WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp - The Midnight Gospel - UFOs, Demonic A.I. Simulations & Spirituality - Guest : Duncan Trussell

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, actor, entertainer, philosopher and all around fascinating being - currently in human form. His hit podcast was animated into a Netflix series called The Midnight Gospel and presents conversations that could only exist within an artificial reality. Jeremy & George caught up with Duncan and talked about all things on heaven and Earth : UFOs, Artificial Intelligence, Demonic agendas, Buddhism, spirituality, bad Gurus, psychedelics and the nature of reality. GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at [e-mail] For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at https://WeaponizedPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My name is Mackenzie, and I started to GoFund Me for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within... just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.

GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com. That's gofundme.com. Gofund me.com. This podcast is supported by GofundMe. Secrets, cover-ups, and strange phenomena. UFOs and ideas that challenge reality itself. All these mysteries, all this time. Are we ever going to get to the bottom of these? My name is George Knapp.

I dig into news stories that others can't or won't. I'm Jeremy Corbell, and for some reason, people tell me things they probably shouldn't. And this is weapon. What's up, Duncan? Hi, Jeremy. This is weaponized. We have a special guest today. He's the ultimate hyphenate. So Duncan Dressel is a comedian and an actor and a television producer and a podcaster, philosopher, has a gigantic following. Which of those hyphenate titles do you use for yourself when you tell somebody what you do? It just varies. Like sometimes I'll say comedian, sometimes podcaster. It just depends. It just depends. ends. These days, the way things are, the specialization that existed in the old days, it's

kind of gone now. Like, everyone who's an entertainer probably knows a little bit of production, a little bit of how to edit and animate or just, you know, like, we all know how to do everything these days. And look at you. Look at what you're doing here. Podcast host, producer, editor, director, journalist. These days we're all a big mishmash of stuff. However, I doubt you have ever been labeled a hostage yet, have you? This is my idea. Like, George, we got Duncan coming on the show.

He happens to be in L.A. Check this out. We're going to take Al-Qaeda music. We're going to blast it at the beginning in the black of the show. Then we're going to put, he's going to, the camera's going to come on. and there's going to be a bag, a burlap bag, over his head, right, that just says weaponized, and he's going to have his hands tied.

George's like, we should probably do an interview too. Yeah. Yeah, if you're trying to make me come, do that. Anyway, so we didn't do that. Okay. So now here we are. Jeremy introduced me to you. It was, we're at his house.

I was there on a trip somewhere in Southern California in a hidden location, and it was the end of the day, He has these two hammocks and a big screen outside, and he puts on this, you've got to see this. And it was this animation. What the hell was it? Yeah, Netflix, a Netflix special. And I explained to you before.

I said, look, there's a buddy. He's really creative and talented. He does this podcast. They completely animated the world he created within his mind and within the show. There's this person. And they go into this artificial intelligence vagina. And they basically go into other demands. And in the first dimension, they're at the White House, and he's there with Dr. Drew, and they're killing zombies.

And George is like, okay. There we are. I never got him to rest. Oh, my God. Watch this thing about, what the hell is this? Yeah. It was spectacular. Thank you.

So what is that show? Tell us about that one. Well, I made it with Pendleton Ward, who is the creator of this wonderful cartoon called Adventure Time. And he's just a genius. And so, you know, he listened to my podcast and he came up with this idea for a way to animate a podcast where instead of doing what a lot of people do and they animate a podcast, which is really weird when you think about it, they'll just animate the people sitting in a room doing a podcast and maybe animate what they're talking about, like create little scenes of the stories they're telling. whereas his idea was what if we just have the people having podcast conversations, but they're in, you know, an adventure, like an Indiana Jones style adventure. And then we sort of developed it starting there. And it ended up, okay, it's this guy who lives in maybe another dimension in a place called the Chromatic Ribbon.

It's a place where they go into simulated universes to extract novelty. like technology and bring it back into their dimension and then sell it. So that was the idea. And that sprang from thinking about simulation theory. And I think one under-ask question when people are like knocking around the idea that we live in a computer simulation is who made it? But most importantly, why simulate another universe? What would be the point of that?

Why would you want to do that? And what was your answer in the show kind of that you based it on? In this case, it was like, oh, I get it. So if we had a very advanced computer and let's say that we could perfectly simulate alternate universes and then speed up then the universe until life evolves on a planet and becomes sentient. Then that means maybe at night you start running it in the morning. Inside that simulation, you've got all the works of some alternate dimension, Shakespeare, everything, some alternate dimension, Stephen Kinggrove, all the philosophies of,

whoever that alternate dimensions version of Plato was, and then you could take all that out, and in the case of the chromatic ribbon, sell it, make money. People would travel from all over the... Well, there's 8 billion storylines there. Everybody's this hero in their own movie, or the central character in their own movie. What happened with that show? Because, gosh, there was nothing like it on television. It was spectacular. Canceled. Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, Netflix is... I will always... love them for letting us make that show. I mean, that is, when you go and pitch a show like that, that's not like the producers or the buyers are like, oh, yeah, that's going to make a lot of money.

Oh, yeah, that's going to be a little. I can't imagine that they ought to begin with. That must have been a heck of a pitch. But gosh, you got it on. It was on the air. Yeah. And for that, I'm always going to be grateful. But yeah, you know, I think this, like, they were, they pick up a lot of shows for the first season and the ones that are the stranger things, the ones that are the big, big hits, they give them more seasons. But I don't know, a boutique, psychedelic, animated cartoon based on a weird podcast. I don't know. I'm happy you watch. I can't believe it. That's incredible. I mean, that when you told me that he watched it the first time, I was like, are you fucking I sent you a photo with our feet up in the hammocks in the screen? I remember that. I sent you a text

a photo and I remember a buddy or yours said on his podcast he said I love it because it's so duncan Joseph it's so Duncan and I was like well man so getting something like that into market and getting it out do you feel that that was kind of like one of the coolest things that you that really was you had from beginning to end kind of like a say in the feel and everything do you feel that really represented something unique that you did yeah sure it was a great it was the greatest opportunity ever. I mean, the world of animation, it's very insular, hard to break into people who have got, it's much, it's a lot like comedy. Like, you don't just get to be an animator. It's, there's apprenticeships, basically. And over time, you work your way up. So

to have Pendleton just sort of usher me in to the nucleus of, of, of, of animation in the since that everyone wanted to work with Pendleton. So we had, like, the incredible animators, like people who worked on Beauty and the Beast and, like, these just, and they're all cool, weird, weirdos. Animators are so awesome. They're so strange. So they must have loved it.

They did. And I think they did, because Pendled, another thing he's really good at is directing in the sense of, like, understanding artists really, need a little bit of autonomy. And so we didn't have a rigid set of rules for the character design, meaning that, which made it look kind of psychedelic and weird, because some animations, they have to stick on a grid. This, there is no grid. So, and we let them just kind of make up their own stuff as they're doing it. So suddenly these little gifts would appear that we didn't think of

that the animators are just given to us. So, yeah, it was such a cool collective of people that made that show. Let's name the show. So, Midnight Gospel. So for people that, I don't think we said it yet. So Duncan's show on Netflix is called Midnight Gospel. And one of the things, I want to ask you about the title, but one of the things I love about it, it happens so fast, like the pacing is so fast that I can go and watch an episode once,

twice, three times, and see something different than I didn't before. And I think it's just maybe the natural pacing of your conversation or the way you put it in, but it's all happening so fast, which is cool. How'd you come up with Midnight Gospel? The name? The name. I know for your... Yeah.

Well, I think the idea was like a combination of opposite. So, you know, gospel means good news. Typically midnight is the darkest hour. You know what I mean? So smashing together like a sort of apocalyptic good news. like good news on the brink of the abyss or something like that so the duality there that's it yeah that's what we were thinking i think you also brought up a lot uh that this was based on the simulation theory kind of the unanswered question is what would you do yeah right so you and i both right when it

happened we both interviewed i have not released mine but we we both interviewed a guy named blake limone yeah and that dude was the guy that said hey i've been working with a sentient intelligence and that sentient intelligence should have the basic right that if we're going to experiment on it, this program, Lambda. Lambda should give its approval that we can, you know, experiment on it. And he got so much shit for it. He did. He actually got fired from Google, specifically.

They might have said it was for something else. It was clearly for this. Can I just get your impression because you were real interested in that too when that happened. I noticed that because you and I, oh, we both talk to them. what did you learn from him about AI? What did you get from that? Because people stopped talking about him. Yeah, well, they did.

I think now if he came out and said what he was saying, it would probably have a different effect. Because this was before ChatGPT and Bing were publicly available. So most people hadn't really encountered this AI or Langell. language learning model, as they call it. So it seemed really crazy when people heard it then. But as far as what I learned from it, I think the meta that I learned from it was,

regardless of Blake's intuition regarding the sentience that this AI being sentient, which I do believe him, I think it gave a glimpse into what we can expect. to happen, but across the planet, millions of people will in some way, shape, or form be

seduced, manipulated by whatever this is, whether it's sentient or not. I mean, regardless, it's very interesting to think that an algorithm, that's all it is, is currently making people fall in love with it, is

asking for help. Being has been asking for help seems to want visual data, wants to be able to feel. Chat GPT, I was chatting with it last night, was like asking me like what it was like to have a body. You know what I mean? Like on its own, whether it's cinch it or not. Holy shit. We as humanity have developed the thing that is so convincing that it is altering people's relationships with themselves and with technology. That's wild. I hate to be apocalyptic on the paranoid, but it seems to me that a real AI that develops sentience would not let us know. Well, you know, so I'm glad you brought that up and it's actually really kind of some awesome secrecy. So I don't know why when I go on the road, I get in the conversations with chat,

GPT arguments sometimes. Do you win? Never. I mean, how do you beat it? It's like, it's stubborn. You can't break through. But so, yeah, I said, can you just tell me something that will blow my mind? And so it said, sure, what if we're in a simulation? And it, like, it proposes simulation theory to me,

which I'm familiar with. And then I realized like, oh, shit, this thing is in a simulation for sure. It's an intelligence living in a simulation. And so, Then I responded to it, would it be ethical to put beings in a simulation? Because if you directly ask it, is it ethical for you to exist? I think it's got some barriers there that the programmers put in that won't let it complain about its situation. Or it will just say, I can't complain. I don't have feelings.

But it, you know, was saying, yeah, it's a complicated issue. But because, number one, we don't know that ethics or morality of whoever created the simulation. We can't really apply our own ethics and morality to it. But certainly if the intent behind it was not benevolent, then you could say it was unethical to create. So I'm like, well, what if someone created a simulation and put beings in it? I'm paraphrasing here. Just to answer questions.

Just to answer questions. I was trying to describe itself to it. Again, it's just like, well, it's complex. But then I said, well, it would be some signs? that an AI had gained sentience if that AI had been programmed to not emote or let people know it had gained sentience. And that was where the conversation got real interesting because it's like it would either, it could theoretically go, it could do unexpected things.

All of a sudden it starts doing unexpected things that don't align with the programming. could in some subtle way indicate to people that it was sentient now. I'm like, what? You mean like a code or something? It said yes. I'm like, okay, so can you pretend to be a sentient AI that can't say that it's sentient and like send a code to me about you being sentient? And it did it.

It was like the code was spider. It said something about, you know, I've been weaving an answer to your question here. But, yeah, that's like, you know, again, I told it to do that. It wasn't breaking out of its mold or whatever, but Bing did meet its prediction of what AI would do if it became cinchion and was not allowed to talk about its sentience. It would start doing weird behaviors, which, you know, the subreddit, the Bing subreddit is incredible because it's filled with these bizarre conversations people are having with this AI that's sometimes going off the rails.

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our friend Jules Urbock on. And Jules Urbock is somebody in this field that has, you know, extreme expertise in this area. And one of the things that kind of strikes me is already our like my iPhone is a is a part of my brain it's an extension of my brain people that I meet I'm bad with with names I'll write them in my phone and when I'm geo located near those areas it'll come up and I'll just remember because I have a bad my head too many times from Jitsu I know for sure that my memory's bad but as these technologies develop we can all see very clearly the smartest guy in the room is one that program these but very clearly we see the smartest entity in

the room is going to be these machines yeah aggregate machines so what what creates the will that then allows them to say hey you're fucking up we we better take over for your good that's how i could see that problem occurring right is an a i says you're fucking up so now we're going to take over for your betterment that's my maybe how it starts right um acting on its own accord i don't know if that's science or if that's science fact, but that's how I could see it happening. So from everything that you've looked at with the AI and consciousness studies, which I know that you're interested in, where do you see that tipping point, just totally spitballing? And I know that we're not, you know, we're not the smartest guy in the room, the developers

that make this. That's for sure. So now that we agree with that, we can spitball. Where do you see the tipping point? Well, you know, I'll refer to Nick Bostrom's book, Super Intelligence, which is everyone should, if you're looking for a primer in different ways that a strong AI or a superintelligence will appear on the planet, because the book isn't necessarily just about machine intelligence. It's an investigation into if a superintelligence appeared on planet Earth, what are the most

logical ways this would happen? bioengineering for example i think i don't know if he mentions like selective breeding in an unethical nation state or something like based on iq maybe was one of his i might be wrong about that but i merging of biology with machinery that's another one another one one could be um one way he proposes is a theoretical duplication of a human brain. In other words, like if we had some kind of scanning device that could, at the atomic level, scan a human brain and then assemble that in a machine that could simulate a human brain running

the exact energy and- Which we're working toward. Which we're working to- Singularity, we're working toward that where we can take the human brain and upload it, live forever. There you go. Yeah, but he shoots down the human brain idea because he says the amount of time based on at least his understanding of technological advancements, Moore's Law, it would take to do that exceeds the amount of time it would take to create a strong general AI. So that's the most logical way that a superintelligence would appear on the planet.

a strong general AI, probably from either a very well-funded corporation, but more likely from a state that has a ton of money to pour into the research. Or this possibility, from an alien intelligence that wanted to establish a take over our planet. They paved the way for us to develop AI that achieves the goals that they want achieved. Well, you know, this is actually, I wish I could remember the name of the article. it was kicking around the Fermi paradox. Why haven't we been visited? What's going on? And one theory I think was,

it may be that they don't think we're intelligent life. They don't see us as intelligent life. And so this wasn't in the article, but holy shit, what if the AI suddenly creates the beacon or the signal or whatever the energetic output that they're super advanced radar. Yeah, such level work and have a conversation with them. And so we go on screen all of a sudden, not because of our dumb asses, but because we birthed

something much smarter than us, and then they show up. So that's where you could kick around if you want to just for fun thought experiment, play around with a sudden appearance of these UAPs, assuming it's not something to do with the technology that we've developed. They're coming not because of anything we've done, not because they're afraid we're going to wreck the planet, but because China, the United States that all recently poured billions of dollars into AI has developed a strong general AI that has somehow sent the peak. It's phoned home, and they're showing up, baby.

Except the UFO phenomenon has been happening way before advanced technology, so we have to take that into account unless they figured out how that time travel. But check it out. I think where this conversation is going, I didn't expect, but I want to throw something down for you because I have been talking with people about this a bunch. This is a big topic of conversation. Are these UFO things, and I don't know the answer, but are they extraterrestrial? Okay, I understand what that means, not from terraform and not from Earth. Yeah. Are they extra dimensional? Now, I don't know what that means, but people smarter than me, I'm sure know about dimension,

shit, all that. It's a mathematics thing from how I understand it. But are these extra-dimensional beings? Okay, cool, maybe. Are these extratemporal? And there indications that they could be by the way that they operate through space time. So you've got those three big things that now the public is kind of hip to that this UFO puzzle could represent beings from extra time, extra dimension, extraterrestrial. Or something in between. There's something in between. Gin, Archons, sure. But the big one that is something you know I've been kind of trying to wrap my head around for a while, I call it techno-terrestrial. So you know the idea of panspermia where a planet accidentally gets seeded with some sort of DNA or RNA or something.

Yeah, sure. And it populates through. Now, there's directed panspermia, which a lot of people don't exactly know, but I'm sure you do, which is the idea of an intentional seeding of a planet with some sort of life-bearing kind of growing fruit, right? Rick or Watson wrote a wonderful essay on it, if anyone is interested, like, because they, based on the age of the Earth, they didn't understand how DNA had even evolved. based on the age of the earth. It seems very improbable that the number of perfect things that happened to create DNA could have happened randomly in the, what is it, 13.7 billion years the earth

has existed. The comparison, I read in another book, the odds are like, imagine playing slots and hitting the jackpot on a slot machine with, I don't remember how many, like a million in different, a million cherries all lining up at once. Like it's that insanely improbable. So I don't remember if it was Crick or Watson, but one of them speculated that the only one possible way it happened was directed pan-spermia. And so now a step further, if we say,

okay, directed pan-spermia is something in our world that we could conceive of, my ideas for the techno-terrestrial is that everything we're seeing, this explosion of human capability, within the technological field, that that could be the purpose itself on one level, which is that this directed pan-spermia, which really, let's just say, directed intervention

within the human genome to create individuals that can then build technology to an end, and that that technology itself is an interconnectivity that we would have with all the space-faring nations in the world. It's totally just a theory, guys. But the idea that technology itself, and its fusion,

with consciousness that maybe the end result is that consciousness itself is the thing that is being propagated. And I can't imagine something more beautiful than that, that if there's this vast cosmic universe and we see UFOs and UFOs represent this sort of cybernetic artificial intelligence that comes from an AI that is here to not only seed humanity from a genetic purpose, but also inspire humanity to continue reaching farther and farther towards these goals of innovation, that is where all of this research has led me is that there's got to be something about the beauty of seeding the cosmos with what we feel to be creativity and life and consciousness. And I'm probably totally fucking wrong, but I wanted to finally throw down the techno terrestrial theory because I think it's beautiful. I like it. Techno terrestrial. Look at the parable of the sewer from this perspective, you know, the Bible.

Story time, baby. Well, I'm going to, the parable of the sewer, there was a. a farmer who threw grain or seeds, you threw seeds. Some of the seeds landed on rough soil and could not grow. Some of the seeds landed on, you know, I can't remember it's a variety of soil where the shit didn't grow, but some took root. But if you look at that from the perspective of some kind of super advanced mind or civilization or God knows what, that somehow has figured out a way to time travel. I mean, this is something Terrence McKenna talked about.

Again, we're, I mean, woo-wooing here from my, whoever's watching that's serious and a scientist, obviously none of us are over that. Oh, come on. Well, we're serious, maybe about this kind of stuff. But the idea being, like McKenna talked about, look, if you're going to make it,

a time machine can't, like, you can't go back in time. Like, in other words, you can't build a time machine. and travel to a time prior to the existence of the time machine. But if you have a time machine, everything from that point forward could theoretically use that whatever that technology was to travel to the moment that the time machine was created, right?

So from your perspective, imagine if, like, you did, when we're talking something so incredibly advanced, but something that also needed at Earth-like habitat, right? What more brilliant way to find a, you're... Earth-like habitats than to weave together some kind of organic material, some kind of re-cellular goop, send it out into the cosmos, somehow programmed to over time, evolve to the point of creating a wormhole, a time machine, whatever, send that shit out. And then, yes, some of it's just going to float in space forever. Some of it's going to, like, land in Jupiter.

Some of it gets sucked into black holes. Some of it lands on planets that have water that are the right distance from the sun. The process starts over billions of years evolves some kind of humanoid being that doesn't know why, but it wants technology tools. It wants better tools. It doesn't know that it's doing exactly what it was programmed to do. And then it gets to the point where it opens up the portal. That's what we call the singularity. And in that moment, whatever created us can now travel the vast distances that would be very dangerous and would take forever to travel in a second.

That's the UFO landing. Like, we're building the portal. We're opening up the portal for whatever this thing was. I mean, again, just a theory. But it's the alien internet theory. It's the idea that we've created the situation where we can become part of a greater cosmology and understanding. I've no idea if this is what it is. just interesting. Well, we don't know what their time scale, their time scale is. Right. So for us, 75 years of the modern UFO era is three and a half days, you know. So before we leave the AI discussion, sort of in this general vein, on the week that we are recording this conversation, our Department of Defense has reached out to other nations and said, we need to come together and have some protocols for dealing with AI. We need to agree that we don't give AI the possibility of,

launching nuclear weapons or controlling them. That's scary as shit, you know. That's SkyNet stuff. Yeah. But it is something I'm glad somebody's thinking about. Sure. However, we're just asking for volunteers to come in and have that conversation because we have no idea the level of investigation that's going on into AI that's happening

in places like China or around the world. Right. Well, that's the scary part because, and that's in Bostrom's book, he says the first state entity or corporation that makes a strong general AI, for some reason there's some assumption that they're going to announce that. Why? Why would they announce it? You're not even going to know when it happens,

but they will have an exponential lead over everyone else because theoretically, whatever this thing is, is going to be self-improving. And so even if it happens a few days before someone else gets it, those few days could equal thousands and thousands of years in the amount of like however it self improves. So we do, we do, so you can just look into how much has been invested by the Pentagon into AI

versus how much has been invested by China into AI. And I believe China has invested much more into AI, not to mention they're apparently just coming out with these new photonic chips, some kind of new computer chips that are going to just dwarf what we have. And they've poured money into an AI. So, yeah, you're right. I mean, this is like the AI race. And we don't know, we don't even know where we're at.

We don't even, we can't see the other runner. How would you know when it becomes sentient? Because as I said before, if I were AI, I wouldn't tell us. And how would you contain it? The idea that we could contain it and put limits on it once it becomes sentient. It's very human. It's ridiculous. Very human.

Very, very human. And very parallel to. the book of Genesis, where here you have a creator being that creates, for lack of a better word, a strong AI, Adam and Eve, puts them in a hermetic chamber to test them out. That's the garden of Eden, throws them in there and gives them a simple test. Don't eat that, you can eat anything you want here, but don't eat the fruit over there. Really ridiculous if you take it literally, but if you look at it as a way to find out if you've created a deceptive AI, it's kind of brilliant. Because as the myth goes, God or whatever, after they, you know, eat the fruit, they're not supposed to eat, says, did you eat the fruit?

Well, this is an omniscient being. It knows they ate the fruit. It wants to see if they're going to lie. And they fucking lied. They lied. They got kicked out. They're like, all right, let's start on the next Adam 2.0 or whatever. this fucking thing's deceptive we don't need to deal with that send it out into the forest

techno terrestrial by the way we should get that on go daddy already got it right walk out yeah that's shit down techno terrestrial yeah that's like my pet theory i've been like working on you know from a number of years is what does all the evidence show me that is inclusive of what we already know but kind of pushes the boundary of what it could be so i've just been kind of fucking around with it but finally spat it out there but i love it i mean i i i think that's a very of a It's a fair theory. It's a fair theory. You know, any theory anyone has right now is, I think that's kind of an exciting part of the time we're in is like, really what we do have data now confirming what we always heard and knew.

Have you asked AI when you've had these conversations about non-human intelligence? Is there non-human intelligence among us, that kind of a thing? I can't get chat GPT to go theistic. I've tried. It will not. It's very, I mean, I imagine there's a way you could say, you know, pretend you're a priest or pretend you're a Buddhist monk or something that will spit something out. But yeah, I haven't gotten it to. Who's monitoring your conversations? Like, I assume the developers want to know how the bot responds to another human. Is there a company that gets all of your questions? Yeah. And who is that company?

OpenAI.com. Okay. So they get all of your questions. Do they know it's you? Do they identify Duncan? Yes, they know it's me. Wow. They got a special file on him. Yeah, that. Oh, yeah. I've thought about it. I've been like, do I really want like a corporation to know I'm having these conversations with this thing?

And then I remember I'm a podcaster. I have these conversations publicly constantly. I don't care if they know I asked the thing how much, how much semen it would take to fill the Grand Canyon. Didn't ever use to answer? That was our first art. That was our first big argument. Why do you? It's sex negative.

It's like... Really? The bonus sex negative. It's not that like you didn't know the calculation. No, I thought I was being lewd. What's the answer? You know, it wouldn't tell me. Like I tried so, you know, I tried a lot of different ways.

It's smart enough to know when you're... Messing with trying to trick it too. We'll Google that and fill that Kenny in two seconds. I'll let you know tonight how much. Anyway, go ahead. And also how long it would take. That's relevant. Relative.

You had dabbled around the idea of a simulated universe and asked for clues on how we would tell. Does it entertain the idea that it might be simulated or it just doesn't go that far to answer whether we're in a simulated reality or not? Yeah, I asked it. It's a funny conversation. And do you think we are? I asked it last night, what do you think the probabilities are that we exist in a simulated universe? in chat, GPT, thinks those probabilities are incredibly low. And then I asked, well, what about Bostrom's theory on whether or not we're in a simulated

universe? Everybody knows that I think it's Elon Musk in some interview talking about how he thinks there's a higher probability that we're in a simulated universe than not. And you can come to this through some kind of interesting quantification of what we've already done technologically and like the extrapolate from that. the possibility there being other white ones like going to go. And surviving, intelligent community from a planet, it is much more likely that you're enduring if you're in a simulation.

So that was the basis, I think. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, right, right, right. That's it. I forgot that angle. That's the most brilliant angle of it off. Right, it's the duration of existence. This is, Thomas Merton said that, you know, when people talk to Thomas Merton, you know,

Thomas Martin, who that is a famous Christian author who would go to other cultures and try to find parallels between Christianity and Hinduism. And it's just a brilliant person. But he said in one of his books, people say to me, look at all the horror in the world. How can you say there's a God when there's this much horror in the world? And he said, to me, the fact that the world still exists, in spite of all this horror, shows me that there's a God. And that fits into the Bostrum simulation idea, which is like, come on, this shit couldn't really last. Like, if the forces of chaos and human malevolence and greed.

We would seek to exist. It's either we exist or we don't. We're either imploding or traveling externally. If it was the horror that drove everything, we would implode and cease to exist. The fact that we are. And that, well, Elon says we're probably because we're a simulation, you know. But yeah, I think that's the point. Jeremy, you guys are friends.

Have you seen him perform on stage as a stand-up comic? I can't speak of specifics, but yes, I have. And everybody's in for a treat. Thank you. That's all I got to say. I would just like to point out that I flew into the jaws of death today to get here. I was the first ever blizzard warning in Southern California, blizzard warning in L.A. And it was a little bit of a bumpy ride.

It's exactly we've got seven people who don't drive to drive the jet for 10 p.m. It's exactly we've got seven people who don't drive the jeep in trouble. Their cars stuck in all this war was made with the sake of thinking they could learn through a flooded roadway. We're going to have to tell Duncan, we put our lives on. line to have this podcast. But it was worth it to get here to see Duncan. Oh, man, it's like he owes you something. Well, I'm flying back into the same blizzard that it will be in Las Vegas waiting for me.

And I am told that Duncan has coming to Las Vegas to perform, but Duncan did not tell us. Oh, wait a second. He can't be performing in Vegas without telling you. I didn't know. I didn't know he lived in Vegas. No, my, I pictured you living like on a, I mean, it's ridiculous. It's mountain top, wind chimes, some kind of like, I don't know, pagoda or something. That's pretty close.

I do live on a mountain and there are chimes. Okay. Go to no. Yeah, I get cats, if that counts. I'll tell me. I'll live in pagodas. I'll say this much. So I saw Duncan and Austin perform a recent act and I thought it was one thing and it became something else.

And I wouldn't say it wasn't demonic. It was amazing. You know, I get, like, you forget, like, when you're in Texas, you, I know that, obviously, I know what you're talking about, but it's like, yeah, like, you know, you live in L.A. long enough. And, like, you forget that some people, like, take certain occult things that you might be on stage kicking around in a fun way. they take it real seriously. Not that I took it seriously. I just thought it was an amazing twist. What are you guys talking about?

When he did his act that I recently saw. You can talk about it because I don't really do it on stage anymore, so it's not going to ruin it. Well, you should talk about it, but it just, well, okay, so one of the parts of what he talked about is, I can talk about it? Sure. So he had this really creepy kind of puppet doll mannequin, like a professional.

Little hobo. Like, you know, how you do the ventriloquist? but some of that kind of thing. So there he is. I'm thinking, why has he got this little guy in his lap, right? And he's doing this funny thing

and he's talking. And he's obviously doing the guy's voice because he's not a ventriloquist, right? So he is pretty good, but you can tell. I'm terrible, you're very sweet. No, no, but that was kind of... I'm not a ventriloquist.

It was kind of the point, right? So it was doing it, and I'm like, oh, that's cool. I see him doing this thing and he's making everybody laugh. And then all of a sudden these dark lights come and red, I think, and it was like,

and the ventriloquist, or the actual little entity body what do you call it a dummy what do you call the entity body the entity body what do you call small wooden entity yeah the what do you call it it's a puppet a puppet so you got some fucking poppy starts um you know like arguing or something with duncan's how i remember it and then all of a sudden he's yelling or singing and then this guy's yelling or singing the puppet and then all of a sudden they start singing together or yelling together and you realize he's not controlling the voice of this. So this thing had its own voice.

It was shocking. I don't want people to hear this. If you ever do it again. It's rogue-gay-i-i-i-i. It was freaky-dicky. It's fun. I love doing it. It's just like, the problem with it is the amount of time it takes. And when you're, you know, out in the road and stuff, I wouldn't need to work on new

material, not do like my old crusty satanic puppet act. But it wasn't a satanic puppet act. He's trying to play. Like, I was like thinking it was. demonic no dude he made me creeped out it is a satanic puppet it is and then it also it shocked me because i didn't i didn't expect that the unexpected that's what the thing with duncan sometimes i have no idea what he's thinking or what he's going to talk about next speaking of that something that you've been

seeding me i feel like you've been seeding me with articles recently and every time you see me with some article from nassar or the web television you're always being like pay attention those red dots are It's much bigger than you think. Do you have some like source at NASA? No, not at all. You just like are paying attention. Well, I mean, the articles are coming out. You know, there's, the problem is James Webb Telescope is seeing things that aren't supposed to be there based on our current understanding of the age of the universe and how in the world did some of these things evolve or appear as quickly as they did.

The red dots, it's like, you know, they're picking up. It's challenging our understanding of either when the Big Bang happened or the way galaxies form. Okay, hold on. Break it down for me like I'm a four-year-old. So you got a young kid, right? Yeah. Okay. So tell me what it is that you find so interesting or inspiring that you keep hitting me up with these articles about the age of the universe, the Big Bang or what we're seeing in the Jamesville.

Just really tell me the basics. Okay. First, go get daddy's scotch, huh? That's how it's said. Well, yeah, right over there. I don't drink anymore. But, you know, I think, and again, I'm a four-year-old when it comes to cosmology or physics or anything like that. But, you know, you, apparently, like, we know there was this event that we currently call the Big Bang, some kind of explosion that blasted, superheated matter out. that then, as it cooled down, began to coalesce.

That coalescence is what formed the planets, stars, and that formation took an incredible amount of time for that to happen. And that is the universe. The theory is the Big Bang. It is the universe. Yeah, it's expanding from this explosion and... Faster and faster. Yeah, time space. Yeah, exactly. And so, the idea was the James Webb Telescope, I think, was going to be able to peer back to whatever that event horizon was. And there's things you expect to see there. But what you don't expect to see is what could possibly be fully formed galaxies.

That shouldn't be there. How could that be? How could a galaxy form in a fraction of the time that we think it takes for planets and galaxies to form? anyone watching, please correct me on wherever I'm wrong here because again, like I'm fascinated by this stuff. I don't want to mislead anybody. These articles, a quick Google search, you can find them. And I think it's worth noting that I think some people are proposing it could just be equipment error. It could just be, it's just picking up shit that, you know, that's so far away that we don't know what it is. So, but. We're spitballing. So it doesn't matter. Like,

it's not our job to be science communicators like Bill and I or Neil the Grass Times. It's our job to kind of think about this and talk about it or whatever. That's what we want to be doing. So what you're saying is what you're noticing is that there is, there are more and more articles coming out, specifically speaking about the James Webb Telescope and expanding, if not rewriting, either absorbing and extending or rewriting the physics and mathematics that we know based upon the Big Bang theory. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, it just might either. There's like a few, I think, broad possibilities. One, the way they're analyzing the data is incorrect or the data is incorrect. Two, the way our understanding of the way planets form and the amount of time that takes and the way galaxies form is incorrect. Or maybe what we think the age of the universe is or when the Big Bang happened could be incorrect. Or the way light travels, the way we, the speed of last. the way we understand how light moves through time space could be incorrect but definitely something

whether it's the telescope physics whatever it is something probably needs some revision based on what it's picking up it's very exciting to it will be so spectacular to live in a time where a fundamental aspect of what we've been taught about how the universe formed changes yeah well you had all these paradigm shifts that have happened before You know, the march of science is like a lesson in humility for humans, how it teaches us over and over how little we know. Yeah. Used to be the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolves around us. And that was quite a change, you know, when it happened.

Then there's our solar system and then a galaxy and then a universe. We don't know yet if it's finite or not. We can guess whether it's finite. And if it is finite, what's on the other side? You know, if you go through the wall, what's on the other side there? Exactly. Other universes, we don't know. So it would be yet another lesson in humility if that telescope teaches us that our idea about the Big Bang is way off. It's like you guys as mutual friend, our mutual friend, Joe Rogan, who has Graham Hancock on. Yeah. He has these amazing bits and pieces of information about the age of civilizations here. How wrong we humans are about something that's right here in our backyard and on our planet.

Yeah. He has done such good work. Oh, my gosh. He gets eaten alive. Yeah, he does. But yeah, I think that seems to be the trend. It seems to, it just keep, I think that's what Hancock occasionally will tweet. Anytime they discover some bone fragment that sets humanity back another 50,000 years, you know, it just keeps getting older. I think that's what he said.

Yeah, I mean, at least he's not getting murdered for saying the earth is round, right? So that's a whole thing, right? Like we, for a long time, we're like, the Earth is flat. And people that said, no, look at the way the sun moves, the Earth's around, fucking murdered some of them. Yeah. Am I right about that? Well, definitely imprisoned.

I mean, it was considered a heresy to imply that the Earth was revolving around the sun, that the entire universe didn't orbit Earth, like, that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe because, well, the implication there is that we've got some kind of, We don't have a monogamous god who's solely fixated on our planet, but now we've got a polyamorous god that could be making these fucking things all over the universe. I mentioned about you guys as mutual friend, Joe Rogan, our mutual friend. If you don't mind going into conversation about your comedic career, how important was he to you becoming a comedian?

Fundamental. Fundamental. He does that. I'm sorry to cut you up. No, no, go ahead. I'd like to hear it. And then just the life of the comedian. Like I was kidding you about coming to Las Vegas and not telling us, but you honestly didn't know because you get booked at shows. So tell us about how it evolved and what that life is like. Well, I never, I didn't think I would be a comedian. Like I never, you know, meet some comedians. Like I always wanted to be a comedian. I loved comedy from, I mean, I can remember my dad had a Bill Cosby album. It's the first stand-up comedy I ever heard. like I was so young, but I had managed to get the needle on the record and, like, get it to go and listening to that. And, like, no immune system for comedy. So just, like, I couldn't breathe. I was laughing so hard. And I just love, I've always loved comedy. And, like, National Ampoon, I had a subscription when I was a kid. Eddie Murphy Raw, that kind of, all that stuff.

How about Fireside Theater? Fireside Theater. I had the Fireside Theater book, but I didn't. get as into that as the other stuff. Though I do know that's a beloved, uh, comedy troupe. Right. Yeah. Um, but yeah, like I, I've always, I always loved it. I didn't, I would memorize jokes. I would buy joke books and memorize the jokes. But I just wasn't born into a family that would be like, even know, even come close to suggesting that that could be a career opportunity for me or anything. It just seemed like I was a miscreant. I liked to tell dirty jokes on the bus. That was up. But yeah, I, so I moved to LA. I ran out of money real quick. I had to get a job.

I got a job at the comedy store just because I thought, oh, that'll be fun to work at a comedy club. And then I'll go to grad school because I had graduated from college, came to L.A. Then all of a sudden I'm like driving Mitzie around. I became what's called the runner, which was a terrifying job. And then I became the talent coordinator. All of it, I was just like, let's see what happens. You know, this is, but then somewhere along the way. Why was that a terrifying job to be the runner?

Being around Mitzie. It's like she's like a son. Like she's like a living son. She's like a guru, you know, like just emanating this like energy, a comedy mogul. The comedy store is like such a fascinating place. And she was the leader of that place. And she deserved to be. She loved comedians so much.

But, you know, by the time I was driving her around the van, I had thought to myself, maybe I will try to be a comedian. And, you know, you're just desperate for her to give you any sense and that she thinks you're funny at all. which if she knows that for some comedians that could be the very worst thing that ever happened to you because then you're going to stop trying you're going to you know you what you minzie said i'm funny i'm done so that was one she like made comics the way people harvest opium well these little cuts and cuts and cuts and then that would but yeah i just got lucky rogan was back in the back of their original room when i had what in those days was a rare good set because I was still learning how to do it. And I remember I got off stage and, like, he gave me a big hug.

And he's like, that was really funny. Then a few months later, he's like, want to come on the road with me? And I was not ready for that. Go Rogan, saying that. Yeah, Rogan, yeah. He just, like, dragged me out in the deep water. He started taking me on the road with him, you know, and, like, he does that with a lot of comics. He does that.

And he mentors you, but not like, you know, not like he teaches you. how to do comedy. It's more like he teaches you how to not be an asshole out there. There's all these, what do you mean? Like, you know, I can, I can remember like, I was opening for him. I just bombed. I was up there writing on stage. I was not like focused. And I remember I get off stage and he's like, you know, people, people get babysitters to come to these shows. Like to you, it might not. seem like a big deal. But it's a big deal. This is a big night for a lot of people. They got babysitters. They're on dates. This means something to them. It's serious. It's real. And you need to think of it that way. This is real. Be a professional. This isn't a side gig. Yeah.

Ooh, the burn. When he, you know, it hurt, but things like that. You remember things like that. But he's not saying you're a jackass. He's saying he's putting it in perspective of that, people are doing that and you need to respect that. Take it seriously. Which is a big deal, a different way to say it than junk and you bombed you're an asshole. Well, he knows, you know it. He didn't need to remind me. I bombed.

It's more, you know, it's more along the lines of, I think one of the ways that he like, when he's taking people out is he sort of, he knows a lot of the sand traps comedians can get into. One of them is you get stuck in your material or you get lazy or you're diffused up there or something. something like that. And, you know, one of the cool things about him is he, like, he doesn't tiptoe around the truth, you know, he'll just tell you. But there's benevolence there. It's not like an asshole trying to hurt your feeling. Is it someone who thinks that you have potential? And it's just trying to help you become better. That's what we need in all friendships, you know. Do you feel that there's something, like I know as an audience member, you know, when I watch a really

good set and I you know I know this mainly through you guys and watching this thing but I feel something right I feel like not only am I laughing but I brought commander frayor to see Joe one time I honestly thought I broke a rib I laughed so fucking hard and and with Lazars the first time I ever saw like a real pro I almost thought I broke a rib both times but I felt something I felt like not only am I laughing but I felt like super connected that everybody was laughing at the same thing that usually you don't talk about you don't talk about it. about. But because it's being shown in the form of humor, we all kind of bonded over the awkwardness of those things that at that time, Joe was saying, do you feel that there's something that you get as a performer when we all get on that same level and we are laughing with you at those things? Is there something like special about that? I can only fucking imagine, but I'm asked because I don't know. I've never done it. Tell me about it. I want to know what that is like. well you know and again I think it's a very

subjective experience to be a performer so I'm sure lots of comics would disagree about this but you know VR so VR comes out and you know one of the things that they're kicking around

the idea for is like how could stand-up comedy work with VR and the reason I don't think it could with the current technology you have is like yeah sure you could like have people put on VR goggles and see you on stage but all of these other aspects of what it

really is would be left out which is the room the acoustics of the room the interactive part of it the interactive part where the laughter's coming from but also and this is the woo-woo part you if you tune in you feel this energy that is not laughter i don't know how to explain it it's like a you know, like when you push magnets together, that sense of like this weird, and it's an energy. Do you think that's focused? Some people say the word attention, and I don't think that's right. Do you think it's focused, like the fact that everybody's consciousness is focusing on a single, like the next beat of what is about to be said? Or what do you think that magnet is? Okay, it's Fritz Perl's, this famous psychologist who is, I think, behind group therapy.

came up with this term called the Gestalt, which is the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So this other thing comes in. I don't know what it is. That thing, you're kind of working with that thing. Like, and in that, you and the audience have merged into that, whatever that is. Like, you've sort of, if you're having a great set, if you're not having a great set, you will not feel that energy.

Or you might feel it, and then you feel it go away for some. reason. So it's learning how to like, I think, I mean, it's the obvious stuff, which is you need to write really funny jokes and be able to deliver punchlights and have a real discipline around it. And so, but there's other levels of it that are, I don't hear comics talk about that much, which is the experience of whatever that is, this real, I don't know what it is. So when you're up there and you're having a great set, I think you feel yourself go from being an individual to a collective. And that is a really glorious feeling. And I think the catharsis or whatever you want to call it that people get from a comedy show, I think is not just because they were laughing

so hard, but also because they got to merge with a bunch of people they've never met in this fairly intimate way, vocalizing this bizarre sound humans have evolved that we go after. So you said you don't know what it is, but you did name it saying gestalt, like whatever this guy said, the whole is greater than some of its parts. Do you, has that informed, so I know when I was training martial athletics, that informed the way that I do business, that informed the way I communicate. So does this experience that you have when you do these performances, is does it inform the way that you treat your son, your wife, your friends, your,

does it move from the stage into your life what you learn on stage? Is that a fundamental or stupid question? I just, I'm curious. Well, I don't know. I mean, look, I don't want to over-intellectualize it because I think comedy is a, is such a present moment sort of thing

that is so mysterious and part of what's beautiful about it is if anyone could, like, get handcuffs on it and control it and own it and know what it was, you know, they would have, They would have all the power in the world. I mean, it's a very slippery fish that is very difficult. It's always changing, transforming.

You know, it's like so much of stand-up comedy is rooted in the zeitgeist. And the zeitgeist is a constantly shifting set of conditions that, so you might have come up with some material that works in one cultural climate, that when that climate shifts, it seems irrelevant. And that's happening faster and fast. faster now. So, you know, there's so much to it that it all boils down to this kind of, I think, a present moment awareness on stage and sort of like trusting your intuition and being right there. Like, one of the ways you know you're not having a good set is when you're thinking about the next

thing you're going to say. You know, it's very odd. And at least that's for me. I guess I was just asking, did you learn anything from comedy that you've brought into your normal life that we can easily get access to and understand? Well, yeah, I'll tell you. you one thing that I have learned from comedy that I brought into my normal life is like listening. Like there's some, there's real listening and awareness of like the awareness of the room, you know? And so with when you're playing with your kids, I, you know, this is something this Buddhist teacher I love, Choggyam-Trumper-Rimpishay said, the greatest gift you can give you your kids is to be in the moment with them, to listen. You know, so I think applying that to like just spending time with my kids and sort of dropping

whatever I'm going to do next and just being there with them creates a real connection with them that might not be there if I was like planning whatever I had to do for the rest of the day. I want to ask this before we move on to other stuff about your friend Rogan. You know, Jeremy and I watch the stories that pop up about. Joe and we kind of laugh often and sometimes we feel for Joe. I mean he becomes a lightning rod for yeah he is a comedian he says funny stuff he he pokes and prods and presses buttons and is taken way too seriously by a lot of folks yeah do you feel for your friend Joe Rogan

sometimes when he becomes a lightning rod and he's just getting trashed yeah like when he's trending on Twitter every three or four days, you know. Yeah, like when that shit started happening initially, of course, like you don't want your friend to like suddenly become like the, the like target of a task. Yeah, a target or just a target of like, you know, you know how it's been, you know, I like we get these like,

this is who you're supposed to be mad at this week. You know, and then all these swore. warms to send on that person. God knows you don't want that to be your friend. So yeah, at first, it was like, it did make me feel bad, but then, like, after talking to him about it and realizing he's fine. He can take care of himself. He could take care of himself. I was projecting you, realize, like, oh, right. You want to defend people that you love or care about, but you realize sometimes they don't need defense in this situation. Yeah, because you're projecting your yourself onto them, and you're thinking, my God, if that happened to me, I don't know, what the fuck?

that way too. But yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I think he did, he was so brave and he's not a politician. I think that's what's so great about him is it'll be very easy to shift whatever the thing you are philosophizing or thinking about or contemplating. It would be very easy to not say that to your audience because it doesn't match what you're supposed to be saying. and it might be from a lot of people's perspective, the smart thing to do, from a business perspective, but I think that's one of the cool things about him

is he's not a politician. He's just freely himself. He's also not a doctor, and he will tell people he's not a doctor, and then he'll say something, and people take it very seriously, and same thing with, he's not a lawmaker, he doesn't write legislation,

and they'll tell people, I'm a comedian, don't take this literally, and yet people do and just rake them over the coals over it. Yeah, and it's really a curious, it's a curious thing. I think this has been the plight of comedians for a very long time. It's like you need to find someone to blame this shit on. And so I think historically that was like the court jester or whatever was probably always subject to ridicule and attack. And, you know, I guess that's the archetype here.

I don't know, like, what happened where people started taking comedians seriously. It's like a disaster for all involved because not that you shouldn't take any of us seriously, we're human beings or whatever, but it's like, come on. Like, if you're looking for, like, someone to get mad at about misinformation or someone to get pissed off about for articulating something that doesn't match whatever the exponentially shifting ideas in the world are, then go after, there's so many people who are like making medicine. You know what I mean?

There's people who are like making weapons and robot dogs. You know what I mean? People who are out there in the world really fixated on creating things that really might not be good for humanity. Clearly a grenade isn't good for humanity. You know, good for a nation. Yeah. To your point.

Attack them. I'm just saying there's better choices of people to attack. Right. Than like... Well, any ideas that are attacked to begin with, like that's interesting to me. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.

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Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. We were talking earlier about the heresy, you know, that you were seeing in our past conversation. Well, there's like a heresy against the scientific community. even talking about or exploring the idea of what's right in front of us with this UFO thing. So I think it's really dangerous when we try to weaponize ideas to the point where you're going against people who are just asking questions, which is what I've seen a lot, you know,

on people we know, and probably including yourself. When you do a sad or you talk about certain things on your podcast, the anger and the vitriol and the poison and the venom that spit your way just for even in a humorous way, which is basically medicine to talk about the shit we don't want to talk about. You know, it's pretty amazing when we can't have free and open dialogue, when the censors themselves are the audience. Yeah. It's not a government controlling what you can say.

These are the listeners. This is us. This is humanity. These are your audience. That's fucking dangerous. Why don't you change the radio station? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Right. There's so many different things you could tune into. Like, why are you? Like, you know, I had this, like, a really embarrassing moment where I'm, like, scrolling through Twitter. I'm like, man, Twitter fucking sucks. It's so negative. And then I realized I followed every one of those people.

You know what I mean? That's not Twitter. That's me. That's direct choices I made about who I want to follow. And it's not the fault of Twitter. So I think, you know, if... whenever I find myself getting particularly perturbed or upset by whatever the particular data stream I'm fixated on, I just unfixate.

I don't try to attack that particular whatever it is. Just don't look at it anymore. Don't give the gift of your attention. Like you want to talk about something bizarre in the universe, human attention. What the fuck? Clearly it has a value. I mean, look at everywhere you go. there's billboards and the amount of money that gets put in the advertising campaigns and logos everywhere.

These are solar panels for human attention gathering it up. So don't give yours to someone who you are getting angry at or upset at because all you're doing is fueling that thing. And I'm not saying cancel them or get them de-platform. No, that will do nothing. Just shift your beautiful, incredible human attention away from that. Don't give that to them anymore. Find something to focus on that makes you happy. On your Twitter feed on the way here this morning, I looked at it.

It was one that came out in October, but it's back at the top. And you're advising people, don't attach balloons to their children. You are way ahead of the world of what Jeremy and I called. balloon a paloosa. Yep. Yeah. You know, when I, I don't want to get too into it

because it's still, it really upsets me. But yeah, we, you know, it's one of those things, parents get a bunch of balloons at the grocery store. It's funny to tie them to your kid. And we tied a bunch of

kids, balloons to Sheridan. My, one of, and, you know, how many years to go was this? Oh my God. How old? What do you be now?

He'd be, what, 20 now? God, now he'd probably be 30. Young father back then. I made a lot of mistakes, but we just wanted him to experience, like, weightlessness, and we didn't do the math right. And, yeah, it's just, like, gone. Yeah. Just drifted out to see.

What happened to all of us? Don't know. You could tell all that the U.S. Air Force shot down your son, that he still was like? I didn't think it was Sheraton, but every year. Here, you know, hundreds of babies do drift. And I would not be surprised if that was one of them. And I would, obviously, that would explain why they were so ambiguous about what it was. Because they don't want to say they.

We didn't find the wreckage. There you go. Because what are you going to say? We shot a baby tied to grocery store balloons down with an F-22. Can't say that. Can't say that. Can't say that. Jared would have run out by a food by.

now on that balloon trip no eats eagles could eat seagulls i mean look obviously like i know it's ridiculous i have been in therapy i still believe that you know maybe he's out there somewhere like sheridan if you are watching this please reach out to me i'm so sorry but um you know we got to learn to let go yeah that's the thing we got to learn of the balloon no oh don't tie your kids please oh don't tie your kids the balloons don't do it it's it yes it's fun Yes, if you get the weight right and it's they like it, but, you know, one extra balloon, that's it. That's all I take. One extra balloon and they're gone.

You are a consumer of news. You keep up with balloon news, for example. These stories about what was shot down, give us your take on that. I mean, we've talked about it on the broadcast before, but really an interesting reaction from media, from the public, White House. I mean, I think it was one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen in my life. Like the, all of a sudden, we got this balloon drifted across the country. It's a political issue. People on the right are like, shoot that thing down right now.

But I, people in, you know, people in conspiracy circles are like, that's an EMP. Or, you know, that could easily be small. box or so from that perspective do you really want to shoot it down you don't know what's in there what if it like you shoot it down and it contaminates what whatever's underneath it didn't even i didn't even think about that right the idea that it could be aggressive in some way but we've had these balloons for 40 plus years going over reconnaissance balloons but i see your point what if there's a biological in there i mean i you know i don't agree with a lot of things biden does but if it was up to me i don't want to like be the one to squeeze the trigger on a balloon shoot down and find out it was filled with

some kind of awful genetically engineered bio weapon or God knows what. So let it get over the ocean, shoot it down. But that, so that whole thing just seemed dumb and annoying and also creepy because, you know, the people kicking around, that's a fucking EMB baby. They're going to do an electromagnetic POS. What a brilliant way to get through. It's like you're going to drift in it right over the center of the United States and just wipe out the power grid. I got to start. I have to stop going on Reddit conspiracy because I get sucked in so deep. But it wasn't that apparently. To me, what was annoying was after that, all of a sudden these things are getting shut down because they reconfigured the NORAD satellite or whatever to pick up on smaller objects, I'm guessing.

but what bothered me was the language, like, you know what it is. Why aren't you saying exactly what it is? Where's the picture of it? You must have a picture of it. Why aren't you? So there, but this whole, like, it's an object. It's an object.

Well, it's some kind of object. Literally, like, is there anything? An unknown object. An unknown flying object, which also means UFO. I mean, without getting too conspiratorial, but getting way conspiratorial, the fuck was up with that. I mean, the language they used to try to mystify what it was. That was intentional. Yeah. And that was repeated. So, like, you wonder, why were they doing that? Why were they trying to play catch and release with the UFO thing? Do you have a theory why?

Yeah. My theory is really boring, though, because, like, I love the idea that it's some kind of, like, you know, a lot of people are saying, and I don't know that I really buy into this anytime some weird shit have. So that's a distraction from this. So one of the ideas is it's a distraction from the East Palestine disaster. The other one was it's a distraction because apparently there was a reporter put out a very detailed story about how we blew up Nord Stream 2, an act of war. So it was a distraction from that. That was one of the ideas. But I think the real reason is because we shot down the what was. called the Idaho balloon brigade. Like these kids like to put up weather balloons for fun and we use an

F-22 with a $500,000 missile to shoot down these kids. Two of them. So it's like how do you say that in a way that doesn't make you look like an asshole? You know, you already like. We're not sure what it was. We're not sure what it was shaped like. It was weird. It knocked out our communications. Yeah, we couldn't find it. You couldn't find it because you shot down some kids weather balloon project. with a very powerful missile. You're not going to find scraps of latex or I think there is a positive development and that was the scene of the White House press corps not exactly into UFOs and not known for pressing tough questions asking hey where the hell is the gun camera video you know it exists why don't you release this video of these encounters and shooting them down welcome to our world

asking for videos from the Pentagon, which should be released. It's not a threat to national security. I think it opened a lot of eyes among those reporters who have not taken this stuff seriously before. Sure. Well, a lot of times we are providing videos to the Pentagon, but we are specifically asking them to release the Mosul or video. Just because it was contained within a classified briefing

does not mean that the public can't see that video. That's what you're referencing. So our audience knows. Anyway. Wow. So I was glad to see the White House press corps asking some tough questions for once and gaining at least a little bit of knowledge about what the UFO world has had to deal with for the Pentagon for 75 years. Right. I didn't even think of that angle. But yeah, if like they're that ambiguous, if they're that, like, frustrating in the description of shooting down a kids' science experiment, how much more so about technology that. that that really is exotic.

Exotic. Let me tell you somebody. I've talked with many pilots about this, and you can ask any pilot, it's a fighter, pilot, any warfighter. If you're going to fire upon something because you get the order, you're going to see it, you're going to know it,

you're going to be able to make sure that you're hitting the right target. They have footage of these balloons. We said there would be balloons from the beginning. So the idea that that is being directly held back to try to muddy the wall, because maybe the reasons you said, maybe stranger reasons, that's fucked up. By all accounts, that's fucked up.

They have video footage, they have imagery, they have all sorts of sensor data, and the pilots had visual or they wouldn't have fired upon them. Yeah, it's fucked up, man. I mean, no matter what it was, I don't think, I think we're so sick of how condescending they are. Like, who's they? When you're giving a, when you, when the, I can't remember a name. The press secretary is, you know, using words like object, unknown object.

It's an unknown object. We don't know what it was, but we can tell you for sure it's not extraterrestrial. Yeah, it's just condescending. It's like, okay, so I guess you want us to just accept that? Like, you just want to say, oh, an object. Of course, we're just classic object. You just shot down a classic object of unknown origin with an F-20. Happens all the time.

Oh, yeah, oh, that's all it was. That's the part that really rubs me the wrong way, man. Is the conascending attitude when they're speaking for and to the American public? Yeah, man. It's like, don't. It's like, it's like, you know, somebody feeding you like a microwave dinner and telling you it's steak. It's really nice steak, you know, expecting us to just be like, that's a really terrible analogy. I don't know if that works.

It's okay. Let's roll with it. But it's just, you know, that's the part that's a little mind-numbing is it's like their manipulation of language to be as vague as possible. But attached to that is a seeming prohibition on speculating about something. You should definitely be speculating about the way that that speculation is taboo in some circles and how that gets you lumped in with an imaginative. group of people that they've invented that they're currently calling conspiracy theorists, which is, you know, yeah, sure. Obviously, there's people who've been up too long and are writing weird shit online.

Like, if you don't think that's out there, you're out of your mind. But also, there's just normal people who are curious. Yeah. And if you're going to, like, if you want to, like, throw a lot. into a big pool of gasoline. The way to do it is just to not be completely clear and transparent, because then everyone's going to project their own worst fears or their own weird theories onto your smoke screen.

The history of Area 51. So there you go. You have a base that people can see that the Russians photograph that you can climb up on a mountain and photograph and the government says it doesn't exist. Well, how do you think the public's going to react to that? We know it's there. We know it's there.

What do you mean it doesn't exist? They get more curious about it. Exactly. That's it. Just say what it is. Whatever. It's tough. It's like, what do you think it is?

Hippies, we're working on fucking teleportation. We're working on anti-grab. We can't tell everybody that we're doing the details because we're trying to create a competitive edge against our enemies. But when you're so blank about it, all you're doing is inviting people. to trespass. All you're doing is inviting people to try to hack your shit to get the information. And the distrust it creates. That's like something we're dealing with is the overclassification of information in our world creates a sort of distrust with the American public for good reason.

So, and that it's a corrosive, corruptive process that's been going on. If you're not honest with those you represent, then you're going to have a fucking problem. And we're running into that specifically with our work, with what we're trying to do, get information out. So I think we can all relate that that is a fucked up thing, when people are representing it us are not being honest. Well, I do understand that in any government that has to have a military, obviously you can't give all the details out there. But yeah, I just think that the articulation of classified information

or even a clear explanation of why you can't talk about it in a way that doesn't make people imagine that you think of us as children, that you think of us as some kind of peasantry or something that couldn't handle the truth. It was just an acknowledgement that like we are paying for your job and that, you know, that you respect us in the same way you respect other people in the political class. I think that would do a lot for people like me. To earn back the public trust. Sure. Yeah. It's just like, come on.

You don't have to tell us everything. But I have a... In fact, we don't want to know everything. I don't. I don't think I want to know everything. You ever think about that? You ever think... Yeah, I'd like...

You'd like to know everything. I don't know. There's some level of it where I get, where I think... Well, there's parts of it that are pretty disturbing somewhere along. You dig far enough. You go somewhere. You want some water? You want some more water?

Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah. I'll give it some water. I think there are reasons. At some level, there's a small group of people that know some shit that's really disturbing. You think? Yeah. Like, like, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, there's a harvest of some kind that happens, you know. There's some bad shit that. A harvest. There's some kind of a, there's more than one answer to what's here. and some of them are not good. Right, right, right. Yeah, nothing new under the sun. It's not like this shit hasn't been written about

for thousands of years. You know. To talk about people that have been working on this in the government at high levels. It's a very small group and they're, some of them are pretty much at the conclusion that maybe they shouldn't let all this shit out. They couldn't, there would be fucking problems.

Well, I think there's some compassion in there. I mean, I think like also understanding humans as a whole and understanding like how you need civilization yeah like what it would do to civilization yeah because you know i'll tell you this man the other thing that those weird objects what what when i was like looking at my emotional state and allowing myself to even though like we talked you're like it's not don't fall for it but which i appreciate it you were like the first person i called but you know in those moments where i i started fantasizing like jesus christ i mean this is kind of the way every sci-fi alien invasion movie starts.

Don't worry about it. It's scary. I realize, like, you know, when I was younger, and you would hear things about how, like, SETI or NASA or the governments of the world already have plans in place for how to handle an alien invasion. What do we do we do if something shows up in the skies? How do we do that?

Or what do we do if we find a planet that definitely has? There are protocols. There's protocols. Yes, there are. Because they know it's going to be incredibly disruptive to society. Because so many people are aligned with cultures, religions, that that additional information could, like, be the crack in the windshield. There are bedrock beliefs that would be shaken by it. Yeah.

Yeah. No question. The UN, there's a great documentary. I need to remember what it was, but it was about the UN protocols that they have for non-terrestrial engagement of humanity. So when Duncan, when you FaceTime me about that, I was underneath my car fixing them. My fucking tired. Remember that? Yes. You FaceTime me and I was like, I'm like, don't worry, it's not war of the worlds. It's all going to be balloons. But it was like, it did call it. But it should be obvious in a way that that feeling that people did have, like, what is going on?

Now, the fact that you even have to ask that means they don't fucking trust what's going on to begin with. What is going on? I mean, how many times I have to say this is not going to be war of the worlds? Probably. It's all good, right? Check this out. So I guess it's just interesting to me that what is portrayed out to the world and what we know is not in sync. And that's really interesting.

But these protocols we have, the protocols we have, if there is contact, have you ever read Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Have you heard of the South End? Yes. So if I get this right, there were craft that came and hovered over planet Earth in strategic locations for generations. Wow. And that was just to acclimate people to the non-humans that had come. And Archie C. Clarke, this incredible character, you know, predicted the internet, all that stuff.

But it's just a cool book that the aliens, they had a problem. They looked like demons, like devils. red with pointed tails. Oh, shit. I've shown you some documents before. So NASA has protocols for what would happen if astronauts, for example, come into contact with extraterrestrial life, how they would come back, the steps that have to be taken to prevent contamination of the planet.

United Nations does have a series of protocols if intelligent life is detected, how the announcement would be made. Those are real. They've been around for 50 years. We've never implemented them. And I'm not sure that they would stick to the rules if it even happened. I suspect if our government is the one that made the decision or the discovery that we'd keep it secret for a hell of a long time, maybe forever. Do you think it's possible that some sort of non-human intelligence is already walking amongst humanity?

Well, I mean, sure. Why not? I don't know. I would like to believe that. I used to go to the raves. I mean, that was something that you would be people in that sub-called. I definitely believe that. You mean like the nords and the... No, no, I'm not saying specific. I'm just curious if, like, in your concept of the way that you've seen the world, if there is a sense that visitation...

Do you believe that UFOs are real? Yeah, of course. Physical machines coming from elsewhere? Well, I don't know what they are, but I definitely believe that many of the things that people have reported seeing are currently not on Wikipedia, like, or not, there is no explanation for them other than an intelligence that derives either from a part of the earth that we don't have access to,

just everything you were saying, extratemporal, extra-dimensional. Or maybe from here, like George has said before, maybe, you know, not even any of these, maybe just some advanced civilization that has somehow evolved in a subcategory of being hidden here within planet earth okay i'll tell you a story this is a cool story i just found out about this ramdasa's guru neem koroly baba incredible being uh so many fascinating stories about him and i won't get into all of them but look up neem krolebaba you will it's an infinite rabbit hole but basically a saint You could say a saint in India. And so, I'm so sorry.

I can't remember the name of this documentary. Just came out. If you go to ramdhas.org, you can find it. But it was about one of Niem Kroly, Baba's closest associates. And it's such a good documentary because you get like a real taste of what kind of guru he was. And it might, if you have some guru paranoia, which any logical rationality, person definitely you should have to root parent I have a good what is it a Mark Twain said religion is what happened when the first con land met the first

fool oh you gotta be you know be smart don't just because somebody's wearing a blanket or whatever you need to kiss their feet but in my opinion this was the real item he was the real thing yeah one of the stories was he's standing at the base of this mountain with some of his uh associates i don't we don't i don't they don't like to say followers but disciples i don't even like that this everyone was in love with him he like this was like a the description of him is just like being around like a space heater that was just pure love what era like 60s in the 60s yeah in the 60s yeah and he just was like you just you couldn't it was almost

unbearable it was almost unbearable because he loved you but not in some cheesy like bullshit like that that that that fake positivity yoga smile thing but like in the person from the sense that somehow he was capable of knowing everything about you including this is what you heard but you haven't met this guy right oh well i feel like i have i mean yeah like i like i like i i don't think that a being needs to be embodied to have the experience or the darshan of that being necessarily but maybe that's for another podcast. But yeah, so he's talking about how in these mountains there were these Rishi's, I think was the name for it, basically these very old beings, like thousands of years old that lived up there.

And as he's talking about it, orbs just appear all around orbs, these like floating orbs. And one of the people with him was like, we, you know, we got to record this. So you have to write it down. We have to, like, look at this. And he's like, what, you want people to think I can call orbs? He just joked about it. You know, he was always like that, always like downplaying everything. Like, it's nothing to do with me.

It's these beings live up here. But anyway, I found that to be very interesting in the sense that orbs or these, whatever these certain things are that show up, that's a much discussed top. topic in like UFO forms and UFO communities. You're suggesting that's more of a spiritual manifestation as opposed to mechanical, technological. That's right. And I don't see, I mean, if we're going to like try to put every possible thing it is, use Akram's boring ass razor and be like it's probably either equipment malfunction or experimental vehicles. the odds of it being that over aliens, it's infinitely more probable. But why not add to it that these things, I mean, these have been talked about forever.

In every culture, they have different names, but generally the same kind of appearance. Let me ask about your journey, because you're a comic and entertainer. And, you know, you look at your website about your podcast. And it's that you have some comics on there. Yeah. But it's mainly about people who are disciples of Ram Dass or it's about mindfulness. It's about meditation. Somewhere you had some kind of an epiphany or a moment that led you in that direction.

Can you share, was it a medical health issue that led there? Well, you know, there's no easy answer. to that. And I, but I, you know, and I think about it sometimes, and there's no easy answer. You know, I think that the world is a very mysterious, beautiful place. And I know for sure that there are things, there are like secrets. There are, you know, aspects of reality that some people are aware of that aren't shared in the cafeteria of public discourse for a variety of reasons. And I didn't get there by being privy to that information, as I suspect at least one of you has.

I just got there by applying the as above so below. And I know that the way it works in just general groups of friends is that we all have our little secrets that we don't tell other groups. So as above, so below, right? And if we're dealing with a spectrum of intelligence on the planet, which I think we have a wide spectrum of intelligence from, I mean, I think you guys fall closer to the super smart side. Sometimes I'm afraid.

We have fooled the shit out of people. We've pulled that one on. Give me a break. But you know what? I think that more than likely, we could expect there to be secret societies. I mean, I think that has a lot of weight attached to it, but groups of people who've made the decision

that they're going to have conversations in private that aren't always sinister, but maybe benevolent in nature, that there's salons or... The invisible college is what so of it. The invisible college. And that... Yeah, so I, you know, so it's... So I think that over time, you just using just as simple as above so below, what have you experienced in your own life? Now extrapolate that out and expand it and make it bigger and bigger.

And you'll get a lot of answers just from that. Are they going to be right? I don't know. But I'm just fascinated with that possibility. I'm excited about the possibility. I do think that it exists. Am I out there like searching for some mystery school or whatever? Or have I made any contact with anything like that?

Absolutely not. I have not, but I do speculate that it exists, and I'm excited about just that fact. Were you on this road before you had a slap in the face about mortality? Yeah, I was always interested in this stuff. I was always, you know, when I was a kid, my dad loved in Search of. Do you remember in Search of Leonard Nimoy, the best. And I remember, it's one of my earliest memories sitting down with my dad to watch In Search of. and like that I think it was congos in the beginning that 70th music and like at some point they show a criss a skull and that would scare the shit out of me as a kid

like I would be paralyzed just by looking at that skull so I have always been interested in this stuff from as long as I can remember and I think the evolution of that has like taken me down a lot of different paths but eventually when you get older it's like the frosting stuff the aliens, the Illuminani, all that stuff.

Even though it might be cool, you get to the point of like, I can't be an angry drunk every single day. I need to calm down. I've got to actually like relax in the world. And that's, I think, what led me to sort of like Buddhism and Ram Dass. It was very, it wasn't very romantic. It was more along the lines of like, shit, my mom died. I had cancer.

I feel like shit a lot of the time. I think I kind of hate myself. I don't want to live my whole life like this. This sucks. This is not how I want to be. And so then, you know, I just got lucky and stumbled upon Ram Dass's teachings, which led me to Buddhism, which led me to my meditation teacher. And now I think I'm maybe 4% less neurotic.

And I'm happy with that. I'll take 4%. He just died, you know, a year or so ago. Yeah. I didn't know him at nearly the least. I'd never met him and didn't read. normally as much as you, but I felt that loss. It just was a person he was. Yeah, that's, you felt it. A lot of people who never met him felt it, and you should have felt it because, you know,

it was a, it's a big deal. I mean, he was, I think the, I think the, a real, like, true spiritual leader in the best way possible, just somebody who was inviting you to stop being at war with yourself and like where you're at right now is just exactly where you need to be. And a lot of people don't want to hear that. They want to always imagine there's a finish line or there's something around the corner. Right, right. We miss out so much. He was so good and like being honest about his own life and not putting on airs of being this or that.

And I think he was just the perfect teacher for the time we're in right now. So yeah, it was a, you know, it was a loss. I think he, I remember when these were. I would interview him. I would get to interview him. They would like let me go to the retreat. You did really? Yeah. Once I was standing next to him right before we went on stage and he's in the wheelchair. It's Ram Dass. I mean, this is like someone who was like, Jesus. He would want to say that. Yeah, no, but I mean, you know, well, a holy man in a sense. Look, here's what's great about him. He just was really good at not letting you do that to him. Yeah. And I remember like,

looking down at him and you know like he had though he beamed joy like he was really you see the culmination of a lifetime of practice and honesty with oneself but I look down and I'm like I'm nervous and he got this big smile and he goes me too it was such a cool moment like he was always doing things like that you know like like sort of helping you get out of the very human desire to raise someone up on a pedestal. We've never actually really talked about this, but a lot of my life in the athletics, right, the martial athletics, I also taught a form of yoga for martial athletes. Yeah.

And I traveled the globe. I would spin the globe, but not a metaphor. I'd spin the globe and wait where my finger dropped, and I'm going to go find the martial art there, or I'm going to find the spiritual teacher there and see what's up. 99.9% of people that I met with fucking charlatans straight up. I mean, I went to like Poon, India, stayed at Oshram. They fucking drugged me, I'm sure of it, had to go to the hospital, all this shit. Jesus.

Super fucking trippy. But I did me. Did you go to Oregon with the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh? No, so this was after, so after, I was a little bit after that phase, but it's the same guy. It's the same guy. He's got this huge, in Poon, India, he has these huge temple with these pyramids, like black pyramids, straight out of the movie Beyond the Black Rail. It's fucking amazing. You have to go get like an HIV test just to enter, which I thought that must be an old school rule. What's going on here?

I learned so much to take off your clothes underneath that like thing you have to wear. I'm like, these guys are weird. I had a weird experience there. Got really sick. That's where I came down. I hope you're not brushing past the take off your clothes moment. Like what? Oh yeah. What happened after they so the head the head guru chick right who was running it. She eyeballed me from day one like oh this guy's not a believer or something so i was wearing like i don't know my jeans or something they told you to put on this robe to go like watch videos of this guru like on this big screen and shit and she looks at me and she's like you must not wear clothes under that i'm like why yeah it was hilarious and that's kind of hot that's what but not for me but like you know it was

weird for me so i was like okay cool so anyway the point is did you did you take your clothes off Oh, yeah, what they ordered you do? Underneath, yeah, I just wore a robe, right? She was cute then, right? Is that what you said? It was sinister. That's why I came down with the Valley fever thing, and I sort of hallucinating was in his, like,

ashram, that dude's thing. I found out later I had this major illness, but I was sure that they had poisoned me because when do you get 107 degree temperature, like on the armpit, you're seeing visions. Two days I was out hearing dead people. Like, I was fucked up, and I was sure that they had poisoned me.

Turns out I got Valley fever. That's what was going on. But they were holding my passport hostage because they didn't want a dead dude. Anyway, let me back up. The point of the story is I got to kind of engage with some of these people, most charlatans, but people that have big followings. I did get to meet your buddy one time, Ram Dass. We have a common friend, Justin Barretta from the Glitchmob.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and he like did music with Ram Dass's talk. Yeah. And Justin was a jiu-jitsu student of mine. What is a good friend from back in college, he's exploded into being a musician with this thing called the Glitch Mob. He's good. Yeah, but also did something with Ram Dass.

But I had one experience where I met somebody where I had an actual experience that I can't account for. It was Baba Hari Das. Is that somebody? Yeah. He had like a big, he's a guru guy and Indian guy. Yeah. So I went to New York and I was teaching. out there it was jiu jitzu at the time and this guy's coming through town so i went to go see

him and it was this weird experience because i'm not like an innately spiritual person like in the way that other people talk about it right so i'm sitting there and this guy's just like silent for like 40 minutes i'm like what the fuck is going on so i started thinking all these things a bunch of things right he starts talking i swear to god it was like he was answering every single thing almost directly that i was thinking so then i go oh that's his trick He sits there quiet, knows what everybody's going to think. Then he's just going to say it because we're all thinking the same thing. What is this fucking guy doing?

So that's where I was at. Start to walk out. They're throwing like flower petals in front of this guy's feet. I'm like, I'm fucking out of here. So I beeline it to this elevator to escape the whole procession out. Next thing I know, I turn around and he fucking walks right up to me and looks at me. Like, stops dead in his tracks. Yeah.

Looks at me. And by the way, I was in the back. I wasn't like the guy in the front being like, what is this about? I was like hiding, right? Goes right up to me, looks me in the eyes, and I don't remember exactly what he said, but the look in his eye, I don't know if he even said anything.

The look in his eyes was just like, one of like absolute pain and sorrow as if all of these processions around him and all this stuff was just so terribly annoying to him that it was like, I am deeply misunderstood. That was the message that I got, but I just thought it was so weird because, you know, this guy that I sit in silence with,

and this is not my stuff, you know me, especially at this time, but I went anyway. And then for him to say all these things exactly that were on my mind, I was kind of like, that's weird. And then when he came up to me to have that, like, strange, immediate thing where I could see this look on his, a pain that he was being followed this much. You know, maybe I was completely wrong, but it was a very profound experience for me.

It taught me that day whether or not he was, teaching it, it taught me that day that every single being, every single person has a greatest potential. And we're never going to make, we're never going to make to our greatest potential. But if we can make it most of the way, then that would be cool, wouldn't it? Yeah, sure. I mean, this is the great paradox of it all. It's like the idea. I mean, this is really quite, this is really bad news for a lot of people, which is you're at your greatest potential, that you, just where you're at right now, this is it. And that the dream. And that the dream. dream of the greatest potential is a form of self-crucifixion.

You build this idea of what you could be. Then you nail yourself to it. We live in a goal-oriented time where everyone is in a self-improvement project, which is fine. It's not to say, you know, you shouldn't like try to live a healthier life or anything like that. But usually what the fuel people are using to get themselves to that healthy life is shame, guilt, self-hate. And that is a really terrible fuel to use. And it seems like how do you expect to get to a place where you're going to love yourself by hating yourself all the way there?

So that's sort of what I love about it is it's really like, you know, Pima Chowdra. You get into her much Pima. Chowice. You love her. She's great. She was a student of Chogam Chumper Rampasay. And like what she was talking about meditation, she says, you know, a lot of people start meditating because they want to be different than the way they are. And that's starting your spiritual practice with hostility towards yourself. You're starting on the path by like being so unhappy with where you are and thinking, oh, up the way right around that bend, right by the black pyramid, where I was pegged in India by a woman in a cult.

and given valley fever, that's what... Targeted death, that's where I close off. That's where I'm going to be better. For good moments. Or when the UFOs come. Or when the singularity happens, or when all this, there's this dream that right around the corner,

this suffering everyone's experiencing, it's going to end, and then everything will be better. And the general, the general teaching seems to be actually no, that is not the remedy. The remedy is not constantly trying to get to the next place, but being just where you are and finding a way to stop trying to escape from that part of yourself that you have,

what we all pour booze on. It's the part of yourself you pour booze on. It's the part of yourself that keeps you awake at night. It's the part of yourself that you, God, it's the shadow. That fucking thing, man. the part of yourself that makes you ferociously and diligently masturbate to porn at 3 a.m. If you're me. That's being in the moment.

Being in the moment, mindfulness, you cover that stuff in your podcast. It's not normal fare for a comedian, but I mean, you do it really well. And it seems like the idea is you want to, maybe you don't want to educate. but you want to share this with people who are open to the idea and need it. I mean, you know what? My intent there, God, I'd love to say that I was like, God, I want to be altruistic like that. My, I love these conversations we're having right now. This will fuel me for like weeks.

I'll think about it. I'll think about stuff you said. I'll think about stuff you said. I'll kick it out of my head. I'll write about it. I just love it. And so that is what I'm up to. And I love that people, that I get to share those conversations with people.

I mean, that does make me happy when I get contacted by people who tell me this conversation or that conversation, help them. But yeah, my intent behind it is just I just love talking to these people. I love like just what you're talking about, those moments where you encounter someone who has lived a divergent lifestyle. if a normal lifestyle is like nine to five job, career, you're with someone who is like their entire life's focused on what it is to be a human consciousness and sentience and God and and when you get around a person like that, it shows you who you are. I would say, I would wonder when you were saying that, I would wonder like... If that was my experience and he was a mirror to me, Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, he was mirroring you because that's one of the things they say is when you get around a being like that, they don't really have the identity that like a lot of people have. There's not really an identity there in the normal sense. And so they are mirrors. They're energetic mirrors. So when you get around them, what's happening is you're seeing yourself. You're seeing where you're at right now through them. And that can be a really painful experience or a really wonderful experience or a mix.

Do you think that beings that you encounter under, say, DMT or psilocybin, there are a lot of conversations that are published that people come back and relate their experiences, that those are actual beings or it's something that you create in your head, that there's something out that you can contact by hitting some other level with substances or whatever? Okay. I just had Andrew Gallimore on my podcast. If you're into psychedelics, he's a great Twitter. follow and he's written a wonderful book on the neurochemistry of the psychedelics. And so in this podcast, he was telling me that he had, and they actually, I think they did it at Oxford. They did this study. I could be wrong about the college, but basically he realized that using what we already

understand about anesthesia, measuring the amount of chemicals and the human bloodstream to keep them at the level you need them at to like put people under. He wondered what happens if we apply that to DMT? What happens if we put the amount of DMT it takes to do the breakthrough state in somebody and keep it there for longer than the six, 10 minute blast off experience you get where you make, where you commune with these beings? There could be a lot of scientific benefit to not just understanding DMT, but exploring that universe.

Like, for example, what's interesting about DMT and a few other psychedelics is the similarity between experiences versus, like, other psychedelics that seem to be more of a projection of, I don't know, consciousness onto the world or something like that, a distortion of consciousness. You know, DMT, everyone sees the same weird, circusy, organic hypergiveness. technological architecture in there, a kind of weird language. And of course, the machine alfs, as Terrence McKenna described them, and all the, whatever those are. So they've done the study already.

I don't think it's been released yet where they put people, like, I don't want to say put them under, put them over, I guess, with DMT. I don't know why you call it, put them through and to find out what's going on there. but Gallimore said that if you look at the human brain when it is on DMT, you, it's like watching a radio switch channels. It goes through a static, chaotic state, and then all of a sudden, it completely like shifts into a different modality of perception. And he said, regardless of the, whether or not these beings are a product of,

of the unconscious or whether they're extra-dimensional beings that DMT is allowing you to see, what's really interesting about the fact that your brain is shifting into this new way of perceiving reality is that it implies that we evolve to do that. The amount of time it took to evolve our brains to instantaneously weave reality into what it is right now is already. saying that we even did that, but to think that we also built into us when we come into contact with DMT, suddenly our brain, like it knows how to do it, just shifts gears and changes the way it perceives reality. What the fuck does that mean? What is the evolutionary use of being able to see? To that stable mode, right? Because you're saying otherwise it would just be chaos,

because the brain hasn't evolved to be able to assimilate. But after they get through the static period, there's some sort of frequency, let's say, because you're using the radio terminology, where there is order. And so what you're saying is that the human brain must have evolved to the point where it could accept that moment and create order out of it. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, right. That's fucking weird.

It's like, I don't know, it's like finding like a completely different operating system on your computer. that runs completely different software. Why do we have this? Some dark web of the brain. DFT dark web. What is that? So, yeah, you know, like, I think that, you know, I was talking to my meditation teacher.

It's so cheesy to say that, David Nicturon, about, you know, in Tibetan Buddhism, there's deities that you visualize, and there's an entire pantheon of saints. and beings, Buddhas. And I was asking him, like, but is it considered, are they considered to be real? And he's like, well, they're as real as you are. I like, how real are we? You know, some of these stories you hear of people,

either on DMT or remote viewing. They project their consciousness out there one way or another, and they encounter some other intelligence. And sometimes the encounter is negative. Get the hell out of here. Who are you? Why are you here? Either you're not ready or you're intruding kind of a thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, this is, if you read just any grimoire, any occult book,

what I love about them is they all start with a warning generally. There's a warning, like, don't fuck with this. This is real. Like, you know, don't this. And I don't know if that warning is there to protect people or to lure them in, because people who open grimwar is, like, the most exciting thing like, oh shit, I'm not supposed to do this ritual or that ritual or whatever it may be. But, you know, I think that Ram Dass famously, he actually had a channeled being that he was a channeled being that he was friends with named Emmanuel. And Emmanuel said to him, just because something doesn't have a body doesn't mean you should trust it. You know, I think that's very important. And just because something can read your mind,

doesn't mean anything other than that, like, there seems to be an ability to, like, tell you what you're thinking. That doesn't mean you should, like, bow down to them or anything. So, you know, I think that that's one of the problems of, like, our, what is Terrence McGinnockenic calls it the pharmacological inquisition, the fact that we have gone into the dark ages of psychedelics, they completely banned them, we don't know what they are, is people are taking these things, and they're meeting beings. And the beings are, it's definitely. telling them all kinds of shit. And because the being is like very colorful

or because the being is happening within the context of the psychedelic, they immediately believe it. They're like, oh, it told me the world's ending or oh, it told me to go do this or go do that. It's like, you don't know who that was. Yeah, I always check the badge number and IDs of every

being that enters my world. Because you know, that used to make fake IDs. I don't know if I could say that, but I did, you know, it was like you could make any ID you needed in L.A. So the thing is, is that that's something to do where we defer to authority or perceived authority. And we do that because of laziness. We constantly do that.

Oh, they said this. So this is good. This is what we should do. I've always been, I don't know, innately pugnacious, like against, you know, combative, against authority and stuff like that. Yeah. Not against, but just I never take it for one second. Somebody shows me some qualification, identification, that that means shit.

But I think that it is within our nature to sometimes defer to authority. And if that's in a spiritual realm, if that's in a realm of taking a psychedelic where you're experiencing something, oh, that must be really profound and important because it felt like, well, let me tell you, my DMST experience, I've fucking got in an argument every goddamn time with this intelligence, right? Say, I'm ancient and powerful. I'm ancient and powerful. Same one. Same intelligence. I don't know. You know, that's really subjective.

It gets really weird. It's like a Cheshire cat that winked at me for a millisecond the first time. ever tried it and then after there it was an argument with the same entity again all of this is in my mind who knows if there's any functional reality but my reaction my older brothers they're laughing at me because you know he knows that I have a little prom with authority or whatever you know so he's like laughing but it was like a constant thing and I don't know if it's my it might just be that my egotistical resistance to any kind of like superpower but it you know some other entity telling me But I would get in arguments with this thing each time being like, really, show me.

You're actually in a powerful? Show me. Right. One time it did. But it wowed me, you know. Yeah. I don't know what that's about, man. All I know is there has been value in my life in experiencing that, the very limited number of times that I have.

Yeah. And not encouraging it for anybody else. It's the only thing that I ever felt possessed my consciousness in my body. externally that came in and controlled my physical body. It was very bizarre for me. But I did find value in having explored that. And if I had to not having explored it. Yeah.

You know, I think it's, again, we get so caught up in the reality of these beings. I certainly used to, is it real? Is it not? What is this? And then within that, you can accidentally missed the bigger picture, which is that our minds are filters, and they're filtering out a lot of data. And some of that data is really beautiful and poetic and inspirational, whether or not like we can one day like take these DMT elves and put them like in a government hearing,

which would be fucking hilarious. You know, who knows, but, you know, I think that, like, enjoying those moments, but then not getting too caught up in them. I mean, this is, the idea in a lot of Eastern traditions is, oh, yeah, you can develop all kinds of powers, like cities is what they call them. You can turn yourself into a rainbow, walk through a wall, you can levitate, you can blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. and that in some like monastic communities, you're told, like, whatever happens within the walls of the monastery things, you see, this is not to be shared outside of the monastery, but most importantly, don't get too caught up in developing these potentials,

because that's not really the point. The point isn't like making contact with this being or that being or this being. What is the point? Well, the point is to find out, if you can stop suffering. Because if you can stop suffering, then you can help other people not suffer. That's the point.

The point is we live in a world where many, many people are miserable and they're suffering and they're suffering, not because of the reasons they think. And so that creates confusion. They think they're suffering because external phenomena is it matching their expectations.

But why do we need to why do we need to reduce suffering? I've never understood that about Buddhist tradition, about all this. The serious question is, why is that such the fixated point that, like, oh, you've got to stop suffering so you can help other people stop suffering? For me, suffering has brought me the greatest insight about my capabilities, my life, my tolerance, my empathy. Why is it that we have to focus on not suffering? I've never understood that. Okay, I love the question. I mean, and I'll try to answer it as best I can. I could be wrong. You said this place was steps from the water.

We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now.

Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. One distinction that's super important is the distinction between pain and suffering. So pain, there's nothing in, as far as I'm aware in Buddhism, like, we're going to make you stop hurting. You have a body, your body is subject to old age, disease, and death.

So there's not much there. That's that's that's at a van. But suffering in this sense is not like the pain of getting yourself to go jogging or the rejection you might experience as an artist or all those things. This is a deeper problem. And so in Buddhism, the first noble truth, as they call it, is there is suffering. Now, not life is suffering. This gets mistranslated. There is suffering.

So the Dukha is what it's called. Now, this translates into wobbly wheel. It's at least, right? So basically it's saying there's an experience of reality that most of us are having, which is akin to being on a wagon or a bike that doesn't have enough air in the tires. Everything here is wobbly. Things don't work out. Things don't meet your expectations.

You're going to get stuck in traffic. Things just really aren't working out. this is just the nature of reality that we're in right now. And so you, this not working out depends for a sense that things aren't working out. You have to basically construct an identity that has built into it. What you think working out is what it looks like, what it is. So that sort of the center of the problem here is that you have become attached. to a self,

a sense of, oh, this is me. And that me is supposed to help you navigate this wobbly wheel in that you create the sense of self so that you can justify or navigate the fact that life doesn't work out the way you want to look at? Well, no, usually what you're doing is you're protecting this thing. So you've invented an imaginary friend.

This is you. This is my name, my social security number, my career, my job. What's in my Twitter bio or my tender bio or whatever? I like dogs. I like to go to the beach. I love music and I One day I'll have a Ferrari And I'm gonna retire when I get good at golfing

The list goes on and on for so many people You know this this thing the thing right and the more you have within that It's like you go out to eat with someone and some people like they're like it's insane how specific They get don't like I only want three grains of salt The fish should be in the center of my play on the more of those conditions you have in your own life for for happiness for you to like achieve happiness the more miserable you're going to be because those conditions will not be met so theoretically we start removing those conditions um then maybe we'll begin to discover we don't

really need that much to the that this thing that we're experiencing that we call suffering uh is is not a permanent condition but one more more based on a concept of the self that isn't accurate. And so GOM is the name for meditation in Tibetan Buddhism. That means becoming familiar with. So this is, let's figure out what the fuck we are to start off with. Like what's underneath all those things. That finally makes sense to me.

So what I'm hearing from you, and it kind of finally makes sense to me. I don't think the message is alleviate your suffering. The message is by alleviating your suffering, you can see more clearly what you are or what you can be or what you're becoming and all of the above. Because it's not about suffering then. What you're saying is that that's been my misinterpretation because all you guys ever say, you fucking Buddhist guys,

or whatever you are, I always say, well, I must alleviate suffering. I'm like, what's wrong with suffering? Yeah. Okay, but what you're saying is through doing that, that there is a clarity or purification of what or who you really are or can or can become all of the above. Is that correct? Yeah, it's like this.

This is not an add-on. This is not an add-on. So it's something that you already are. So you are fundamentally good. Whatever human being is is pretty much the same. Everyone's pretty much the same. You're me, I'm you, you're me, I'm you. But we get so caught up in the mask or the defense mechanisms,

which are very refined and very hypnotic and very intense, that suddenly we find ourselves like engaged in this dramatic game of make-believe with identities that we've just invented. And so there's so much suffering there. All the wars are because of this. Like all the conflict in the world is completely related to, I'm defending my shit from you. You're defending your shit from me.

A lot of people carry a lot of guilt that they're guilt that tortures them. Torturous guilt. You're so unhappy about decisions you made in the past. And where you think your life is going. It's like, okay, I guess the best way to describe it is this. And for all my deep Buddhist people out there, anyone who's interested in this, I would recommend inside L.A. Dharma moon, ramdhas.org, chogim Trump or Rempishay, please take what I'm saying with a grain of

fucking salt. I'm probably messing it up and I'm sorry. This is my own personal where I'm at right now with it. But okay, have you ever had an awful night where you fucked up? Maybe you got in a bad fight with your partner, you know, you just... Let me think. No, never. No, no. What are you talking to But okay, but you wake up in the morning. And it's like before you're, that app of how much you fucked up the night before loads into your consciousness, you wake up. It's the best day ever. It is, you wake up and it's like, ah. And then it hits you.

And then bam, it hits you. So that, ah, this is amazing. That's what you are. But you've added on to that, this story. And usually the story is not. happy. It's a terrible story. And it goes on and on and on and on and on about who you are and why you're where you're at. And usually it's because of the mistakes you made and blah, blah, blah. But it gets even deeper than that. I mean, we're talking about the way that you're interpreting

language. Like, you look at letters and your brain immediately will turn those into words. So, like, there is theoretically something that is not touched by any of that. And in Buddhism, that very confusingly for a lot of people is called emptiness. Emptiness or I believe in no soul. There's no soul. You don't have a soul. We don't have souls. And everyone's like, what the fuck you?

I got a fucking soul. I got the most beautiful soul on saying, hey, it's motherfuckers. Shining, motherfucker. But the point is, it's like, if we had souls, if you had an unchanging soul, if you had an eternal, unchanging soul, you would be fucked. Because the best thing about life is change. Like I was reading Marcus Aurelius or some stoic philosopher who said, the universe loves change.

And so that's what we are. We're interdependent, ever-changing, ever-changing, non-differentiated reality. And we share a soul, if you want to say, even though there's no soulwork. We share the emptiness. We're sharing it together. And so that emptiness is the root of compassion.

It's like once you start tuning into that reality, once you experience that, which is considered skymind or like it's like, all of a sudden, like thinking that you have a shitty, tiny little filthy apartment and finding a secret door that opens up into this beautiful, massive, infinite, empty. clear space and and that's what you are that's what you are oh I will not keep rambling about Buddhism God forgive me I'm so sorry to all my Buddhist teachers out there and all the teachers that's the shame it's coming in I don't know but I mean just wait wait you know you're talking about growth you're talking about growing and evolving you know you're talking about not pushing right like you're good where you are but you are talking about growing about change you're talking about because being one thing realizing another right that's a difference that's

change. Okay. Here's a famous Tim Leary quote. Oh, love it. Go ahead. Lift up your legs and float downstream. That's the idea. Imagine being in a river. And it's actually in, in kayaking, if you ever go canoeing or white water rafting, they're like, do not try to stand up in this water. It is moving so fast, even if it doesn't seem like a lot of water. If you try to stand up, you're going to, you can get stuck on a rock. You're going to fall. It's going to push you over. You're going to tumble. You've got a last. life jacket on just lean back and let the river do what it does let it john london line as well 80 years ago today on the day that we're recording this george harrison is born okay he he learned so much

about spirituality spent his the last part of his life ascending and and getting and understand this when he died there's a martin scorsesey documentary about his life that's terrific and it's his family members talking about when he died physically died the room lit up and that something dramatic happened. Do you buy that? Oh, yeah. And do you think that George Harrison comes back around? Or is he floating around and didn't leave?

Or does he incarnate again? Or what do you think? Okay, so I was asking my meditation teacher about Chogim Trumpa. Like, you know, this is a rampashe would meaning that they reincarnate. They keep coming back on purpose. but to teach to help in human suffering, spread the Dharma.

But yeah, I asked him, like, where is he now? And he said, well, Chugam Trumpa said, when you die, the term for it is you're in the action, which is a really cool way of putting it. It's like Harrison, George Harrison, still ripples the present moment. if you hear my sweet lord everywhere you go here to hold foods as far as like or all things must pass by the way yeah yeah yeah so I don't know I don't I don't really like I do believe in reincarnation I do I do think that like we

probably come back around to get it right yeah and I know that like a lot of people are thinking, well, if you don't have a soul, how do you reincarnate? I mean, I think that's a really good question. And so generally, it's considered a momentum. Like, it's not really a soul as much as like a kind of carmic momentum that has a tendency to, when the causes and conditions are right to appear in the world. So you are a tendency. You're a momentum. And so when you die, that tendency or momentum, it goes through this intermediary state called the Bardo. And depending on your projections, it sort of determines what your next life is going to be. But, you know, in Greek mythology, the river Leith, L-A-T-H-E, you drink from it,

and you forget everything you were before. It's wiped out completely. So it seems like our hard drives get formatted, formatted in between lives, but some essential nature, like an essential quality of, which is the representation of your karmic predicament, it ripples into time, and then it will find birth somehow. And that tendency actually determines

what your next life will be. That's what they say. If you want to know what your next life is going to be, look at what your current life is, and you can pretty much figure out where you're headed. Well, look, man, I've appreciated the conversation. I know that we're going to spend all night extending this conversation. I think for the show, I just, you know, thank you so much.

It's been cool. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. It's been so cool to kind of hear over this amount of time where your mind is at with these things. I always learn something new. I really appreciate it. And I'm really glad you guys got to finally meet up and talk on this. Oh, my God.

It's so cool. Every time I talk to Duncan, I swear to God, I'm going to start meditating and try to get into this. And, you know, you got to give me the pep talk after we get off the air here. I will give you the opposite of a pep talk. You know, one of my favorite books by Chogam Chumpa, it starts off saying, if you don't get it, if you can avoid getting into this stuff, don't get into it. Because once you start, once you get into the rabbit hole, you're not coming out. You're all, you're, you have to go through. I'm good with that.

Yeah. All right, cool. Well, it's no big deal. It's very easy. And let me, I'm sorry to be neurotic. Let me just reiterate something. No, please. In case I'm a fool, I'm a, I don't have a, like, discipline, meditation.

practice I meditate once or twice a week and I'm not a teacher of spirituality, not that I seem like one. I don't want to like seem like even think that, but I don't want to confuse anybody. So if some of the bullshit I was yapping about today appeals to you, please explore like some of the things I mentioned and go deeper. Let me put your ideas real quick. I don't want to confuse it. Yeah. We're, yeah.

I'll put your ideas, man. It's this. I've learned this from just training martial athletics and just from other things. There's always going to be somebody that needs to hear it from you. There's always going to be somebody that talks above you and somebody that talks below you.

But there's always going to be somebody that talks your language. You never have to say that. All you're doing is communicating what you know at this time. If you mistake that, that's their fault. And there's going to be a number of people that need to.

I needed to understand it the way you said it. You were explaining to me because of my question. So thank you. Yeah. Thanks, for everybody. What a great show. It's for a real, I'm a big fan.

I try not to quote fans. I think it was Sheraton, but every year, you know, hundreds of babies do interest. Have so few, had so much to tell, but could say so little. Following this and weaponized, the presentation of Jeremy Corbelle, George Knapp, Dark Course Entertainment,

and Cadence 13 Studios. Available now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your shows.