Hunter Biden

25:10He was one of like the OG refugee and immigrant advocates in the country. And I was involved in that. And I decided that I was going to do the Peace Corps. And another guy, a guy named, I'm naming all these people that nobody does. No, it's fine. Father Watson, Bill Watson. He said, why are you going abroad? Join JVC, which is a domestic version of the Peace Corps. What about Portland? Exactly. Exactly. Because he was from Portland, which, by the way, was the greatest thing ever, because this was 1992. It is just the coolest place in the world. Coffee, cigarettes, grunge. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like I sat in Powell's bookstore and read all the Beat Poets.

25:48You have an endless cup of coffee and three packs of cigarettes and you live with other volunteers. You make 80 bucks a month. That's all you get. And you pull your money together for groceries. But you're riding the bus and you're working in the community and living in the community that you work in. which was me in the basement of a church, figuring out how to get people food or get their lights turned back on or get the heat turned back on in winter. It was the greatest thing ever. And you met your first wife there? Yes, exactly. And she was a volunteer also. And then we shortly after that had Naomi.

26:19We got married. I went to law school. I did my first year at Georgetown. And you were married with a kid at 23, right? Exactly. And I had Naomi on my last exam of my first semester of law school. And the professor let me out of the exam. So I took it after Christmas and he gave me an A. And I did really well. And I'd always wanted to go to Yale. I got rejected and I didn't think I was necessarily going to get in, but I did really well. And got into Yale as a transfer. They accept like five to seven people a year. Sidebar, was it interesting to leave the bubble for the first time and go to Portland in that you grew up in Delaware.

26:57Dad's a senator. It's politics, politics, politics. Then you go to Georgetown, which is in D.C. Again, you must at that time think the entire country thinks about politics all the time and cares. Yeah. And then you go to Portland. And was it nice to get an outside perspective? And did you feel that happening? Yeah, not as much because I needed an outside perspective from the politics thing. But the difference with Bo and I was that we never grew up in that. We grew up in Delaware. My dad took the train back and forth every day. And so in a state of 600, which is like now I think a million people or just under a million people, everybody knows my dad.

27:35And you guys kind of get this idea. I mean, Uncle Joe, they knew him as Joe. Like when I get pulled over by the cops, it wasn't, sorry, sir. It was like, I can't wait till I see your dad. He's going to kick your ass. You know what I mean? Like that was our existence. When I went to Georgetown, that was a little bit different, but still not overwhelming. It's not like anybody knew who I was by the way that people on the street know who I am now. So when I went to Portland, though, you're absolutely right. I don't know what you think about the addiction thing, but for me now in retrospect, particularly this time, this last seven years in which I had to kind of make a choice, the ultimate choice to live or die.

28:10So many of the decisions that I made in my life that had really horrible consequences are all based in fear, fear of judgment, fear of sticking out, fear of being found out, fear of showing truly who you are. But when I was in Portland, I could be the guy that was sitting and reading Ginsburg and the Paris Review. Maked Lunch and Bukowski. Exactly. While I was making 80 bucks a month and not giving a shit. Can you think at this age, so if I do it, it's like, there's some really memorable moments with using. One is the very first time I decided to drink some beers out of the fridge. My dad was a recovering addict, so I was never going to do it.

28:53Then one day I was like, no, I'm going to do, I'm going to find out on my own. And I do remember having like three rears out of the fridge and literally thinking, oh, fuck, this is the feeling I've been craving and couldn't articulate. I don't know. I can't compare it to non-addicts, but just immediately I was like, this is a magic. A hundred percent. I know exactly where I was. I know exactly what happened. I was at a adult party with my brother. I picked up a champagne glass, went underneath a table with a tablecloth over it, dragged the glass and thought to myself, oh my God, this is the answer to everything.

29:27Oh yeah, truly. Because then I left underneath the table and I danced with everybody and I was happy and I didn't continue to drink. Now all the trolls clipped this stuff. I wasn't drinking at the age of eight, but I remember that experience. You know, when people said, why did you do it? Because it worked. Well, yeah, it's a medicine that works for a period of time. It works like that. And then you find something that works even better. I played football. So, you know, during the football season, none of us would drink, kind of. And it's what we did. It's what we did on the weekends. Yeah, what are you going to do?

29:59Be the one person not doing it? It's a hard thing to ask people. The next time I really drank after I was eight, I remember what it was. Exactly. And talk about regulating emotion. There's a friend of mine who had taken his parents' car with another friend of mine. They had a couple of beers or whatever. and was speeding down one of these back roads in Delaware and ran into a tree and she died instantly. Talk about the wrong response to that. The wrong response to that was he was my best friend at the time, is that we stole beers in the back of his house. And I remember the enormous guilt. I don't think I've ever told this story.

30:37I remember my dad picking me up from his house the morning after we, between us, drank a 12 pack, I guess, or whatever. But you know, you're 15 years old and going to mass we'd go to mass every sunday that saint joe's on the brandy wine little catholic church and having to leave and tell my dad i think i have the flu and thrown up outside and i think it was less a response to the alcohol than it was to the normity of the guilt that i had just like our friend the consequences for him for what happened were enormous yeah and the guilt of that. And as you know, guilt is appropriate, but the thing that is not is the shame.

31:15So then what's the only thing that you know, your brain is telling you works so that you don't have to feel that shame and anxiety over that shame of the thing that you're not telling somebody. Oh, I know. Have another drink. So that was like at 15. And then it's a cycle. So when I get to Portland, I've made it through college. I actually did pretty well. Not without Oktoberfest in Burlington, Vermont, got in a street fight and somebody curbed me and broke every tooth out of my... Oh my God. Stomped on my leg on the curb and broke my leg in three places. I was in a cast for six months. Oh my God.

31:50I mean, oh, it was awful. But that didn't stop me. Yeah. That didn't stop me. It was a little speed bump. To Portland, there's this whole new me. No expectations. Nobody that knows all of the small town or the small college kind of group. and it's filled with purpose. Yeah, it was incredibly promising. And so I drank, and obviously to excess, I don't know what your drinking was like, but I wasn't a blackout drunk, unfortunately. I really wish I blacked out because I could go and go and go. Yeah, the bill never came due at that age. No, and the truth of the matter was is because I wasn't engaging in anything in which the bill came due.

32:25We were going to nickel beers at Knob Hill in Portland and playing pool. We didn't have any money beyond like a keg, yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking that your keys are actually in your hand before you close the car door. Have you ever stood in a parking lot full of sun staring at your keys sitting right there on the seat four inches away and completely useless to you? It's a very specific kind of humbling. Yeah. Checking first is a good idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote.

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37:04When's the first time it occurs to you? I think this is like for the layperson, there's these kind of stereotypes that are true and not true, which is, first of all, this notion of like a bottom, which is like, well, there's not a bottom. I had like 30. I always say a bottom's you're dead. Maybe in jail if you're lucky. But just that moment you go, oh, I should have died last night or I should have died over the last four days. This is life or death. That's a bottom. Yeah. And you go, are we going to keep going? And often you keep going, even though you find a new bottom. When do you start recognizing?

37:37I do this differently than people and probably I'll have to quit at some point. When I was 29. I start to realize my pattern of drinking was unlike anyone, not anyone, because you find your group. You know what I mean? But even among those heavy drinkers, I would still be going at six in the morning. While everyone's asleep. What are you guys doing? And then when I was 33, my wife at the time said, like, you need to slow it down. Were you accumulating any wreckage? Had you gotten DUIs? No. No. You were keeping it pretty. Yeah. And I, you know, I built my own law firm. I graduated from Yale. I did really well from law school.

38:13And I was a senior executive vice president at a major bank when I got out of law school. And then I went to work for the Clinton administration. Your resume. You had a lot to lean on. Yeah. You're doing well. You're getting gigs that other people aren't getting. You're able to shore up the plummeting self-esteem from the addiction with these external things. And I had three kids by that time. Well, right. But were you also thinking that maybe it's a part of your success? Like, I could see you kind of, anyone, being sort of like... well, this is part of the whole recipe. I do this and I'm successful.

38:46It becomes a part of your identity. Identity, yeah. Definitely. And what I always say when people come to me, and I love it because I say to them, I don't have any answer for you other than getting clean and sober is easy. All you have to do is change everything. But it becomes a part of your identity and you think, what am I going to do? What am I going to do on a Thursday? What am I going to do on a Friday? vacation. What am I going to do on Tuesdays? Everything revolves around drinking. What am I going to do on vacation? When I celebrate. What am I going to do at five o 'clock? Yeah, five o 'clock.

39:1911 a.m. Yeah, try 11 a.m. Yeah, exactly. Can I sprinkle in another, I think, facet of this very complex system of addiction? I think for men, at least for me, there's a big chunk of masculinity involved in this whole journey for me, which is, again, I was the dude who went harder than anyone. And I showed up and did my shit. And I had great pride in that. That was a real indicator of my alpha masculinity. It validated me. Just scratching and clawing for this validation of being appropriately masculine was also some facet of it. I don't know what percentage, but it was in the mix. Was that happening for you too?

39:56All of that fear of really being seen, you build up this persona of being tougher than anybody, more capable than anybody. Because really, I'm just a sensitive dude who wants to entertain people and love my daughters. So it becomes a shield for everything. And it becomes this identity. And it's literally the polar opposite of your true self. Because I'm not that guy. I don't want to be that guy. And so doing a speech, doing anything public, I needed a drink to do it. I thought I needed a drink to do it. In the past life, if this was seven years ago for me, the idea that I wouldn't literally be a puddle on this couch.

40:31Just if you put a microphone in front of my face. Yeah. And knowing that there's a camera in the room or that I had to get on a stage and do something. I was so afraid of that. Now, unfortunately for everyone, I don't. Exactly. So I do a lot more. Yeah. But you're exactly right. So it becomes your persona. And what happened with me is what I did was like, okay, I'm going to prove to everybody that this is not a problem. I'm not going to drink for January. or I'm not going to do 30 days. And I'd get six and I'd break it. I'd say, oh, that was just one break. It was for the weekend. And then what ends up happening is then you start hiding it.

41:07It becomes binge even more. And then I'd be like, hey, I got a trip that I got to do for business. And that business trip would be two days that would stretch into four that would stretch into five. And then it would come home. You're dead on arrival. I just laughing at how many times the game plan evolves so quickly. It's like, yeah, 30 days and then just weekends. No, just Wednesdays and weekends. Just beer, not Jack Daniels. Well, not yet. And it just erodes so fucking quickly. From the abstinence to the, like, one day a week to full on. It's comical. There's also physical dependence. There is physical dependence that people take out of consideration.

41:43Yeah. It's like you can't actually just stop at any moment. You kind of have to, like, titrate. And if you're an addict, you can't titrate. Like, it's this crazy. It's a trap. Yeah, nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about all of that in terms of the wellness piece of it and ways to be able to mitigate that and how you should do it with somebody. You really do it understanding what you're doing. But regardless is that for me, it became so many promises made, so many promises broken around alcohol that Bo's just like, hey, let's do something about this for real. Let's start to look. And I found Crossroads in Antigua, Eric Clapton's place.

42:16Oh, I sent my best friend Aaron there. It's great. By the way, it was for me at that time. And this is, what is it, 2003? So 22, 23 years ago. It's in Antigua, but it's not a resort. And you earn swimming privileges. Like Aaron would call me and be like, oh yeah, I did all blood blank. I'm going to get to swim in the ocean today for two hours. Exactly. You get to go on the bus to go to the ocean to go swimming. And it has a real community aspect, at least when I was there. They were really wonderful. And I get there with all of those preconceived notions of how my life is going to be so empty because I don't have alcohol in it anymore.

42:49And I was introduced to the program. All of a sudden, I was like, wait a second, this may work. And I got out. So my brother picked me up from the airport and immediately drove to a meeting over at DuPont Circle Club. Oh, what a good big brother. That's what I was just thinking, too. He went in. It was an open meeting. He went to the meeting with me. That makes me fucking emotional here. He goes up to this guy and says, hey, do you sponsor people? Because he had spoken in the thing. And he goes, yeah, of course. He goes, I'm going to introduce you to my brother. And I got my sponsor. I stayed clean and sober.

43:21And again, I hate the distinction. What is the distinction? Well, you say you're sober if you're not drinking, and you say you're clean in the other program if you're not using drugs. Oh, I see. It's all drugs. But anyway, I was not on any mind-altering substances whatsoever for about a seven-year period of time. And did you love the program? I loved the program. Did it start yielding all the results? I still love the program. Yeah, yeah, same. Those people that I met are still clean and sober. And when I say people, like a handful that through everything have always been a lifeline for me. If I had my phone in front of me, you'd find like four texts every day from those same people that gave me a lifeline back.

43:58When you're looking at the landscape in front of you, yes, all you see is all the things you're not going to have, like the camaraderie with friends, the intimacy with men, the thing to do on vacation, the celebration, the salve for disappointment. You're very aware of all the things you're going to lose. But what you don't consider is you're also going to lose this impossible weight that has been on your shoulders, which is the shame and guilt and regret. But you don't even know that yet. You can't conceive of a moment where you won't be walking around feeling like the biggest piece of shit that ever lived.

44:31That's not even in your imagination yet. And I think the gift of it that's kind of hard to sell kids on or sell people that are new to it is like, you can't really even imagine what it's like to walk through life with maybe regrets, but not shame. And you've made amends and you're walking free of all that. Because for most of us, it's been decades since we knew what that feeling was like. It's impossible to tell somebody. The only thing that we can do is show them and hope that they get the chance to experience it. Yeah. And by the way, that seven years, it wasn't like I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth in any way.

45:09But what I now know is that I had not fully done the work because there was that armor that still existed in which that shame still lived. And not even about specific things, just about truly being me. And so anyway, I relapse. Yeah. I'm on a plane and it was 2010, I think. And I'm coming back from a business trip in Europe, clean, sober. I had been upgraded to like this business class, but I was the only one in there. She comes by with a cart and it's a Bloody Mary cart, like a full Bloody Mary cart. And I swear to God, you know what went through my head? One of my counselors at Crossroads had told me a story about how he'd been sober for seven years and he had a drink on a plane on his way to Washington DC from the West coast.

45:58And he woke up in indianapolis indiana in a motel why that would be a in any way like oh i should do that maybe i should try this yeah yeah but i did i had a drink yeah and of course i didn't have one bloody mary on that plane in which i think i probably came and told people that in my group i had six and i got off the plane and i went to a corner store on the way home and picked up you know, a fifth of Smirnoff in that plastic bottle and put it in my bag. So then about a year later, Bo comes and says, back to Antigua, pal. Are you like, oh my God, my brother has to keep, do you have guilt about that?

46:43No, no, I don't have any guilt about how much my brother adored me. He wasn't like, oh God, I got to go get Hunter. He was like, what the fuck? You've been trying so hard let's get you back man you're doing great when we get back i'll go to me i think the meanings are great i love it i could use it too i probably never any like talk about unconditional love that we had between each other but anyway thanks monica now i think i maybe should have been guilty i'm joking i'm joking i really did letting people down i didn't part of the shame i know i had guilt with my wife at the time i had guilt with my kids who i adored and adore me but then i cycled Then it was like I came back from Antigua that time.

47:26I got shingles three months later. Somebody prescribed me oxycodone. I started down that path, which led to a bottle of Smirnoff. And I was in that cycle. And then Bo got diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2014. It's a death sentence. If I were you carrying around, I'm a piece of shit and I'm a scumbag. And my sweet brother gets this diagnosis. I would think the amount of shame it would exponentially trigger in me that I should be the one dying. Why on earth would it be him? 100%. You already have this latent survivor's guilt that exists. And this is why I've opened up to the idea that I can talk about that trauma now.

48:08Because of course it had something to do with everything. And just forget about the drinking or addiction. Just in terms of my fear, you already have that latent survivor's guilt. The worst dream that I ever had in my life as a kid was my brother dying. I remember vividly. The only nightmares that I ever remembered was that, with losing a boat. And that became true, but playing in slow motion. Like, you know, the end is near, coming, and it's going to be awful. And it was awful. And I did things like I decided to join the Navy, and I relapsed the day before I went into the Navy Reserves at the age of 42.

48:47Pissed hot. I get, yeah, pissed hot. Discharged from the Navy Reserve. Discharged from the Navy Reserve. I now am sober. I'm going through all of the treatments with Bo and all of the things that we're trying. And you get down to the end, they're doing experimental stuff. But anyway, he passed away, was it the 30th of May? 11 years ago. And from there on out, just everything. Not because of him. Regardless of that, I just as easily could have completely screwed everything up. Yeah, even if you had stayed healthy. Yeah, even if you stayed healthy. It accelerated. Yeah. And the biggest thing that it accelerated is immediately after Bo died, my marriage fell apart.

49:26I mean, immediately after. We attempted to do things. I attempted to go back to rehab. I stayed in. I had a sober coach. Everybody was afraid that I was going to kill myself. Right. And that all fell apart within a year. Do you remember, you must, it's a rhetorical question, but the first time you smoked crack. From June of 2015 to the end of June of 2016, I had been in and out. I did like 45 days in an inpatient. Then I came out and I did this thing where I had this guy that three times a day I'd have to blow into a breathalyzer and it takes a picture of you. And so I was doing that. And then I had a relapse over Christmas.

50:05It's Dicey on its own. Yeah. I relapse. I admit that I relapse. I go back into a outpatient program, which is like six hours a day in DC, but I'm living by myself for the first time in 46 years. And by the way, nobody's fault but my own. Just to be clear, I'm not blaming my... It doesn't sound like you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's even more important for me to say that over and over again. And I relapse. I use cocaine and I drink and I come back into the program on the Monday and I say, hey, I relapsed. I drank. And I used cocaine. And they said, you got to go take the drug test. And I said, I'm not going to take the drug test.

50:42It's not protected by HIPAA. You're in a rehab facility, not in a categorized medical facility. It's discoverable. And I don't want to do that. I'm telling you what I did. I'm not keeping anything out. They said, well, unless you take the drug test, you're not coming back in. And so it was on K Street in DC. And I walk out. and I know the Lincoln Park, which is literally two blocks away. And I knew the worst possible thing that I could do was go smoke crack. And that's what I decided was the answer. And I did. And it was a revelation. And again, Joe Rogan, I don't mean this is a love letter, what I mean is it adds the ultimate warning from someone whose life was torn apart by it.

51:31it was staggeringly effective and immediate. And that began a cycle. For people who don't know, so when you snort cocaine, it goes into your sinuses, it slowly dissolves, it slowly enters your bloodstream. When you smoke it, your lungs convert it immediately. They dump it all in your blood. The only thing that's faster is shooting it intravenously. It's a different experience because you're getting all of it right away. And there's a piece about crack that also has this idea that crack is dirty. Really, the truth of the matter is the way that you manufacture crack. I figured out how to do that pretty quickly.

52:06It got much better and better and better at it. Most of the impurities that you could find in it when things were mixed get burned out. And so it's a very, very pure form of the drug, which has an immediate effect. There's a really crazy study that I heard out of University of Pennsylvania in which crack addicts, they did these brain live rates. FMRI images. Yeah, but live with smoking. The highest that you get as a crack addict is the millisecond before you ever ingest a drug. That's the dopamine dump. And that's the power of the drug. It's not even the drug. It's literally. Power of the brain.

52:44The power of the brain. It's crazy. And so it worked really effectively. What you're looking for is like the micron before obliteration as the goal, which is so fucked up. So fucked up. oh god it's so fucked up it's sad i mean that's why when when you tell the stories about people saying degenerate crack addict and stuff it's like who can hear these things and not think one thank god i don't have that two this is sad we need to help people to like shame to add to the shame i do not understand as if the person's like thriving in life and you should be upset It's literally kicking someone while they're down.

53:27We're pieces of shit in cars, smoking pipes. As you can see from the thousands of pictures, I was not thriving. Hey, it's like, you want to trade places with that person? There are a few. I look pretty good, though. You went to Deps. I didn't. I became aware of your story because a woman that spent some time with you wrote some piece that I happened to read. And I quite enjoyed it for a few reasons. A, she liked you, this woman who wrote this thing. I don't even know specifically what it was like. Well, that says something. If you can hang out with an addict who's fucking smoking rock all day long and you come out of that, you still kind of like the person.

54:01It's really kind of revealing because you're at your darkest, shittiest, monstrous. You're just a bottomless pit, right, of giving me more of everything. So the fact that that person still had kind of a kind opinion of you, I found fascinating. But also it was an interesting perspective to see the person orbiting someone in that zone and then just imagining people that orbited me when I was in that zone. And I never really get to hear what that person's experience is like. You got to hear from a lot of them. I overcompensated knowing what I was doing to myself with being as compassionate, empathetic, and generous to a fault.

54:38You know, basically come beat me up. Well, you're getting robbed all the time. All the time. I mean, I don't know how many laptops and phones that were stolen from me. And I don't say this like, oh, I was such a victim. The way that I assuaged my guilt was I just would give it all away or know that it was going to be taken all away. And it didn't matter who it was. It didn't matter if it was bicycles who lived with me in my apartment, knowing that she was robbing me blind every day, or whether it was a prostitute, by the way, which was all about drugs. That's the fastest way to be able to figure out if you want to figure out how to get drugs is that that's the easiest entryway, particularly for someone like me into that world i mean eventually i had to go down to like the flower district at four o 'clock in the morning and score and nowhere to go you have guns you know in my face you're not naive you're a smart dude you went to yell a lot you also recognize like i am desperate for this thing the people around me are even more desperate because they don't have any means and so i'm not naive yeah i'm gonna get taken for a ride and i'm willing to get taken for a right because I want access to the thing.

55:45It's all a terrible symbiosis of destruction. And by the way, I consciously knew that I was killing myself. 100 % knew it. And it would go up. And even during that period of time, like I went for treatment and did Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT therapy. Were any of those effective? No. I hear about people claiming. I think that they can be very, very effective. My experience with 5-MeO-DMT was one of the most spiritually enlightening things that I've ever done, but that's because I did the Ibogaine before it, which was not as effective for me because I was smoking crack up until the three hours before I went and did it.

56:20Ibogaine is, I think, one of the strongest, if not the strongest, psychoactive hallucinogen on the planet. It's a plant from the iboga plant in Africa that they've used for thousands and thousands of years. Studies have shown that it has a great impact, particularly with people with PTSD and opiate addictions. It's a very, very long lasting 12, at least my experience was like over 12 hours, you know, and then I went and tried to do ayahuasca and I did that frog toad venom where they cut your arms and purge you. You know, I went to this charlatan in Massachusetts and did ketamine infusion therapy, but all the time I'm still using.

56:54And I believe in those things. And I believe in those alternative things, not as an answer, but as additive to something. If you approach it with the respect that the plant medicine actually requires from you, I don't want to ever do any of them again yeah i'm afraid to do anything but also yeah the notion that you're going to take one thing to break your break your desire to take another thing but it can be when you're really healthy is it can be a mind expanding experience it can break up neural networks that have existed since the first trauma and it can rewire new pathways you see literally that if anyone ever really really stops to think about it is kind of the perennial philosophy of the connection of all things, that everything is love.

57:39And I don't mean love in terms of the more sense of it, but in terms of there is no distinction between me, you, this table, this earth, the universe and anything else. At least that's the experience I have. These are arbitrary boundaries. Impossible to articulate, which is a beautiful thing to experience, but it's not the answer. The one thing is you still come back from that. And if you're filled with shame and fear, it's still there the wreckage is just piling up you have lost your family yeah you have a relationship with your brother's widow i mean awful what grief and addiction loneliness and every other thing that you can come up with to think why something like that would have been a good idea for anyone while you know that you're tearing your family apart we talk about the shame and the only thing that has you know is being able to talk about it knowing that like i'm going to talk about this now and there's going to be 400 people that are going to come into your comments and say what has come back you know what i mean and by the way and me say like yeah i don't know by the way i don't know and i don't care maybe put it this way is that when i was in the depths of my addiction, I did some really, really shameful things that I have no excuse for.

58:55And I don't think that drugs and alcohol and addiction are ever an excuse, but I do know this, certainly part of an explanation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I can observe you off of it and I can observe you on it. And they're pretty distinct creatures. I think people have some fantasy of what the crack seems like. But again, when I've been with friends, it's like full vulnerability, full lack of any fear that you'd be judged, full expression of yourself. That's the joy of the thing is like I'm telling you how much I love you. And that's so scary for me to do sober as a dude. Yeah, it's just hard to find many compatriots.

59:38That group becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until you're in a Super A motel off of 95 in West Haven. And the end of all of our stories is ultimately is isolation. So even if there's 20 people in the other room, you're in a closet smoking crack and you really don't want to be interrupted. And you just need that there to know you're not completely alone, even though you are. I think it's maybe worth we maybe should have done this earlier. but to remind people of the difference between shame and guilt, because those are very different. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like shame is I'm bad and guilt is I did something bad.

1:00:15Exactly. So guilt to me as a good Catholic boy who doesn't really practice much anymore, but I learned some good things is that, yeah, guilt's an appropriate thing. Yeah, we should have it. You should feel bad about this, that, and the other thing. Go read my book. I feel bad for it all. And what you should do about that is that you should atone and make amends. And I don't mean atone like go whip yourself with thistles on your back until you bleed. I mean go and say, I'm fucking sorry. I apologize. Not expect the other person to say, oh, I forgive you. It's okay. But you make it clear that you know that you did wrong.

1:00:51Shame is I will never, ever be good enough. You're a horrible human being. I'm unworthy. I'm unworthy of love. I'm unworthy of trust. I'm worthy of my own self-love I mean that's the thing about the honesty the biggest thing to get honest about like I always talk about this thing radical honesty you gotta get honest with yourself that's what like you really really really do and I never really knew what that mean though you hear all of these things in the room even like the serenity pair well what the fuck does it mean you know the difference between you know like I don't I don't know but there was a moment when I finally put it down almost seven years ago.

1:01:30It wasn't by any virtue of my own. I had that experience of like, it wasn't a white light, but it was like, you have a choice. There's a tiny window open right now. Yes. And if you don't step through it, you're going to be dead. As clear as you two sitting across from me. I want to do two seconds on this because it just kind of came up. And again, I can forget. Now, look, I relapsed on opiates, but I haven't drank in 22 years, right? I'm pretty removed from, because each of these addictions has their own specific personality. I talked to opiate addicts and I had that experience. And that's one experience.

1:02:07It's much different from the hardcore alcoholic experience for me. But I was reminded of this because my best friend who I sent to treatment and I were talking about a third friend who is hardcore going through it right now. And I was reminded, we were just talking about it. I called him to say how grateful I am. He's sober. Seeing this other friend, I'm just so grateful. And we were talking and what we both agreed about that I think might be, again, enlightening to people is like, there's a point where there's a third rail in your mind. It's not necessarily you want to die. You want to die for a period of time, long enough that when you wake up, all of the wreckage will magically be gone.

1:02:48Like there's this third desire. It is obliteration and death, but it's not, I remember not wanting permanent death, but I definitely wanted to die for like three or four years and then wake up with a clean slate. That was like a bit of a fantasy. Disappear. It was a literal fantasy with me. Think about it. I came out to California, told everybody I was going to rehab because I was going to disappear. That was in my head is I'm going to disappear for three years. and then either I'm dead, but more realistically, I'll come back a new man. You know what I mean? But I was disappearing for all intents and purposes, if any rational person would look at it.

1:03:28It's the little boy in you that's like, maybe if I run away long enough, they'll remember that they loved me and that they miss me and they'll forget about all this. First time I ran away, what I did is I wrote a note and then I went and hid under my bed so that I could hear everybody tell me how much they miss me. Yes, yes. That's what it was. Yeah, and it doesn't go away. You're still acting like that as like a full-grown adult male. Exactly. We're all just kids. 50 years old. If I disappear for three years, they'll be so glad when I walk back up the driveway, we can put all this behind us. Yeah, it don't go away.

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1:05:03Not only did my fantasy not come true, the whole world right when I got clean in June of 2019. It just fell on top of my head outside my doorstep in every single crevice and nook and cranny of my life. You were being accused of everything. Brokering deals with the Ukrainian oligarch to win favor. Yeah. On this, let me ask you certainly your behavior couldn't have been above board for 15 years while your own desperation was raging right here's what i own yeah is there any validity to some of the here's the validity the validity is i should never have taken the board seat with burisma that's the validity of it that's the ukrainian yes the ukrainian oil and gas company it was not with ukraine was not with a foreign government.

1:05:58It was not with an oligarch. It was public about going on the board. I served on 14 other boards before that. I was chairman of the board of the U.S. World Food Program, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I was vice chairman of the board of the largest railroad company in the world, which is the National Passage Rail System, which is Amtrak. I was chairman of the board of the Truman National Security Project, chairman of the board of the Center for National Policy. I was a professor at Georgetown's master's program in the School Foreign Service for four years. I had my own business in consulting, and I had been in more places in the world than 99.9 % of people.

1:06:35Very high-functioning addicts. Extremely. That makes it harder. And by the way, I was of counsel to, at the time, the most prestigious law firm doing corporate governance at Boyd-Shiller and Flexner and had my own business. And so when they came to ask me to be on the board, I said, no, I would represent them as a lawyer. And I represented the lawyer and the former president of Poland, the first democratically elected president of Poland, President Kwasniewski, asked me after representing them for two or three months, because they were under an extreme and ordinate amount of pressure from the invasion in Donbass, where their wells were, from the Russians.

1:07:11And the entire purpose of that incursion into eastern Ukraine was to extract and take over what they could not take over the single greatest resource in Ukraine, which is natural gas. And so he convinces me that we'll be public about it. You'll be transparent about it. And you come on the board. It obviously turns out to be a mistake, but not because of anything that I did and not because of anything that my dad did. And the reason that we know this is this, is because you have 25 years of my entire digital footprint. You have every single email. I think I literally am probably the only person in the world.

1:07:51If this happened to anybody else, every photo that you ever took, every selfie, every voicemail, every single text message, every email that you've took in 25 years were dumped in the internet. And to this day, remain there. Whether it is your selfies, nudes, or whatever, we're out there. 90 % of us are getting canceled. Oh, yeah. By the way, 100 % of people would get canceled. Yes. There's not one single email, text message. They have all of my voicemails. They have voicemails from my dad saying, sweetheart, please, where are you? You need to get help. I mean, they have everything. There's not a single thing in that in which I say, hey, dad, or hey, dad's chief of staff, or hey, dad's secretary, or hey, anybody.

1:08:37I'm getting paid by these guys. We need to do this. Not a single one. There's a text message in which the board secretary of Burisma says, it was nice meeting your dad. and I know we were at a restaurant together and he sat down and there were 10 other people at the table. He was in from Ukraine. I introduced him to my dad and that's it. Now they had an impeachment hearing over that. And so I take responsibility for doing something that could ever cause the perception of that. Now, not to get political, but what these guys are doing now. And I hate even putting the comparison between the two because that was the standard by which we as a family had lived.

1:09:14And here's the point. I really don't care about rehashing that, but I'm more than willing to and welcome it. But what they did was in 2018, there was a Ukrainian Russian oligarch who was offering for sale my laptop. This is before a laptop repair shop guy ever existed. it he was offering it for sale and rudy giuliani along with lev parnas and a guy in igor fruman that he deputized went to ukraine and then to austria eventually or on their way to austria to buy this hard drive and they never made it because lev parnas gets arrested lev parnas he's one that got arrested he was working for rudy and he gets thrown to the wolves and so he tells the whole story truth rachel maddow made a whole documentary about it called from russia with Lev.

1:10:07And Lev points out that what they did was, and what they eventually found was a record of my addiction. And that was going to be the October surprise. But the problem was, is that in between that time, I'd sat down with Adam Entos of the New Yorker and I had told my whole story. Nobody told me to. You went rogue for that one. A hundred percent. But intuitively I knew, and this was the difference between any other time that I'd gotten clean or sober ever, which is I get a call from this guy. He wants to talk about Ukraine. I say, where are you from? He's from the New Yorker. I had an obsession as a kid with the New Yorker.

1:10:48Thought it was the greatest publication ever to the point where I had the cover cut out, taped up to my wall. And then I read some of his work and he's an incredible journalist. And I said, I talked to him. He just was really honest. And I told him my whole story as it related to addiction. And so I had out it myself. I think Adam said one of the first calls that he got after he did that story was from Steve Bannon and said, you MF-er, you scooped us. And so they had it. They had the hard drive. They had the phones. They had the laptop and two phones that were stolen in Las Vegas. They had a laptop that I I left at my psychologist's office in Massachusetts that was there for a year and passed around.

1:11:30What a hunt for all this. Oh, yeah, exactly. And then a laptop repair shop owner who happens to be blind, literally legally blind, turns over not to anybody except surprise, surprise, my arch nemesis, Rudy Giuliani and his lawyer who cobble it together and cobble all of these sources together. And they present it to the world two weeks before the election. And remember, what Rudy did is he went to the courthouse steps in Newcastle County, Delaware, with a laptop, which was no such thing, with Bernie Carrick, of all people, who's now, God rest his soul, dead. But he was the former police chief who was indicted for bribery and fraud.

1:12:09And they go to the steps and they say, this is a record of degenerate. There are inappropriate pictures of minors. And they do exactly what is elimination rhetoric, which is an old Russian trick. accused them literally of the worst thing. What am I supposed to say in that two weeks when the world is coming down? And so 40 NSA, former security officials come out and they say, this has all the earmarks. We're not saying that it is, but it's all the earmarks of Russian propaganda. And then Twitter, which was Twitter, suppresses the story for a 24 hour period of time, not because of the content of the story, but the content of the photographs, which were nude photographs of me, which violates their terms of service.

1:12:50Yeah, yeah. That's the only reason is the New York Post put on their front page, me with my private parts blurted out naked, which by the way is against the law because of the bill Melania had just passed, the Take It Down Act. But then that becomes a suppression story. And they would have won the election if anybody just had known what was in the laptop. Okay. Well, now you've had seven years, everybody, all of you. And I include the two of you and me and everybody else. you've had my entire digital footprint unlike anyone that i know of in human history available to you for a 25 year period of time what do you find literally nothing other than i was a degenerate crack addict yeah and i was in rooms i should not have been and i was with people and prostitutes and dancers and drug dealers smoking crack and doing other drugs and 90 of the text messages But you do not find anything about foreign corruption or bribery, anything like that.

1:13:52Finally, after two years, they come back and they offer me a plea agreement because I failed to pay my taxes on time in that period of time, which I had subsequently paid with penalties and interest of over$800 ,000 after I got sober and found out that I had not filed my taxes. So I paid them with penalties and interest. and that during that period of time, I'd bought a gun and I checked the box to say that I was not currently an addict. And at the time, this is honest. And then when I walked into that store, I didn't think I was an addict. I was at least three days clean. Well, yeah, you're not going to say you're an addict.

1:14:27Well, even if you bought it fucked up. Yeah, they're just not doing that. Here's the thing. Every single person today in the United States of America, based upon the law that I was prosecuted for, if you have ever smoked pot or you smoke pot even remotely on a regular basis, which means more than once a month, basically, and you own a gun, you're in violation of that same law, which means about 85 million Americans are pregnant, but they prosecuted me for it. We can't find a single other case. Woe is me. Oh, no. I, you know, I'm being held to a higher standard. Like, yeah. Well, let me ask you this, though.

1:15:02This would be like if I sponsored you, right? Yeah. Which I don't, and I don't claim to have any more knowledge than you do, but let's just say for one second, we're role-playing. We'll see how the question goes whether I ask you to be my sponsor. do you foresee a future where you could actually let all that go yeah i've let it all go you think you have no a hundred i get it if i had been accused of a lot of stuff i didn't do it would be nearly impossible for me not to defend myself so here's the thing that is a completely fair question and i hope that this is as honest an answer as i think it is which is i have let it go Other people have not let it go.

1:15:42And so, for instance, the only time I spend a lot of time thinking about it is when I come and I sit down with you guys. Yeah, because you're nervous it's going to spark up the holes. No, it's because I'm answering the question. And so when I leave here, I'm able to put it down. And I guess when you say let it go, am I angry? No. I think that the most dangerous emotion that any addict can have is uncontrolled anger. Let me come at it from a different way. God damn it, Dex. Is it possible? Is it possible? I'm never angry. That the most evolved version of yourself, the most peaceful, the most serene version of yourself might come around to having gratitude.

1:16:28As crazy as that sounds. No, 100%. Gianni, although you didn't do all those things, if you're dead sober, none of those things happen. 100%. So I'm not victim shaming, but we also agree, like, had it been even a little bit lighter on you, maybe you're dead. Well, it really sucks to be with another addict. Maybe you don't have a wife. He's not going to let you off the hook. Maybe you don't have a wife. Maybe you don't have a new son. So maybe all those guys, almost everything. Everything. The greatest lesson I learned in this go-round is exactly that, is that when they tell you to make your gratitude list, I always thought, and it is an appropriate thing, and you don't have to be an addict to get up in the morning and benefit from making a gratitude list, which is like every day in Southern California, 7 out of 10, you're like, I'm grateful for the weather.

1:17:20Yes, literally, yes. You know, I'm grateful for my wife. I'm grateful for my son and the relationship that I've rebuilt with my daughters and for my painting and the coffee that tasted so good. And like all the good things that are going on. That's well and good. What it really is, is being grateful for every awful thing that ever happened to you that brought you to right there. Have you ever read the Gnostic Gospels that they found in Naj Hominy? I'm not a scripture guy, but there's a great thing. I would listen to the audio book of a famous book called the Nasa gospel. He says, basically I'm paraphrasing is learn to suffer as I do and you will be able not to suffer.

1:18:03And it was like, yeah, that's it. Be grateful for all of that suffering because there is no way that you are here sitting in this chair right now. Without all that? Without all of that. I would have never ended up here in Southern California. I would have never met Melissa. I would have never had Bo. I would never have the depth of my relationship with people that I love now, and particularly the depth of the relationship that I have with my daughters now. I would never have had the wherewithal to understand that this was, for me, a question of life or death. And each one of them, I was a little bit perceptibly, by self-perception, able to get a little bit better about the gratitude in the moment.

1:18:49and when it really hit me was when the verdict came in in delaware so i decided not to testify because what they'd done is they'd put my family on the stand they were going to if i testified that they were going to bring as a counter witnesses and ask and like it was just awful and the jury came back and when you put they pulled the jury they were like oh i hated that we had to come to that because it's bullshit but the technically yeah we believe that he violated the law. And I remember, and everybody was like, oh. I looked around and there were literally the entire prosecution, it was like a wedding, prosecution people sat on that side, my people sat on this side.

1:19:27And I looked back and I literally saw every single person, almost every single person that I cared about. My mom and my sister and my uncle and my aunts, Mouse, the guy that grew up with my dad, Reverend Bullock, and all of these people from the community that had known me, all those people that I said that were my aunts and uncles, they were still there for me. All the people that I thought that I had lost, that I was ashamed because I had been the embarrassment. They were all standing there. Proving to you despite what you're telling yourself that you're worthy of love. And the closet's open and here's all the skeletons.

1:19:58Exactly. And now I'm convicted and yet you're still here. I didn't even think you'd be here if I was perfect and yet you're here and I'm at my worst. Yeah. That's powerful. Really, really powerful. There's some players in this that don't have much social redeeming value, but they gave me an incredible gift. they gave me the gift of being able to be honest with myself if they'd never released out of any this stuff i wouldn't have admitted to anybody i'm not sitting here talking to you out of some insane courage that i got because i went to reishi cash for five years and meditated i'm sitting here because you know what it's already out there yeah yeah yeah that is a gift there's nothing to lose huge gift you named one of your companies seneca yeah yeah so you were into the stoics or yeah there's a stoic road forward exactly those people you're powerless over them right i mean you are as powerless over those people 100 as you are over crack it's none of your fucking business i would have an impossible time executing what i'm suggesting let me own that no you wouldn't no i know i have a thing where he would i had listen i had violent stepdads and i I decided when I'm 18, no one will ever get one over on me.

1:21:11There will be no me being subjugated. So I have an overly activated sense of like, you're fucking with me. I will go to the ends. I'll die. I'll die over it. I know this would be like the hardest challenge for me, but also it's not happening to me. So I can kind of see from the outside that any piece of your heart taken by those people is a wasted piece. I think potentially you actually could get there if it was just you. but his family is affected. Oh, yeah, forget it. And that's, you would kill everyone. Yeah, yeah. So I understand you can look at it and tell him that. I'm owning that it would be nearly impossible for me, but I also know that's the truth.

1:21:51If your mom was getting dragged into some of this, you'd just literally kill everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And people are talking shit about her. No, no, no, no. And people have all these opinions about her that are wrong. You'd go nuts. Uh-huh, I would. And so I have to give you some credit. He can be your sponsor, but I can. Be like your friend. I give you credit. It isn't out of any, and I really mean this, that I'm not just being like humble. It was not out of any courage on my part. It was so ubiquitous that I didn't have any other choice unless I wanted to die. That's what I'm trying to point out.

1:22:26But some people die. Some people do. Oh, I'm proud. Number one, I'm most proud of anything. I'm proud of my sobriety over the last seven years in the heat of all of that. 100%. I have an enormous amount of pride. I have an enormous amount of pride that I've gotten to where I am, but I really mean it. It's more than just like a few people saying bad things about you or your dad or your kids. It was, at one point, it felt like, because it kind of was, like half the world. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure. And the machinery of the government. Exactly. That's what I mean. And politics right now. The machinery of the government, which no one can, unless they've been subject to it, it is staggering.

1:23:03I mean, like people say, well, you know what? you got a partner and you've never faced any consequences. Probation officers coming into my bedroom and my wife was still in the bath naked because they could over the course of a three year period of time. Well, I would even say they've got it wrong, which is I would sit in a jail for six months in a heartbeat over deal with the emotional damage I caused. You didn't get out of the consequences of your behavior. That's your father hugging you at the end of his driveway, crying saying to you, I just don't know what to do. Yeah, that's exactly. I would sit in jail before I'd have my dad say that to me.

1:23:38I know. God. Like that's not even the harshest punishment. Yeah. You don't really get out of any of that. And here's the other thing. Melissa is still ready to kneecap a lot of people. I go, honey, you can't say that. We're going to get a visit from somebody like you got to, you know what I mean? And you then really become to realize is that when it's all directed to you, it's so much, so much more overwhelming and hurtful to the people that truly love you. I love you, yes. So like my kids. Yes. And that's what nobody understood with my dad too. And my dad and I talk literally almost every day.

1:24:12So long as I say, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm like, dad, what are you sorry about? Jesus. It's just all so, yeah. Well, yeah, it's going both directions. He's thinking if I weren't running, this wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't have been a tool. Yeah, it's all sadness. That's my last question for you. And again, in the most apolitical way possible, I can't even really imagine what it was like to be by your dad's side and watching him in public coming up short. How protective you must have felt during that time. How stressful that must have been. What was the experience of watching your dad not at his best have to be at the height of the struggle?

1:24:51The first thing that you do is you get incredibly defensive, but you're right. What happened culminating in an incredibly obvious instance of the debate in which my dad didn't rise to the challenge, that's just objectively true, is that my dad did lose a step. he didn't lose his marbles. Not one single person on the record in this entire time has ever said that Joe Biden was not available, present, and capable of executing on every single decision that this administration had to execute on. Not one. Now, did he trip over a sandbag and fall and look like an 83-year-old trying to get up at the Air Force Academy speech?

1:25:40Did he freeze on the debate stage and look like he was 83 years old? 100%. Did he lose a step literally where his gait got shorter? 100%. All of those things are true, which by the way, it's a whole nother discussion about how we are as a society going to start to treat and deal with people as they physically become more infirm, but still are all mentally there. Is everybody that's 83 years old that shuffles a little bit have dementia? I don't think that that's true. By the way, and I don't, I don't hold any animosity and that's not a hard question for me. But I'm more interested in the emotional, again, the powerlessness and somebody who just endlessly had your back in the most beautiful way.

1:26:24You have such an enviable father. I mean, truly from everything I've read about you guys. What a beautiful father. It would kill me to have America talking about my dad. Again, not because I've figured out some meditative process. By virtue of who I am, you better figure out how to be able to stay in this country when no matter what president you are, at any given point in time, anywhere between 40 and 60 percent of the public thinks you're akin to the devil. It is like a constant barometer of favorability, unfavorability. He's the worst president. He's the best president. He's the greatest person.

1:27:02He's a demented clone that did all of these things. All I have to say is that my dad has his record. He will have his legacy. I think that he was unique as a president of the United States in that I think that the job by definition requires a level of narcissism that almost any other job in the world does not require. and that he came to that office without that narcissism. I think that he had more empathy and compassion for normal people because he was the most normal person to ever occupy the office. You know, my favorite moment of his, I know you've seen this. They did an incredible two-hour front line on Putin.

1:27:42Yeah. And there's a moment where they're sitting across the table from one another. It's before he's president. I think he's vice president at the time. and he looks directly at Putin and says, I think you're soulless, basically. I'm paraphrasing. And then Putin says, this is the first guy who's ever, he's like, liked him. He respected him probably. George Bush had gone and said, he goes, you know, I looked into his eyes and he saw his soul. And so my dad's sitting across from Putin and he looks at his eyes, he goes, I look into your eyes and I don't think you have a soul. Yeah. There we go. Yeah.

1:28:17And Putin likes it. Whether he liked it or whether he's smart enough to have pretended to like it in the moment because he thought it was tough. I mean, there's a whole nother cat. But he's the only dude we've had thus far who's looked Putin in the eye and said, you're soulless. Yeah. He has a lot of integrity. Everyone's had an opportunity. And he's literally the one human being on our side who did that. And that's what I mean about my dad. I love McCain for the single moment. And that's why they were best friends. On the presidential campaign when his supporter calls Obama a Muslim, and he goes, well, hold on, hold on, that's not true.

1:28:51These little moments of integrity. Well, even worse is like the idea that that was a deal breaker. But regardless, my God, in a four-year period of time coming out of a pandemic, my dad created more jobs than any other president with two terms by double in the history of the United States. He cut child poverty in half. He passed more legislation than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson. He had a better midterm, even though we lost the House, than any president since FDR in 1932. He expanded NATO. He stood up to Putin. He added two countries for the first time in NATO's history to NATO, Finland and Sweden.

1:29:30He reestablished our connection and alliance with the Pacific Rim countries and Japan and Australia. I mean, I could go on and on. And all of those things are lost in the mix of the insanity of what's now, the chaos, the fire hose of falsehood and insanity. A UFC fight on the lawn of the White House. And we're painting it reflecting pool blue. And he made 3 ,700 stock trades in the month of February alone. The first president in history that's made one, let alone 3 ,700. And we're building a tower in Abu Dhabi. And we're putting Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia. And we're going to turn Gaza into a golf course.

1:30:07I mean, it's just like, you got to stop. You can't take it all in. But if we get back, which I pray to God we do, because I love this country. And I'm not just saying that like, rah, rah, I love this country. I'm fully aware of what this country is capable of and the horrible things that it has done in the name of our democracy. I am fully aware of my history. But at the same time, I truly still do believe that we are the greatest single hope for, Or I'd like to put it as a Star Trek future and not a Star Wars future. I don't know of any president that just as a human being is as good a man as my dad.

1:30:47I love that. Well, look, I admire anyone who's gone to hell and back and shares it deeply. You and I will have a connection that's deeper than all these extraneous other things that are spectacular. because we know what it's like to be completely humbled and destroyed by something that's a unique right i think it's a kind of a bonding 100 yeah yeah yeah like you could have any political leaning you could have i feel bonded to you too though what are you talking about i feel a much deeper connection i love that no it's really helpful what you're much more gentle Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:31:28My hope is I've had this experience a bunch of times in the meetings I go to where often people arrive in their big headlines kind of arrive. People who need a lot of privacy comes to some of the meetings I go to. And I've had a couple moments where the people that walked in, I hated publicly. One dude was like, oh, this anti-gay legislation, then got caught in the bathroom. I was like, that's fucking hypocrite. You know, I just hated him. And this person started sharing. I was like, this person was completely devastated and destroyed by this thing. And they know the depths of hell. And I have compassion for this person.

1:32:05What a unique experience to have on earth. If not for this condition I have, I wouldn't have had that. So again, I'm so grateful that I could value something about somebody. Their honesty can cut through all the shit. And I love it. It's so fucking powerful. It's almost magic. It's incredible. The self-control, do the next right thing, and show compassion. Pass it down. And that's what I learned from it. And I often fail at the self-control, but I don't fail in the way that I used to. And I sometimes don't have the compassion for the people that I find so offensive, but can't. And I don't always do the right thing.

1:32:42But I know, at least, that's what I think about every day. Well, this has been a delight meeting you. Yeah, thanks for coming. This has been great. Great time. I watch you guys all the time for so long. When you guys said that you'd like to have me on, I was like, all right. I love what you guys do. And if you want to hear the very harrowing tale of all this, I encourage everyone to pick up Beautiful Things, your memoir about this whole life of yours, which is worthy of a book. If nothing else. Thanks. So great meeting you. Thanks so much for coming. Appreciate it. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time.

1:33:22Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let him have the facts. We're both wearing vintage shirts. I wish. Yes, looks like it. I would have to call mine, unfortunately, a retro. I mean, it's from an old, old Pink Floyd thing, but it is a new shirt. Okay, well, you're being honest. Yours is really from the 80s? Well, that's what I'm told. See, it could be a lie. How would one know? I wouldn't. Well, the sweatshirt's definitely old. I can tell by the tag and the stuff. But they could have plopped that right on. But yeah, they can fake Rembrandts and stuff and have real experts sign off on them. Exactly.

1:33:59I bet they could get a... They could get one over on me for sure. Yeah. For sure. I'm not that good. We're recovering, I guess. Do you want to talk about it? I mean, yeah, we were just recording Armchair Anonymous. Yes. And not only were we recording Armchair Anonymous, it's a prompt that elicits some emotions. For sure. So the person we were speaking to was at the apex of their emotional journey of the story. I felt very, very inclined to be present for that. Yeah, of course. And I hear Rob's door open. Yeah. My first thought is like, why is Rob thinking he is time to go outside? I thought he was getting the food.

1:34:47Oh, OK, that's good. I know better than all those things. What's that? I know better than to do all those things. Well, exactly. I know you know better. So I'm just like, this is a strange move. Right. And it was a little, it wasn't like if Rob was going to get the food, he would have done that quietly. It was loud. Yeah. And then I went to, oh, man, I got to get my kids to understand they cannot interrupt me at work. And then it was Kristen. Yeah. And immediately when I saw her face, she was crying. Yeah. She was like very panicked. Panicked and crying. Yeah. And now I literally have my real life wife panicked and crying.

1:35:23And then we have a guest who, of course, I care about who's also crying. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to have to fucking tell this lady I got to go. But I had to go. Yeah. I mean, we didn't end the call. Yeah. I had to get up. Yeah. It was fine because I was chatting with her. Come, come, come. You got to go. right now you got to put this bird out of its misery i'm like what happened so backstory and i think i've been reporting on this we've been having the sweetest two or three month affair with these crows that have really come and taken to walking around our yard yeah they walk around and we've named one of them yeah it was maybe and we've been feeding putting out food and they've been taking it.

1:36:07I was just last night, I was in the sauna and because the screen was down, I can see out of it, but obviously the crows, they were just directly in front of the sauna for 20 minutes. I'm watching them just like interact and I'm like, I just, I feel so lucky that there's these beautiful crows in the back here, my favorite animal. Yeah. And I'm just watching them. They're getting more and more comfortable. I go outside and what has happened is a friend's dog has attacked one of the crows. Really bad. All the other crows are in a tree directly above the fallen crow. And they are yelling. Of course.

1:36:42As they should. Yeah. I'm so bummed for them. Of course. And you. And you're bummed for you. And my family is. Everyone's freaking out. Lincoln's bawling. She watched the whole thing. And then I got to find something. Yeah. You didn't use your hands. We'll just say that. I did not use it. I mean. I'm glad. It was terrible. I hated it it was terrible and there's the little crow I've been watching who I like and then I know that that's his mom up in the tree and his sibling yeah fuck I bet the mom obviously feels guilty and then I'm like okay that's done I get the crow wrapped up and then I gotta quickly try to nurture my family to check in is everyone stable and then come back here and then drop back into that at least it was a kind of dark story we were hearing.

1:37:37It was very dark. So it wasn't like you had to just like be happy again. I'm so sorry. I got to go blow out birthday candles. Right. Exactly. It wasn't frivolous. Although we didn't tell her what the emergency was. No, we didn't. No, I'm saying, I'm saying, sorry, I'm saying this Armchair Anonymous story was pretty dark. So my dark energy. It wasn't like you had to come in and put on this like very happy. Laughy. It was like a funny. Yeah. You pooped where? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. This is the one. Oh, okay. It's silver lining. The one time you didn't want an unauthorized EVAP. Yeah, yeah.

1:38:11So. Anywho. Yeah. That was terrible. That was a terrible event. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I feel like that was the universe making me pay for the pigeons somehow. No, you already paid for that. That was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Yeah, of course. I hopefully atoned for that. I think. Well, I'm really sorry. that all that happened. I'm very sorry you had to be the one to handle it. I get very anxious in those situations. Yeah, what was going on for you? For everyone's moods. Like everyone's, in my head, I'm just like, oh my God. Like everyone's so sad and so destroyed. And like, they're not going to come back for this for a couple, from this.

1:38:56And you know how I feel about emotions. So yeah. But I even mean you. I'm like, oh, no, like, this isn't good. Like, he's killed. He's murdered today. My favorite. He murdered his favorite. Oh, my God. And also, like, murder of crows. You know, there's something in there. Okay, well, let's save the wordplay for another day. Let's just hold off on the wordplay for today. It was just right there. So, you know. I just went back inside to check in. This is what you guys get for calling yourselves a murder. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm so sorry. Oh, it was a very cheap shot. So I went inside and now people are going up to the store to get materials for a grave.

1:39:41Oh, that's good. Yeah, I guess that's what. That's nice. No one knows what to do. You don't know what to do. No one knows what to do. But I, yeah, I was like, I don't think I should. We had ordered food. The food I thought Rob was running out desperately to get. Yeah. And so we finished our armchair nomads. We had a little break before the next one. And so I was like, I'm going to go the long way to go get the food. Right. You didn't even want to deal with. It wasn't dealing. I was like, they might be like, how insensitive is she to go get her food? Anyone hungry? I got extra chips. I don't think I'm going to eat this third one.

1:40:19I mean, that is something I would do in a nice way. Like, can I help with the things I have here? Anyone starving right now? Anyone feeling really hungry? Or is anyone distracted by other emotions? Or should I just eat crow?

1:40:36I'm sorry. They're everywhere. Sorry. Yeah, it's too soon. Okay, I really am sorry. It's just a bit too soon. But this is how it is being friends with you. And I'm pretty soon. This is how it is being friends with you. I bet. Okay, so maybe I am now getting... But I don't want you to have repercussions. Okay. So I take it back, okay? Yeah. Anywho, I still feel like fight or flighty Yeah, yeah, yeah From that experience of running in and running out And I was like, thank God Obviously, of course, when Kristen runs in I think it's something with the children Same, so there is a level of relief Yeah But it's very partial I know, but yeah, but I heard something about Burt Crow And I thought she said Lola, another dog So I was like, oh, I'm like But still the panic of everything.

1:41:27You have the dynamic of that it's someone else's dog. So all of their stress of having brought their dog over and they killed our favorite members of our family. Well. I mean, sincerely. No. They shouldn't feel bad. No, I mean your favorite members. Of our animal family. Oh, your animal family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no. Yes. For me? For you, yeah. But if the dog killed Frank, you might be happy, but But that would be like, really? Yeah, it feels weird to speculate. But I definitely think whiskey would have been a push for the family. No. Yeah. You think they'd be out there right now just laughing and doing work if whiskey was dead right now?

1:42:11No, I really don't. You're probably right. But it's okay. Your favorite member. Your favorite animal members for sure. In the beginning of something that was quite fun and beautiful happening. I know. They're not coming back. There's no way. but crows have incredibly good memories so the other thing this is and this is where it's probably selfish of me i'm like this dog did this but i these crows are watching me right now they're staring and they're gonna watch me do that why is that selfish because they're gonna remember they remember for there's all these instances where crows remember for like 30 years no i'm saying that's not selfish of you i'm trying to be friends with these guys so hard and now they're going to hate me for sure.

1:42:51Well, did you tell them? No, I don't know that they understand English. Well, they're smart. Although they could. Yeah. Also, by the way, they saw what happened, so they know it wasn't you. I hope, but maybe they thought I was going over to resuscitate this crow. I think they knew it couldn't be resuscitated, or they would have come down and grabbed it. I'm glad that wasn't happening. That would have been fucking brutal if they're trying to like. But don't you think it's kind of better if they like go down and grab it, bring it back up to their area? because they want to succeed at that and then i would have been having to shoo them away so that i could you can't have this thing suffering in the yard that's off the table yeah oh real life will find you yeah you know you're you we've we've created this little cocoon that we like virtually nothing can happen right we're just sitting here chalk chalking yeah we in a fight but whatever we'll get through that uh and then life just you know find you yeah yeah but i feel bad because like because you're so tough and you had to be the one to do it and it's like oh yeah he'll he's like he's like that's why we have him is basically yeah we deal with everything for this moment you better do the thing yeah that you bring to the table but i do think i want them to know that it hurt your feelings pretty bad.

1:44:15I think they know. You don't think so? I think it's my job to tell them, remind them. You know, that was really hard on Dax. Okay. Oh, yay. You're going to be a justice for me. Sometimes I come in. Wow, that's nice. Yeah. I did feel it was hard on you. Yeah. I didn't like that. Well, thank you. Anywho. See, and then I tried to make jokes like you do to make it better. It didn't work. So I get it. Well, yeah. It was very soon. Yeah. And puns already. I just. You know, on a good day, puns are questionable. I know, but they were both pretty good. Okay. I'm probably not in a good. Yeah. Later. Position to judge.

1:44:59Maybe later. In a few years, I'll hear this. Wow. You know what? That was a really good joke. Oh, no. Oh, well, that was a lot. I'm really sorry that happened. Shake it off. What's up? Summer's here. Kids are getting out of school. I'm going to go to a graduation tomorrow. Oh, yeah, we are. We're going to a little baby's graduation. Do you know what's so funny? It makes me sad. So the fifth grade dance was Friday night. Oh, and she wanted to go with her girlfriends. Yeah, I think I might have told the whole story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was Friday night. And what was rad was this just makes me so happy.

1:45:43She said, can we drive the Lincoln? Like she wanted to show up at the dance. Looking rad. And we delivered. Did you bring her friends or you just you dropped her off? Mom and Delta and I. Oh. And you're on a big grass field where everyone parks. And yeah, we pulled up in the Lincoln. It's already low, but in the grass, it's just like, right. and all boys ran up to the fence they're asking what kind of car that is so that was primo she's in a dress oh yeah it was great did she do her hair and stuff oh of course she had ringlets yeah she looked incredible what's interesting is when lincoln had her fifth grade dance because it is the end of elementary it's the last thing they're really gonna do together so when i picked up lincoln the entire class well all the girls were crying they were bawling they were hugging each other.

1:46:34It was so sweet. And then maybe people remember the overall demeanor of Lincoln's class versus Delta has been night and day, as you know, like they were Delta's class is so naughty. They had to rearrange the recess structure because they couldn't be trusted around the pre-K kids or whatever. This is a naughty class, naughty group. Cops come in. No, those were for her classmates last year oh right so roll back up to pick her up and um they're still raging and delda's like i danced the whole three hours and i'm like yes that was because i you know i love the school dance my favorite memories of junior high are those dances so she did it she danced so hard so anyway there's a photographer that would do these like 360 shots of yeah so she would get in a group with her friends and then the camera goes around them and this is embarrassing to admit but i'm looking at this first all i see of course because i'm the dad yeah it's like oh she's the cutest girl that was ever born yeah you know when i'm looking at her and all her friends i'm like oh she's the cutest one yeah but then all of a sudden i go well she's really quite short i'm gonna show you the video and see if you have the same reaction i was like I don't think of her as short and she's such like a little leader in her class and everything.

1:48:00But I just had this moment was like, oh, she really has had the Kristen experience where Kristen was like a tiny, tiny person. Yeah, me too. Yeah, you know. And I just didn't really realize Delta. I didn't realize that either that she was necessarily. Let's see. That's so cute. Oh, oh, wow. Oh, my God. She's a head shorter than all of her friends. So cute. It's crazy. There's another shorty. Yeah, there's one other shorty. I won't say her name, but Delta is. Yeah. I was like, oh, she's the little girl in class. She's even shorter than the Indian girl. Sure. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

1:48:41Yeah, I think she's Lebanese, but. No, she's not.

1:48:50Aw, okay, so she's on the short end. Yeah, she's a tight. I didn't know. I didn't know either. Yeah, it was really. It was like I finally came out of the water and saw clearly for the first time. And then I said to her, I said, you know, I just I noticed from these photos, you're a shorty, aren't you? And she goes, oh, yeah, dad, I'm like the shortest girl in class other than so and so. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, once. So she's just like, yeah, I'm the short girl. Like once you are the short girl, you just are her, you know, like you don't even think about it. yeah and um it does a little bit explain like you know she's in such a hurry to lose her teeth you know there's like an ongoing thing and then she got her x-ray that said they were still not coming out for a while she was like devastated in the and i never really i'm like why are you in a hurry to lose your teeth but i think if you're the tiny one she's like let's get the fucking show on the road let's get rid of these teeth let's give me some puberty let's get a few inches yeah it might be informed by the height it might be yeah well it's great is i've never heard her complain about it That's why it was not even on my radar.

1:49:51Like her best friend who I thought was really tall. Right. I now think it's probably average. Yeah, yeah. Whoa, that is weird. Yeah, I was like, oh, she's really tall. Well, because one of her other friends is also not that tall. A little taller than her maybe. In the middle. But like, yeah, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I didn't, I mean, I wanted to look completely different. But the short thing never bothered me. Yeah. I don't know why for whatever. I had so many other things that were higher. It is a lot easier for the for a girl to be the little girl than the big bird. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

1:50:27That's a much harder road. Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, maybe she should be a cheerleader. She could be a flyer. OK. You know, short, short people have a lot of advantages in that way. They don't have cheer where she. Why? I don't know that for sure, but I don't think they have cheer where she's going because it's an all girls school. I know. They should. Fucking feminist. No, they should still do competition cheerleading. Feminist. No, because competition has nothing to do with it. Okay, it's not cheering for the boys? No, it's not. I knew feminism was going to ruin this country, and here it is.

1:50:58God.

1:51:02Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:51:14All right, well. Want to do some facts on Hunter Biden? Sure. Let's do a few facts. Yeah, I found this to be. Wow. Yeah, this was a good one. It was. It was. Again. Did you have feelings about him before? Mm-mm. I didn't know much about him. Same. I really just knew his name. Mm-hmm. And I knew of all the crazy allegations. Yep. I knew about the computer. Yep. And I hadn't seen his face until that interview I watched, which made me interested in him. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I knew the same thing everybody else knew very, but very surface even. And I didn't even really know he had such a legitimate career before all the dust up.

1:51:56You know, I didn't know he's a lawyer and he'd gone to the great schools and all that shit. Well, and then obviously what we talked about, the debate where Joe Biden is, where Trump references him and then Joe Biden is defending him. And it's like very. I remember that moment. Yeah. Upsetting that he has to defend his son. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, he's working so hard. It's heartbreaking, honestly. But I don't want to suggest that these are comparable levels of culpability. They're not. But it felt like he was making fun of him that his son had cancer. I mean, that's what it felt like. Like your kid has this life threatening.

1:52:36Yeah, exactly. Illness. And I'm going to shame you over. It's just like, fuck. There's no. And then he really got himself into crazy because he said it. And then. Biden was like, said something about him dying. He was like, no, your other son. And it's like, yeah, he's working really. And it was like, yeah, you're making him talk about like the absolute worst things a parent could possibly imagine. It's horrible. But I also like I don't think I knew the extent of the tragedy they had all dealt with. I didn't either. I kind of knew. Right. I knew that Joe Biden had a real big tragedy and I think I knew he lost his first wife.

1:53:16Right. Like I didn't know the extent of that. I didn't know he's sworn into the Senate in the hospital. Oh, he's 29. All this stuff. Like you imagine dealing with that at 29. And your baby. No. I mean, no. No, no, no, no. Like absolutely not. It makes me, it makes me have so much respect for him, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've told three or four different people post interview. I'll go like, do you know the whole story? And no one does. Yeah. That I've talked to. Yeah. And the two different times that kids were present. What do you think their follow up question was? When you said like. The station wagon.

1:53:58Ugh. Did the dog die? And I'm like, I didn't ask. Wow. But it goes to show, you know, this rule in movies, you cannot kill a dog in a movie. I know. brains are crazy are i think it's because the innocence almost the opposite it's like we know humans come in every shade of good and bad and and so like there's bad people you know you can imagine easily someone dying that wouldn't bother you at all like if putin gets shot tomorrow i won't care in fact i'll be happy right there's no dog i'm gonna be happy that was killed unless he eight people i guess but oh shit this just came full circle like i wouldn't be happy if the dog that killed the crow got hurt no because i don't think the dog's capable of malice right right right anyways there's something intrinsically more innocent about these animals of course yeah but it is a funny sliding scale of priority and I obviously as a bad person like don't get it I mean I get it I do get it intellectually in that way like oh yeah there's an innocence but I don't feel that ever so I don't I'm of course my question is like the children I would never think about the animal right right right right It's really telling and interesting and fascinating that we, because we're social primates, like we're built to think some people deserve certain things and punishment is built into the system.

1:55:44And like, I know it's just interesting how we view each other versus how we view almost everything else. I know. But again, I think there's anomalies. I don't know that. I don't know. I mean, obviously you can speak for yourself, but I don't think you really believe that people should be punished. And I think I believe it less and less and less. Right. I think people should be removed to keep other people safe. Yes, me too, but not in a punitive way necessarily. Yeah, what are we doing it for? Yeah, I think my— You're not going to make anything better. Yeah, my level of wanting someone to— Suffer.

1:56:25suffer like feel bad because they did something wrong is is pretty much gone yeah like there's still a stepdad alive to my knowledge that you know i didn't like yeah um i don't want him to be suffering yeah i don't i don't really well it does nothing no that's the thing issue or that's although i mean i again to be fair like i've never had a loved one murdered exactly and in that case Maybe I would fully just be like, yep, want them to suffer for the rest of their life because I have to suffer for the rest of my life. If you killed someone in my family. Yeah. Yep. So that is the paradox. Yeah, I know.

1:57:07We just have a lot of very fascinating hardware. I know we do. That controls how we it's this whole thing where it's like if these one million people died for this reason and these one million people died for this reason, we can put such different values on that. You know, like if we think someone deceived someone in the pursuit of that or if we think it was a natural cause or we think it's like the death's the death. You don't you don't have the person anymore. But it makes such a big difference to us how that happened, which is a bit all in our mind. You know, it's like the objective tragedy is that someone you loved is gone.

1:57:47Yeah, but prematurely feels or by the hand by unnatural unnatural causes. cancer at 25 years old is unnatural is getting murdered by somebody right this is unexpected it's unexpected but i do think it's like that's the way their body it's that's that was their body their body couldn't handle this life or whatever there's like a lot of things you can say to yourself but when it was really avoidable um that feels yeah that's it's too maddening like it's it's very upsetting i mean just don't murder you know yeah like let's just not do that but it's just like we have all these Yeah. Sliding scales.

1:58:36Mm hmm. It's like if there's a just a legitimate accident in an intersection, if a lights out, that's one thing. Yes. There's not a light out. Someone blew a stoplight. Now we ratchet up. That person is drunk. Yeah. I know. The objective thing is all the same. Someone was killed operating a vehicle, you know, and then we've got like a huge range of how we feel about that. Yeah, I think, again, on the scale is about the level of which it could have been avoided. And if it's just someone making a decision in their mind, I hate this, but I'm going to kill them. Or like, I'm just going to shoot all these people.

1:59:12That is so far on one end of the spectrum of avoidability. It's harder to accept. Yeah, because it didn't have to happen. It didn't have to happen. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is the aliens might go like, oh, this person had a partner. Now they don't have a partner. Therein lies the heartbreak and the anguish. And then if you told the monkeys, well, no, there's a there's a big sliding scale of heartbreak and anguish within that. That's where they would get fast. So you're like, oh, please tell us about why. There's different versions of losing a partner. I know. I bet even the aliens would get it.

1:59:55You think so? I kind of do. Yeah. Well, I don't know what they're like, you know? I haven't met any. Yeah. But, yeah. Okay. Just for that whole thing. No, you don't want to knock on wood because you want to meet aliens. Oh, no, that was just for all the death and murder. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I have no problem meeting aliens as long as they're nice. Yeah. They're going to probe you. But you might enjoy it. Do they have to? Yeah. That's standard. That's the only consistent thing across all alien content. What are they trying to see? They got to figure out like what makes you tick. That's not the way.

2:00:32For them it is. They put that anal probe in, they get all the answers. Oh, God. Yeah, we had a guest we recorded yesterday that was so fascinating about some murders. and we also just want answers so badly when something horrible happens when a horrible tragedy happens we want answers so badly that we're really willing to overlook a lot of things and we feel better with the wrong answer that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to approach that i i'm like no no no no that's what i'm trying to approach is like we have just all these weird built-in biases that don't actually make sense. I know. I don't get that.

2:01:14Like, if you gave someone that option, would you rather think the wrong thing versus not know? They would go, well, not, they would say not know, but then in the situation, they want it. They want to think the wrong, they want peace. Like, I get it. You want peace, but. But that's why we're getting somewhere because that's why, like, Buddhism is a compelling thing. Mm-hmm. It's like that shouldn't be what gives you peace. You know, but it also in these cases where it's like murders and stuff, it is it is like, well, are they going to murder other people? Are you know, there's there's that element to like it.

2:01:55They're out. Outstanding. That would even heighten the reason to not think it's the wrong person. Yeah, I agree. But we all would be susceptible to that. I think so. I think that is right. OK, who's the hypnotist who makes people stop smoking? Carrie Gaynor there are a few listed online but this is the only one with a crazy with a toupee oh because he had said there was okay can you tell this is a toupee it's looking more and more like one right well no I'm having a wild Wolverine face of my grow up it is it doesn't look like a toupee though okay just a mop No, it's just growing. Dax quotes Hunter saying you add up all other drug deaths and the number of alcohol deaths is five times.

2:02:48Drinking deaths versus other drug deaths in the USA. Alcohol related deaths, 178 ,000. All other drug deaths, 70 ,000. Not good. And we have an inordinately high amount of drug deaths in the U.S. Yeah. And his was worldwide. Everyone's drinking. except for the Middle East. True. Hunter says he was on the cover of the New York Post more than anyone else in a one-year period. Couldn't really find that. You didn't go through every single... To be fair, Emma did this. Okay. And she couldn't find it. Well, then I trust that it can't be found. President Donald Trump holds a record for the most appearances on the New York Post covers.

2:03:32While Hunter Biden was prominently featured in the late 2020 and 2023 regarding his laptop and legal issues. Figures like Trump sitting presidents and prominent New York politicians such as Anthony Weiner or Mike Eric Adams have accumulated vastly more covers over the decades. So that's over a longer period of time. Remember Weiner? Yeah. Yeah. Ding, ding, ding. Joe Biden had one of the funniest things with Anthony Weiner. What did he say? He like, I wonder if I can find it. What worries me, Mr. Vice President, is that folks are going to go to the polls or have already gone to the polls, and they don't know what to make of this.

2:04:08They're in the dark. What should happen now? I think it's unfortunate. I think Hillary, if she said what I'm told she said, is correct. They should release the emails for the whole world to see. The whole world to see. They can continue their investigation. It won't, to the best of my knowledge, it won't prejudice the investigations. But that's sort of the stilted language the agency always uses. and it doesn't mean anything. And so it's unfortunate. I'd be remiss if I didn't note that if she had released all the emails from the get-go, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Well, that's true.

2:04:44But I don't know where this email, where these emails came from. Apparently Anthony Weiner. Well, oh God. Anthony Weiner. Oh God. I should not comment on Anthony Weiner. I'm not a big fan. and I wasn't before he got in trouble so I shouldn't comment it.

2:05:04So, oh God.

2:05:09It was just so real. It was such a real moment. Oh, really made me laugh. How old was Hunter when Jill came into the picture? Hunter was seven when Joe and Jill married. When they married? Yeah. So before that. She might have been in the picture, yeah, for... Yeah, I assume. Hunter claims Ibogaine or Ibogaine. Oh, yeah, the drug. Yeah. Yeah. Is the strongest or one of the strongest hallucinogens on the planet. That drug is not necessarily the strongest hallucinogen in terms of potency, but it is classified as one of the most uniquely powerful and intense psychoactive substances. It is highly potent with a deep, long-lasting, dream-like experience that fundamentally differs from classical psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin.

2:05:58And that's it. That's it. Well, dude, I'm amazed he made it out of that hole. I mean, that is many years. This is the second person this year we've had that spent years smoking crack. I don't know how you come back from that. But who's the other one? Charlie. Yeah, I know. I mean, that amazes me. I know. As someone that smoked it sporadically and I found it to be pretty devastating for the next week. Yeah, I just don't know. How you ever come. Oh my God. Love you. All right, love you.