Better Sex, Better Hair, Better Sleep: ‘Humanmaxxing’ Is Here

23:42Right.

23:42Ross Douthat:So you take a pill, you take an injection and you still have to exercise, but your muscles increase radically without being in the gym. Yes, one of my private biotic companies is doing exactly that. We're working on a drug. The mechanism is called AMPK activator. You actually lose weight and you gain muscles. You still have to train a bit, but much less. And then the holy grail would be you don't train at all. Hair loss, huge. So is that fixed? What's the status of hair loss? I've tried not to pay attention to it. So currently, you can already do a lot with topical versions of finasteride, whatever.

24:25But ideally, you start them when it starts. So in your case, at the moment... No, I'm not... Okay, sorry. In a hypothetical case, Christian. At the moment, you would still need to, if you have lost a lot of hair already, get the transplant and make sure it doesn't fall out. Okay. So we don't have the regrowth. But there are drugs in development, and actually late stage, not from us. which do that. So I would say give it five years and there will be a hair regrowth struck on the market. By the way, another huge thing will be sex. Actually, by the way, if you want to see it like that, Viagra was actually the very first best-selling.

25:03That's a good example. We just didn't call it like that, but it is. And then came Mozambique. But now it's like, what's the next? One of my favorite companies in our portfolio, in our biotech portfolio, is a company for Cadence. not listed, like, they work on premature eaculation, which happens to more people than you think. Sorry. Sorry. Go on. Yes, yes. And I think it's 30 seconds. I can't relate. So, but what we found out, so we actually really out to cure that, yeah, and the drug we have in late stage is giving those men affected more, but then we found out in the healthy group. Sorry, this is very serious.

25:45It's very serious. I tell you, we're going to be back and it's going to be a huge market. And by the way, practically so far, no big side effects. So that is like sex is a big thing. And then by the way, my number one is like happiness. What I'm trying to get across is like we have some illnesses and that's how the whole pharmacop world thinks so far, which are black and white. And where it's very clear, having cancer is bad. It's not the standard. Curing it means bringing you back to normal and that's it. Like there's no enhancement. The same having a viral infection, having a bacterial infection.

26:17That's not normal. Let's cure it. You're back to normal. But there are so many subjective things. And this is for me is looks, happiness, sex, intelligence.

26:26Ross Douthat:What do you think women want in this landscape? In terms of like, we've been talking about male pattern baldness and erectile dysfunction. Like, just give me an example of the female market. But saying one thing is like, I can give you examples, which a lot of women tell me, but But I don't even want to generalize because my whole message is it's up to you. And a lot of people think this is pushing people more in body conformity. I think in the moment we make it easy to achieve, I think the world will go more diverse. So I think then because like if you go through. Because right now temporarily, right, there is the phenomenon of like the, you know, the Jenner family who all seem to have ended up with, right, the same face.

27:07Ross Douthat:Right. There are certain there are certain convergences in looks that you get. under these conditions. Yes, because it's still hard to access because it's expensive. Because their look is not therapeutic use of drugs. Their use is operational, which is very expensive. But if that would be available to everybody, I don't think we all want to look the same. You don't think there would be convergence? No, I'm thinking about that a lot because I love history. And if you go into history, what always the beauty standard of each time was what was the hardest to get. A lot of the beauty standards are indirectly signaling that you have money because they are practically what you're signaling.

27:48If I'm very trained, if I'm very, if I'm thin, whatever, I have the time to do that. And so in the medieval ages, for example, the beauty standard was a very pale. Why? Because the peasants had to work outside. So they were very tanned. So only the rich ladies could stay behind their castles and be very pale. So being pale was the unobtainable.

28:11Ross Douthat:And then being on the beach becomes the thing that rich people do and tan. Exactly. But there's still a standard, right? I mean, human beings are mimetic, right? It's just hard for me. Yes, but what I'm saying is like what happens if we're making everything fairly easy? Right. Is that not actually opening up the window because people are not seeing it as something unobtainable? So coming to women, though, to your question, like, first of all, sex. By the way, it's very unfair. Men at least have Viagra. Yeah. women have not really something. So to so many women I'm talking to are like, hey, I want to feel pleasure.

28:45And it's always, by the way, connected women's health and sort of well-being. And the number one thing they're all citing is like, menopause sucks. Yeah. And we want also something for sexual pleasure, which we don't have at the moment. Women don't have.

29:01Ross Douthat:And with menopause, does that include extending fertile years? Like how, I mean, how? Both. Like some want that. And again, we have a biotech company which is working on that. Yeah. But it can also be like, okay, you're not fertile anymore, but you don't have all the downsides going through menopause. Right. And how do you get to mass access for this stuff? If it is, you know, it's a marketplace. The same what all Zampik done, bringing it to FDA so that people don't try sketchy shit they're ordering from China because they heard it from an influencer. Right. Doing the very proper scientists. So no Chinese peptides, only all American peptides.

29:37Yes, because like it's also... Or European Union peptides. So A, you need to know the science and then obviously you need to know that what you ordered is what you want to have. And by the way, for the peptide market, it's a long story because like, again, there I'm fairly conservative. Like I think like we have, first of all, there are peptides, which are already FDA approved. I'm actually hoping they're not going overboard because there's a lot of stuff on it which I would call interesting. So I would like to learn more in terms of, I would like to see more science, but I would not put it in my body.

30:06and that's where we as enhanced games at least want to draw the line and that's what I want to message all the time I want to give people the freedom because they deserve it but freedom only makes sense if you have knowledge otherwise it's idiocy

30:30Ross Douthat:I'm Jonathan Knight and I'm the general manager of New York Times Games if you play our games you probably know there's something a bit different about them. Just like there are writers behind the articles you read in The Times, there are creators behind our daily puzzles. Tracy Bennett curates the day's Wordle solution to keep it lively and varied. Winnaloo creates each connections board, including all those categories that try to stump you. Sam Azersky combs through every last letter, word, and pangram in spelling bee so that loyal players of all skill levels enjoy it. Our puzzles are human-made every day, with the standards you'd expect from the New York Times.

31:07Ross Douthat:And this matters because when you choose to spend time with our games, it should be time well spent solving puzzles that are challenging, surprising, and joyful. Puzzles handcrafted for you. We think that's something worth investing in and something worth paying for. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games at nytimes.com slash join games. So what are you putting in your body? So the sentence before, but my whole message is it's scientific and you have to do it with a doctor because what is right for me, even if now I'm 48, even if a 48-year-old man is listening saying, even for that person, meaning he can maybe take the closest sort of comparison.

31:51Well, we're going to imagine this.

31:54Ross Douthat:We're watching television and this conversation comes with the immense bar at the bottom of the screen. Only go to your doctor. The endless disclaimers. And you don't have to tell me everything. Just give me a sense of your regimen. There's nothing I wouldn't tell you. I'm very open book. Testosterone is one thing. Since my 30s, I'm doing TRT. By the way, very, very mild. What I'm doing is I know exactly where my testosterone level was at 30. And I'm keeping it there. And by the way, I don't even think about it. But when I talk to friends who are going to the gym when they're 48 and they're training and they have sore muscles, whatever.

32:28For days, I was like, I don't have that. I'm really training exactly the same way. and it feels the same way. So then I'm taking GLP-1s because I'm kind of stress eater. And by the way, even if I have good stress, you have a fun day. If I'm busy, I'm like, oh, here's a cookie, there's a cookie. And then I gain weight. Happens to all of us. But GLP-1s switched it off. I haven't eaten today because I was busy,

32:49Ross Douthat:but now I don't because I just like... Do you find that they remove any non-food compulsions? Do you feel like they've changed your personality? It's a good point. Not for me. But again, I come back. That's why I say do it with a doctor and observe yourself. So there is this side effect people report. By the way, sometimes it's a happy side effect. No, no, people will say I'm no longer addicted to scrolling social media on my phone. To pick a hypothetical problem. Unfortunately, it doesn't do that for me. I am addicted to that. I'm trying. My partner will say, yes, he is. It doesn't work for him.

33:21For me, it does what it shall do. It just reduces my craving or my stupid, like, oh, I'm eating a cookie. So I have that. I'm taking DIGA, which is a hormone-like substance that I'm taking pregnenolone. I'm taking actually a lot of things for sleep because like also let me say, sorry, we're jumping, but like people always want to know from me and this is exactly what we're debating now is like what's the medications we can take? It all just makes sense if you cover your basics and the basics are five things in life for health and sleep is the number one. Get your sleep in order. Second is social relations.

33:58Super cheap and super hard at the same time. have a great life, enjoy it, have friends, have family. Third one is no drugs. You laugh now, but maybe it's coming from me, but I hate drugs, by the way, the negative version of it. And I think the number one drug which should not be even allowed is alcohol. It destroys everything. Alcohol is scientifically the worst and it's spiritually a path to help. That's my view. I've never touched it and I will never. And by the way, I have not touched it. I would not, it makes you dumb. There are medical use cases, But again, by the way, also, everything is also always a trade-off.

34:32If I would have a medical use case with marijuana help, maybe I would do it. But I clearly see the side effects, which is, especially when you're younger, by the way, it does, if you do it a lot, reduce a little bit your intellect for life. Why would I fucking do that? It's like, yeah, so I have not tried any recreational drug except of coffee. Yeah. And psychedelics, but that's another topic. We'll get to that in a sec. But everything else I think is bad. So don't touch it. No alcohol, no cigarettes, no smoking. no matter so then go to the gym two three times a week do a little bit of cardio do a little bit of weight training um and then food intake like be mindful of that as well because we like talking always about the risks of drug and at the same time people are like sugar is super bad for you like so have a mediterranean diet so these are the five basics and they i would say account for 70 or 80 percent of your well-being aging whatever and if you cover those basics then actually enhancements at all.

35:26That's just like the concept. So I do a lot of supplements actually for sleep to improve that. I do one medical drug for sleep, which is called QVIVIC, that regulates the wake sleep mechanism. So at the moment you have orexin drugs, which promote sleep, like this said QVIVIC, and the great thing is they give you more deep sleep. That's what you really want. You need core. And interestingly, in older people, it might actually reduce the risk for dementia and Alzheimer's, which is always a theory I believed in, is that older people unfortunately get less and less sleep on average. So it was always a hypothesis I was looking at is like, oh, if we give people more deep sleep, could that be prevented?

36:06And it seems to be. So I'm taking that. Oh, what did I forget?

36:10Ross Douthat:Well, just mention Alzheimer's, then take me into the longevity debate and how you think about that, right? Because as, you know, just as prior to Ozempic, I had the sense that, you know, lots of interventions made a difference on the margins, and then Ozempic comes along and seems to make a really big difference. My impression of all of the debates about longevity and anti-aging stuff at this moment is that people are doing, you know, 17 different supplements and avoiding direct sunlight and so on. And in the end, maybe it's going to add, you know, 13 months to their average lifespan or something.

36:49Ross Douthat:Now, maybe that's wrong, but that's my impression. Do you have an expectation that you are doing or will be doing things that will actually add meaningfully to what your lifespan would be, even if you were healthy? Right. Yes. Okay. So first of all, you're right. At the moment, there is nothing you can take. so that in average, again, there could always be the outlier of statistics, but there is nothing which would make people live 10 years longer. Right. Yeah, but it's going to come. So at the moment, I'll give you a different view. Like two things. A, let's start like already aging better, having the same.

37:26So we need to dissect life expectancy. So how long do we live? And then quality of life. So we have already, that's what we just talked about. the quality of life, I think, can be easily, already now for every person on the planet, improved like 10 years plus. And then at the same time, I think now in the future, like in the next 10 years, we're going to see breakthroughs also in life expectancy. So try to be alive. Yeah, by the way, the number one... If you want, if you want. If you want. If you want the extra, right. One thing maybe, which is, again, just a practical thing, because it's not a medication, the number one thing at the moment is checkups.

38:05I'm doing a blood cancer screening, you know, that you get your blood thrown and like, yeah, I'm doing every three months. I may be a little bit obsessive. That's a little bit, I mean, I did just get a colonoscopy.

38:15Ross Douthat:Great, I've been there every two years. I feel virtuous for that, but I, yeah, I am not, I'm not good at keeping up with checkups for reasons that I want to get into at the end, but now I want to ask about psychedelics. where does the mind and consciousness alteration fit into this? In so many ways. Like the first of all, first of all, hopefully I get it across that I really think this was the beginning of our debate. Like I think life is awesome. Yeah. It's exciting. We're not having a debate. No, exactly. This is, this is. I know, but I just want to say, and that's where my point comes. But I realized someone, I had this luck literally since I'm alive and I really, really credit my parents.

38:54I'm coming from this very small farm village. Like I'm always fairly happy. It doesn't mean that I have bad days, but like my baseline is happy. And so when I realized that is not normal and I think it's very sad. Life is awesome, but obviously you need to be happy to enjoy it and healthy. But like we covered the health part, but life without happiness is not good. Like sort of, so that's why the baseline of psychedelics is like they have the potential to really massively, massively improve the mental health of people who have a medical issue, which is a lot. Meaning depression,

39:27Ross Douthat:depression, anxiety, addiction. But in this terrain, just to be clear, we're not in the realm of things that are all FDA approved, right? This is... Yes and no. Okay. Because the amazing thing is like, so I'm saying that since 10 years, but I always had to add, we're going to prove that out. So I started two companies, Atai and Compass, both are listed. Both companies together raised more than$1.5 billion. I put in 100 million of my own capital, more than. And now we're there. So Compass has released phase three data, which is the last final stage. For which? For treatment-resistant depression, but then they have...

40:05With which psychedelic? Sorry, Compass is psilocybin. Okay. Which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. And then Atai is doing all the other psychedelics. We just had phase two B data for 5-MeO DMT, which was maybe the best data set in neuroscience since like 30 years. It's amazing. For which, sorry, is it? 5-MeO-DMT, which is another psychedelic. So they have several psychedelics.

40:29Ross Douthat:Is that equivalent to the DMT that it's in like ayahuasca? What's the connection? So it's a very colloquially said, it's a stronger version. It's a different molecule. It's in the same family. Okay, it's in the same family. We also do DMT. So our Thai is doing 5-MeO-DMT, which is actually what people call colloquially the toad thing. like if you have heard it. Yes. Then you have, we do, as a Thai, we do DMT, which is colloquially what you take when you do ayahuasca. When you do ayahuasca. But you can do DMT without doing ayahuasca. Exactly. And actually we do it buccal, which is then a much shorter trip.

41:01It's because I think if you do it medically in the medical system, the shorter the better, because I have to add for psychedelics, is I believe psychedelics should be not only medically approved, but they only should be taken with a clinician together. So it's a narrow approval. Like, for example, what we discussed so far are prescription drugs. You have to go to a doctor, consult, but then testosterone you can take home or get an injection or whatever. But like psychedelics, my vision and also where we agree, because the FDA has the same vision, is they should be used only with a clinician together because the session can be very intense.

41:40Yes, I've heard that. And you should do it with somebody who's sort of educated. And that's how it unfolds the biggest therapy effect. But long story short, psychedelics are about to be approved. You're going to see psilocybin, active ingredient magic mushrooms. You can take it with your doctor next year. It's going to happen now. There was just a presidential order, which kind of just stated the obvious because it wasn't needed, actually, a different topic. And all the other psychedelics were developing. DMT, 5-MU, DMT, ibogaine, a new version of MDMA. are going to come, I would say, over the next three to five years to market.

42:20And which are the ones that you have taken yourself or that you take now? So I do regularly psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. Regularly means I do it once, maximum twice a year with a therapist together in a country where it's already legal. So I do it the proper way how it will be in the United States, hopefully next year, end of this year, next year. So I have done 5-MEO DMT. I've done DMT. I've actually done our entire pipeline except of ibografen. All right.

42:50Ross Douthat:So what happens to you when you do psilocybin? Wow, that's always the most complicated question. Yes. Yes. Well, I'm going to ask about DMT too, but I want to ask about both. As someone who has never taken either and finds the literature on them very interesting. can i give you two answers i give you the personal one second i give you the medical one and i try to make it simplified medical one all the psychedelics one of the big effects is we have a part of your of our brain where our consciousness seems to be created at least our sense of ego consciousness is already a tricky term because that's how what i'm doing like i'm going through a mind field of tricky terms sense of the boundaries of the self yeah and ego yeah ego in a not an oh somebody has a big ego but like ego and like your sense of self and that default mode network is reduced to really shut down and the initial reaction of people is oh who am i when my ego is gone and then the interesting answer is and they can try to make it very neutral and i can give you my christian answer because i'm personally very spiritually religious which is i want to make a clear divide I can give you.

44:06And that's the great thing with psychedelics. We can go through FDA and don't need to use the word God and soul and all of that because we show. But this is a safe space for using those words. I like it. I'm just always making clear what I, there are certain things we know about psychedelics. And the great thing is we know that much that it's so easily going to be FDA approved because by the way, side note, also the side effect profile is super benign. Like, yeah, people have a headache, vomiting. There are some people have a higher heart rate, but it's all like, I would say, again, I don't want to be too easygoing because everything has side effects and everything is like a trade-off.

44:40If you drink coffee, your body will display some side effects. You just know them. But I would say what we've shown is they have mild side effects. Right. But back to the feeling itself.

44:51Ross Douthat:So you have a sense, your sense of ego and self weakens. And then something else is there. And you can call it your subconsciousness, you can call it your soul your inner voice whatever but so your your your your brain or your head is not empty so to say and that is the moment which allows you to work through whatever the reason for your mental health issue is for me again it's more like my personal opinion because i'm chairman also of a biotech company publicly but like my personal opinion is like there are certain root causes it's my belief for for psychedelic sorry for mental health issues like trauma is a very sort of wildly talked about but there's also others like loss of connections grieving yeah just like getting obsessed with negativity in your life and depending what the root cause is my subjective answer is the beauty of all psychedelics is they show you the right answer or the right antidote to whatever your root cause is.

45:59I give you two examples like if people are and there's so many by the way their root cause is the simplest one and the most common one is they don't even know what makes them happy because we're living in a world where we don't embrace that we don't allow people to explore and communicate and express and that is one of the biggest group of patients I see throughout all psychedelics, they go in a psychedelic trip and they come out and they're like, I know now what I want and that I deserve it and I should do it.

46:30Ross Douthat:But you're doing this not all the time, but frequently, right? So are you sort of once or twice a year? But are you resetting and figuring out like how your, your true self is changing? Like what, what is the maintenance effect? So the maintenance is, by the way, let's start with my first trip. So the great thing with me was that's why for me it was very confirmatory so i went into that and i came out of it was like okay the first the only two things again why i did this whole pre thing because it sounds so banal like everything i'm telling people about how psychedelics work and what psychedelics teach you you can read a deepak chopra book by the way you can talk to your parents you can also read the bible like we have all these things out there which show us how to lead a good happy life in Germany just say it goes in the right ear and goes out the left ear meaning you don't listen to it truly and on psychedelics is because your ego is reduced it's like you experience these experience these kind of truth at a very very deep absolute level and you come out of it and you have the courage to live live live according to it so in my case though it was very confirmatory what was the revelation of your first trip very simple I'm doing exactly what I love.

47:40I'm blessed. Like I structure, but I, and why? Because I always structure my life. Why would I do anything different? I don't even understand it. How people can do things they don't love because then don't do it. Yeah. And now people say Christian is very fortunate because he's very successful. No, I decided that very early and then I became successful because I'm very sure about that. And the second was though, and it's so cheesy. It's all about love. Like it's like, yeah, you can have a lot of money. It's in my case, it's like, I like to build companies. So the message was like, you you know, do that.

48:08Right. But make sure that you have enough time for your parents because if life goes as normal, they're going to be gone before me and have a great relationship to them. And I'm so grateful. So I spent more time since then with my parents, like make enough time. Like it's so simple. So people might say, okay, I could have told you that without a psychedelic trip, but I want to really get across your experiences on that deep level that you're like, wow, that's it.

48:43Ross Douthat:I'm Paul Tenorio. I cover soccer for The Athletic. And I'm Amy Lawrence. I cover football for The Athletic. Whatever you call it, the biggest competition in the sport is happening right now. And the Athletics World Cup coverage has everything you need to follow the tournament. We've got more than 70 obsessive reporters on the ground. If you're eager to know more about the teams, the matches, all the stories on and off the pitch, we've got you sorted. Throughout the tournament, you have free access to all the coverage in our app. Download the Athletic app and see you there. So with DMT, right, which is associated with ayahuasca, which is a drug that has a whole sort of shamanic culture that's grown up around it.

49:27Ross Douthat:My understanding, and this is I'm sure a crude generalization, is that magic mushrooms, things like them, induce some version of this sense of dissolution of self, oneness with the universe, self-knowledge, and so on. DMT, ayahuasca, gives you a more extreme experience where it feels like you are entering different levels of reality, encountering other entities, beings. People talk about angels. People talk about the machine elves, which people listening can Google if they're if they're interested in. And yeah, just have just have a sense that's more like they are leaving this plane and entering another plane.

50:11Ross Douthat:i'm curious first is that your experience and second there's a lot of people who have what you might call kind of hellish experiences right and in especially in that like that they're plunged into a sort of purgatorial landscape where they feel like they're cut off from god and reality and so on um what's what is that is my reading accurate basically yes and no because there's many points in it which which all we need to dissect because it's many things like so first of all let's stay with dmt like so there is when people drink dmt and that's what it's called ayahuasca yeah it's a very very different uh sort of experience it's up to eight hours whatever when i say we do dmt we do it buccal so it's only in your cheek in your cheek yeah it could be also intranasal is anything transmucosal um then it's a much faster experience it's from from clinical start to end round about two hours and it's very different from my waska so while it's the same ingredient just saying like so ayahuasca is very different um what is that experience how is that experience different from magic mushrooms so that's the second answer is by the way a lot of people who make the differentiation you just made and say, oh, under DMT, ayahuasca, so oral as a drinking version or trans-mucosal version or 5M DMT, you see entities, you go through literally another plane of existence, if you want to say it like that, or perceived.

51:46And mushrooms is more gentle. Most of them have done mushrooms recreationally, so they take fairly little. So I always ask people, when you had this experience, were you able to walk and speak properly? Most people say, ah, kind of, I was on a beach. I was like, hey, it was a great, by the way, great for you. I did it on a beach, like in a country where it's legal. But it's a mild dose. So the therapy dose is actually, they're much closer together. So in the therapeutic dose of psilocybin, people also have a very spiritual experience. So the nuance is different, but like, again, they're much closer together when you compared now a very strong DMT dose to a very recreational psilocybin dose.

52:25But tell me what happens.

52:30Ross Douthat:So if you take the therapeutic dose of magic mushrooms or you're taking this more condensed dose of DMT, do you feel like you're on another plane of existence? So let's just like for the sake of compliance, like let's say we're leaving science now because science is like, yeah, so we're coming now to my personal opinion. Yeah. So I do believe that psychedelics are opening up the, opening up our, again, I'm only struggling because like I know when I use religious terms, then maybe religion is the one thing we don't think a lot about it, but it's very loaded. If I use the word God or soul, everybody has a few.

53:13And it's not necessarily what I want to say with it. I'm just giving that also a disclaimer. So, but like I do think psychedelics. But it's not what I want to hear about. Yeah, no, no. And I'm happy to hear. I'm just trying to make it most accurate and not repel people.

53:27Ross Douthat:Well, and you just, the disclaimer would be, you think people will have experiences and get these results, even if they think and are sure that it's all happening just inside their heads, right? Yes, that will be proven. But when I read what we also ask, like the personal questionnaires, whatever, of the patients, this is all a very spiritual experience. Some people, by the way, might not call it like that. I have a friend who's actually big shout out because he was my first sort of shaman, like my very first trip. He's very, very, he would call himself, although he does psychedelics, really an atheist.

54:02But then when I talk to him, he's like, you're not an atheist. Like, you just don't like the word you like religious. just like you believe in something bigger. Like I think there is no real atheist, by the way, or very, very little. And I almost would claim like you cannot be a real atheist after you took psychedelics because everybody comes out and has these, it's called spiritual for now, religious, very deep experience that there is more.

54:25Ross Douthat:And there's, no, I mean, there's data on this, as I understand it, that at least with what I've read about DMT, it is similar to the data on near-death experiences where you have a substantial number of people where they do a study and they say they go in, are you an atheist or materialist? And they say yes, going in. And there is, not with everyone, maybe not with your friend, right? But there is often this sort of change of metaphysical perspective, right? He also has it, right? He just doesn't want to say it, yeah. But that is what people have. Like they have a very deep spiritual experience.

54:54Like some people meet entities. Do I personally believe? Yes, yeah, because I'm spiritual religious. Like I believe in... Have you met entities? Yes. Tell me, just tell me about... I especially met God. like every single time. So tell me what that was like. It's indescribable because that is the, no, by the way, suddenly if you, I'm, Sir, this is a podcast. Everything is describable. Yes, I'm trying. I just give you the word that it is indescribable

55:17Ross Douthat:because that is the nature of God. So this is apophatic theology, which is where the term for when human concepts fail. Exactly. A hundred percent. Like you go, the thing is like, so my guess, by the way, obviously we have to bring it across in a podcast and you can say, you don't want to answer. Have you done it? No. And I'll tell you why in a second. So why I'm asking is like, so that's, you're actually a good counterpart because I'm trying to explain it to somebody because like otherwise people immediately like, I know what you mean. Because like everybody has the same experience, but it's so, it's, it's practically like you read in the Bible where it's like, you can't make a picture of God.

55:52It is like that. God is so much bigger. Yeah. And so much out of our comprehension we have in this incarnation. I also believe we have an eternal soul. I believe we're going to go forever. And, and it's just so far out of our comprehension. But on psychedelics, you're, you're, you're going on a state of consciousness, which allows you a, I would say to comprehend the nature. and let's maybe use the divine and to communicate with it. And it was the most loving, best experience I've ever had. By the way, not always fun. I can tell you the hardest, because people I work with is bad trip. What you said, the hellish ones.

56:39Right.

56:40Ross Douthat:And people report entities that are darker. So I think a majority of what people would call, let's use the word bad trip, is because they're not prepared for it. So I can give you very sort of where I witnessed very hard story, but like they with a very positive ending and they were good because somebody was sitting next to them and guiding them. If that happens to you at a festival, you might find it was the worst experience you ever had because you're like, and it sounds so simple, but I tell you in psychedelics with set and setting, the way sort of A, how you are, that you know you're safe, and it's expecting it to a certain degree and that you have somebody next to you.

57:25Ross Douthat:But then you don't really think though that, like to the extent that you actually believe that this opens doors, you're not just locked into your head having this experience. You're opening a door to the infinite. You don't think that it's possible to open that door and have something dangerous waiting on the other side. That is one of the best questions because I never had it in a podcast. Well, this is the special thing about interesting times? So I'm actually, I believe, and it's, by the way, maybe the one question I ask every religious leader I'm meeting is like, how do you make sure if you're on the religious side of it?

58:02Again, this is not science. This is not the tie. It's like, how do you make sure that you're meeting God and not sort of a misleading entity? Yes. If you want to very simplify it. I have some concerns

58:16Ross Douthat:about the misleading entities. So I'm thinking about that, by the way, an incredible amount because like I'm, again, that's. But you don't think just to be, you don't feel like you've met a misleading entity. So the reason is, I think, how do I phrase it? Like, again, this all sounds cheesy for the ones who want to make fun of it. But like, I do believe that ultimately not just life is good, but God is good. And if you go and have a sincere problem, which you're bringing towards God, then he, she, it will always answer. That is my deep sort of religious belief that these psychedelics are meant to open up that.

59:02So God gave it to us for a reason. And because God, again, personally, because God gave it to us, psychedelics, he wants us to discover him in that way if you're ready for it. That is my spiritual answer. But this is why it's so important to go into it with exactly that intention. This is why if I go back and maybe, I don't know, maybe if the right answer to your question is also to look how have others done it, all religions, Christianity, who used a lot of psychedelics. That's a separate podcast conversation.

59:36Ross Douthat:We'll let the claim hang there. All the pagan religions, like whatever, they all, all the ones who are still out now, like the nature religions in the Amazon, whatever, they all make sure that you go into it with that sort of intention and preparation. And then I think the answer is like, if you, I think what's the quote in the Bible like if you ask God for something he will always answer but if you do it in a if you kind of ignore the power of these substances and if you do it in a non-intentional setting I think you can accidentally meet other entities but like I cannot go with that argument to the FDA and say that's my argument They won't listen to this podcast, don't worry No, but the good thing is I can come to the same conclusion with science.

1:00:32A lot of people say I'm a hypocrite because, again, because I'm trying to stay in the middle lane. I deeply believe these very powerful substances should be available, but I don't believe at all, and especially for psychedelics, that they should be sold in a marijuana shop because it can go terribly wrong. And I can't give you the scientific answer why it can go wrong, because if you uncover a trauma and you're whatever, then it can make it worse. And I can give you the religious answer that if you go into it without the preparation. So, but if you go into it and you are going it with a pure heart, you know what I mean?

1:01:12Like it's very, and I'm struggling and I'm also not allowed to speak, but like if you're going in it like with a good intention and if the intention is to solve your problem, I think God will be there because he gave us these substances. That is my personal religious belief. Okay.

1:01:26Ross Douthat:I really appreciate you answering me directly. And I want to just to sort of bring us to the end, I want to sort of, I guess, offer my own Christian reasons for skepticism about these substances that I think connect to some reasons for skepticism about sort of the quest for greater human potential overall. You mentioned earlier, you said something like, you know, the message that God is love, you know, it's there in the Bible and it's there in Deepak Chopra, right? And it's there in Oprah Winfrey and so on. I agree with that. But I think that there's a lot of sort of spiritual thought and practice nowadays that sort of start with the assumption that if you find it in the depths of your soul, it's probably basically good.

1:02:20Ross Douthat:And I feel like Christianity starts from a somewhat different perspective and says, the depth of your soul is also divided. Human beings are divided. We have an angelic side and we have a fallen side. But then what does this mean, right? For like in his encyclical that I started with, and I know you haven't read it. You don't have to have read it to respond to this, right? But the Pope says something basically like, you know, there are certain kinds of suffering, certain kinds of experiences, embodied experiences, experiences of difficulty, heartbreak, sorrow, disease, death itself, right, that human beings are supposed to go through.

1:02:58Ross Douthat:And again, I should say I've had Christian friends who have had conversion experiences based on psychedelics. So I'm not denying that they can have positive effects. But as a consistent practice of a culture, you're stepping outside, right? You're sort of leaving the trials of the flesh behind. And then in the same way, everything else that you have talked so eloquently about, right, is a kind of like, you know, it's sort of, it's like we are, we are, we are sort of escaping it, the suffering, the things we're supposed to go through. We're, we're, we're, you know, we're maxing out, right? And I just worry about like human vanity, right?

1:03:35Ross Douthat:Like, isn't vanity a problem here? Isn't ego a problem here that you don't necessarily escape just by getting to the depth of yourself? Anyway, that's a ramble. No, I love it. I love it. Just tell me, give me a response. First, and I always wanted to talk about it, because there's two answers. Let's come to psychedelic side, on the enhancement side, on the physical enhancement side. Actually, I thought about it, because by the way, I'm deeply religious, or spiritual. Again, I only say spiritual because I'm Christian, but I kind of think... You have some heterodox ideas, I think it's fair to say.

1:04:07And I'm coming to the Catholic Church in a second, and especially not to this encyclopedia because I haven't read it but like to the what's missing because like I think what all religions did by the way that would be the separate podcast one sentence like and I'm doing a lot of research there and financing a lot of research most religions are built on psychedelics and what psychedelics tell you and I can see it by the way once you have a psychedelic experience I read the entire Bible yeah I read Quran like because I'm interested in it and once you read it with the eye of having done psychedelics you clearly see where the psychedelic influence is.

1:04:42No, but wait, but wait, but wait, wait, wait, wait.

1:04:43Ross Douthat:No, no, I can't let that go. Wait, but couldn't that just be that psychedelics give you, through a drug, a spiritual experience that people in the Bible or the Quran or wherever else are getting direct from God? Why does it have to be that they're, like, I agree. First of all, great, great. No, hopefully we have a little bit more time because I love this discussion. So, the discussion, because, for example, I financed a very important, I think, very good, study completely different thing because I believe someone we're going to use psychedelics for peace negotiations. Totally because I think one sentence because I think it's such important is like one of the things and we showed it is like in all these conflicts in Israel and Palestine and Rwanda whatever is they dehumanizing the other side.

1:05:29So when I talk to politicians at the moment most of them are like ah they manipulate me. So what we've shown with what we did we had a group of Palestinians and a group of Jews trip together. And they all went in and were like, oh, do I come out and going to give the land away? That was the manipulative worry they had. What actually happened, which is much more beautiful, I think, they came out and said, it's such a complicated debate. I want to live here. But I for the first time see that the other person is a human with a family, with very basic, He's like me, and they just want to live and make a good life for their family.

1:06:09And I want to find a solution. They didn't find a solution, but I think it was a great answer because it was not compelling them both sides to leave the land. But it gave them the understanding that there's a human on the other side, which if you read it, you're like, what did they think before?

1:06:23Ross Douthat:All right, but let's stay. This is good, though. This will sharpen my question. In the New Testament, right, Jesus does want people to have a direct relationship to God, to pray, to call God Father, right? You know, there's clearly a strong thread of mystical experience running through the whole New Testament, right? But how shall I put this? Jesus is not human maxing, right? Like Jesus is incredibly focused on everything he's talking about is giving up your body for other people. This is something I fail at, by the way. I'm not like holding myself up as a paragon of this, but you're giving your possessions away, but you're also sort of giving of your physical form.

1:07:07Ross Douthat:And I think the worry, whether it's the Pope or me sitting here talking to you now, right, is that there's a combination of maxing of the body and sort of spiritual escape that risks getting away from that fundamental obligation. That's my question. Don't we risk getting away from fundamental obligations? Like just in your examples, right? I've got a lot of kids. If I don't have time to do certain maxing things or even to think about certain maxing things, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. So first of all, there's two different answers, by the way, for psychedelics. Let's call it mind-maxing, if you want to call it.

1:07:47So I gave you the answers. Psychedelics, by the way, to finish that, I think, by the way, I also want to say everything I just said, come back to the, to your question, but like everything I just said, you can actually achieve without psychedelics. And by the way, I'm not the one who says, Hey, this is the only way religions have all developed various techniques, meditation, prayer, whatever. My critique is, and that is, for example, my biggest critique, I would say, as a Catholic, is like they traded away the mystical experience and the direct relationship to God and also helping people to achieve that even without psychedelics.

1:08:25I want people to have that because I think that is the core of having a relationship with God. And they traded that away for power and organization. And they made themselves very hollow. and I think that is so yes it's important that the Pope says something about AI but I don't think we need the Pope for that I want the Pope to give much deeper answers much more spiritual answers on the condition of being human and I think they lost it and it's sad because I think people deeply deeply need that and long for it especially in a world which is changing again coming back to that

1:09:00Ross Douthat:we need religion okay so mind so okay so that's that's the mind maxing side so on the on the now talk about the body maxing and whether am i doing something wrong i said i maybe by letting myself get a little bit fat and ignoring my lost hair in the but in the service of like trying to be a good journalist and a good husband and father and not have that like be in my mind all the time okay i'm giving you a personal answer yes i want a personal answer yes so you have children how many i have five children so you have five children how old they are anywhere from 15 to too. So you want to be there as long as you can.

1:09:38So you're tiny bit overweight. Yeah. Is putting a toll on you. It's no, it's storing inflammation. It's increasing your risk for a cardiovascular disease. And you have a responsibility, I believe, for the kids you put in this world to be there in a healthy state for them because I believe in family. Like, yeah. So, so it's kind People want to talk.

1:10:02Ross Douthat:But maybe not the hair. I can leave the hair alone. But if it makes you a happier dad, the question is that why I'm saying before, like, it's not that I'm saying we all should do that. What I think there are people who want, if they do X, it makes them happier. And I want them to be happy because only if you are happy, you can make other people happy. If you're miserable, you're going to make other people miserable. So be happy. Yeah. Have a connection with God and be healthy because that is kind of the basis. and then you can be the good force in life to whoever you want to be there, to your children, to your wife, to your readers, whatever.

1:10:36So it's not a conflict. People always want to talk up that conflict and make it like egocentric, whatever. Not at all. It's like... But it's a conflict, but it is.

1:10:46Ross Douthat:You would admit it's a conflict for some people. It's why I struggle with it myself, that there is a balance between healing and seeking health, which I think Christians, people who believe in God are absolutely required to do. But then there's also the perils of vanity, narcissism, and egocentrism that I think, you know, whatever psychedelics may or may not do are sort of carried in the train of personal improvement. It's like, I hear you again, and I think if some people become narcissistic or very vain, then it's a treatable issue itself. And then I would say go to psychedelics. But I don't think that people who just want to be the best version of themselves, that they should be called like that.

1:11:36I give you two. So if you're because I never had a podcast where the other side was also Christian like believer. So I guess you believe the term child of God is is an accurate one. Are we God's children?

1:11:51Ross Douthat:So in. Yes. With some theological debate behind it. But yes. but I think sometimes by the way that the theological intellectual debate is the wrong one I think maybe it's the real one like it's maybe it's maybe you should take things more literally so I deeply believe because I was thinking why do I like biotech so much and why do I don't even mean like forget me why are we humans so curious why are why do we want to invent there is this drive like we literally like like zoom out like we are a very like uh curious adventurous innovating species we have this drive to do that i actually my personal answer is because that is the divine in us that the part of god like if god is a very creating has a very creating nature which we definitely as christians would say he does because he created the universe and us whatever isn't it that we have that spark in us and we want to create on a much smaller level but it's like my It's like children imitating you.

1:12:48Yes. And I think trying to optimize things, but by the way, trying to do any science, whatever, is actually, is the divine spark in us. And that's why I think it's good, it's inherently good if we're trying to, as I said, become the best version of ourselves. And I don't think there is anything bad in science helping us do that.

1:13:10Ross Douthat:I'm very hopeful that this has been the best version, the best possible version of this podcast. So Christian Angermeyer, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. It was amazing.