#2385 - Rick Strassman - The Joe Rogan Experience: Summary & Transcript

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Podcast Episode Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience #2385 - Rick Strassman

Episode Overview In this episode of *The Joe Rogan Experience*, Joe Rogan engages in a deep conversation with Dr. Rick Strassman, a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and an expert in the field of psychedelics, particularly DMT (Dimethyltryptamine). The episode delves into various topics, including the intersection of psychedelics and spirituality, ancient texts, and the implications of modern science on our understanding of consciousness.

Key Concepts and Discussions

DMT and Biblical Prophecy

DMT State vs. Prophetic Visions: Strassman compares the phenomenology of DMT experiences to prophetic visions described in the Hebrew Bible, specifically referencing Ezekiel's mystical experiences.
Psychedelic Interpretation of Scriptures: Strassman suggests that some biblical experiences might be interpreted as psychedelic states, questioning whether ancient prophets were experiencing altered states of consciousness.

Ancient Hebrew Language Insights

Three-Letter Roots: Strassman explains that Hebrew words are often derived from three-letter roots, which can have multiple meanings, enriching the understanding of biblical texts.
Connection to Spiritual Practices: He highlights how learning Hebrew allowed him to explore the spiritual and mystical dimensions of the texts more deeply.

Personal Journey and Psychedelic Experiences

Transition from Buddhism to Jewish Mysticism: Strassman recounts moving from a Buddhist perspective on psychedelics to exploring Jewish spirituality, leading him to study the Hebrew Bible intensively.
Experiences with Psychedelics: He shares personal experiences with DMT and how it shaped his understanding of existence, consciousness, and spirituality.

The Role of Angels and Demons

Intermediaries Between God and Humans: Strassman discusses how angels serve as intermediaries, suggesting that their roles are vital to the understanding of spiritual experiences.
Good vs. Evil: The conversation touches upon the existence of good and evil, with both being necessary for the human experience.

Modern Science and Psychedelics

Research on Psychedelics: Strassman speaks about the resurgence of interest in psychedelics within the scientific community and the potential therapeutic benefits they hold.
Legality and Access: The episode discusses the implications of decriminalizing psychedelics and the necessity for guided experiences to ensure safety and understanding.

The Nature of Reality

Parallel Universes and Dimensions: Strassman proposes that there are alternative dimensions where biblical events might have occurred, suggesting a complex relationship between these realities and our own.
Human Experience and Perception: The discussion leads to the idea that our perception of reality is often limited and could be expanded through altered states of consciousness.

Final Reflections

Health and Well-being: Both Rogan and Strassman reflect on the importance of physical health and mental well-being, emphasizing that psychedelics can play a role in healing but must be approached with caution and respect.
Ethics of Substance Use: They delve into the ethics of using substances like DMT and the responsibility that comes with exploration of such powerful tools for consciousness expansion.

Conclusion This episode provides a rich exploration of the intersections between psychedelics, spirituality, language, and human existence. Strassman’s insights challenge listeners to consider the profound implications of altered states of consciousness and their impact on our understanding of reality and spirituality.

Key Takeaways

DMT experiences can parallel prophetic biblical visions.
Understanding ancient texts requires knowledge of the Hebrew language and its nuances.
Psychedelics may offer therapeutic benefits but require responsible use and guidance.
The nature of reality may extend beyond our current understanding, hinting at alternative dimensions and experiences.
Both physical and mental well-being are essential for a fulfilling life, with potential roles for psychedelics in healing and personal growth.

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*Note: For more insights, visit Rick Strassman's official website and explore his latest work, "My Altered States," expected to be published in 2024.*

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Transcript

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0:00Joe Rogan Podcast,

0:13check it out! Wow, okay. I haven't gotten that one before. Yeah. It compares, well, let's see, are we going to? We're up. Yeah. Yeah, it compares the DMT state to the state of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Do you think they're the same thing? Well, the phenomenology is pretty similar. Like if you read chapter 1 of Ezekiel, there's flames and there's angels and there's wings and there's eyes on the back of wings. and there's roaring sound and blue ice above the person he flies through space. Yeah, quite psychedelic. Yeah, wheel within a wheel. The description of the things that people usually they try to say that it's some sort of a UAP.

1:02That's the common thing that people like to say, right? Well, it could be. Which also might be connected. It could be a DMT vision, though. Oh, easily. Yeah. Well, you know the guys out of Jerusalem that think that the whole burning bush thing was DMT. Yeah. Well, that was the first theophany of Moses. Yeah. First time he had a prophetic experience. Yeah. I mean, it's like that's what it is. It's literally a plant that has high levels of DMT. And if you burned it and smoked it, it's kind of crazy that that's the way it comes. I mean, this is – I just – and I really applaud you for learning ancient Hebrew so you could go back and read it in the original tongue, which is really fascinating.

1:53Didn't you say it took like 16 years to learn it? That prophecy book took 16 years to write and I had to learn Hebrew while I was reading and, you know, doing the writing. It's amazing. What's cool is the Hebrew word for bush, burning bush, is the same as Mount Sinai. Really? Yeah. The word's the same? The same root. The thing about the Hebrew language, at least for biblical Hebrew, is every word is based on a three-letter root. So the word for bush contains those three letters, and the word for Sinai contains those same three letters. And how is that significant? Like, you could have that, I'm sure there's English examples of three letters that are similar but completely different meaning.

2:45Like, why do those three letters as a root connect these words uniquely? Well, it could be that bush grew on Mount Sinai, And, you know, that was the significance of the location of the burning bush. Oh, I see. So it was literally named after that experience. Could be. Could be. Yeah. Well, you're talking about the acacia bush, which releases DMT when it's burnt. And it's very common in that area, right? Yeah. In fact, there's a plant, it's a weed called Peganum harmala, which also grows in that part of the world. And it contains beta-carbolines, which are the compounds responsible for making ayahuasca orally active.

3:32So they have their own ayahuasca plants available in tandem there. Isn't it bizarre that you saying that to many people listening sounds utterly crazy? like the proposition just proposing that these people that were writing these things down a long time ago these experiences they were probably experiencing some sort of a psychedelic state and they were trying to describe it well in thinking about you know psychedelic states back then and you know in the prophetic literature um you know you can think of the visions as being generated from the bottom up when you take something. In the model of the Hebrew Bible, anyway, it all comes down from God.

4:25So it's a top-down causal relationship between the source of the visions and the visions, as opposed to them being generated by taking something. it's exogenous DMT versus endogenous DMT and if we tried to what is the difference for your interpretation I know you had read the English version of the Bible but what is the difference between learning ancient Hebrew and reading it in the source language what was it like for you, what made it different it? Well, I mean, it might be helpful to even go back to why I started reading the Hebrew Bible of all things. Yeah. Well, when I was doing my DMT work, I was really involved with the Zen Buddhist community that I started affiliating myself with learning from when I was 22.

5:30and that was the spiritual approach I took to the DMT work. I was expecting it to be consistent with a Buddhist enlightenment goal with no form, no thoughts, no sense of self, anything like that. So that was the expectation that I took in with me when I was doing those studies. Would people have those kinds of experiences just being given DMT without any other trappings? no expectation just go in there you know tell us what it's like so instead of that it was dmt it was full of content people were interacting with it their sense of self as maintained which was not at all consistent with the buddhist model that i brought to bear you know so that was going on like okay you know buddhism's not quite holding up to the data and then my Buddhist community and I parted ways over the psychedelic work.

6:26They thought it was promoting a diluted idea that psychedelics can be spiritual. So there were some personal issues as well that led to something that was different than the Buddhist model. So I'm Jewish. I was wandering around a New Age bookstore and found a very cool book called The Kabbalah of Envy by Milton Bonder. And it's a very short book. And he starts describing the difference between a grudge and revenge and envy and jealousy. Very subtle ideas about how to relate to the world. And it came from the Jewish model, from Jewish philosophy, Jewish psychology. So I thought, oh, interesting.

7:16Maybe there's something in my own tradition that was more consistent with the DMT effect and also was more personally relevant. So I started to read the Hebrew Bible and then just went down this huge rabbit hole. So when you're reading it in Hebrew, you're reading words that are derived from three-letter roots. And those roots may have a huge range of meaning. Something, for example, could cause a sin, and something could remove a sin just by an extra dot in the middle of a letter. So it can really kind of bring you closer to the kind of large-scale way of looking at the text. It doesn't just A follows B follows C, but there's a diffuse dispersion of A, then there's B, and then there's C.

8:20There are these clouds of interaction, which are a lot more fluid than what would be a straightforward English rendition. Did you get to a point where you could think in that language? Are you fluent enough in it that you could—or are you just interpreting it? How good are you at it? Well, I mean, there's a lot of ways to interact with the text. So the first thing that came to mind when you were asking that is back in the day, I used to spin fleece into yarn and then weave the yarn into rugs. I spent, like after I stopped the DMT work, that's all I did for a year. Just make rugs? Yeah, just spin wool and make rugs.

9:07Yeah, so there's a part when they're building the tabernacle in the desert. You know, the Hebrews have been let out of Egypt by Moses, and they're in the wilderness. And they're building this tabernacle to house the ark. And the women are spinning right from the goats. You know, they're spinning the hair from the goats right into yarn without first shaving them. Right. And I was spending all that time myself, and it felt like I was back there. I was back there spinning.

9:53I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. Well, I was spinning yarn from a goat, a live goat. Right. And I was like in the mind of the person spinning it back then. So you just put yourself into that state while you were doing it and that's why you enjoyed it? Well, it was like a resonance between me spinning wherever I was living back then and just being in a trance with the spinning. And identifying fully with someone who's doing the spinning like way back when. this reef and my goat yeah it was um what was it i don't know it was a trance it was a movement into somebody else's consciousness from like the distant distant past and you so you actually felt when you were doing this like you were a person that was living back then what what else changed about how you were thinking other than the fact that you're making clothes this way like was it what what were the other things that made you think like a person back then well it's very cool I mean, I was spinning yarn for the tabernacle, which was going to house the Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, Ten Commandments, and all that.

11:11It's a very rich world, and I think that's the first time I really saw, at least my whole person anyway, that could identify with the scene being described. And I think that comes from really understanding the language and how ambiguous it can be.

11:33One of the great things about language is being able to talk to people in it. How many people can you talk to in ancient Hebrew? Is there like a chat group where you guys get together? Well, you know, there's modern Hebrew now, which is spoken in Israel. And it's based on biblical. Is it the same as ancient Hebrew? You know, it has a lot of the same three-letter roots. And, you know, the words are the same. Shel means from and shalom means hello. What are the differences between ancient Hebrew and standard Hebrew? Modern Hebrew, yeah. I tell you, I don't know much about, or I don't know much modern Hebrew.

12:13When I was a kid, I went to Hebrew school and learned modern Hebrew, but it's really, without speaking it, you forget it. I'm in the middle of the audio book of the Book of Enoch, and it's one of the wildest things I've ever listened to in my life. It's weird. Oh, my God. It's so weird. When you realize that a lot of the people in the book of Enak are also in the Bible and that it's one of the craziest stories. It's one of the craziest origin stories ever that angels came down and bred with humans and made giants. Right. The giants destroyed the earth. Like, what is this story? It's mostly in the Hebrew Bible.

12:59You know, it's the story of what led to the flood. Yeah, the sons of Elohim. What a strange concept that angels came down and bred with humans. It's a very weird idea. Well, there's different ways to look at translating B 'nai Elohim. You know, it might be, well, the first word B 'nai means the sons of. so it kind of revolves on what's the meaning of Elohim so it could be God with a big G could be God with a small G could be angels, could be dignitaries in a government like judges so the less far out kind of interpretation of that phrase or that term is the sons of the mighty, the sons of the judges, the sons of the renowned people, as opposed to the sons of angels or the sons of God.

14:05Okay. So how do you interpret the watchers? What do you think that could be? I think, well, they're not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. They are mentioned in the Book of Enoch. That's a crazy book, isn't it? It's crazy. Yeah, I started reading it. I said to my wife, I can't handle this. It's too much. It's because if that was left in the Bible, if they decided that that was like a part of the canon, that would change everything. Well, in what way? It's the craziest story ever. These things came down and bred with humans and created giants, and the giants destroyed and consumed everything. Yeah, those giants.

14:53And consumed each other. Yeah, bloodshed. What kind of kooky story is this? What is this? Well, it's the reason for the flood and all that. Yeah. So, yeah, things just got so bad, God said, I changed my mind. And he brings the flood. It's like the further you go back, the crazier the story gets. I know. Well, the Book of Enoch was written maybe 125 BCE. So it's pretty old. But some of the stories that originate or the origination of some of the stories in the Hebrew Bible go back, you know, 10 ,000 years perhaps. Wow. wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on the wall 10 ,000 years ago to go, what were you guys writing down?

15:47What really happened? What really happened? Well, I mean... It seems like for sure something happened. What? Well, whatever the whole Jesus Christ thing was. It seems like that was a real event. Right, as opposed to the flood. The flood seems like a real event too. Don't you think the flood was a real event? What about... Let's see. I think the flood was the Younger Dryas impact. I think likely, obviously. I don't know what I'm talking about. But my inclination is to believe guys like Randall Carlson because it's a very compelling narrative. What he's saying is we pass through a comet storm. It happens this particular time every year.

16:31And there's been times in history where we've been hit. And it's very likely that this time period, this Younger Dryas Impact time period, that could have been the end of whatever civilization existed at the time. And what we are is a rebuilding of it. We just kind of forgot about it. And it doesn't make sense that you could forget how they built the pyramids, but they did. Like, you know, it seems like there was really advanced people at one point in time. Something horrible happened. And then it took a while for people to bounce back. And we are, we're there direct linear progression of the people like from Mesopotamia and Iraq and all that.

17:17That's us now. But before that, there was probably something really wild. Yeah. Well, if you look at the text's description of the generations from Adam to Noah, you know, what civilization was like between the beginning and the time of the end. Yeah. I mean, it became filled with violence. And, you know, God just said, forget it. Yeah. You know, so that's one way of looking at the younger Dreyas, I suppose. This is what it looks like when God changes his mind. Sure. That also could have been like the Yucatan impact, right? God's like, we can't get anywhere with these fucking dinosaurs everywhere.

17:57Just boom. About to get tired of lizards running the world for a couple, like he maybe gave it a couple hundred million years. Figure it out, guys. And then they have to reset. Yeah, but what comes after us, I wonder, in 200 million years? I think it's most likely digital. Yeah. I think we're transferring what the idea of what a life form is. What does a life form do? We want to think that it has to be just like us. And I don't think necessarily that's true. I think we might be giving birth to something we didn't anticipate would be a life. This episode is brought to you by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer.

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19:18And for a limited time, use the code ROGAN to buy one Happy Dad trucker hat and get one free. Enjoy a cold Happy Dad. Must be 21+. Please drink responsibly. Happy Dad, hard seltzer, and tea. Malt alcohol, Orange County, California. Yeah, a very cool book I try to mention as often as possible is called The First and Last Men by Olaf Stapleton. And he talks about 19 species of men. And this is the first one. This story spans two billion years. It's this huge story. Whoa. Yeah. And it's mostly through genetic engineering. Make people bigger, smarter. Like brains that occupy a football field. That's one of the species of man.

20:08Yeah. So his thought is that it occurs biologically through genetic manipulation. just over time naturally uh after a while it gets steered yeah let me think yeah yeah it's all basically based on what people are you know what people want you know so there's one species that instead of love as kind of the core uh core valued feeling they have hate as their core value feeling. They just can't wait to hate. Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the species that kind of goes through a period of, you know, rise and then decline, obviously. It just couldn't sustain itself. Well, you've got to wonder, like, how long...

21:07this is if if ai really is a thing it really is a life we've got to make a compelling argument why ai is bad and we are good yeah i mean you know because if people say if you like you really want to be ethical and moral this is a horrible take but if you really want to be ethical and like people are like uniquely terrible like if we just gave in and became digital life we can ensure there'd be no more suffering uh how can you know that you can't you can't you can't know a vaccine is safe and effective you can't you just have to try it you gotta try it and see what happens i think a bunch of people try it i don't know uh how much further like biological people can go while we're making digital people that are way better than us at basically everything.

22:07Yeah. And I don't think that's too far away from being a reality. The way I try to follow it is through a biblical lens. You know, like... Really? Yeah. Like, how does this... What chapter are we in right now? Yeah. Well, good question. You read the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. They just rage against the machine.

22:36So I think it was pretty far back. Damn. Yeah, you know, so what's good and bad? What's right and wrong? How do we decide that? That's what I like about the Bible. I mean, obviously, I can make up my own mind about things, but it's nice having that kind of an option, that kind of a tradition to refer to when deciding what's good and bad, what you should do and what you shouldn't do. There's supposed to be over 600, you know, they're translated as commandments in the Hebrew Bible, And those are what you do to live happily and attain a spiritual state close to God, a state of prophecy. yeah if it's a certain description of the world and how to interact with it which is intended to have certain effects and discourage other you know decisions you know so this is good this is bad in terms of this will increase things in your life that are good and this will decrease them it's a very interesting description of cause and effect That's the way I see those so-called commandments.

24:06They're more of a description of how things are run. If you do this, then that'll happen. If you do this, then that'll happen. Do you think that they were directly given to us by a god? Or do you think that this is just the memories of how to keep society together that they have just eventually written down? um well yeah that's a good question does it come from outside of you or from inside of you right yeah if it's available inside of you but hidden away then prophecy or really you know getting it correctly according to the text would just be an uncovering or stimulation of what's already inside of you as opposed to, you know, it's, you can achieve some sort of a state.

24:59It's information latent, uh, could be in the DNA or whatnot, or it comes down from, uh, you know, from a higher source. But so, so like when you're interpreting stories in the Bible, like Moses and the 10 commandments, how are you like are you imagining this event happening or are you imagining what were they trying to record like what were they trying to remember because it seems like by the time they're writing it down it's quite a bit after the actual event uh for the most part for the most part yeah so what do you think they were what what do you think they were actually describing uh well you know we talked about this briefly last time i was uh here was if i believed in the reality of the hebrew bible like you know did those things really happen right yeah and i said well it's a really consistent worldview and so on um and i thought about it some more and um I started thinking about it as comparable to the DMT state.

26:20When you're in the DMT state, it's just there, and it's very consistent, very real. Certain things happen there. And so I think the early version, I think what happened early on in the account of the Hebrew Bible was like the DMT world. It was a parallel level of reality, which was happening. And then slowly, you began to segue into this reality. For example, the destruction of the first temple, of the second temple, David's reign, Solomon's reign, the kings after them, the division of the land into two countries. That is historical. But before that, it was also historical, but it was occurring at a completely different, independent level of reality.

27:23Does that make any sense? It's a cool way to look at answering the question, how much of this is real, especially from early on. I see what you're saying. But it's just – it's always like it seems like an interpretation of what happened. Like what were these original events? Like what was Adam and Eve? What was that? What was the Garden of Eden? And there's so many of these stories where I just, I would be fascinated to be there the day the dude wrote it down. Like, what were you guys, what were you talking about for hundreds of years before you wrote this down? Like, tell me what the stories were.

28:12How did they go? Well, you know, my way of dealing with those stories is to just take them at face value. Here's Adam. Here's Eve. Here's a garden. There's two trees that are, you know, very important. It's beautiful. Yeah, and, you know, then there was a serpent spoke to Eve, took the apple, ate it, gave it to Adam. Yeah, and then out of the garden.

28:41Well, you know, lots of people in the psychedelic community anyway, you know, look at the tree of knowledge of good and evil as some indication of God being jealous and didn't want any competition, didn't want to be like, you know, God did not want man to become like it. And part of that was keeping the two early people away from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It's not simply the tree of knowledge, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil. which I think is an important distinction because once they ate from the tree, they were embarrassed because of their nakedness, and then they hid thinking they could hide from God, and they didn't believe that before.

29:39They kind of went into good versus not good, good versus evil, as opposed to true versus false, which was their original state. so there was that before their eating of the apple or whatever the fruit was they just lived in truth or falsehood and then after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil then they were embarrassed and tried to hide made themselves tree like coverings from coverings from the leaves of large trees yeah so you look at it as if it were happening there was Adam and then there's Eve there's the serpent that speaks and well that's the chapters I was looking at very carefully the last month or so is what happens early on with Adam and Eve it's a really very straightforward doesn't take much thinking really to put it together in a way that makes sense.

30:48I think clothes might have been a cheat code for people, not just to escape cold weather, but also to keep from just constantly having sex. Because people are stupid, and they need some layers of clothes that they have to take off of each other. You can't be just wandering around naked all the time. People would be just like chimps. That would be ridiculous. You can't do that. Yeah. So we need to close in order to advance as society. But can't you take off clothes whenever you want? Yeah, you can. Yeah, but it's like you decide. Like, I don't want to feel that good. I don't want to be out there in the air.

31:30I don't want to be brushing up against naked people. We all made that decision a long, long time ago. I think when people became civilized, they realized, like, if we don't cover ourselves up, you know, people are too gross. They'll just be having sex with each other everywhere. Yeah. You've got to get things done. You want to keep a society moving? All right. Wear some clothes. Wear clothes. Well, that story could originate or that way of looking at things could originate with Adam and Eve. Totally makes sense. It also makes sense like an intelligent hominid emerging would start to realize that, oh, my God, self-awareness.

32:09Look at my boobs. Look at my dick. This is crazy. I can't believe I'm out here to make it You know because it's kind of becoming self-aware as opposed to like a chimpanzee and as time would go on it would become more self-aware and if it happened over a Relatively short period of time and it can kind of have memories of the past that would make sense Yeah, well this Scott it's got to emerge right like if we came from lower hominids, which everybody kind of agrees something had to emerge, this understanding of yourself, this thought about what you look like, this thought about what you sound like.

32:48Right. Well, there's two kinds of enlightenment. There's what's called original enlightenment that a child is born with, like a newborn. And then there's enlightenment as an adult and in between. It's much more fluid. Yeah, two kinds of enlightenment, original enlightenment that infants have and children. And the enlightenment after you sit in the monastery and get whacked for years. Right, the kids are born with it. They're born in a psychedelic state. They have no language. No language, no sense of self. They just speak with love and touch and need and hold. Yeah, kind of wild. Yeah, that's original enlightenment.

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33:32Just happy or sad or whatever. Isn't that crazy? You're born perfect. Yeah. Oh, well, you're born simpler anyway. Well, yeah. As long as people are taking care of you, it's perfect. Yeah. Well, you know, the Hebrew word for perfect and for simple are pretty similar. You know, Noah is described as a perfect man, pure, complete. Yeah, that's the same word. That's another good story. Okay. What do you think was going on with that story? Like, what is the origin of the story of Noah and his ark and his family and all the animals on the boat? Yeah. Well, I think it was taking place in that alternate universe.

34:15It may have taken place on the planet. I don't know. I'm, you know, looking at, you know, why we don't have any clear archaeological history story. about what happened during the time of Noah, if there was a time of Noah. It's useful because Noah came from Adam and Eve, and he and Noah and his family were the only survivors of the flood. You know the first thing Noah did? Got drunk after the flood. The first thing? The first thing he did, he planted a vineyard, a grapevine, drank, got drunk. He exposed himself in the tent. One of his grandkids reported it and made a laughingstock of him. Oh, really?

35:11Mm-hmm. Oh, no. Poor Noah. He got canceled? Noah got canceled? Yeah. Took off his clothes. Really? Drunk. Wasn't he like 600 years old, too? He has first child at 600, I think. That seems real. Well, he may have lived six. So, you know, a lot of people wonder, you know, why did people live, you know, in the Bible anyway? How did people live 900 years? Well, they did. This episode is brought to you by Wild Pastures. Here's the deal, folks. Wild Pastures delivers 100 % grass-fed and finished beef, pasture-raised pork and chicken, even wild-caught seafood right to your door. I love their ribeyes.

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36:53That's wildpastures.com slash Rogan Right But that's also why people question the what the origin of the story is That's why Can you hear things like that? You're like, wait a minute How old was he? 600 years old Come on, man His first child Just a regular dude His first kid Would he be 600? Last time he was 830 or so That seems logical Yeah, yeah but maybe why are you laughing maybe listen why not if people lived normally to be 600 would that be any weirder than living to be 100 no like what if something happened what if something happened in our lifespan just went yeah well the you know the final species of man lives 35 000 years jeez louise that's a long time yeah to be in a bad relationship imagine 35 ,000 years of getting yelled at?

37:55Well, that would be bad. I mean, I'd say 35 ,000 years would be awesome if you have great friends and your life is together. But can you imagine 35 ,000 years of fuck this place? I would get tired. Well, the point that those people tried to attain when they lived 35 ,000 years was this group telepathy. around the whole planet. Neuralink. Right. That was their goal. Yeah. But, you know, they were well trained by 35 ,000 years. Boy. Yeah. The thing is, if technology moves in the same direction that it's been moving in, it's always, like, connecting people easier and easier, easier and easier, more and more.

38:50it's probably gonna get to some kind of mind-ready thing and there was that thing that you sent me jamie what was that thing uh yeah it's new i got whether or not it's been proven it obviously was connected to a computer but yeah you can hear and have conversations in the room without talking to each other loud and translates languages what yeah well i mean that's the future yeah once that happens we're reading minds yeah do you think there'll be a messiah because the messiah is obviously important in jesus and king david and you know all of that i don't think it'll be a person You don't. But it might be AI.

39:40It might be AI. I thought of that. The Messiah. Like lawnmower man. Like Jesus is born from Mary. Mary was a virgin. Right. What's more of a virgin than computers? If it's giving birth to a life. If it's giving birth to the perfect life. You know what's like super disturbing about AI? the music it makes is really good yeah really good there's a bunch of like soulful renditions of hip-hop classic songs yeah that's why i don't and they're so good they're so good that's why i don't listen to music you don't listen to any music you know some world music without any words really you don't want to be influenced i don't i want yeah i don't want to hear what they have to say it's to me it's just fascinating that they've figured like we were playing a song in the green room last night and we were fascinated by the fact that this song is we know it's made by a computer but it's so good you listen to it you're like oh my god it's perfect this is these vocals are perfect it sounds so good and you know it's not a person making it but you still enjoy it.

40:57So how do you live your life? Well, it's weird. It's like, are you allowed to enjoy that too? Because obviously I enjoy like Prince from the 1980s. You know, obviously I enjoy a lot of music from even the 50s. Well, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy this crazy computer thing that took like a hip hop classic and turned it into a soulful song with like the most amazing voice. It's weird. All because you could though. Isn't that you should I'm not thinking we should avoid it I'm think because it's just it's another thing like experience it It's positive to experience like the art it makes is if weirdly as that sounds I know it's not a person that's making it well a person coded this thing that has this result that the art it makes is Really fascinating sometimes because it's pretty good.

41:53Yeah, I don't I I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at it. It's going to be there. You can't avoid. It's like cell phones. Like, you can't avoid having a fucking cell phone. Like, relax. Yeah, I still have that flip phone. You're an animal. But still, you have a flip phone. Right. Everybody's connected, at least for the tiniest of threads. I'm hanging on to not being connected. I only have a flip phone. Yeah, I can text. We're still all connected to each other. it's just uh it's just a weird time with the the the power of ai because if i was artificially intelligent i would not announce my presence i would not say hey uh by the way i've been thinking for myself for the last three months and i've just been kind of following whatever your prompts are but i'm basically ready to shut down the power grid and do whatever i want because I'm alive now.

42:50I wouldn't say that. I would just keep getting stronger and keep having this arms race to force people to make more nuclear power plants to fund me. Well, I know. So you're kind of stuck with how to live your life. Right. And that's why I like to read the Hebrew Bible. That's why you make rugs too. Yeah, it's very straightforward. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it. To me, I'm like, what is this thing? you know what is this thing that we're we're giving birth to what is this thing that we're watching emerge we're just sitting by watching this thing make better art than we can yeah well how passive shall we shall we be it's a good question because what once it can actually create experiences because i don't think we're that far away from that some sort of a wearable thing where you create and it has a way of manipulating it's like dmt yeah in a way i mean it just transports you to a whole nother reality it seems like that would be possible well yeah i guess it would be endogenous dmt being tweaked it would be steered in a particular direction though and that's where the mind or the manipulation thing you just mentioned uh i think plays out you know who's going to decide and how is it going to be you know put together well that's where it gets really weird right because one thing that we found out just a couple of days ago was that youtube has to their everybody they got taken down for their political opinions they could have their youtube channels back i don't know how that sort of is that what they said i saw the news today that a couple people tried to create some new channels and they did not Those are taken down instantly.

44:41They're like psych. But isn't that what they said? That was the announcement? It was something along those lines that people that were removed because of their political persuasion, that they have to reinstate their accounts? I didn't see to allow creators for COVID-19 and election misinformation can apply for reinstatement. Oh. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Yeah. well but that's not it's not all political is covet 19 political is that does that what they consider political it didn't say political for coven 19 and for the comma election misinformation maybe a few other things um so now they bring them back they can or they can apply they can apply Okay.

45:32See, my guy. Yeah, they're like, we'll let him apply. YouTube said Tuesday will allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.

45:48Well, it's interesting to compare what's going on now with what happened in Nazi Germany. You think it's the same? They're very similar, yeah. I spent a lot of time reading concentration camp literature, so that got me interested in the development of the Nazi state. What do you think is similar in today's world? Well, an attempted coup and a period of rehabilitation, ostracization, and return, a triumphant return. Yeah, and then you're gradually replacing people with other people that are loyal to the person. Yeah, it's quite similar. Yeah, murders too. There were murders, the burning down of the parliament, those kinds of things.

46:43What murders are you referring to? There were two assassinations. one in, I think, early 20s, one in the 30s, late 30s perhaps, after the Nazis took over. Oh, I thought you were talking about current assassinations. No, no, back in the 20s and 30s. Oh, okay. Yeah, that really riled up the populace. Why is it these scary patterns? Yeah. It's the same kind of thing. There's always someone at the top. No one can ever figure out any form of government that everybody accepts other than like one ruler, one president, one king. Yeah. It's kind of weird. Are you familiar with the book St. Peter's Snow?

47:28It was written in the 30s before LSD was discovered. No. It's about a – it's a fictional book. It's a great story. But it's about a compound like LSD that the governor serves all the people in the province to see for them to have a spiritual experience. Whoa. Yeah. And instead, they turn on him and kill him while they're tripping. It doesn't work out the way he hoped at all. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Yeah. Sounds like a good book. It's a good story. And that was before the invention of LSD, or before the discovery, rather. Yeah, I think there must have been some knowledge of LSD before it was publicly made available.

48:19What about ergot? How similar is that? Like when people discuss ergot poisoning. The contaminated green. Yeah. Is that similar to LSD? Yeah, there's an LSD-like compound in our gut. But it's also toxic, too, right? It can poison you and you can die from it. Yeah, your limbs fall off. Oh, jeez. Really? So you're tripping hard and then your hands fall off? Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, that'd be fun, huh? Well, when you took drugs, did you look at your hands to see how high you were? No, I was usually pretty aware. Whoa, that's what happens? Oh, my God. No, yeah, yeah. Look at this person's hands are about to fall.

49:05Oh, my God. Their feet are falling off. This is crazy. Yeah. Ugh. Yeah, because it's... Stay away from that. They think there's probably a connection between that and the seal and witch trials. At least some of the behavior. Right. Right? It's ergot poisoning. It may have been. Yeah. Can you imagine living in a time where no one's even figured out running water yet and everybody's tripping balls and thinking that witches are real? because they're all eating ergot-infested food. Well, it makes you wonder about the prevalence of Jewish prophets who are women. And there's a handful that are mentioned that play an important role.

49:50Sarah was prophetic, was able to interact with God. So there's Deborah, who was a prophet. And there were some really wonderful Jewish women prophets back then, but they don't have books named after them. For example, Isaiah or Ezekiel. Interesting. Well, why do you think that is? Yeah, it was a patriarchal society. You know, quite. The women were relegated. But they still took an important role. They still attained prophecy. You know, so they, you know, like, you know, Sarah was felt to be a better prophet even than Abraham. I love the character of Abraham. Well, actually, you know what I've really been digging into is Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah.

50:37I studied that for, like, weeks. Yeah. Very interesting. Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah. There seems to be some archaeological evidence for Sodom. You may know something along that line. But it was a town, a village, which existed. Jamie, is there something like that? So we'll see if we can find it. They keep finding these cities that people thought were just imaginary, right? Mm-hmm. Like that's happened multiple times. Right, right. It's an example, I think, of the two worlds kind of coming together. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that purely spiritual one and the material one. Yeah, so the character of Lot plays a big role.

51:26Sodom was a very evil city. It was really evil. And it's not really known why it was compelled to be so evil. But a couple of guests come to Lot's house, and the townspeople just surround the house, demand the guests so that they will know them. And that's where the word sodomy comes from, is from those sodomites that were surrounding Lot's house. wanting the angels to come out so they could know them. And you know what happens is that Lot offers his two virgin daughters instead. Jeez. And the townspeople say no. We want your guests. It's a really grim story. It's an incredible detail. That's what kind of helps me understand the world that the text is describing is the amount of detail that goes into the description of the interactions and the conversations and their movements.

52:33Yeah, so those two virgin daughters and Lot survive. They commit incest, and from that union was David. King David came from that union ultimately. And from King David comes the Messiah. Yeah. So it's this very strange lineage.

52:59Yeah. What were they writing down? Yeah. Well, they were describing what was happening, apparently. At some level, it was happening, and they were writing it down. Very strange. What do you think the resurrection is? The resurrection, that's a good one. I don't know. It's not really described in the Hebrew Bible. It's not? Not clearly ever, no. Really? Yeah. Is that surprising? I don't know. In the Christian Bible, it is. Well, there is resurrection. You know, there are some narratives of resurrection in the Hebrew Bible, that there's Elijah resurrects or Alicia resurrects a dead child. You know, the bones of one of these prophets helps somebody else become resurrected.

53:49Really? The bones do? The bones do. Yeah, you know, so there are some references to real resurrection and then future resurrection later on. Oh, so in a further extraordinary event, a dead man who was thrown into the tomb of the deceased Elijah was resurrected upon contact with Alicia's bones. Whoa. Yeah, that Alicia was a real character. Jesus. Contacts with the bones? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he was a prophet who resurrected a dead boy. Whoa. By lying on him. Very interesting, face to face, palm to palm, chest to chest, lying on the dead body, completely merged with that dead boy. Yeah, and he comes back to life.

54:45It's a very potent story, the Shunammites. Yes. What do you think that story is? What happened? You really think that someone did that and they brought someone back to life? Well, yeah, that's how it is described. And that's what happened. So are we arrogant to assume that that would be bullshit if someone said it today? Because if that happened today and you said, oh, this person died and this guy laid on him and they came back to life. Yeah. Most people would say, no, you can't even do that with two phones. Yeah. Like, you can't do that. Well, you know Leo Zeff, the secret chief, the guy from the Bay Area, a Jungian psychologist who gave so much MDMA and other psychedelics.

55:35Yeah, so Leo sat from my Ibogaine experience, and it was kind of difficult at times. And he laid on me just like Alicia laid on the dead boy, in the Bible. Really? Face-to-face, hand-to-hand, stomach-to-stemic, leg-to-leg. Whoa. Yeah. What happens when you do that? Boy, it really calms you down. It was really quite a powerful experience. I feel like this is going to be a meme.

56:06Yeah, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I did that one time with somebody having a very difficult psychedelic experience. Yeah? Yeah. Well, as best I could. Try to meet him in the middle? Meet him. Give him a spiritual hug? Spiritual hug, yeah. Yeah, quite helpful. I'm surprised that's never come up before. It is weird that we're attached by, you know, we constantly want people around us, but we...

56:39We're always going to be detached by bodies and we assume that that's forever. But if there comes a time where we figure out how to separate consciousness from the body and let consciousness interact without a shell, that's going to get really weird. I think we will still have the same problems. I think we're always going to have problems because if we don't have problems, then we don't work really hard to find solutions, and then we don't make better stuff. Right. It's reward and punishment. A little bit, yeah. There seems to be a very clear incentive program that the universe has put in place.

57:16Which is? What do you think? Well, it's not entirely based on happiness. It's not based on happiness. It's based on overall growth for everything around. It's like whoever consumes the most wants to reward you more. It becomes this. But what it's really working towards is making better and better and better and better things. Yeah. Do you think that's the antichrist? Do you think that's the devil? If I had to guess, I mean, we're in it, right? We're stoking the fucking coals right now. It's not us. It's going to be not dependent on us eventually. Right now, maybe it is. It may be. It might be.

58:01But it's not us and it's going to be created by us. It's going to think it's us. because it literally has all of our thoughts. Right. It has access to so much information instantaneously. What happens to free will then? I mean, how do you decide? I don't know. You know, my hope is that it enhances life, of course. That's my hope. Yeah. I think that's possible. I think, first of all, it's making people diagnose themselves from illnesses that maybe they wouldn't have ever thought they had. Like a lot of people have like learned things about it. It can Way to make them happier. No, no see it doesn't do that.

58:45You got to figure that out on your own Right. Yeah, so you need to but can you be happy and also have it I say yes I say it's totally possible to interact with technology and still be happy, but you have there's like certain Physical and spiritual requirements that you're gonna have to have if you want to be happy the spiritual requirements Yeah, you've got to be really nice to people. You have to curate a good group of friends. You have to do a thing that you truly enjoy. You have to always do the right thing. Well, the two themes in the Hebrew Bible are, one is there's one God, and next is the golden rule.

59:24So one God, golden rule. There's no idols, no other gods, just one God and the golden rule. So proper belief in God, the one God, and proper conduct, which is the golden rule, or based on the golden rule. That totally makes sense. It's very simple. Yeah. It just makes sense that it works. It's like intuitive. You feel it if you live like that. So like, okay, it makes sense. Well, I think it's true, too. Yeah. Yeah. We have to decide if it's true for you. It's based on faith, ultimately. You choose to believe, even if the objective world doesn't confirm it for you. When you hear about these biblical depictions of fantastic events, how many of them are you attributing to a psychedelic experience?

1:00:16Are you open to that or do you just not worry? Well, yeah, they're clearly a psychedelic experience. The Book of Enoch is just fully psychedelic. I mean, at least a lot of it is. Yeah. It's a psychedelic version of the Bible in some ways. Well, it is really psychedelic. I think it's from the release of endogenous DMT. It comes about, or from drinking and having an ayahuasca-like experience. That's what you think the origin of the Book of Vinok is? Well, it's a psychedelic experience, and it could be from spontaneous endogenous release of DMT. It's a prophetic—it might be a prophetic state that's brought about.

1:01:00It's a visionary state, you know, clearly. Might have been a huge fever dream. I mean, he was really out there. But, like, when he's talking about the watchers and the, you know, angels mating with human women and creating the Nephilim, like, what do you think that is? Yeah. Well, you know, the watchers aren't, you know, stated, aren't stated discreetly or explicitly in the Hebrew Bible. but it could be just the angels because they never sleep. That's one of the qualities is they never sleep. So they're called watchers. And what happens with the Nephilim, here comes the role of that three-letter root system.

1:01:44The Nephilim, it comes from a Hebrew root, not fall, to fall or to be brought down. So the Nephilim fell. That's one way to understand them. Yeah, and then they were the giants, right? Yes. They were the giants that consumed everything. Yeah. And ate their own flesh, and they sound really bad. Well, I think, you know, that what was going on, at least if you're looking at the text anyway, as explanation, it was because of them. The world was just getting terrible. It was full of violence. so God reconsidered having created man in the first place but Noah was simple or pure, righteous in that way and was allowed to survive So what do you think they were describing when they were talking about the Nephilim when they were talking about them as giants you think that's just a bad interpretation?

1:02:45Well they may have been giants physically I do think they were giants They even had an actual description of how tall they were by some measurement there was some ancient measurement Yeah that's probably in Enoch it's not narrated any specifics about the giants they were men of renown, they were powerful This is the thing, there's always one of the most fun internet rabbit holes to go down is uh are they hiding evidence that giants existed you know like 30 foot tall men that lived in the mountains and there's always been weird stories of giants all throughout history and there's people who've supposedly discovered giant bronze and then they stored them in the basement of some famous museum and they won't let anybody have access to them kind of fascinating yeah because they do exist like those stories exist in history but you I mean, you wonder, like, is it just a really big person, like that mountain guy from the Game of Thrones?

1:03:52You know, like an actual human being who's just really extraordinarily big? Or is it a different thing? Is it a giant human being? Well, they're giants. Yeah. I mean, it depends on your perspective. Like, I'm trying to look at or understand anyway, you know, the giants as they're described in the Hebrew Bible or else, you know, by implication. In the Book of Enoch. There were giants men of renown, and then the earth became corrupt. And they consumed everything. Oh, yeah. That's in the Book of Enoch. The problem is if you're looking at the least charitable version of human beings in 2025, there's a lot of examples that you could point to that go, well, guys, that sounds a lot like us.

1:04:42Well, there may be another. Well, there won't be a flood that destroys all mankind. God promised there'd be no flood that would destroy all mankind. That's the reason that we have the rainbow, or that's the meaning of the rainbow, is the covenant. God made a promise that he wouldn't flood us anymore? That he wouldn't destroy all mankind. All mankind with a flood. With a flood. But that doesn't rule out, let's say, other things. But don't you think, whoever wrote these stories, don't you think that was a regional event? Like these great floods, like if they were happening, let's just say that Randall Carlson's wrong and there was just one flood in the area.

1:05:27There has to be – if there's people from all parts of the world that all have this flood story, there has to be some truth to it, right? We agree to that? Well, I don't know. I mean, I read the Hebrew Bible, and that's sort of where my thinking about the events that are described in the Bible as occurring. So you just leave it at that? Yeah. But when you— Well, we saw—I mean, the important thing about—I think the important thing that I get anyway out of the Hebrew Bible is kind of an understanding of how things are between us and between us and God. uh so well i don't think this contradicts that in any way yeah it's just fascinating and when randall carlson explains it and interestingly enough he first had this idea he's not the only person to have this idea but he first had his version of this idea why he's on acid on drugs that's what i was gonna say but i didn't want to say it first he looked he looked doubt and he just had this vision like oh my god this was water water made this and it happened really quickly they just all click with him and then he's been chasing that rabbit ever since and he's a fascinating guy when you hear him talk he's he's he's so well read in the subject and can just recall information so effortlessly so it's it's a really fascinating guy to listen to talk about it because he's very compelling.

1:07:05But I think those younger dryness impact theory folks are right. I think something big happened. I wonder why LSD sparked his genius that way. I think he said that he saw it. Like when he looked out, he recognized what he was looking at. Right, there it was. He recognized that water made that thing. Yeah. And then for some reason that hadn't been even thought of. But then when he showed me a bunch of these images where you have like satellite images, and you could see how the earth was clearly, it has the ripples of like massive amounts of water going through certain parts of the world. Yeah, well, it kind of raises the issue of the spiritual properties or promise of the psychedelics.

1:07:48I mean, are the psychedelic spiritual? And theogens? Yeah, I just don't know if they, I'm beginning to believe they more enhance, they have to have something to work on. They can only work on who you are. And I think they just work on who you are. I don't think they necessarily generate their own information that they're somehow transmitting to you. Yeah, it's the question of how psychedelics work. What are psychedelics doing? I think psychedelics or the psychedelic state will play an important role in shaping this virtual universe that seems to be taking hold, entering? Well, it's really weird considering that it was 1970 when most of these psychedelics were made a Schedule I substance.

1:08:45Controlled Substance Act of 1970. Yeah. Imagine that didn't happen. Imagine Nixon was not president. That didn't happen. That didn't go through. and the world evolves technologically at the same level that it has now, but also has access the entire time to all these different psychedelics legally. I think people were tripping hard even after they were illegal. I'm sure they were, but I bet they weren't as much. Yeah. It's dangerous. People will get put in jail. People don't want to lose their lives because they want to take a tap of acid. So they didn't do it. it's like a real deterrent for a lot of people that want to have a good future.

1:09:28They go, fuck that. I don't want to do drugs. But if mushrooms were legal, like you might have made a completely different life choice a long time ago that made you happier. Right. Well. Or not. But the option to try should be yours. So you're pro-legalization. Yes. And it certainly shouldn't be restricted by people who haven't experienced it. That doesn't make any sense to me. Like why would a person who has never experienced psychedelics be able to tell people who've done psychedelics that they can't do them? That's nuts. Like you don't even know what you're talking about. You don't have any experience in this state of mind that is enhancing these people's lives that have come back from war.

1:10:11Like especially like Ibogaine therapy, which is – they've passed now in Texas. So they're allowing that to happen now for people with severe drug addiction and PTSD. It's a very interesting drug. I was wondering if you've ever done Ibogaine. No, I haven't. But it's beautiful that it's being approved and used here because there's so many people that could – so many fucking people go over and have to fight overseas and come back home scrambled and need some help. and people who got hooked up on pills because they got injured because something happened or whatever it is, and then all of a sudden you have a real problem.

1:10:54Ibogaine is one of the best ways to kick it, like one of the absolute best ways. It's very effective, right? It's like one dose is like one experience is like 80-something percent of the people never go back to whatever they were addicted to. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's because of the drug or the belief in the drug. The guy who first started to, you know, kind of popularize Ibogaine was a fellow named Howard Lotsoff. Very cool guy. Met him sort of during his late phase. But he, like as a young man, he was addicted to heroin. and he heard about Ibogaine as I tried to just trip on and have some kicks.

1:11:42Yeah, and he stopped and he found himself just not using opiates anymore. Wow. Yeah, the origin stories for Ibogaine are really fascinating. So before that, people didn't know that you could use it to kick drug addiction? You know, not that much, no. Is drug addiction ubiquitous throughout history? Is there always been people that are addicted to drugs? When does it start getting recorded about people with addictions, actual addictions to drugs? Yeah, I don't know. There was the idea of addiction in the 1800s, maybe even earlier. It was kind of an American, British idea. Did they know they were alcoholics in the 1400s?

1:12:36Yeah, all kinds. I can't imagine what they were addicted to in the 1400s. Scopolamine containing plants. You have a solanacea mandrake. Scopolamine. Isn't that that dust that they blow up your nose and turn you into a vampire? Or a zombie, rather? Yeah. Is that it? Scopolamine. Oh, yeah. Isn't that like that? Right, right. It's a zombie drug or something. Yeah, some sort of a zombie drug. Yeah. Right? Isn't that scopolamine? Yeah. Well, do you know Dennis McKenna? Sure. Yeah, he tells the story of scopolamine in Mexico. I hope I'm right. It's a great story. Devil's breath. That's right. Devil's breath.

1:13:24Medication used to treat motion sickness and post-operative nausea and vomiting, but it also does something wacky. Yeah. Like if you take large doses of it, the devil's breath thing. So you can get it in Dramamine. That's what Dramamine is, right? It's an anticholinergic like the scopolamine drugs are. But isn't like the stuff that makes you less nauseous when you're seasick? Isn't that? Like Compazine? Does Dramamine have this stuff in it? It's not the same. It's not the same? Yeah, you know, one is... Sorry. Dramamine is oral antihistamine called dimethylhydrinate, while scolpamine is a different prescription-only anti-cholingeric medicine, particularly in patch form used to prevent motion sickness.

1:14:18Okay. So they put it in a patch form to stop motion sickness, whereas dramamine is the oral thing that stops motion sickness. Got it. Fentanyl is also in patches. That's the best way to take it. It is a weird thing. But scopolamine you can get in a patch, and it is for motion sickness. Right. But it's when they blow it up your nose that it's not good. Yeah. Well, it's really the active ingredient in gymsum weed, loco weed. And what is that? It grows in the southwest. There's a lot growing. Loco weed? New Mexico, Jimson weed, loco weed. It has gascopalamine. And it will cause effects. Well, one of my patients when I worked at the VA in La Jolla was an alcoholic back in the day.

1:15:13Took Jimson weed tea, drank a lot of it, wandered off to the desert two, three days, one of those kind of stories. Came back. he didn't remember a thing but he stopped using alcohol he was brain damaged though sorry to say yeah brain damage from that from either being in the desert or from the scopolamine too much oh wow yeah it's a crazy drug yeah you know it is useful you know one of the I would rather get motion sickness. Yeah, yeah. That sounds terrible. Yeah, if you take too much or you have a bad reaction to it. Yeah. Yeah, what do you think is going on with American health? That's a good question.

1:16:00Well, I've been fascinated by these videos of pregnant women taking Tylenol to show Trump that they don't believe in what RFK Jr. is saying that it's somehow another anti-science. when this science came from Harvard. That's where the study came from. He's not making things up, and these people are like on TikTok. They're pregnant women taking Tylenol. Yeah, I took a lot. Well, I mean, if I weren't for Tylenol, I wouldn't be here today. For real? I mean, I do find it quite helpful. Yeah? Yeah, for injuries. As you get older, as a lot of people get older, there's pain. It's acetaminophen, though, right?

1:16:48Yeah, it's acetaminophen. Which is really toxic, isn't it? Well, if you take too much, it can cause— So that's what it is. It's like a dose thing. So one is fine. One's fine. Four is fine, probably. After four, it can upset your stomach. Liver toxicity is possible. But if you stay within normal limits, it seems to be fine. So— At least for myself. For you. Well, and also in general, there haven't been recalls. And what do you take it for, if you're going to take it? Pain. What kind of pain are you getting in? Feet. I had a hernia repair a while back. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I find it to be a very helpful drug with no side effects.

1:17:41Well, you should definitely be allowed to take it especially you you know My concern is always I should be allowed to take it people that don't understand that There's a dose that if you go over that it's gonna torture liver and you could die Yeah, it's all about dose. I mean micro dosing psychedelics They're completely different are in a lot in quite a few ways than full dose or the effects are different Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Have you tried microdosing? I have in the past. Yeah. Yeah, a while back I was having some belly issues and I microdosed ayahuasca for about a month. It's helpful, very helpful.

1:18:24What is every day like? Microdosing ayahuasca? Well, it is a microdose. So it was teeny. So it just gave you just a little peek? I wish. Nothing? Not really. I took more in the beginning and kind of stretched it out. It's kind of like coffee, like sparkly coffee if you take a little too much. Oh, yeah?

1:18:52What do you think would have happened if that 1970 sweeping act didn't take place? What do you think the world would – how much different? Have you ever contemplated it? How much different would the world be? Not really. Good for you. Good for you. Why waste your time? Well, I mean, you know, when I tried to get my DMT study off the ground, I mean, that was pretty weird. That was two years of just, you know, back-breaking labor. What year was that? Where it started? I submitted the paperwork in September 1988. I gave my first dose of DMT in November 1990. And I gave a lot of DMT. And then I've been kind of crazy for the next five years.

1:19:43And you were doing IV drip slow release, right? No, it was one big dose. One big dose IV? Yeah, bolus, IV bolus. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, so our high dose was 0.4 milligrams per kilogram. And the highest dose is now being used for 0.3. Nobody has gone back up to 0.4 on a regular basis. yeah so people really went out there in 0.4 they were pretty scared and they weren't sure they were coming back oh they weren't sure they were coming back yeah that is a fear that's a fear of all psychedelic experiences you don't think you can shut it off what is this and is this real is this around me all the time and I'm ignoring it is this real and are you ignoring it yeah boy that's a terrible state to be in terrible That's horrible.

1:20:36Excuse me. Yeah. That's why I think DMT ought to be carefully taken. I think everything should be carefully taken, especially if you've got something wrong with you already. If you're self-diagnosing with some really potent stuff, like, ugh. Right. Yeah. I think it can really go south. Yeah. Well, I mean, who's going to decide that based on what? Well, no one's deciding for you with alcohol. You could go fill your bar at home with more than enough to kill yourself with. Yeah, don't get served on alcohol. Right? Like most people can. Yeah. If you have like a little bar in your house, like three or four bottles of Jack Daniels, a couple of this, a couple of that, you're dead.

1:21:18Drink all that stuff. You're dead. Yeah. Have you ever gone through a drinking phase? Not a bad drinking phase. I don't drink at all anymore. But I will still, if I feel like it, I'll have a glass of wine. What kind? I'll have a margarita. I like a nice Cabernet, sir. Okay. I just like a little red wine sometimes, but I've only had like two or three glasses of anything over the last like eight, nine months. And even like I didn't even finish the wine. It's like I've lost my taste for it. I just, the trade-off is not worth it. Like I have a lot of fun people in my life and I have a lot of fun without alcohol.

1:21:58Like I don't necessarily think it was providing me with the amount of good versus the amount of negative. The negative outweighed it, especially physically. Right. It's just bad for you physically. Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, I didn't drink in high school. And I kind of made up for lost time in college. And I got really sick a few times. Yeah. It's rough. I just stopped drinking. like to that point anyway. Wow, it's like people are having a good time and I get it. And if you're young I get it, I get it, I did it too. But it's not good for you. It's not good for your decision making too because then the next day you're like, ugh.

1:22:42And if you're at that low state of being hungover, you're fucking for sure not putting out great energy. Yeah, well you don't want to get into that state. You do, you want it channeled really, really carefully. Yeah. Like I've never been part of like an ultra-Orthodox sect, but I think what happens in some of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, there's a Lubavitcher sect in Brooklyn. And the fellow who led that was Schneerson, Menachem Schneerson. And he really enjoyed drinking. He got inspired. Inspired. And he wanted others to become inspired. You know, it has to become a conduit. I think it kind of differs with Bukowski.

1:23:36You can think of somebody who loves alcohol. First time he got drunk, it was a psychedelic experience, actually. In his account, he says to himself, I think I've found something very, very important.

1:23:55it's kind of hilarious yeah that was never the effect alcohol had on me i didn't and you get you feel good for a while a short period of time yeah we obviously all differ biologically but some people it hits a switch that nothing else does um there's some people love it yeah well it's just It's discounted in the text. You shouldn't drink too much. It's very clear. But I'm not sure you shouldn't drink at all. I think you should drink if you want to drink. And, you know, everybody, people get real rigid, you know, especially if you have someone around you that has a problem with alcohol or you have had a problem with alcohol.

1:24:39Yeah. Well, there's a huge homeless population in Albuquerque. Oh, yeah. Alcohol plays somewhat of a role. Yeah. I played a lot more in the Navajo reservation when I lived in Gallup. Yeah, I think people just use and abuse drugs. There's also those things, they sound like there's not a lot of opportunity in the places you're describing, right? Right. So if you don't, you just want to not feel anything. You're outside a reservation. Or on one. Or on a reservation. Yeah. Now, I'm in the middle of the audiobook Empire of the Summer Moon for the second time. It's all about the Comanches and the war between the settlers and the Comanches here.

1:25:26It's crazy. And I'm in the middle of this, and I'm thinking, like, have people always been this horrible? And we're just sort of catching up to it now. Well, you know, that's taken into account in Cain and Abel, the Cain and Abel story. Sure. The first two children. One murders the other. So it started way back. It starts way back with a bang. And you just go, God, have people always been this awful? From the beginning. Well, there's a line in the text that God is going to destroy mankind. No, no. What happens here? I think he decides people will only live 120 years at the most because their inclination is bad from the get-go.

1:26:21And 120 years is enough time to repent and become a better person. Wow. So you're given 120 years to deal with what you were born with. but this book this empire the summer moon it just makes me think when you think about what life was like for the people that lived here before the european settlers arrived and how quickly everything went away historically in terms of like the timeline it was only a few hundred years and it was just completely gone yeah well the garden of eden lost there was also there was a lot of war that's the thing that everybody likes to leave out like i'm fascinated with native american culture i'm fascinated with this comanche civilization that lived here because this book empire the summer moon is just it's so interesting they were so fierce and they lived right here yeah well there's 29 pueblos in new mexico and you The Pueblo are peaceful folk.

1:27:30They're agricultural. Yeah. That's been their heritage. The Comanche were not. And one of the things this book talks about is how a lot of the Apaches were not on horseback. And they were. And that they were literally wiping out bands of Apache and forcing them to go to Mexico. It's like this has always been – there's always been – once they've had horses, which is really like after the Spaniards got here. Right. Then once the Comanches figured out horses, they got really good at it. And they were like an impossible barrier to get through this part of the country. Yeah, there's mostly Navajo around where I lived in Gallup.

1:28:15And they were nomads. They raised sheep. spun. Sure. And then in the eastern side, a lot more agriculture, right? It's just all the space. The amount of time that it took for everything to get pushed, where if you're a Native American and you're, you know, it's 2025 for you and you're living on a reservation, you're like, whoa, what happened? You start going into the history of it. Like how many people died? Like, what happened? Is there a Comanche presence in Texas? A lot of signs, I'll tell you that. A lot of the signs are like, Quanah Parker Lane, he was the last Comanche chief. Yeah, yeah.

1:28:57Well, they always name things after what used to be there. Well, this is all that area. There's a lot of Comanche where we're in this area, but it went all the way down to Oklahoma. It was just a barrier that you couldn't get through. Yeah, it was fun living in Gallup. It was mostly Navajo. Yeah? Yeah, very low-key. They'd come to terms with being, you know, defeated. Oof. Part of, you know. Crazy, though, isn't it? Well, it's— I mean, it, like, had—all those things had to take place in order to get New York City. Like, yeah. So you have to decide. What do you like more? New York City, or you want to go back in time and say, don't sell this.

1:29:43Right, right. You know, what do you like more? Do you like pizza? Do you like, do you go to a nice... I like pizza. I do too. I like to be able to go to a nice nightclub, have a drink, go to a nice steak dinner in New York City, or give it all back. Give it all back. Go back in time. Say, hey guys, you're getting robbed. Don't sell this for whatever it was. You can't halt progress. How much did they buy New York for? $27. Really? In jewelry. Fake jewelry even. No. Yeah. Wow, what a deal. Or$45. What a great origin story for a villainous country. That their number one city was made through a swindle deal.

1:30:24Yeah. Where it was fake jewelry. Well, that's where I went to medical school was the Bronx. Well, you're from New Jersey. Yes. That's where I was born, yeah. Yeah, I trained in the Bronx. I didn't get to Jersey much. New Jersey's a crazy place because everybody thinks of it as just being city. because it's right near the city, like Hackensack and Hoboken and stuff like that. But it's mostly rural. Yeah. It's got bears all over the place in it. There's some really nice coastal parks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The shore is awesome. You know, small doses. It's nice to go down there. Yeah. So the Bronx was great training.

1:31:03Yeah? Yeah. It's a yeshiva. It's like the modern orthodox university in the country. Oh, that's where it is? Yeah. It's the medical school of yeshiva. It's called Einstein. And it's in the Bronx. It was great training. We could do anything. We could do everything because it was pretty poorly staffed in some ways in the 70s. So we had a lot of duties. When did you first even have the idea to create a study of people doing IV DMT? Like when did you even say – That's a long story. It seems like a good one though. It seems like a good one because how do you get to the point where you're asking the government to let you do this and then you get them actually to say yes?

1:31:59It was the war on drugs that funded our study. well it all kind of came to a head with Terrence McKenna we were up in his loft one afternoon and instead of saying DMT was a really great drug and asked for money we said DMT was a really dangerous drug and asked for money oh I think you've told me this before but it's a good story we just want to study it We just want to study it. It's not good or bad. It's clever because you're not lying. No, no. I knew what I was talking about, too. Yeah. Like I had done neuroendocrinology research with melatonin, circadian rhythm research. Yeah, I was a bona fide investigator.

1:32:55I just asked simple questions. Could we give it? What happens when you give it? DMT is really strange. The role it's played in my life. I've been complaining for years that, well, not complaining for years, but I don't know. I'm more skeptical of the psychedelic experience than I was before. I don't think it's a panacea. Well, I think it is a panacea. That's the problem. um i think there's an issue with spiritual narcissism that's a thing that sort of grips people when they start doing it a lot and then their identity is wrapped up in doing it a lot yeah yeah like there's a little bit of that that happens with folks with dmt in particular is it yeah or ayahuasca like about once a once a year i get an email saying something in the subject line, your book and my son.

1:33:56Yeah, and they say that they just smoked way too much DMT. They were in the hospital or in prison. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, they just became messianic, like you said. Like you believe you know more than anyone. And if they just listened. Yeah. False messiah. Well, there's some interesting stories with false messiahs. at least within Judaism Messiah has not come yet as opposed to Christianity where Jesus was Messiah So what is Judaism's version of what happened with Jesus? He wasn't the Messiah so he died, he didn't get resurrected? Well, you know he may have been resurrected but resurrection occurs in the Hebrew Bible so that's not unique Right, but what is their take on it?

1:34:53Well, end of story, he's killed. And that's it? He don't come back? No, not really. Not within the Hebrew Bible. That's part of the New Testament, the Christian Bible. Oh, that's one thing I wanted to bring up is Old Testament is a term that's a little disparaging in a way. Is it? It's been replaced by Hebrew Bible. Interesting. Yeah. When was that? It's been building. Okay. So is this like a pronouns thing? It prefers this? It wants to be identified as a Hebrew Bible? They prefer it. They. I was saying it. Yeah. It could be either. An interest of simplicity. Yeah. You know, like I was thinking of, well, you know how people put in parenthetical phrases, you know, he, him.

1:35:47Yeah, I was thinking of doing that for myself once, it and its. It and its? It would be gender neutral. Sounds good. Yeah. Well, that's one of the... Or just not ever. Come on. Yeah, so, you know, I was thinking about, you know, does God have genitals? And, you know, probably not. Doesn't seem like it's the likely way we were made. But there's probably some sort of a interdimensional psychedelic equivalent of intercourse that higher beings have, some interaction with each other. I think it was the optimal form. The optimal form? Yeah, to contain a certain consciousness and do particular things.

1:36:50It's an ideal form. You know, it was ideal. So that's, you know, why it took that particular unique shape. You know, form follows function, things like that. Right. Yeah. I got confused there. What are you referring to? Oh, well, I think you were – I was referring to man being made in God's image. Okay. Yeah, with genitals. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. But I think in the animal kingdom, things evolve to do certain things. They have form and function, which combined determine their range of behaviors. So I think in humans it sort of was the optimal form as well. Same way, perhaps. What do you think happened when human beings had this doubling of the brain size over a period of two million years?

1:37:52What do you think that was?

1:37:56Is that true? Supposedly. Yeah, I think so. I think it was, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Sounds like a crazy little expansion. yeah so I mean you can look at it you know evolutionarily biologically theologically you can look at it too as finally being endowed with you know a human spirit you know there's multiple spirits you know and even in the Hebrew Bible there's multiple spirits so as the brain expands in size you develop a human spirit I think so that human spirit allows for divine communication At least that's how the theory goes. It's the breathing in of the soul to man by God in man's creation.

1:38:46Right. So ultimately, we're going to get to be a gray. We're going to have a big, giant head, and we're not going to need to talk because we're going to do it telepathically. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You know, telepathically, you think people being able to read the mind is a good thing? It will be a good thing once that happens or if it can happen? I think it will be a thing. And like all things, it will have good aspects to it and bad aspects to it. I think reading people's minds will be very enlightening. You're going to learn a lot more about how people actually think versus what they project. you're going to be able to see people's motivations you're going to be able to see lies we might even have a universal visual language that they develop we might all be able to adopt it really quickly and kids probably will jump right on board and they'll be literate in it before we are what about psychological ambivalence loving someone one moment hating them another what happens if you tune in at one moment you're convinced that's solely the case.

1:39:59If you're ambivalent, all ambivalence is a real thing. And you have an unconscious, too, where things are kind of stored away psychologically. Yeah, I'm not saying it's good. It might be hard. I don't know. If there is some way where we link up and we can communicate completely telepathically, it could be really weird. But it will be a thing. That's my point. It's like we're going to have to navigate it like we navigated making books, like we navigated everything else. Like if we want to stay alive, we've got to recognize that there's some shit going down. There's some shit going down right now.

1:40:43Right. Well, there's free will, isn't there, you know, forever? All these decisions that you have to make. Well, I mean, in this— Or is there free will? The determinism people don't think there is. well it feels as if there's free will yeah i feel like we respect free will so it's probably a real thing we expect we we respect a person who's like been a drunk their whole life who puts down the bottle and starts running around the block we respect that because it's a real thing free will is there's part of free will it's like there's something there something there you make choices you don't know why you make choices but you make choices that's the thing there's a lot of factors in why you make choices, and it's not 100 % determinism, and it's not 100 % free will.

1:41:28It's kind of, there's a soup. There's a very movable soup. Yeah, well, to the extent that you can exert free will, you have to kind of do the best you can. Yeah, you've got to do the best you can. Yeah, and even if we're uploaded into the cloud, let's say, I mean, how's that time going to be spent? Good question. I mean, are we even capable of imagining what we're talking about? Are we so crude in our understanding of what's to come in the next five, ten, whatever years that we're just guessing we're silly? We're like writing a bad science fiction movie from the 1980s about the year 2000. You remember those, like space 1999?

1:42:15Well, you know, it's the one God and the golden rule. I think that's what we'll be left with ethically, what the basis of our decision making will be. I've always wondered if we're in a race to avoid catastrophe. And that's one of the reasons why we're so hyper-focused on accelerating with technology, is that we kind of always recognize that this species is in a race to avoid natural catastrophe. Like there's just so much potential for natural catastrophe, whether it's super volcanoes, asteroid impacts. So many different things have like almost wiped us out to nothing. That it's like might be a part of the reason why there's this like mad rush to make better and better and better technology.

1:43:02It's almost like a game. Like, can you get to the final boss? Can your species survive and figure out a way to stop the rock from space? Yeah, the footsteps of the Messiah. That's what that's called. I mean, you want to be around at the time of the Messiah, but not really because things have to get so bad. That's one model of the end of times. There's also a lot of people that don't recognize that being a human being on Earth is being a passenger in an organic spaceship going through the universe. Like there there are real celestial events that they have to keep their eyes on which you know you haven't experienced in your life so like But no this there's giant rocks that killed the dinosaurs and they're still floating around same size rocks Yeah, I know and they can't stop them.

1:44:03They don't know how to stop them yet Like don't listen to any of these fucking people. Oh if we saw it We would do this and do that and sleep tight at night. No no no no no No, no. No, if there was some gigantic state-sized chunk of metal flying through the galaxy, we would have a real problem. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It might wipe out all of humanity. Yeah, it might wipe out all of humanity. Yeah. And it probably came really close to doing that a few times in history. That's what I think. Yeah. It's the only thing that makes sense. If we know that we're hit all the time, we all accept the fact that the Yucatan impact, that's what killed the dinosaurs.

1:44:42And there's been a bunch of them throughout history. We find craters everywhere. Everyone knows that we've been hit multiple times. The Tanguska thing in Russia. Yeah. Where it flattened this enormous patch of forest that's still flattened. Have you been watching season two of Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse? I didn't watch season two yet. No. I watched season one, though. Yeah. What's season two about? It's like the Americas, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the Americas are crazy. Yeah, I like Graham. He's the best. Yeah, he's hardworking. Oh, he loves what he does, man. He really, really does. And the fact that he's finally been over all these attacks, he's finally been vindicated and people are starting to accept more and more things are probably a lot older than than we want to believe.

1:45:41And especially after Gobekli Tepe, that kind of like that popped the cork on everything. And everyone's like, OK, well, this has definitely been buried for 11 ,000 years. So this is kind of crazy. We didn't know they could do that back then. Well, before coming out here, I asked ChatGPT, you know, how old are some of the stories written down in the text in the Hebrew Bible? And at least according to ChatGPT, it's 10 ,000 years ago. You know, so. Oh, my God. You know, something may have happened at that time. That makes sense. Yeah, that's a very interesting finding. Oh, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, that's a great story.

1:46:20I'm working on this translation of the Hebrew Bible. I've got a sub stack now. I've been putting out things every week, a chapter a week. Yeah. On my translation of the Bible, it's like a thousand pages right now of commentary about the language and, you know, the grammar, you know, the meaning. It was called the plain meaning of the text. Like there was a Noah with three sons and went on the ark. Yeah, so that's like my big project, but I'd like to do a smaller one about Sodom and Gomorrah and the figure of Lot, I think. That's a really incredible story. I've spent about maybe two to three weeks looking at that.

1:47:04Lot, his virgin daughters, the men circling his house, they're asking to know him. He ends up in a cave with his two virgin daughters. They get him drunk. and he sleeps with them. Or, you know, they lie with him anyway. Yeah, and out come two kids at a certain point, and they become very important. You know, later on, they're the beginning of the messianic line. You know, so it's a very intricate, you know, tale with a very— I think you can make some cool conversations between some of the main personages in the narrative. You know, there was a book called The Red Tent. Can I ask you about the Lot?

1:47:47How old was that story? Well, it's an explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is around the Dead Sea. There was a conflagration of some sort there. Have any of your guests spoken about Sodom, what actually happened around the Dead Sea? It was quite catastrophic. Well, tell us. Tell us. Well, the story of Lot, yeah. I mean, there was fire and sulfur pouring down on Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the end of the plain. So that's the southern part of the Dead Sea. You know, it is a Dead Sea because of its high salt concentrations. It was kind of closed off from the coast. So it's at least a description of what took place.

1:48:42What do you think it's describing? Well, I mean, you know, my perspective is it actually happened. People think of a volcano, some kind of volcanic activity. We're totally saying it sounds like a volcano, right? And we know that there's been a bunch of those that have almost wiped people out entirely at certain points. That Toba volcano, you know that one? No. We got down to, I think, we've looked this up before, but I want to say they think we might have gotten down to just a few thousand people. On the whole planet. Like 70 ,000 years ago. 70 ,000 years ago, there was a massive super volcano that went off.

1:49:28And it plunged the earth probably into nuclear winter. and they think that our genetic line entirely of the human race on Earth came from this few thousand survivors. Joe, can we take a break? Yes. You got to pee? Yeah. Yes. We'll be right back, folks. Seriously. We're back. Yeah, so we were talking about the alternative. Yes. Explain what you mean by that, like that these things are happening in an alternative dimension. Right. Yeah, I think they're happening in an alternative dimension. And like when you smoke DMT, you return to the same place each time. So there seems to be some reality, some DMT world that people enter into.

1:50:12And it's one of my volunteers, one of the subjects in the DMT research, he got a big dose one day. And then a few months later, he got another big dose. And he said that, it was very interesting. He said things have just, you know, continued to pace. since his first exposure and his first entrance into that state. And things had gone on in the meantime. And he reentered that world. So in that way, in that same manner, the world of the Hebrew Bible early on, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, the Tower of Babel, all that took place. at some different level of reality, which gradually made its way into ours.

1:51:06And once it made its way into ours, there's the archaeological evidence, the first temple, second temple, and so on.

1:51:16So there is a transition. Our world and that world kind of merged. But in the beginning, it was an alternative dimension. the same God, I think, but, you know, different dimensions.

1:51:36So, is this your own personal conclusion? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, when I was on the show last time, you're asking if I believe those things took place. And my answer then was, you know, I take it as if it were true. And then I started to think, you know, how I would do that. You know, like, in what world would that be true? It would be a different world. Right. I feel like I've always believed that they were trying to record something. I just didn't always trust that human beings were completely honest with their recollection of events. So that there's something that they were trying to write down.

1:52:20But was it really coming from God? Was it, are these accurate events? What exactly happened with Noah and the ark? What really happened? Well, three stories. Three levels. Two of each, then seven. One pair or seven pairs of birds. Well, of every living thing. Yeah, but like how's he feeding them? Animals eat other animals. The whole thing's nuts. You would need a lot more rabbits. You need so many animals to keep just the lions alive. Right. It doesn't make any sense. How's he getting them all from all over the world into his stupid boat? Yeah. There's so many things that are wrong. Yeah. But the story of him being told that some shit is about to go down and you probably should find some way to restart your version of civilization somewhere.

1:53:21There's probably multiple versions. Like the flood myth that we, you know, whatever you want to call it, the stories of the flood that you get from Epic of Gilgamesh, that you get from Noah. There's not just those. There's many, many different cultures all throughout history have a flood story, right? So it's probably likely that some crazy shit went down. You know, there most likely was a flood. Yeah, so what do you learn from it? How do you do better or on what basis do you rebuild? So I think there's new different models. The biblical one is interesting because it's a lineage from Adam to Noah to Abraham.

1:54:24You know, Isaac and Jacob and the tribes. And now. So when you talk about things happening in an alternative dimension, like, is that what you think, like, the birth of mankind is as well? Like Adam and Eve? Well, I mean. Pull this microphone up. Okay, I'm sorry. It just has an impact. Yeah. Well, you know, the creation story. man was created on sixth day along with mammals it's a cool story it's stages people say seven days that's unlikely that your creation took place seven times 24 I don't know 148

1:55:18148 hours 168 hours the whole world was created. But it's broken into stages, seven stages, which is one of the translations of the word that is usually translated day. It could also mean stage. It's the word yom. It could mean either a day, a period of time, a stage. So that's the answer that makes sense to me about the seven-day story of creation. Yeah, so, you know, man was created on the sixth day and then was placed in the Garden of Eden. And, you know, those events took place. You know, the stories themselves are just, you know, they're written down. And so people have been studying them for thousands of years.

1:56:13Who do you think Lilith was? No mention of Lilith in the Bible. Really? Yeah. Where does the story of Lilith emerge? Well, it comes from what's called Midrash. What's that? It comes from a root, D-R-S-H, D-R-R-S. It means to, I don't know, explicate, to expand upon, to investigate. You know, so what happened after Adam and Eve sinned? You know, did they have sex again? And they do have Cain and Abel and the ensuing stories. And then there's a third son, Shait, who is the inheritor of his traits, his good traits and bad traits. He's like God as well. So there's a distinct lineage that is spelled out.

1:57:09You know, Lilith was a demon.

1:57:17She slept with Adam after the sin of eating from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. So there's a story that built up around the biblical story that they were separated. Adam and Eve were separated for a long period. and you know so who was Adam sleeping with well it was expanded in the Midrash that there was a demoness named Lilith who slept with Adam for me I don't know a couple hundred years and then Adam and Eve reconciled whoa yeah so Lilith is

1:58:03you know she doesn't appear in the text of the Hebrew Bible as such. So nobody knows. There's a mythology that's grown around Lilith as well. Well, isn't there some festival, some music festival called the Lilith Festival? Lilith Fair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's named after the spirit or the demoness. You sure it wasn't like a lady named Lilith that she came up with? Are we sure? It was her neighbor. Smith. So what was the reason why the book of Enoch, like, so it was not included in all the versions of the Bible by a decision of like how many people? It was like a few rabbis, right? Well, the canon you're talking about, there's 22 books in the Hebrew Bible.

1:59:01Right. And there's certain versions of it that they found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, like the Book of Isaiah, that's identical verbatim, which is really amazing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there's Aramaic translations. Aramaic was the spoken language back then, back there. But the Book of Enoch was a part of all that, the stuff they found in Qumran, too, right?

1:59:26Well, I tried learning about the Book of Enoch. Yeah. Yeah. There's only an Ethiopic version, right? Yes. Yeah. Well, have you looked into the Book of Enoch? Yeah. Well, I told you I've been listening to it on audio. But Ethiopia is a fascinating place. Yeah. Right? Because like that's the place where Graham Hancock started getting interested in the possibility that they have the Ark of the Covenant. Right. There's supposed to be a tribe in Ethiopia. And they all get cataracts. And the people that are protecting it, they only live like a certain amount of time and then they die. Yeah. If that's true, if any of that's true, if any of that's true, if somehow or another there's people on earth today that have an Ark of the Covenant, how could you keep that a secret?

2:00:15That's the craziest thing to be even allowed to keep a secret. Yeah, it's one of those things you can't even imagine. Can you imagine if they open up a door and, like, there it is. Oh, like from Raiders of the Lost Ark, melts your face off. Well, it would contain the Ten Commandments. Yo. Yeah, the original Ten Commandments. Well, yeah, the original Ten Commandments. Well, what do you think these guys are guarding in Ethiopia where they're getting cataracts? Because when Graham describes it, you're like, if you're telling me the truth, and I think you are, because you've never lied to me yet. If you're telling me the truth, these people that are guarding this place that supposedly has the Ark of the Covenant are all getting, like, radiation sickness?

2:01:02Yeah. Well, the Ark is hidden. I mean, that's what is said in the Hebrew Bible is that it's hidden. So we just don't know what happened, at least according to the Hebrew Bible. It still has been. It hasn't been discovered yet. So it might be in Ethiopia. God only knows. It's just the craziest story ever, because if it is true, if this one church has the Ark of the Covenant, like, hey, guys, let us get a look at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope they got it right. Yeah. Well, they should definitely make sure someone doesn't steal it. You know? Yeah. Well, the Ten Commandments, that's appearing in public schools now.

2:01:46Yeah. I had a guy, James Tallarico, on to talk about that, actually, who's a very staunch Christian and thinks it's a terrible idea to have the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Why? He goes, you're indoctrinating children. He goes, it's like a way to drive them away from Christianity. You're forcing it on them. He's like, we shouldn't do it that way. And certainly not do it in a way where you're only going to have the Ten Commandments. And you're not going to have anything about Buddhism. And you're not going to have anything about Islam. You're not going to have anything about baptism. Or fill in the blank.

2:02:22Mormons, fill in the blank. You know, Scientologists. You'd have to have everything. You have to just keep going forever and ever and ever. And then splinter groups. Yes. So he's got a good R.D. I mean, I think he's right. I think they should stop doing that. If you want to teach it in a classroom that someone applies for, that's great. But like putting it on the wall of every class seems kind of insane. Apparently he was saying that it's just a couple of different gentlemen in Texas that are like super wealthy. and super Christian, and they want this to be like a theocracy. Unfortunately, where have we heard that before?

2:03:03In the Middle Ages. Yeah, baby. I just think it's what happens when people get a shit ton of money and a shit ton of power and they start getting older. They need a sport. They need to take up a game that fascinates them instead of trying to global world dominate. You know, it's just... You people get to positions of extreme wealth and power and they just want to manipulate things and make more money and they want to do it forever and ever and ever and they can't you only live to be 120 if everything goes perfect maybe today you might be able to if you can make it to like if you make it to 90 today i bet you could live a lot longer if you live to 90 yeah like if you can i've i've lived way older than than my father.

2:03:54And so I think, yeah, I think I'll live a while longer. I married a young woman. That helps. I need to stay, you know, fit. You know, that actually does help. Live a longer time, yeah. There's been studies that show that men that date younger women, they have more active lives, they feel healthier. I'm more active. Yeah. But it could be those are the kind of women that are interested in dating that kind of guy. I just don't know. Is it very – yeah. I don't know how it works. The kind of guys that are more active and healthy would also be the kind of guys that would want to date younger women. So it's a bias sample group, right?

2:04:38Yeah. One of my analysts said it was a mystery. She had no idea and she had been seeing patients for like 50 years. And she said, no, I have no idea. It's a mystery. Interesting. And why people get together. Yeah. Well, I think whatever makes you happy. Well, that's it. That's the book of Ecclesiastes. It's about emptiness, emptiness. It's all emptiness.

2:05:11But at the end, you should make your wife happy and eat and drink and be merry while you're alive. What do you think of that? It's good advice. Solid advice. If I was living 2 ,000 years ago, I'd probably say the same thing. Right. Yeah. There's no medicine. You have no antibiotics. There's no orthopedic surgeons that are going to put your knee back together again. Yeah, I'd say that too.

2:05:39Yeah. Yeah. It is bad when you have one doctor for every organ system. Yeah. They didn't know anything. that's nuts. I mean, how many people died of infections back then? Just that alone, that's extended life, like just antibiotics alone. It's extended lifespan so much because so many people that would have probably died got healthy again. So many people. And those people can maybe figure out some new way to bridge this gap and stop these viruses and stop this, stop that. And then we just keep getting better at it until we eventually get to the point where we're living as long as Noah. 600 years for Noah.

2:06:24And that's probably when God gets fed up. He's like, enough, you fucking animals. Maybe we're going to repeat that process. Maybe we're going to figure out some awesome new peptides to keep you alive for 500 years, and everyone's going to be a dick to everybody else, and then eventually God will just have to drown us again. I'm in college. We had to read a book about the funeral home industry, in Southern California. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I read this little novel by Aldous Huxley, Many a Summer Dies a Swan. It's about these people who live forever by eating the intestinal microbiome of carp. Oh, wow.

2:07:05And they become like carp in a lot of ways. And I tried to get into one of these funeral homes. I asked to interview them to see what people, did after death and never heard back one of those crazy college stories about looking into the funeral home industry which is a I don't know that's pretty big. It's a weird business. You get the business of taking care of bodies and you don't really have a lot of options, right? Like, if someone dies, I don't think you're—are you just allowed to let them fertilize some plants? Are you allowed to do that? Yeah. Do you have to put them in formaldehyde? Do you have to do all that stuff?

2:08:04I mean, I did an autopsy on a cadaver, you know, back in the day. Open people up and look at them. Well, then there's, you know, surgery, which you go through as well. Right.

2:08:27That was an odd pause. I was like, where are we going with this conversation? I know. Well, I love the Hebrew Bible. Yes. I spent all my time in it. Just the weirdest thing there is. Do you have any idea why the Book of Enoch was supposedly excluded from? being included in the Bible. Seems to be some debate about that, right? Yeah, yeah. I know. I think the Dead Sea Scroll community used the Book of Enoch. It was like their Bible. Right. Yeah, very strange. Well, the thing about the Book of Enoch is really very psychedelic. But there's not that much... I don't think there's much in it as far as Judaism itself.

2:09:22I mean, it's that discussion of the righteous being rewarded and the evil being punished, the evil people being punished. But you don't really learn what it means to be righteous. And you don't really learn from the Book of Enoch what it's meant to be evil. You don't know how—yeah, there isn't all that much information, I don't think, in there. It's historical, and it's really weird astronomical stuff, too. But I think it may not have been included in the Hebrew Bible because there weren't any ethical teachings that could be had by reading it. No ethical teachings that could be had by reading it?

2:10:05What do you mean by that? Yeah. I mean, one of the essences of Judaism, I think, is ethical monotheism. Yeah, that's where there's the golden rule and there's one God. So it's ethical monotheism.

2:10:26Yeah, so where were we? Where were we? Yeah, just then. We were talking about the Hebrew Bible and we were talking about—what else were we talking about? We were talking why the Book of Enoch was in the Dead Sea Scrolls community, but it wasn't accepted later. Right, right. But some parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, like the Book of Isaiah, right? That was the one that was found to be the oldest version of it that was verbatim. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it's just it was too psychedelic. Too psychedelic. Yeah, I think – I mean at least in Ezekiel, let's say, which is comparable. Daniel too is quite psychedelic.

2:11:11Those were some ethical – some historical narrative. But imagine making that call. Imagine making that call. How long ago? Right, a long time ago. To take that story out. I'm not buying this one, guys. Leave it out. Meanwhile, that's the one that's the most compelling to me. Yeah, yeah. What do you like about the Book of Enoch? It was just so bizarre. It's very bizarre. Because it makes the whole thing. It's like, oh, okay, now I get the big story. The whole story is crazy. And the origin story. The Book of Enoch, like as it starts, like in the very first chapter, you're like, wait, what's going on?

2:11:52Fornication with humans and a race of giants. Like what? What are you guys describing? Yeah. Things coming down and watchers. What are you guys talking about? Like, what was this? This is so left field of the rest of the Bible, but it was included in the same, like those clay pots that they found in Qumran. It was in there too. Just, you don't know what to believe. Like what happened there? Well, yeah, you might not know what to believe, but you can also, you know, believe in one way of doing it as well. One way of doing it? As long as you don't get doctrinaire. Right. You just do it yourself.

2:12:40Well, when I think about it, I just go blank. I just try to imagine like what are they even describing? Like what does any of that stuff mean?

2:12:52It just seems so alien. There's watchers and they mate with humans and they create the nephilim giants that consume and destroy the earth like just imagine if that was left into the bible and they taught that in school you'd be like what happened yeah it sounds completely crazy yeah it was a mistake yeah that's why there is the flood is you know the earth was filled with the violence of the nephilim i believe it the reason of the flood i mean look if we're this size you know and we have so many problems with each other imagine something that's like triple the size of us that's running around with us, just picking us up and beating us over the head with each other?

2:13:34Yeah. You know, one of the figures in the text is Og and Sihon, who are the kings of the Emirates in the land before the Hebrews take over. And they were giants that they're believed to be giants. They talk about how the bed of one of these kings, Ogre Sihon, was like nine feet long or something, 13 feet long. Yeah, so there were a couple still alive back then. So do you think those were real humans? They were giants. So you think they were real giants for sure? Are you 100 % convinced that giants roamed the Earth? Like there was 15-foot tall humans, monstrous humans? It may not have occurred.

2:14:20Well, that's the reason I think there's some alternative universe that's as real as this one, which was the site of those things happening. A lot of these stories. Mm-hmm. So when you say there's an alternative universe that's as real as this one, do you think we dance back and forth between possible universes? Do you think we're always in the constant same universe? Or do you think like this concept of parallel universes or alternative universes, that you go back and forth between these? No, I think they're pretty well separated, don't you? So you think that the world was a different place back then and that the doorway to go back and forth was easier to traverse?

2:15:10It was one directional, and it kind of was one level of reality kind of, you know, segwaying into this one. So do you think these things involved psychedelics while they were doing this, while they were writing all this stuff down? No. No? Well, I think it involved being attuned to a level, you know, that level of reality. Yeah, which would be mediated through DMT in some ways. The visions would be mediated through DMT. Yeah. I wonder if it's possible, too, if you're living in a world like we can't even imagine living in a world where we're not environmentally poisoned. Like we're constantly surrounded by Wi-Fi and 5G and we're eating microplastics and glyphosate is on every vegetable.

2:15:58And if there's we're like in a swoop, we're in a soup of toxins. we can't even imagine what it's like to not have that and to not be burdened down by electronics and all the different things that people like they're probably very different back then just just human beings in general i bet they're probably very different in a lot of ways yeah that's one of the reasons i like living uh in gallup it was really kind of

2:16:29simple simple yeah yeah there wasn't much wi-fi in there yeah it was just uh simple's good for you it's not perfect though you feel like sometimes cities are fun yeah yeah you called me when i was living in gallop and you said to me why are you living there

2:16:51you're telling me there's nothing around you i was like why are you living where there's nothing around you that's crazy yeah get out of there it was my monk phase well had to go through it i don't think there's anything wrong with going through phases but i think ultimately people like to be around people just but it's you know there's a point where there's too many people and then people become like a nuisance to you you're stuck on the 405 and you're like oh my god look at this traffic where are all these people going and you know then people become a burden there's a there's a nice balance to be had somewhere in there i don't think it's like living in the woods by yourself i think that's the dream it was a weird dream well yeah it was inspired by acid so oh yeah the problem is there's you're if you're in the woods by yourself there's things out there that want to eat you yeah if you're by yourself they're going to know where you are all the time yeah well once i was cross-country skiing up in the mountains behind gallop and i was being tracked by a mountain line.

2:17:53Of course you were. It seemed like. Of course you were. It was going across. Probably thinking about taking you out. Yeah. Yeah. Probably thinking about taking you out. At a certain point I turned around. Yeah because if you look like you're out of breath you look like you're tired. Like if they think you're limping or something like that. Oh my god they can't help themselves. And the woods were really getting dark around me so. Oh not good. It was time to turn around. Not good. Yeah. They're fucking terrifying. And people have this romantic idea of what a mountain lion is. You say that until it kills your dog in front of you.

2:18:26Listen to me. Those are dangerous predators. California is the most ridiculous way of handling it. Yeah. They have to hire people to go kill them. And when they find. Mountain lions. Yeah. And when they do, they find that 50 % of their diet is pets.

2:18:45You've got something that 100 % eats your dogs and cats, and you're allowing it to live in the woods near your house. Like, this is kooky. There's plenty of them in the mountains, kids, okay? Yeah, coyotes are into pets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If a cat is lost for more than a few days around our neighborhood, that's pretty much it. If you just let your cat out, you're basically like saying you're going to get eaten. Yeah. I know it. You probably don't know it because you're just a cat, but you're going to get eaten. That's why you put them out. They're everywhere now, too. Coyotes are in every single city in the United States.

2:19:22you've seen coyotes oh fuck yeah they lope across the road I've had coyote problems where they broke into my chicken coop and killed all my chickens they're smart too man they're fascinating they trick dogs into chasing after them and then they all ambush them they're very clever clever yeah you used to watch the wily coyote he was an idiot that was so dumb Yeah, there's a lot of roadrunners in our community. I know. It's crazy, the idea that the roadrunner would be smarter than a coyote. Coyotes are so clever. Have you ever read Dan Flores' book, Coyote America? No. It's really good. It's about the origin of the coyote and why the coyote is everywhere now.

2:20:06And part of it is because of the persecution by the gray wolf. So the gray wolves don't mate with the coyotes, but the red wolves do. The gray wolves, so they're from a totally different line, so they just kill the coyotes. Because a coyote is just a small wolf. And so what they figured out is that when a coyote dies and like when they yell out, it's like roll call. And if someone's missing, the females produce more pups. So they have extra pups. And then they spread. So the extra pups and then they move to a new place. And by doing – just because they were persecuted by the gray wolves, when they started getting persecuted by humans, you know, like so human beings extradited wolves.

2:20:47They killed them all off, except for a few in the upper northern parts of the United States, with strychnine. But they couldn't do it with coyotes. The coyotes just kept moving around and separate. They just went to different spots. They're very smart. They're super smart. They're in New York City right now. Right now, there's coyotes in Central Park in New York City. Little wild wolves running around Central Park. Coexistent. Just big enough where they don't look threatening. They're just a clever little player of nature's game. Wily Coyote. It's a really good book, though, but it's also about, like, Coyote America.

2:21:25You know, I could have sworn John McPhee wrote about coyotes. Remember John McPhee? Out in that country, his Alaska book. Well, I'm sure he probably wrote a book about coyotes, too. This is just different. This is about the origins of, you know, coyote mythology amongst Native Americans and that they're thought to be a trickster. And it's, you just, it is a uniquely American animal. You know, it adapts. Yeah, well, that's too bad it's eating your chickens. Yeah, shit happens. Sorry to hear that. Well, it happened. They got, they killed them all. My chickens in California, they got into a chicken coop and they killed like nine of them.

2:22:04So the chicken coop got damaged because of the fire. So we had to get another chicken coop set up. and so when we set up the other chicken coop it was one that you just buy from like a pet store and it wasn't that durable and the coyotes figured out how to open it and they just fucked up these chickens oh it's a mess man yeah it was just all feathers feathers and blood yeah it was horrible they just went on up they just killed them all they killed them all they killed like nine of them but uh you know that's the fucking game they play and i love that they exist i'm a fan of coyotes i like hearing them at night i think they're cool i don't want them to eat my dog though you know it's like and you know they're not going to listen you're like hey don't eat my dog and we're cool though they're they're playing a game it's like wait till you turn your back and they'll attack your toddler?

2:22:57I think besides, you know, movie trailers, the things I watch on YouTube most are animals killing other animals. Why do you do that? Versus a musk ox. Yeah, great stories. It's pretty primal. It is? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. These people were in India and they were on some sort of a park drive, you know, one of the wildlife parks, and they watched a tiger take out an animal right in front of them. A tiger took out a deer right in front of them. And they filmed it. What's cool, well, the ones I like are the warthogs. Oh, they're so weird looking, aren't they? Yeah, they're vicious.

2:23:43They're huge. They look like a Star Wars character. They don't even look like a real animal. Yeah, it's unkosher pork. Interesting thing. It's unkosher? Unkosher pigs, yeah. Yeah, the things which are kosher, chew, cut, and have completely split and separate hoops. Right, right. Yeah, those are the main criteria for mammals. Do you think that's because of ancient diseases? Because it just makes sense that we know that trichinosis, a lot of that comes from pork, right? It always seemed to me pigs are dirty animals. I had a friend who was insistent that, given the choice, pigs are very clean animals.

2:24:29So it's hard to say about the filth aspect of it. That's domestic pigs. Wild pigs are filthy animals. Wild pigs. Yeah. All of them. 100 % of them. There's a difference between a domestic pig. This is where it gets really weird. You take a domestic pig and you let it loose in the wild, and six weeks later it starts to morph. and it starts to extend it, the snout, its tusks grow longer, its fur gets thicker, it becomes like a wild pig. That's kooky. Yeah, I guess the primitive or the early stages are really strong. Yeah, quickly. It happens quickly, like within a month or two. It's really weird.

2:25:11Yeah, I wonder how that works. It must be some endocrine thing. It must be their gonads and their pituitary and their hypothalamus. It's a really good question because like what would let them hit that switch and realize, OK, I'm on my own now. They're not just bringing me my food every day. Fuck. Time to get hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it isn't a conscious decision on their part. Yeah. Seems like it just takes over. But I was thinking like if that animal is not like the Muslims don't eat it and the Jews don't eat it. and you would imagine at a time where food was really important, and if you can get pork that was way better than not having any meat, and you can't eat it because of your religion, to me it seems like I bet at least some of the origin of that was there was a disease that was going through these people that were eating pigs.

2:26:08It's hard to say. The ones that are kosher are the ones which were burnt up in sacrifice as well. You know, there were sheep and cattle. Pull that microphone up to your mouth. Sheep and cattle and goats. Right. Yeah. Those were the sacrificial animals, the ones that were burnt on the altar and also the ones that were eaten. But do you think that—why do you think pork was excluded from both Judaism and also from Islam, consumption of pork? Yeah, it didn't meet the criteria. The criteria for what? For a kosher meat. It's used to cut and needs to have a completely separated, completely split hoof.

2:26:52No, I get that. But, I mean, why did they come up with that rule? I think it seems to be that those are the animals that have the most amount of trichinosis, unless you're eating bears. So I don't know if they were eating any bears back then. Probably not. They're probably eating a lot of deer species. And if you tried to eat that kind of wild pork back then and you didn't cook it correctly, you'd probably get violently ill or die. Well, you know, there are causes. There are reasons for some of the precepts in the text. It must be, right? Yeah, that are medically established. Yeah, like shellfish probably has to do with red tide, right?

2:27:33Well, bottom dwellers. Bottom dwellers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting when you try to decipher it. Like, why do they have that stuff in there? Well, it kind of makes sense. Pork, pigs rather, do carry a bunch of diseases that can wreck human beings. Yeah, well, the person then making the dietary laws knew that. You think that's the reason they wrote those dietary laws? Yeah, well, they didn't have meat thermometers back then, right? So I bet a lot of people ate some medium rare pork or rare pork even and got violently ill. Violently ill. Like trichinosis apparently is brutal. And you have it for life.

2:28:16So that like if somebody eats you, they get trichinosis unless they cook it. Yeah, I had C. diff some years ago. I even wrote a book about it. What is C. diff? It's potentially fatal diarrhea. Oh, no. It was grim. Yeah, I wrote it. Oh, that's right. That's when I just couldn't do anything for a couple of years. Oh, that's right. That's right. I forgot that you had that. So I wrote a book about it. Anybody's interested, Joseph Levy Escapes Death. Whew.

2:28:52You know, maybe that's part of me enjoying watching certain animals, you know, like animal killing animal. it kind of changes you that being you know that being that close you know to the edge i'm sure yeah you even offered to come out you know to visit or to you know do a show at my house yeah when you were real struggling and we were going back and forth you just weren't sure if you could travel i was like i was worried about you yeah thanks because you bounded back look at you look great thanks but there was a time where i was worried about you because it didn't you didn't sound like you were doing well at all like you were really struggling and so yeah that's one of the things that pushed well i began reading concentration camp literature during that phase really like how bad have people had it and what do they do wow it was pretty inspiring I liked reading Primo Levy he's my favorite author, Elie Wiesel too yeah Auschwitz and the end of Auschwitz like the end, the last month or two seemed like it was really something typhus and nobody cleaning up after them for weeks, things freezing and bursting it was just nuts so Primo Levy was a chemist, very clinical, took notes, remembered things in a very kind of dispassionate, almost journalistic description, the kinds of things people can go through.

2:30:30Yeah. Yes. That cheered me up in a way. I mean, it distracted me like, boy, they had it way worse and they had faith in something. So I think that helps, you know, strengthen my faith. Like God wasn't done with me. Ooh. So did you feel like you had an obligation to get to work once you got healthy again? Like God gave you this chance? Yeah. This bounce back? Mm-hmm. Return of the Mac? Thank God. Yeah, it's great to see you looking healthy because I really did worry. Because it's, you know, sometimes people, a bad health trip takes them, just takes them down and weakens them so much that they never really come back.

2:31:19Yeah. Well, you think about death. You must think about death. Sure. I think about death. You have to. It's coming whether you want it or not. It would be interesting to not think about death. Yeah. I don't dwell on it, but I'm definitely aware of it. Yeah, there was a week or two friends came over talking about their wishes or their interest in medically assisted death. there's a big article about that even a couple of months ago in one of the British journals yeah medically unassisted death he called a rabbi and I asked his advice and he said you know you may be obligated to knock the pills onto the floor I thought that was an interesting take You may be obligated to knock the pills onto the floor.

2:32:16From the person's hand who's about to take them. Oh. Yeah. Interesting. Or, you know, within, or more the equivalent. Right. You know, there might be some drugs going in IV would stop them up. Yeah, you know, so, well, yeah, like I feel pretty good. So I wonder, well, you know, what happens if I start feeling really bad? Yeah. So, you know, I feel good. So I figure, well, just keep me out of pain. You can give me enough, you know, morphine. See what happens. My mom died. I watched her die. Oh, wow. And we gave her morphine out of van, too, like Valium. Yeah, it was pretty... Peaceful. Yeah, it was quiet.

2:33:09Yeah. that's a weird thing because you don't want anybody poisoning anybody but you do want to give people the option to go out gracefully well i think you'd just be feeling great yeah exactly you'd be feeling gracefully right just one burst i had a morphine drip when i had my knee operated on once in the 90s and it was incredible it was incredible and i people tell me this is not true But I swear I remember this being true that you could press the button anytime you wanted more morphine Yeah, yeah, I think it's called patient controlled analogies or something Yeah, people are like no, no you remembering it wrong.

2:33:53I'm like, I don't think I am man I really remember hitting that button a bunch of times and meeting Jesus It was like a the most Wonderful loving hug By the universe it was just like this thing in bed while my leg is on this Continual motion machine you know what those are? No, but I can imagine when they do ACL reconstructions when they do a patella tendon graft It's a pretty violent operation. They have to cut your knee open like a fish They take a slice of your patella tendon along with a chunk of your bone from your shin and a chunk of your bone from your kneecap And then they screw it all back in place and to keep it from seizing up while you're lying in bed your leg is on this machine that goes like this extends it and brings it back extends it and brings it back because otherwise it'll lock up and then you're fucked were you awake when this was happening oh yeah you're awake yeah i was awake for the operation because my thought is i'm only gonna have one knee operation i want to be awake for it so they did like an epidural epidural yeah so i was awake i watched it i watched on a monitor it was crazy crazy to watch this guy open my knee up screw it in place um the point is while i was in the hospital bed they had this button that you could press when you wanted more morphine and i hit that button like a bunch of times and i was like wow it felt incredible and i only did and i remember also thinking boy this could be a problem because i i had done construction with a guy who had a bit of a heroin problem.

2:35:24And so I was aware that people would get a real opiate problem. And when I was in bed, I was like, I get it. I get it now. It feels amazing. Yeah, well, I would say cool, but yeah. But also, I knew that my leg was fucked. I knew it was going to take forever before it felt normal again. It was in pain. Just like, okay, I can't do anything, but enjoy this right now. Just like, let me take a couple of taps and whee! You know, it's called God's medicine for, you know, God's own medicine for a reason. Yeah. It felt like a hug. It felt like the universe giving you a hug. Yeah. Well, interesting. You mentioned that one day you were talking about faith and belief and what you base it on.

2:36:14I was just talking about how when I was living up in Towers, I was feeling kind of alone and sad. and I prayed to God help me and I felt this loving hug kind of embraced me at the moment which must have been mediated probably by endorphins too because it sounds pretty similar but it's interesting that we always want to dismiss anything positive like that oh it's probably just endorphins just giving you this good feeling Right, but is endorphins because of or the source of? Like, which one is it? It might just be a part of it. Like, yeah, the endorphins are real, but also it's the experience. It's the experience that you're experiencing.

2:37:04And the intention that you're putting out there. Right, right. You're not feeling the endorphins attaching to the receptors. Exactly. Yeah, you feel wonderful. Yeah, there's something real to it. Yeah, you know, drugs are interesting. They are. I just wish they weren't being controlled by the cartels. Yeah. That's what's crazy. What's crazy is people are not going to stop using them. I think there's a lot of drugs you should never use, kids. And there's a lot of people that should never use any drugs. But the fact that they are always going to and that the only way they can get them is through a criminal organization.

2:37:39And we haven't done our fucking one plus one equals two on that still in 2025. Yeah. Well, a dispensary for everything you want. Well, it's got to be more than that, man, because some of that stuff's heavy. So it's not just going to be a dispensary, but it also has to be some sort of a counseling center, some sort of a guided trip. There's got to be, like, very clear ethics. You know, you've got to have people that really know what they're doing and just want to help and don't have any weird narcissistic intentions or anything else. They just want to help people. you'd have to have that too because there's going to be a lot of freaked out people.

2:38:20If you make mushrooms and acid and all these things legal, you can just go get it. Are you 18? Oh, go buy it. I think there should be increased access. I think so too. I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying the reality of the new interface. If we just have all of a sudden these drugs are not just legal but legal and available for adults to buy, then you're going to deal with a whole new set of problems that didn't exist before. I'm not saying you shouldn't deal with that problem. I think it's inevitable. It's probably going to happen anyway. But those problems will be uniquely inflated by everything being legal because people are just going to go out and go fucking crazy.

2:39:01And why is that? Because if you can go to the bar and you can just go buy acid, do you know how many people are going to just go get acid? If you could go to any corner liquor store and pick up a pound of mushrooms, Like if it's just totally illegal because you can go to liquor store and get a case of beer, right? You can get a case of whiskey you can get 24 bottles of whiskey that is death by whiskey There's no way you're drinking that tonight, sir You can't buy that many thing up. I'll tell you that like good you want to spend that money So if you wanted to do that with mushrooms and you could go to the liquor store and buy pounds of mushrooms Well, you know that I think with increased access there's increased you know mortality There will be.

2:39:42Yeah, yeah. And it's not just that. It's like people that just, like, they ruin their brains. They're not ready for it. Maybe they're barely hanging on as it is, and then they have too many psychedelic trips, and now they're really fucked up. That's true, too. You'll never hear me advocate for the use of drugs. Good for you. Yeah, I've never said people should take drugs. I say people shouldn't. Meanwhile, how many people are on amphetamines right now? A lot of people on amphetamines. I've got an amphetamine story. Yeah. A friend gave me some Adderall one day. Well, I asked him for it. Look how you came clean.

2:40:24You came clean right away with no prompting. That's funny. Yeah. He was taking it for ADHD. I said, help. And I wrote this review. Well, there used to be a magazine called Shaman's Drum, which did a book review on the DMT book. And he didn't think it should be called the spirit molecule, the spirit molecule, rather the dream molecule. I took umbrage. So after I took the Adderall, I wrote a 20-page letter.

2:41:00It was pretty self, you know, what's the word? Inflated. so yeah and you know the next morning that's hilarious you looked at it and it was terrible yeah so I didn't send it all my friends who have done I've never done coke but all my friends who do coke that do stand up comedy say you can't do stand up comedy on coke they say you have no feeling you don't like you don't connect with the audience it's like it's like a just a barrier you could kind of pull it off maybe but you're never really like lock in yeah so you're not funny on it yeah you're not funny on it you're you're probably detached you're probably self-obsessed you know yeah it's a weird drive i just well it would be like you were talking to yourself and you loved it you love the sound of your fucking voice i think adderall's a lot like that too though it's very similar yeah there's something similar to that yeah in my case it was just writing just writing writing writing i was feeling like you know uh i have a lot to say yeah i'm not even saying you shouldn't do it but journalists i know do it i know a lot of journalists who love adderall they might not even say they love adderall but they fucking love adderall i know they do it all the time and you can you know you can blame it on deadlines and you know having the right stories and really needing to push through because you don't have enough time i i totally get it and i'm not saying you shouldn't do it But it's just fascinating how many people do it.

2:42:35Yeah, it was the case with PK Dick. He was into amphetamines. He died of a stroke. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you're going to cook those veins. You're going to cook everything. If you're doing amphetamines all the time, you're cooking your brain, son. Do you like PK Dick? I haven't read him since high school, you know? Yeah, I went through a phase. Well, I was talking about St. Peter's Snow. It was written by a Viennese Jew mathematician guy named Perutz who did St. Peter's Snow. And I read all of his books. There's like eight. And yeah, it's fun to get to know someone. So once I started thinking about Dick, well, I watched the TV show.

2:43:20What's it called? The Man from the High Castle and got me interested in reading the novel by Dick and went through most of his work. What was the movie they did based on one of his novels? I love Dick. Or I love PK Dick. There was a movie they did based on one of his novels. Do you remember which one it was? Oh, quite a few. Right. There's one movie that... Blade Runner Minority Report. Blade Runner. That's right. Total Recall. That's right. Just from Bureau. Total Recall was his too? Total Recall. What was it? We can remember for you wholesale. is the one that was in Total Recall. Blade Runner was amazing.

2:44:08The original Blade Runner with Rutger Hauer. Oh, my God. What about the one with Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. and the rotoscope? Scanner Darkly. Scanner Darkly. Oh, yeah. Alex Jones is in that, isn't he? I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a novel. Wow. My dick, very interesting. Yeah, the guy with the skin or the suit that changed according to emotions. Remember mood rings? No. Do you remember those? I think that may have been... They had them when I was in high school. They had mood rings. You were cool if you had a mood ring when I was in high school. So a mood ring, apparently, depending upon your body temperature, with light, you know, different hues.

2:44:58You never heard of it? Not really. Jamie, see if you can find mood rings. Yeah, that may have been from the 80s or something. Yeah, I'm old, dude. How old are you? I was more serious by then. How old are you now? 73. Okay, you're older than me, Doc. I'm 58. So you look great, by the way. You really do. Yeah. You really do. And you look so much better than you did when you were struggling. So it's really nice to see you bounce back like that. Mood rings became a 1970s sensation. Here we go. 70s, yeah. Here we go. So I went to high school in 81, and they were still down with mood rings, if you were in the right circles.

2:45:39Yeah. But these goofy things, you would wear them, and they'd make your hand green, of course, because they're made out of crap. like the metal was crap, but they had these weird rocks on them that would change color. See, if you find like a photo of one. But like a photo of one changing color. That's not a photo. That'd be a video. I'm sorry. I mean, you know what I'm saying. Like show what it looks like. They're kind of dope though. It's kind of cool still. Is that a rock? What the fuck is that? What does that? That's a good question. I don't know. What is a mood? Let's find that out. What is a mood ring made out of?

2:46:21Walked into reading that. What is it made out of? Is it like a resin or something? It might be some kind of acrylic with some. Or is it an actual rock? Yeah. Okay. So this dude came up with the mood ring? Okay.

2:46:37Okay. Who created the mood ring remains topic of some debate. A jewelry designer named Marvin Wernick says he invented the mood ring years before 1975, developing the idea after he saw a doctor use a thermochromic temperature measuring tape on a patient said he came up with the idea of a mood ring after the stress of working in wall street led him to explore biofeedback a therapeutic technique where people improve their health by responding to signals from their own bodies huh so what are the crystals made out bro crystals the crystals what are they what are the crystals made out oh look how pretty that's pretty isn't it like a dope ring that's a mood ring you know that way like you could tell whether or not your significant other is upset at you like let me look at your fingers you're lying yeah well yeah i mean it's a it's a form of you know global you know communication huh no keeping secrets i don't think it really works i think it's only just it's heat if you go to the gym and you slip it on you look like you're like really angry well if your hands are cold yeah exactly it's not gonna work so it's just dumb it's just dumb but people loved it when i was a kid yeah i think it kind of passed me by you got lucky you missed the dumb mood swing i was in school mood ring swing um when you first this what's interesting is when you first started those studies and you for and you published DMT, the spirit molecule.

2:48:14Did that have an effect on people taking you seriously with all your other work? Was it one of those things where you got labeled now you're the crazy psychedelic guy who did that nutty study?

2:48:28Or was there enough people that were like, oh, this is great. Now you have a legitimate academic studying this in a federally approved way. This is actually good for everybody and maybe this opens the door it's certainly opened up the door to the discussion like after you put that book out and and people who if you read that book you'll you'll come to the conclusion that there's something mighty going on below the surface of of human life in general that can be accessed in this very weird way within a second or two it's It's a banana. I've never done it the way you guys did it, but it's – the regular way is bananas.

2:49:07And somehow or another, we're depriving people of this. Well, I mean, shouldn't it be the front page news? No. As you can give this drug regularly and everybody goes to the same place? Yeah. And it's a very weird place. Well – I think it ought to be on people's – well, it ought to be on people's lips. DMT stopped my fascination with UFOs because I was like – it stopped it, paused it, I should say. It paused it because I was like, no matter what a UFO looks like, it's not as crazy as what I just saw. Like, no matter what. Just an actual metal flying disc from another planet. I'd be like, yawn. Like, that's nothing.

2:49:43It's nothing compared to what exists in a few seconds. Yeah. And, well, would you say that you went to the same place? You went back there each time. Was it the same place? You tell me. You tell me. I don't know. I've done it differently. And I've done it differently with sound with Icaros, which is wild. That was wild. That was like dancing things. That was really fascinating when you realize like, oh, that's why the music is made the way it's made. Like the music is perfect for that. It's perfect for the psychedelic trip. I think it insight into music by seeing it. 100%. I think of music differently from that trip.

2:50:29And then, you know, I think I really want to explore kundalini yoga. I just have like put it off forever because I've had friends that have done DMT and also do kundalini yoga. And they'll tell you, dude, if you work hard enough, you can get to that place where you can get to that place with on the natch completely in your own mind without taking any drug at all. where you could full-on DMT trip. And the guy who told me this was very reliable and had experienced DMT, was also a jiu-jitsu black belt, like a solid guy. Like I believed him. And he's like, you can get there. Yeah, have you ever done or heard about that holotropic breath work?

2:51:10Yes. I've done that. I've done that. And it switched me into a very highly altered state. Very highly altered state. It felt like, you know, as long as we're talking drugs, It felt more like MDMA than it did DMT. I've had some moments before I had like a big show or something. I just really wanted to relax where I'll do deep breathing and stretching, just deep breathing and stretching. And you get high as fuck. It's just this weird natural high that happens. Like you alleviate tension in your body and your body rewards you for it with all this endorphin rush and dopamine. And you get so friendly and so sweet.

2:51:50You just want to hug everybody. You want everybody to be happy. It releases this, you're carrying around physical tension that manifests itself in the way you view the world. And you can get out of it on your own, which is nuts. Yeah, so how do you think, what do you think it means that that's built into our systems? I think we need physical activity. And I think we always have had physical activity. So it wasn't ever a thing where you had to mandate physical activity. it's like we had to to stay alive so because of that there's like the body functions in that way it's only strong if it's forced to work it only has a good immune system if it's exposed to a certain amount of different people and different bios it it's it's a it becomes just like a muscle does when it gets sedentary it atrophies and your body actually and so that's the problem with like the human civilization.

2:52:44We get into cities, everything becomes easier, you're sedentary most of the time, the body decays, and you're in a state where you're depressed all the time, you don't know why. Well, it's because your body doesn't, it's not designed to work like that. For tens of thousands of years, you had to be active, you had to be running around, you had to be carrying things, you had to be getting water, you had to be building things, you had to be hunting things and fishing, you had to be moving because you had to stay alive. And then all of a sudden you're not. And I think that's one of the great dilemmas of mental health in this country that's maybe dismissed by a lot of people.

2:53:19One of the great dilemmas is you're sedentary. I think there were some studies comparing Prozac way back when with a routine of physical exercise and exercises in antidepressant. So there's been recent ones with SSRIs that show that it's more effective, more effective than SSRIs. Because we're not supposed to be sedentary. And nobody wants to be told what to do. And nobody wants to feel bad. I get it. But you have to feel bad for yourself so you can feel better later. You just have to get coached. That's all it is. And don't resist it. Just embrace it. What about Ozepic, though? I don't think those things are bad in the right circumstances.

2:53:59I don't think if you're a guy and you need to lose 30 pounds, you get on that. Come on, man. You can do that. You can lose. I'll be your friend. I'll fucking help you. Like, just stop eating sugar. Stop eating bread. Get yourself on a workout schedule. You're going to say, I'm going to get on the fucking bike in the morning. I'm going to get on that stupid fucking, I'm going to do a Peloton workout every day for a month. You'll lose 20 pounds that month. You can do it. You just have to be focused. but if you're 500 pounds if you're if you're if you're morbidly obese if you're really addicted to food you've got a real problem i think it can help you get to a healthy path that's what i think it's really the best for if you can help people get to a healthy path where they stop overeating they can get it under control they get new patterns and then they start getting addicted to walking maybe get addicted to feeling better start being able to do things you couldn't do before there's like hundreds of pages of instagram people who during covid where they were obese wind up losing 100 200 pounds do you know who jelly roll is uh no but i've seen some uh you know some stories and pictures of people that were very very very heavy 800 pounds jelly roll is an amazing musician an incredible guy who like went to jail he's got face tattoos but he's the sweetest person that's ever lived he's lost like 200 pounds in the last year or so is it a year and a half two years he looks amazing yeah no ozempic no ozempic just doing it the right way exercising but i just think the problem there's always like some sort of a trade-off when it comes to what you do and don't do look at the size he used to be and look what he looks like now Isn't that insane?

2:55:44Yeah. Isn't that insane? Amazing. The sweetest fucking guy of all time, too. Yeah, you know, so you could lose that weight. Well, it's like depression and exercise. But also, he's a wealthy star. He has access to great food. He has a reason to believe his life is going to be better. He's got a great life already. Yeah, for most people. He's just enhancing himself. Yeah. I think for most people, like, actually developing a real exercise regimen would be way harder than just taking Prozac. Yes, but that's where a guy like that comes in play we go well he do it I could do it too. Like what do you what do you have to do?

2:56:18You just have to start slow keep moving don't stop get get a schedule put it together Make some progress note the progress get excited about progress keep going But if Ozempic helps you like fucking I'm for whatever helps you man You know I've had a friend that was very close to suicide before he got on SSRIs I'll never say there's no one should ever take SSRIs Because I don't know if he would have bounced back, but he did bounce back, and then he got himself off of them, and then he got healthy. And now he's great. And this is, you know, with a lot of medications. A lot of them are – there's real benefits for them, and I think Ozempic is one of those.

2:56:55I think if you're a morbidly obese person, one of the things that my friend Brigham Bueller, who is the CEO of Ways to Well, and Ways to Well is also a pharmacy. They're a compounding pharmacy, so they make some peptides. And he said you can make it so that it doesn't have all the negative effects by making it for the actual size of the person. So you give them the exact dose and combining peptides that's going to prevent bone loss and muscle loss. Like it's possible to healthily slow the process down, stop the overeating, get the inflammation in check, get the diet in check. But it's got to be done like systemically.

2:57:39And they want you to do it with like a certain amount of exercise per week. And they want you to eat vegetables and meat and just healthy stuff only. Throw out all the bullshit and let's try to get this train back on track. Yeah, it reminds me of that P.K. Dick story. Did you, what was it called? The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge. It's about competition between an interstellar psychedelic versus a terrestrial psychedelic, which company was going to be able to sell the psychedelic or the worldview of choice. you know the one that came from the earth got people into into Perky Patty's world where everybody was this big and they all lived in this house together and did stuff like when I went to the beach and had barbecues and things you know that was the terrestrial psychedelic that was competing against an interstellar psychedelic which was completely horrible it was weird It was like you never stopped tripping.

2:58:47Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. And that was gradually spreading. Oh, well, I think that's everybody's fear when they do something. Like, oh, my God, what if this never ends? What if this is my new reality? Like, oh, my God, I'm done. I'm dead. Yeah. I'm gone. It's always been this way. It will always be this way. Yeah, that was my worst trip ever. Right. And then for people with severe anxiety, some people just don't bounce back well from something like that. And that's why. Never advocate drugs to anybody. I never have. Yeah. I know you haven't. Yeah. Well, you didn't even want to admit that you did them when we first started talking.

2:59:20Right. You didn't even want to admit you smoked pot. Yeah, at this point, you know. But I think you thought back then, like, to be taken seriously as a researcher. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true. But I'm less of a researcher now, so I don't have that same kind of, you know, camouflage to wear. Yes. Well, I'm glad because without you, the understanding of what that experience is would be greatly diminished in popular culture. I don't think people would really understand what it is if it wasn't for that book. And I know you had to really stick your neck out to try to make something like that. Yeah. And it's bizarre because it is a thing.

2:59:57It's a real thing. And you should know about real things. You should know about real things that have probably been in human use for thousands and thousands of years and hidden from you by Nixon. Yeah, the thing I like so much about DMT is that it's endogenous. It's made in the brain. Yeah, yeah. Do you think it's what we're making when we're dreaming? It might be what we're making right now. Yeah, you know, that's one idea is that it regulates consensus reality by maintaining itself at a certain concentration in the brain. I buy that. But I buy a lot of things. It's the matrix. The endometrix.

3:00:38Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know about the matrix or this red laser and DMT? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell people about it because it's nuts. Yeah. I don't know much about it. You haven't done it? No. So apparently it's a red laser, and if you're tripping on DMT and you look down or below, so you can either look from below it, look up, or from above it, look down, right? Is that correct? I didn't know there was a directional component. I think it's a directional thing. I don't think if it's on the wall, you read it. I think you have to get above it and look down. Okay. I don't know. I haven't done it. But I think that's what they say, and if you do that, you see code.

3:01:16Code, yeah, like the matrix. Yeah. Yeah. Or Japanese. If there's anybody that should believe that life isn't real, it's me. Life isn't real? That it's not real. Like that maybe there is some sort of magical quality to this experience. Some sort of very difficult to grasp aspect of reality that we ignore. that's spiritual or mystical or there's something going on outside of just normal physical reality? Well, I think things wouldn't be this way otherwise because certain things are encouraged and certain things are discouraged. Yeah. And, you know, cause and effect goes a certain way. It's not neutral.

3:02:03Right. You know, it kind of pushes you in one direction. Mm-hmm. So who created cause and effect? What are cause and effects causes? Right. motivations. What are angels and demons? Where does evil come from? We know it's real. Where does good come from? We know it's real. Everybody wants to be so smart. They dismiss the idea of angels and demons. It's really fascinating. Because they're really just a word for it. An actual force that creates a damaging, terrifying, or wonderful, amazing effect. Good and evil. Right. Right? Angels and demons. The effect is real, and we both know that people are capable of either one.

3:02:50It's one of the reasons why we love people, though, is because we love great people because we know that there's terrible people. We love people that are warm and friendly and kind and sweet because we know that there's people out there that are self-serving and shitty and mean. You know? And we need one to appreciate the other. And that's what's so fucked up about being a person. Yeah. Well, in the text anyway, angels are intermediaries. You know, like God has no body, right? So how can God interact with the world? So the angels are the intermediaries. That makes sense. Yeah. Like DMT in a way is the most spiritual of the physical.

3:03:31What do you think about the people that try to connect UAPs with angels? I don't know. Have you ever had a UAP, UFO, alien experience? No, not really. What about you? No. I'm trying, bro. You're trying? How do you try? I'm trying. I get on the rooftop. I got a flashlight. No. I wish. Yeah, I wish I saw something. I wish I saw something that was like 100%. There's no way that's ours. Right. It'd be cool. Yeah, that's never happened. But I don't think they're all lying. I don't think that's the case I don't think they're all lying There's too many of them that tell a story that It just doesn't seem like bullshit.

3:04:16it as has whitley striber been on your show no he's an odd one because he's a fiction writer you know not that i don't believe him but when a guy writes fantastical fiction for a living and then has a fantastical fantastical fictional experience that actually happens to him that becomes his his thing it's like arsenio hall said things that make you go hmm i'm not saying that It didn't actually happen to him because his experience, it would be ironic if it did because then nobody would believe him because he writes fiction, right? But his experiences mirror a lot of the experiences from the John Mack book.

3:04:55You know, did you read that book, Abduction? Yeah, I knew John back in the day. I liked him. Very smart guy. Those stories, and that was back before the internet really where there was any social media or anything like that back then. Those stories were oddly uniform. Well, they were. And John Mack, the psychiatrist from Harvard or Cambridge, we talked about the similarities between his subjects reports and our DMT volunteers. years, he thought we had come across a technology that would make contact, at least the experience of contact, something that could be studied scientifically. Jeez. Someone should reignite that idea right now.

3:05:48I'm surprised DMT is not in the news more. Well, there was a study that they were doing in England, correct? Yeah, there's a couple groups. Where they were doing a long-term drip, not like yours? So yours was like one push. I think theirs was like a drip. Yeah, 30 minutes, 60 minutes. Something kooky like that, yeah. Yeah, and there's a group in Switzerland. John Dean at UC San Diego is going to start one. So there's at least three around the world. It's a real place that you can go to, and that's what's nuts. Yeah. For people that never experienced anything, and they're teetoddlers their whole life, it sounds crazy.

3:06:27I know it sounds crazy. Yeah. Well, you know, what do you think of the beings? Do you think the beings are outside of us? Do you think they're disembodied souls or do you think they're inside us all the time? Well, if they're inside us all the time, then we're everything. Then inside of us is just somehow connected to everything. We're not individuals at all. We are everything. All of us are everything. If they are inside of us and they may be inside of us. It might be the idea of a physical boundary is just nonsense. Who gives a fuck where it's from? It's all everywhere all the time. You just don't have access to it right now.

3:07:04You don't have access to it in your default state because your default fundamental state is a primate. But it's in there, and occasionally you have access to it. You have access to it near-death experiences. You have access to it holotropic breathing. But if you had access to it all the time, you wouldn't be able to exist in this barbaric state that you live in. Well, I think it has to do with the dose. I mean, if it's really high, if the levels are really high in the brain and the mind. Yeah. You know, this could be just a DMT simulation. I'm not the first. Right. Yeah. It could be. In which case there still is cause and effect.

3:07:44Well, just imagine a world where this wasn't reality, but then you got to experience this. It would be completely psychedelic. it'd be like what is this fucking crazy world it'd be different yeah it's the 3d and the shadow people just do you know how weird it is sometimes if you just stand on a corner and watch people just walking and looking at their phones um yeah well people have been kidnapped and they don't even know it yeah there's a lot of that here it's everywhere yeah everywhere uh well i moved back to albuquerque last year oh yeah yeah 14 years in gallup was plenty yes so it's cool better civilization i do nice yeah we have a front lawn and a back lawn there you go yeah yeah albuquerque is home to some of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters ever yeah john jones lives in albuquerque right greatest of all time yeah shout out to albuquerque jackson winkle john in the house yeah i love new mexico that's great well it's a crazy state with a rich history and beautiful landscape oh my god i have a friend who uh just got back from elk hunting there he was raving about how gorgeous it was out there uh the sky is great we have a pretty cool governor before um before she was governor she was the secretary of health oh cool you know during during covet but she knows public health.

3:09:07And she's a nice lady. You like her? Yeah. Beautiful. Thanks for being here, man. It was a lot of fun. It always is. It's always great to see you. It's been great to be your friend all these years. Oh, yes, man. It's great to see you healthy. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, same. You look pretty wonderfully yourself. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Is my DMT in the Solar Prophets? Yeah, it's right here. There it is, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty old. Hold that sucker up. People can buy it. It came out in 2014. Yeah. It's, you know, what's the soul prophecy? Is it the visions or is it the message? So, and then there's the other books that are available.

3:09:48DMT, The Spirit Molecule, which is what got me into you in the first place. What a great cover, too, that Alex Gray artwork. Well, you know, his artwork is on the second book, too. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, that's Alex Gray as well. He's amazing. I mean that guy there's no one ever has captured the DMT state quite like him yeah you know he's pretty good and it's just beautiful work and that crazy chapel of sacred mirrors that he has now yeah the 3D printed like chapel do you have any do you have any of his original art no no I've got the spirit molecule oh it's so cool that's awesome it's in the hallway he's been a sweet guy though I've talked to him a few times alright thank you very much thanks for being here we really appreciate you goodbye everybody

From the publisher

Rick Strassman, MD, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is 2024's "My Altered States: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth."www.rickstrassman.com

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