0:15

Okay, kids.

0:29

This is a good one. This

0:31

is Adam Aronovich. He

0:34

is a fascinating

0:36

guy. And it's

0:38

definitely one of those situations

0:40

where I invited him on

0:42

the podcast thinking he was

0:44

something. And then

0:47

as I started looking into him after

0:49

he accepted and I was like,

0:51

okay, better. Look into this

0:53

guy a little bit. I

0:55

realized he's way more

0:57

than I initially

1:00

thought. So, yeah,

1:02

this has been a journey

1:04

of learning for me. It's been

1:06

really awesome to have this

1:08

conversation and to read some of

1:10

his writing. I mean, what

1:12

happened was I came across this

1:15

account on Instagram called Healing From

1:17

Healing. And you

1:19

may follow the account. You may know

1:21

what I'm talking about because it's a

1:23

very well known account. I

1:25

don't know how many followers,

1:27

uh, 82 ,000 followers.

1:29

So it's pretty, uh, pretty

1:32

well known. And it

1:34

basically, this account takes the

1:36

piss out of the new

1:38

age movement, the healing

1:41

and transformation culture, right? And.

1:44

It does it really well. It's

1:46

fucking funny. It's really funny.

1:49

Um, so I just, that's what

1:51

I knew. Like people were,

1:53

were forwarding me this stuff of,

1:55

you know, instant shamans coming

1:58

back from Peru, full of

2:00

nonsense, fake

2:02

wisdom. And, and, um,

2:04

you know, obviously it's ripe

2:06

for satire. So. I

2:10

reached out to the guy behind it

2:12

and said, Hey, would you like to

2:14

come on my podcast? I'd love to

2:16

talk about this, you know, the use

2:18

of humor to puncture the sacred

2:20

hot air balloon of

2:23

this particular subculture. And,

2:26

um, he accepted and, but it was,

2:28

I don't know, we went back and

2:30

forth for a couple of months with

2:32

scheduling issues. And then, um, and

2:34

then he, published something

2:37

on Substack, which

2:40

I read, which

2:42

it was a retrospective

2:44

look three years later, or

2:46

a little bit of

2:48

context. And this was

2:51

when I first realized,

2:53

oh, this dude is

2:55

deep. There's a lot

2:57

going on with this guy. He's

2:59

not just

3:02

some snarky cynic.

3:04

making fun of shit. This

3:07

guy led ayahuasca

3:10

retreats in the Amazon for, I think

3:12

he said, four years. He

3:14

was like a burner.

3:17

He is in

3:19

the final days or

3:21

weeks of finishing

3:24

a PhD in

3:26

Spain, actually, where

3:28

he's studying at

3:30

Medical Anthropology Research

3:32

Center. Um, he's a

3:34

super smart guy. He's lived, uh, I

3:36

think he was born in Mexico.

3:38

He's lived in various parts of the

3:40

world and lives in Spain now. Um,

3:44

he's been around and he, he and

3:46

I know a lot of the same

3:48

people, Rick Doblin and, you know, I

3:51

don't know if he knows Andrew Weil,

3:53

but, um, you know,

3:55

our worlds have

3:57

definitely overlapped. He's.

3:59

much younger than me, obviously. I

4:01

think he's in his early

4:03

30s maybe. But yeah, we

4:06

know a lot of the same people.

4:08

We even have some friends in Spain

4:10

that we talked about. But

4:12

anyway, that's when I realized, like, oh,

4:14

this guy's coming at this from inside.

4:16

He knows what he's talking about. He

4:18

knows what he's making fun of. And

4:21

in fact, as I

4:23

got to know him in this

4:25

conversation, I realized that His

4:27

his Instagram account

4:29

is called healing from

4:32

healing as I

4:34

think I mentioned and

4:36

It came to

4:38

me that he is

4:41

healing from healing

4:43

he himself is sort

4:45

of coming to

4:48

the other side of

4:50

this process of

4:52

perhaps overestimating or misunderstanding

4:55

or having

4:57

trouble navigating some

4:59

of the very

5:01

powerful psychological

5:03

intellectual challenges that

5:06

can come up

5:08

when one ventures

5:10

into this

5:12

world of. Not

5:15

knowing what's real and

5:17

you know being completely convinced

5:19

as many people in

5:21

that world are that we

5:23

generate reality that there

5:25

is no external reality that

5:27

you know. the

5:30

ego inflation that can come

5:32

with having insights that you think

5:34

no one else has ever

5:36

had and suddenly you're smarter than

5:38

everyone else and you see

5:40

things other people miss and you

5:42

know that that is a

5:44

very common side effect of the

5:46

use of psychedelics. I'm not

5:49

saying Adam had those particular issues

5:51

but these are issues that

5:53

I think a lot of people

5:55

run into. I definitely ran

5:57

into in

5:59

my sojourn into the

6:01

world of psychedelia. Yeah,

6:05

I basically thought

6:07

like if you weren't

6:09

tripping, you were

6:11

missing a lot of

6:14

the point of

6:16

being alive. And

6:18

it took me some

6:20

time to regain a

6:22

sense of humility and

6:24

understand that there are

6:27

many paths to the top of

6:29

the mountain, you know, and

6:31

that tripping and psychedelics are not,

6:33

in fact, even a

6:36

path to the mountain. What they are

6:38

is like a telescope that allows

6:40

you to, you know, look through the

6:42

telescope and see the top of

6:44

the mountain. But you're

6:46

not there. You're

6:48

you're still down in the valley. You're

6:50

just looking up there and now maybe

6:52

you've got a better sense of what

6:54

the top of the mountains like Then

6:56

the average valley dweller But the problem

6:59

is that a lot of people go

7:01

through this experience of looking through the

7:03

telescope and say I have been to

7:05

the top of the mountain. Let me

7:07

tell you what I saw and Sorry,

7:09

dude. You weren't on the top of

7:11

the mountain. You just got a glimpse

7:14

of it That's a very

7:16

different thing. It takes a lifetime to

7:18

get up that mountain. Or

7:20

it takes experiences that

7:22

are every bit as profound

7:24

as drop in acid

7:26

or eating a handful of

7:29

mushrooms or more profound

7:31

because they change your life

7:33

forever. Having a

7:35

child falling in love,

7:38

having people close to you die,

7:41

transforming your life in

7:43

any of of

7:46

dozens of ways

7:48

that rock your sense

7:50

of reality that

7:53

that's just as profound

7:55

if not more

7:57

so than the stuff

7:59

I was doing

8:02

in my early 20s

8:04

that convinced me

8:06

briefly that I had

8:08

seen the light. Anyway, I'm

8:10

veering off course here. This is

8:12

about Adam. He's a really interesting

8:14

guy, super intelligent. And

8:16

I hope you enjoy this conversation. It

8:18

goes all over the place. I mean, we

8:21

talk a lot about these issues, right?

8:23

Like, how do

8:25

you, how

8:27

do you access

8:29

what is

8:31

truly magical and

8:33

healing and

8:35

incredibly potentially transformative

8:40

about psychedelics.

8:42

How do

8:44

we access

8:46

that without

8:49

turning it

8:51

into another

8:53

fucking monetized

8:55

standardized, you

8:58

know, mass

9:00

produced, just cheap

9:02

and industrial. experience,

9:06

which is what we

9:08

Americans tend to do with

9:10

fucking everything. How

9:13

do we

9:15

preserve what

9:17

is sacred

9:19

in this

9:21

incredibly sacred

9:23

experience substance?

9:27

How do we do that? I

9:30

don't know the answer, but

9:32

Adam's a very Very

9:35

smart guy and very

9:37

well -versed in these

9:39

areas. So we did

9:41

we talked about that

9:43

quite a bit we

9:45

talked about Spain we

9:48

talked about Surrealism Luis

9:50

Manuel and Salvador Dali

9:52

and the sort of

9:54

The I don't know

9:56

the sort of artistic

9:58

and cultural moments when sort

10:03

of conventional reality

10:05

is exposed as

10:07

being a joke.

10:09

It's not real.

10:12

It's ridiculous. And

10:14

I feel like there

10:16

are cycles in history where

10:18

people, generally artists or

10:20

philosophers come to this conclusion

10:22

of like, wait a

10:24

minute, this is all bullshit.

10:27

This is all imaginary.

10:29

This is all made up.

10:31

and we can step out

10:34

of it into another reality.

10:36

I feel like that's kind

10:38

of what's happening right now,

10:40

whether it's in a positive

10:43

sense with people having experiences

10:45

with psychedelics or other transformative

10:47

experiences. And questioning

10:49

the sort of foundational assumptions of,

10:51

you know, whatever of the way

10:53

a relationship has to look or

10:55

the way a career has to

10:57

look or the way, you know,

11:00

your house has to be built

11:02

or, you know, all this sort

11:04

of it opens up. When,

11:08

when the conventional structures fall

11:10

down, it opens up the

11:12

opportunity for unconventional structures to

11:14

come in and dynamics and

11:16

relationships and energy. And that's

11:18

a beautiful thing, but it's

11:20

also a traumatic thing by

11:22

definition. It is traumatic when

11:24

the old shit is falling

11:26

apart and, um, and

11:28

that's definitely where we are.

11:30

So I appreciate Adam's time and

11:32

I hope you will check

11:34

out his. Um, accounts

11:37

on Instagram, healing from healing

11:39

and his substack, which goes

11:41

under the same name, healing

11:43

from healing on substack. All

11:46

right. I guess that's about

11:48

it. This is another motherfucking

11:50

commercial free episode. I hope

11:52

you noticed that. I hope

11:55

you noticed that there's nobody

11:57

saying, man, I

11:59

was listening to Malcolm

12:01

Gladwell's podcast earlier. Um,

12:05

revisionist history, it's called. And

12:07

I was outside doing yard

12:09

work and I had gloves

12:11

on and man, every fucking,

12:13

like it seemed like every

12:15

10 minutes, it lapses into

12:17

ads. And it's

12:19

just like, I'm not going

12:21

to, I'm not going to go through it

12:23

again. But I guess the point is, you

12:25

know, I'm not, I'm not like, this isn't

12:28

virtue signaling. This isn't like, oh, look at

12:30

me. I'm so wonderful. I don't put ads.

12:32

This is saying, I fucking hate ads. precisely

12:34

because they insist

12:37

on this bullshit understanding

12:39

of reality, right?

12:41

They pull you out

12:43

of some deep,

12:46

interesting conversation and they're

12:48

pushing some fucking

12:50

lie at you and

12:52

you're supposed, because

12:55

of its proximity to

12:57

the deep conversation,

12:59

because of its proximity

13:02

to Malcolm Gladwell, who's a smart,

13:04

you know, potentially

13:06

trustworthy source of information. Now

13:09

this ad pops up and

13:11

I'm supposed to take this seriously

13:13

too, right? Because my mind

13:15

is configured in a trusting way.

13:19

You know, it says evil

13:21

is, you know, I'm

13:23

sure they're going to do

13:26

this too, by the way.

13:28

I'm sure this is just

13:30

around the corner. Some AI

13:32

advertising takes a child's mother

13:34

samples a child's mother's voice

13:36

and the child sitting there

13:39

looking at an iPad or

13:41

something watching some cartoon and

13:43

then the mother's voice comes

13:45

through and says hey Bobby

13:47

you really want chocolate sugar

13:49

pops don't you yeah chocolate

13:52

sugar pops are the best

13:54

coming from this kid's mother's

13:56

voice. That's what they're going

13:58

to do. If they could,

14:00

they would and they can

14:02

very soon if they're not

14:05

already. Somebody's

14:07

listening to me right now and going,

14:09

that's a great idea, Chris. I'm

14:11

going to take that to the office on Monday

14:13

morning. Fuck.

14:17

Anyway, so yeah, I don't do

14:19

ads. I

14:23

don't know. kind of

14:25

as a service to you,

14:27

but honestly, I don't do

14:29

them because I feel like

14:31

my dignity would be

14:33

in play. What

14:35

is dignity? Does dignity

14:37

matter anymore? Does anyone give a shit

14:40

about dignity or is that some, is

14:42

that like bow ties

14:45

or, you know, Bolo's or

14:47

is it out of

14:49

fashion? Is it absurd? Right

14:51

now, when you heard me say something

14:54

about my dignity, did you feel embarrassed for

14:56

me? Anyway,

15:01

thank you for listening to this podcast.

15:03

I really appreciate it. And if you

15:05

have five bucks a month to chip

15:07

in to keep it rolling, I appreciate

15:09

it even more. And

15:11

those of you who are

15:13

not paying subscribers, This

15:15

episode is not behind a paywall. A lot

15:18

of shit I put out is behind a paywall.

15:20

But if you can't afford that and you

15:22

still want it, all you gotta do is tell

15:24

me. It's not

15:26

even a paywall. It's

15:28

a rickety ass

15:30

fence that's fallen down

15:32

that has a

15:34

swing and gate that

15:36

goes... Late

15:38

at night, anybody can walk through

15:41

it. All you got to do

15:43

is say, Chris, let me in.

15:45

Here's my email that I use

15:47

on Substack. And I will give

15:49

you a pass to step right

15:51

through that way. RicketyGate. All

15:53

right, I'm going to play you

15:55

into this episode with a song that

15:57

a listener sent in. Kyle

16:01

Crew. The song is

16:03

called Infinite Games. And

16:06

he gave me his

16:08

explicit permission to play it

16:10

on the podcast. By

16:12

the way, I took the

16:14

podcast off Spotify because

16:16

Spotify flagged every fucking time

16:18

I use music on

16:20

the podcast, whether it's copyrighted

16:22

or not, they flagged

16:24

it. And it's just a pain

16:26

in the ass. So I don't, and

16:28

fuck Spotify. Fuck them. They're

16:31

not giving me any money. So

16:33

I'm sorry for those of

16:35

you who were listening on Spotify

16:37

and had to find another

16:39

way to listen when I pulled

16:41

it, but I just really

16:44

despise that company and everything they

16:46

stand for. Anyway,

16:48

Kyle sent

16:50

a really

16:52

nice email

16:54

and yeah.

16:57

He's been listening to the podcast for a while. And

17:00

anyway, here are the lyrics, or at

17:02

least some of them. Anchored

17:04

in and I cannot lose

17:06

again. Seeing red, playing dead, stale

17:09

beer, I breathe it in. Clout

17:12

chasing, I suggest you

17:14

look within. Snake skin, lying

17:16

in. You don't have to make

17:18

your point again. Lines

17:20

are straightening. This is an

17:22

awakening. Your attitude's disabling. Maybe

17:25

I'm mistaken and thinking it

17:27

had resolved itself, shrinking of

17:29

the Commonwealth, clinking of

17:31

the empty shelves. Once

17:33

was known, now is felt. What

17:36

kind of creature am I? I've got

17:38

to figure it out. Anyway,

17:40

that's the beginning of

17:42

this song. Infinite Games.

17:45

They're on Bandcamp. The band

17:48

is called Consumables. If

17:50

you like this song, please follow

17:52

them on Instagram, consumables

17:54

.bk, and

17:57

they're at

17:59

consumables .bandcamp.com. All

18:02

right, thanks for listening.

18:04

I'll be back with you

18:07

soon. I don't know

18:09

how soon, but pretty goddamn soon.

18:11

I hope you're doing well and

18:13

I hope you're riding out this

18:15

storm in style. Make

18:41

a dent, knock a

18:43

knife, lose a kiss, seein'

18:45

red, playin' dance, day -old

18:47

beer, I breathe it in,

18:49

loud chasin', I suggest you

18:52

look with it. Snake skin,

18:54

lyin' in you, how to

18:56

make your point again. Lines

18:58

are straightening, this is unawaresomable.

19:00

Waking in, attitudes disabling, maybe

19:02

I'm mistaken in, thinking it

19:04

was all himself, drinking of

19:07

the world. lakin' of the

19:09

empty shelves, wounds were stoned

19:11

down as well. What

19:16

kind of creature am I?

19:18

I've got to figure it

19:20

out. What

19:24

kind of creature am I?

19:26

I've got to figure it

19:28

out. Ill -equipped, lockin'

19:30

up a mate, I

19:32

lift new words, now

19:34

emerge, write another manuscript,

19:36

recommit. Thinkin' of

19:38

the big picture, escape from

19:41

the circular, my doubts

19:43

are all reassured. Belting from

19:45

the mountain top, belting

19:47

of the permafrost, hain' of

19:49

a tulip sock, truth

19:51

is in the paradigm. Deviating

19:53

from the script, extinguishing

19:55

the dissonance, playin' a new

19:57

instrument, no boundaries, I'm

19:59

infinite. What

20:03

a flying creature am I?

20:05

I've got to figure it

20:07

out What

20:11

a flying creature am I?

20:13

I've got to figure it out

20:15

Caught again between the sword

20:17

and the hand Seeing the size,

20:19

I see its shape, I

20:22

see I see its color, a

20:24

distant friend Getting

20:26

caught in the bend

20:28

Grace, a lover's face

20:30

I'll cover no regret

20:33

To repeat and dissect Seeing

20:35

the size, I see its

20:37

shape, I see I see

20:39

its color, a secret care

20:42

In your old dialect What

20:50

a flying creature am I?

20:52

I've got to figure it

20:55

out What

20:59

creature am I? I've got

21:01

to figure it out I

21:22

feel limitless

21:24

This is what

21:26

freedom is I

21:30

feel limitless

21:32

This is what

21:34

freedom is I

21:38

feel limitless

21:40

This is what

21:42

freedom is I

21:46

feel limitless

21:48

This is what

21:50

freedom is This

21:57

is what freedom is.

23:12

All right. I'm here with Adam. Thank

23:14

you for doing this, Adam. Yeah,

23:16

my pleasure. Thank you for having me. So

23:19

So I have been following

23:21

you for I don't know

23:23

how long you've been posting

23:25

the account healing from healing

23:27

on Instagram, but I

23:29

initially sure like most people someone

23:31

forwarded me something that was really

23:33

funny. And then I

23:35

started to realize this isn't

23:37

just funny. There's something deeper

23:39

happening here. This is parody

23:41

with the political intent with

23:43

a lot of intelligence behind

23:45

it. And then I read

23:47

your sub stack post, which

23:50

you just started a sub stack

23:52

page also called healing from healing.

23:55

And that really fleshed it out for

23:58

me and a lot of the

24:00

things that I was assuming about the

24:02

intelligence behind this project, you articulated

24:04

in that first post that you made,

24:06

which was fantastic, by the way. And

24:09

that's what really made me want

24:11

to talk to you because I

24:13

feel like there's some, if I

24:15

think of the greatest political thinkers

24:17

of the last 50 years, the

24:20

people I think of first are comedians. You

24:24

know, so anyway, how did

24:26

this start? What's what's going on?

24:28

Where where are you from?

24:30

And where did this come from?

24:33

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank

24:35

you for saying that. And, you know, just to note

24:37

on what you said about comedians, my favorite book. of

24:40

all time, probably, is

24:43

candid by Voltaire. And

24:46

one of the main reasons why I

24:48

like that book so much is because it's

24:50

precisely what you just described. I

24:52

mean, it's a deeply funny

24:54

comedy that has a very political

24:56

message. Well, and metaphysical, too. Even

24:59

though, you know, it's from a different time or

25:01

different era, but I think it's still very relevant.

25:05

But yeah, I mean, for me, I

25:07

was born in Mexico City. And

25:10

I grew up in many places

25:12

around the world. There's

25:15

a third culture kids.

25:17

I'm probably four or

25:19

five cultures already. But

25:23

yeah, I guess since

25:25

my early 20s, more or

25:27

less, I started really getting interested

25:29

in the mind. The

25:32

depths of consciousness, what does it

25:34

mean? and so on and so forth.

25:36

Like many other people, I guess,

25:38

in our circles, the first thing that

25:40

launched me into that inquiry were

25:42

psychedelic drugs or psychedelic substances, which

25:44

were kind of like that doorway

25:46

into wow, like there's something much

25:48

deeper to the human experience and

25:50

what I what I have been

25:53

told. And, you know,

25:55

taking it taking it from there,

25:57

then I got into psychology, I

25:59

did my my undergrad in psychology

26:01

and cognitive science. I

26:03

went back to school afterwards

26:05

for my for my graduate work

26:07

in medical anthropology, looking at

26:09

similar things. You know, but

26:11

in between in between the self experimentation

26:13

and the academic interest in a lot

26:15

of these things, I was also trying

26:17

to figure out the cultural aspects, you

26:19

know, like, I mean, we come from

26:21

a culture where I mean, now it's

26:23

very different, I guess. you

26:26

share this in a comment in the sub -stock,

26:28

right? Like, back in the day, I mean,

26:30

you're a little bit older than I am, but

26:32

we share in common that, I guess, when

26:34

we first started getting into psychedelia and all the

26:36

different things, the

26:38

cultural climate around that was very different than

26:41

what it is today. It wasn't emissive

26:43

or positive or even, I mean, nowadays there's

26:45

a lot of hype around it. I

26:47

think things are changing as well now. I

26:49

mean, it's kind of like a little

26:51

bit of a pushback. or the pendulum is

26:53

swinging a little bit in the other

26:55

direction, but overall there's a lot of hype

26:57

and it's become normalized and it's become

26:59

kind of like a thing that people know

27:01

and it's not as front upon. But

27:05

you know, I kind of, I

27:07

wanted to get, I was very interested

27:09

in the cultural framings of what

27:11

psychedelic substances could be, not necessarily in

27:13

a disenchanted culture where things are

27:15

criminalized, but rather when it's

27:17

rooted in tradition, when it's rooted

27:19

in lineage, when it's rooted in

27:21

an actual way of doing things

27:23

and knowing things that are enveloped

27:25

by community, that are enveloped by

27:27

society, that are enveloped by a

27:29

deeper understanding of the interdependent relationship

27:31

between the person and the environment

27:34

and so on. So I kind

27:36

of like naturally gravitated towards spending

27:38

time in places like Mexico, in

27:40

places like Peru, places like

27:42

India where I just kind

27:44

of get deeper into figuring out

27:46

the different systems, medical systems,

27:48

spiritual systems, not only

27:50

the shamanic ones or

27:52

the ones where people still

27:54

kind of like learn

27:56

shamanic techniques or you know

27:58

ways of getting into

28:00

those non -ordinary states. Not

28:03

only for the self -experimentation, but really

28:05

just to kind of understand the context

28:08

of it. Nowadays in psychedelic

28:10

culture, I mean, not nowadays. In psychedelic culture, we

28:12

kind of know a lot about the set

28:14

and setting, kind of like the setting,

28:16

which is the context in which the experience happens.

28:18

But the setting, of course, goes much deeper than

28:20

just the immediate room that I mean, or the

28:22

facilitation. You know, I'm

28:24

talking about like really the developing

28:26

culture, the metaphysics of the particular

28:28

culture, the ontological substrate

28:30

from which the medical system emerges

28:32

and so on and so forth. So

28:35

I guess for the last 20 years

28:37

or so, I mean, that's gonna be

28:39

my main interest, both personally, both so

28:42

academically, learning more

28:44

about the cultural aspects

28:46

of all the different

28:48

spiritual and medical technologies

28:50

that we... in the

28:53

country culture. So

28:55

okay you said a lot there that

28:57

that I really resonate with and you know

28:59

I feel like if you and I

29:01

sat down for a couple of hours over

29:03

a beer some night we would find

29:05

that we probably have 30 or 40 people

29:07

that we both know. I

29:11

taught medical anthropology

29:13

in Spain, for

29:15

example. I studied

29:18

shamanism in graduate school. I've

29:20

been to Varanasi. Andrew

29:23

Weil is a friend of

29:25

mine. Wade Davis,

29:27

like all this world,

29:29

this sort of

29:31

intellectual, psychedelic, psychology, anthropology,

29:34

overlapping worlds, that's where

29:36

I've been my whole adult

29:38

life. I

29:44

taught medical anthropology at

29:46

medical school in Barcelona.

29:49

Right now I'm finishing my

29:51

doctoral thesis in medical anthropology

29:53

in Barcelona. I was thinking

29:55

about that while you were

29:57

talking because you were talking

29:59

about the difference between psychedelics

30:01

used in a cultural context

30:03

with tradition, with

30:06

like an enveloping community

30:08

in those sorts

30:10

of factors. And

30:12

it makes me think, is

30:14

that even possible for us? Because

30:16

we're not from that community.

30:19

So the best that we could

30:21

possibly do is what? Fly

30:23

down to Manaus and hike into

30:25

the jungle and find a

30:27

community and learn to speak their

30:29

language. How can

30:32

we experience the

30:34

psychedelic experience, the

30:36

psychedelic initiation even

30:38

within that kind of cultural

30:40

context if we're not from

30:42

that. That's

30:44

a great question. I

30:47

think in a very fundamental

30:49

way, I think we need

30:51

better stories to tell about what psychedelics are and

30:53

what they can be for and how they can

30:56

be used. I

30:58

think we need to create

31:00

our own containers in ways

31:02

that are suited to the

31:05

kind of minds and the kinds

31:07

of cultures that we come from.

31:10

I think the idea of flying to

31:12

the, I mean, and I say

31:14

this as somebody who worked for four

31:16

years in a retreat center in

31:18

the Amazon rainforest. I mean, I facilitated

31:20

the Alaska workshops for a very

31:22

long time. I met hundreds of people

31:24

who precisely had that idea, right?

31:26

Of like doing psychedelics in the original

31:28

context. I mean, the original context

31:30

is also a misnomer because a retreat

31:32

center will never provide something that

31:34

is authentic in any way possible. I

31:36

write about this in my thesis

31:38

a lot, but that authenticity, that container

31:40

is something that is needed. But

31:43

even that approach of flying

31:45

somewhere else in somebody else's culture

31:47

is very insufficient, whether it's

31:49

a retreat center or even somebody

31:51

who just goes off on

31:53

their own for a couple of

31:55

months to diet with a

31:57

Shippewa family or a GoFan community

31:59

in Colombia and so on. It's

32:02

not really going to be sufficient.

32:04

I think if we really want

32:06

to provide the right container and

32:08

tell the right stories, it's something

32:10

that we have to recreate in

32:12

ways that are... I think there

32:14

has been an idea for a

32:16

very long time, at least with

32:18

the people that I've been sharing

32:20

space in the psychedelic world. that

32:23

psychedelics kind of have their own

32:25

mind, right, or they have their own

32:27

consciousness, or they have their own

32:29

intentionality and agency. I mean, some of

32:31

these things are very tricky to

32:33

talk about when it comes to, let's

32:36

say, for example, plant medicines, right,

32:38

like mushrooms, psilocybin, ayahuasca, like oftentimes there

32:40

is a very strong and emistic

32:42

component to those experiences where it's not

32:44

just the person taking something and

32:46

then having some sort of internal experience,

32:48

but rather sometimes it can feel

32:50

very much as a communication or interaction

32:52

with something else that is outside

32:54

of ourselves. something that is spirited, intentional,

32:56

intelligent, embodied, and so on.

32:59

And I think if we do listen

33:01

to indigenous cultures, that's pretty much also

33:03

what they're telling us. It's not just

33:05

you taking a mushroom. It's like you

33:07

being in relationship with a mushroom or

33:09

some sort of intelligence or some sort

33:12

of voice that's communicating something very important

33:14

to you from the world at large. So

33:17

I think we kind of

33:19

have to find the balance

33:21

between between adapting the

33:23

right support systems or the right containers

33:26

where we can tell the right

33:28

stories about what these things are. I

33:30

think currently, for the most part, you

33:32

know, if you look at the, this

33:34

is one of the main things that I

33:36

talk about in my page. It's precisely

33:38

something that I came to term as healing

33:41

culture. And healing culture is

33:43

kind of like this hyper object, we

33:45

can say, there's this intersection between

33:47

all sorts of different influences that have

33:49

converged into creating this overarching culture

33:51

that includes both, you know, kind of

33:53

like New Age spirituality, shamanism,

33:56

Burning Man culture in some ways, therapy

33:59

culture, right, like hyper -psychologized

34:01

therapy culture, American

34:03

libertarianism, the political influence

34:05

of Silicon Valley

34:07

and technology, all of

34:09

these things kind of converge into

34:12

a culture that emerges and then

34:14

that's what people have as a

34:16

guiding narrative. the stories that culture

34:18

tells are the stories that people

34:20

go with into their experiences. Well,

34:22

that brings me to another point

34:24

I wanted to get at with

34:27

you. Why are they converging? Because

34:29

when you and I started

34:32

in this world, there was

34:34

no fucking convergence between government

34:36

and psychedelics, right? I mean,

34:39

they were They were divergent. They were, you

34:41

know, you would go to prison for

34:43

20 years if you were caught walking around

34:45

with a hundred hits of acid in

34:47

your pocket. And now I

34:49

don't know what the laws are now.

34:51

I mean, are people still getting arrested

34:54

for psychedelics? I don't know. But it

34:56

certainly feels like what you just

34:58

said, the economic power of Silicon Valley,

35:00

which I know there's a history Silicon

35:02

Valley in some ways can be said

35:04

to be to have come out of

35:06

the psychedelic culture of the 60s

35:08

and 70s. Steve Jobs and all that. But

35:12

it's confusing

35:14

to me. When

35:17

I was taking notes for this conversation, one

35:19

of the questions I wrote down here is, has

35:22

the establishment

35:24

so successfully co

35:26

-opted the energy

35:28

of alternative

35:30

culture, the counterculture,

35:33

that the counterculture is

35:35

now subsumed within? mainstream

35:38

culture. Well, I

35:40

mean, Rick Dublin, the head of

35:42

maps explicitly shares this in his

35:44

talks, right? Like one of the

35:46

one of the main talking points

35:48

of maps has been to take

35:50

psychedelic drugs from the counterculture to

35:52

main culture. Like Rick

35:54

Dublin explicitly has gone through this

35:56

process of rebranding psychedelics from

35:58

countercultural dangerous tools towards, you know,

36:01

stuff that can be used. by

36:03

everybody. This part of

36:05

the, to kind of remove the stigma

36:08

and rebrand psychedelics as, you know,

36:10

this is not just some hippies on the

36:12

underground, but it's actually, you know,

36:14

I mean, one of the most important, I

36:16

guess, approaches that maps has taken in

36:18

the last decade or so to do that

36:20

has been to first and foremost, like

36:22

start first with the veterans, right?

36:24

Because then we're showing the establishment, like,

36:26

hey, this is like actually a tool that

36:28

is going to help. the establishment, the

36:30

veterans, the people that have been through the

36:32

system that are, you know, deeply embedded

36:34

in it, like it's not just at the

36:36

margins of society. This is the the

36:39

mainstream of society. Right. And

36:41

then you have the whole micro

36:43

dosing culture, right? I get every

36:45

day I get a fucking pitch

36:47

from some agent wanting to send

36:50

somebody to my podcast who's using

36:52

micro dosing to increase your productivity.

36:54

And, you know, it's like, you

36:56

can be a better fucking employee.

36:58

But isn't there something, and

37:01

this gets into the animistic

37:03

or the sense of agency

37:05

that you were talking about

37:07

in plant medicines. I've always

37:09

felt that psychedelics are inherently

37:11

subversive. Yes, right like you

37:13

said in the beginning you

37:15

said through the door of

37:18

psychedelics You start to see

37:20

the world isn't as it

37:22

appears that there's much more

37:24

going on than we think

37:26

that sort of message is

37:28

inherently subversive, right? Yes, so

37:30

how the fuck do they

37:32

take this and turn it

37:34

into something? But

37:37

it's like they've drained the

37:39

subversiveness from it somehow And

37:42

now it's become a more

37:44

productive employee. How the fuck does

37:46

that happen? Well, I

37:48

mean, nowadays we have some cultures of

37:50

neo -nases that are, you know, doing LSD

37:52

and are using LSD to prop up

37:54

their fascist ideologies. And this is what

37:56

I meant before when I said that

37:59

we need better stories, right? I mean,

38:01

I think a lot of people still

38:03

have this idea very much ingrained, like

38:05

you and I, that psychedelics have to

38:07

be inherently subversive. They have to be

38:09

inherently leading people towards... certain politics or

38:12

certain certain understandings of how the world

38:14

works. And I think now as we

38:16

have enough evidence to know that this

38:18

is not true. And actually, psychedelic experiences

38:20

can be very easily hijacked. And the

38:22

psychedelic experience can be easily manipulated to

38:24

draw people towards any kind of ideology

38:27

or any kind. I mean, this is

38:29

how cults oftentimes operate, right? Like there's

38:31

a lot of cults that have had

38:33

this as a major cornerstone of the

38:35

indoctrination process. Let's give people drugs. And

38:37

in that heightened suggestibility

38:40

and that heightened,

38:42

you know, destruction of

38:44

structure, we can then insert

38:46

our own structure, whatever that is.

38:49

And, you know, when I say,

38:51

you think there's nothing inherently, there's

38:54

nothing inherent in

38:57

psychedelics that favors appreciation

39:00

of beauty and peace and

39:02

pleasure and unity and being at

39:04

one with the universe and

39:06

all that stuff. You think that's

39:08

just a cultural overlay that

39:10

happened in the 60s? I

39:13

don't have a definite

39:15

answer to that. My personal

39:17

experience does suggest that

39:19

there's something there's something that

39:21

psychedelics do that orient a person towards

39:23

beauty and towards truth and towards all

39:25

of those things. I think many of

39:27

us still hold on to the hope

39:29

that that's true, but I

39:31

think even if that were true

39:34

and there is some sort

39:36

of degree through which psychedelics orient

39:38

towards that, Still, I think that

39:40

that can be very easily manipulated

39:42

and hijacked to any any

39:44

other direction as well. So maybe

39:46

there is some sort of benign

39:48

force behind it, but not powerful

39:50

enough to override anybody like any

39:52

other story that can then they

39:55

be interposed in it. You

39:58

know, I So

40:00

we were talking about narrative and story.

40:02

A lot of what I talk about,

40:04

if you really want to harness the

40:07

true potential of these substances or these

40:09

experiences, then we need better stories

40:11

that orient us. The main two narratives that

40:13

we have today is to go back to

40:15

the original point that you were making. How

40:17

come something that was inherently subversive and seen

40:19

as a thing nowadays can add the service

40:21

of power? And I

40:23

think those two narratives,

40:25

either the therapist, psychedelic,

40:27

the hyper -psychologized, psychedelia

40:30

or the hypermedicalized psychedelia that organizations

40:32

like maps have been campaigning

40:34

for, right? I mean, one

40:36

of the reasons why psychedelics are

40:38

now not only popular, but kind

40:40

of like... mainstream to some extent

40:42

is because they went through this

40:44

very meticulous process of stripping them

40:47

from the subversive quality and just

40:49

turning them into therapeutic tools, into

40:51

medicalized tools that are the service

40:53

of doctors and therapists and therapies

40:55

and so on, which I mean,

40:57

in itself is not necessarily something

40:59

negative. I don't mean I'm not

41:02

saying this as a negative thing.

41:04

I think psychedelics definitely can have

41:06

a lot of value as therapeutic

41:08

agents or therapeutic tools. I think

41:10

psychedelic therapy has a lot of

41:12

promise. But at the same

41:14

time, it is also true that

41:16

the whole therapeutic culture of society

41:18

is very much ingrained in the

41:21

neoliberal zeitgeist. It's very hyper -individualistic,

41:23

it's very much oriented, not

41:25

necessarily towards creating

41:28

free thinking individuals, but rather it's kind of

41:30

like just a garage where broken people go

41:32

and then you get a little bit of

41:34

therapy or you get a little bit of

41:36

psychiatry. But the goal really is to get

41:38

people back into the workforce, right? Like the

41:41

goal really is getting people back in line

41:43

into the system. Like one of the measures

41:45

of success of any treatment is a person

41:47

able to go back to work. And

41:49

again, within that framework of

41:51

therapy, psychedelics can be very useful,

41:53

but the whole framework is pathological in

41:55

many ways. So I think a

41:57

lot of people, like, resent that idea

41:59

of psychedelics being turned into another

42:01

neoliberal technology at the service of a

42:03

structure that is creating sickness in

42:05

the first place, right? So we're just,

42:08

you know, it's kind of like

42:10

the metaphor, like we're just like plastering

42:12

bandits and people, but the bandits

42:14

are never going to be enough really.

42:16

And psychedelics are really too powerful

42:18

to just be used as bandits. Well,

42:21

that brings me to the point

42:23

of, do you think that

42:25

this is some respect dosage dependent, right?

42:28

Like micro, maybe that's the popularity

42:30

of micro dosing, because a little bit

42:32

of psilocybin or acid or whatever

42:34

can help you get back to work

42:36

or make you more productive or

42:38

more creative or, you know, come up

42:40

with, you know, some insight, whereas,

42:43

you know, what McKenna would have called

42:45

a heroic dose. Right. You're not

42:47

going to work on five grams of

42:49

psilocybin, right? Like you're going to

42:51

be lying in a field staring at

42:53

the sky. So

42:56

yeah, man, you're speaking my language.

42:58

I feel like this is this

43:00

is the conundrum at the heart

43:02

of everything. Trying

43:05

to help in this

43:07

world, like what is it

43:09

that we're helping? We're

43:11

helping the continuation of a

43:13

pathogenic process. Like

43:16

What the fuck do we do?

43:19

I mean, you know, it brings what

43:21

are they called the accelerationists, right?

43:23

People who think that we should bring

43:25

about the end as soon as

43:27

possible to get into the next phase,

43:29

because everything we do to make

43:31

this phase more tolerable is just prolonging

43:33

the suffering. Yeah,

43:36

I mean, accelerationism definitely is a

43:39

very interesting thing when it comes

43:41

to that. I

43:43

mean, to the point of micro dosing, I

43:45

think. You

43:47

know, again, like one of the reasons why

43:50

microdosing is so popular is definitely because

43:52

it doesn't require the sort of commitment or

43:54

it doesn't require the sort of vulnerability

43:56

from the person to like really face the

43:58

depths of themselves or the for the

44:00

depths of the transformational experience that could be

44:02

achieved with a higher dose. I mean,

44:04

it's kind of like a cop out, but

44:06

also the intention is different. Like these

44:08

are not necessarily the kind of persons. that

44:11

want that kind of experience. But

44:13

rather, like you said, like, maybe people

44:15

that otherwise would be taking Adderall or,

44:17

or amphetamines or too much caffeine and

44:19

said, hey, we have something better. There's

44:21

like less toxic and we can, you

44:24

know, use that as a placebo to

44:26

increase our sense of productivity and so

44:28

on. Well, maybe there's a placebo or

44:30

not. There's a debate whether microdosing does

44:32

anything other than just a placebo.

44:34

But by the end of the day,

44:36

when we orient towards productivity in the

44:38

workplace or you know, then, um,

44:41

yeah, I mean, that's, that's a different

44:43

kind of narrative. Did I

44:45

tell you about the first time I met

44:48

Rick Doblin? No, I tell you

44:50

about this. So this was like, uh,

44:52

I was in graduate school, must have

44:54

been 95, 90 sitting in late 90s.

44:56

I was in Boston visiting my sister

44:58

and I had heard about maps and

45:00

I'd written some articles for them or

45:02

whatever and I knew Rick lived near

45:04

there and I looked him up and

45:06

I gave him a call and I

45:08

said hey I'm here with my sister

45:10

I've never met you but I've done

45:12

some work on maps and I thought

45:14

maybe if you know we could meet

45:16

for a coffee or something and he

45:18

said well come over to my house

45:20

here's my address you know and whenever

45:22

I end up spending the whole day

45:24

there had dinner with him and his

45:26

family he was awesome. wonderful

45:28

guy, really, really wonderful. And

45:31

then a few months later, he said he

45:33

I was living in Barcelona at the time

45:35

and he contacted me and said, What

45:37

are you doing in September? I'd

45:39

like to invite you to come

45:41

to Israel for the First World Ecstasy

45:43

Conference. And

45:46

he invited me to

45:48

translate for a guy

45:50

named Jose Carlos Busso.

45:52

Yeah. You know, Jose? Really?

45:55

Give him my love. He

45:57

and I were good friends. Anyway,

46:00

yeah, so I went

46:02

to Israel with Busso

46:05

and translated for him.

46:07

He was doing research on

46:09

MDMA therapy for women

46:11

who had been sexually assaulted

46:14

and didn't respond to

46:16

other treatments. Anyway, long story

46:18

short, we're in Israel and Rick

46:20

Doblin's I think grandfather was like

46:22

one of the founders of Israel

46:24

or something. Like he's a big,

46:26

big deal, a historical figure in

46:29

Israel. And

46:31

this conference was partly

46:33

sponsored by the

46:35

Israeli military. So

46:38

this was 99, I

46:40

think. Oh, wow. Yeah.

46:42

And it was at the Dead

46:44

Sea Hyatt Hotel. And

46:48

it was just such a bizarre

46:50

thing. And this gets to this topic

46:52

that we're talking about. Are these

46:55

things subversive or not? I mean, of

46:57

course, MDMA isn't a classic psychedelic. So

47:01

you've got Sasha Shulgin on

47:04

stage talking about these molecules

47:06

that he's invented, and MDMA

47:08

being one of them reinvented,

47:10

I guess, in this case.

47:13

And you've got. officers,

47:17

high ranking officers of the

47:19

Israeli military in the audience

47:21

asking questions. And I

47:23

got the sense

47:25

that the cover story

47:27

was that they

47:29

wanted to investigate MDMA

47:31

as treatment for

47:33

PTSD, right? The same

47:35

thing with the American vets. But

47:38

the questions they were asking made

47:40

me think they were really interested in

47:42

MDMA as an interrogation tool. Interesting.

47:46

That raises so many

47:48

ethical questions, right? I

47:51

mean, you slip some MDMA

47:53

into a prisoner's water, and

47:55

then you put him in

47:57

a room with an attractive

47:59

Israeli soldier woman asking him

48:02

questions. You're going to get

48:04

more information out of him that way than

48:06

you will by putting fucking electrodes on

48:08

his testicles, right? I mean, I

48:10

have no doubt that this has been done. Ultra

48:12

has been very well documented. I'm sure

48:14

that there's been a lot of black

48:17

ops in all sorts of places. I

48:20

wouldn't want to be

48:22

surprised. I mean, they

48:25

wouldn't do that necessarily as

48:27

a public thing because it

48:29

would obviously resulting

48:31

out of backlash, but I'm sure

48:33

that there's some secret projects

48:35

happening. Well, and also, you know,

48:37

I'm not sure I'm opposed to it.

48:39

If I were a prisoner, I'd much rather

48:41

have some MDMA than, you know, torture. Yeah.

48:44

I mean, you know, you're

48:46

going to talk. Anyway, we could

48:48

talk forever about psychedelics. And, you

48:51

know, I don't want to move away from it, but

48:53

I do want to get to your work and the

48:56

you know, what you're doing with this account, like

48:58

here you are, you're in grad school. This account

49:00

must take a lot of time. Yeah.

49:04

I mean, it has, it has taken

49:06

some time. I mean, I'm almost, almost

49:08

finished with school. I'm just in the

49:10

last, last round of edits of my

49:12

dissertation. So now I'm able to, this

49:14

is why the sub stack took so

49:16

long and all the other things, because

49:19

I haven't been able to really pay attention

49:21

full time to it. But now that I

49:23

have more time than yes, I'm doing, I'm

49:25

kind of like expanding a little bit the

49:27

scope and the reach of what it is

49:29

that I want to say. So

49:31

let's get into the

49:33

political aspect of this, because

49:36

I'm really interested in

49:38

how your your consciousness, but

49:40

also your work is

49:42

this overlap of I don't

49:44

even know how to

49:46

articulate it. It's not the

49:48

psychedelics. I think it's

49:51

the subversiveness of the psychedelics

49:53

that you're bringing to

49:55

your work around politics and

49:57

around healing. And

49:59

I guess to begin with, I wanted

50:01

to read this Hannah Arendt quote

50:03

that you begin your substack piece with.

50:05

It's a famous quote, but a

50:07

lot of people listening may not have

50:09

heard it. She says, if everybody

50:11

always lies to you, the

50:13

consequence is not that you believe

50:16

the lies, but rather, that

50:18

nobody believes anything any longer, and

50:20

a people that no longer

50:22

can believe anything cannot make up

50:24

its mind. It is deprived

50:26

not only of its capacity to

50:28

act, but also of its capacity to

50:30

think and to judge. And with

50:32

such a people you can then do

50:34

what you please. So

50:37

she's pointing to the

50:39

idea that if

50:41

you don't know what's

50:43

true, the ground

50:45

under your feet is

50:48

not solid enough that you

50:50

can act. You can't fight.

50:53

You can't move. You can't

50:55

do anything because you're standing

50:57

on shifting sand. Do

50:59

you think that the

51:01

shifting sand is itself

51:03

a result of the

51:05

psychedelic culture of the

51:07

60s? What

51:11

do you mean when

51:13

you say a result? the

51:18

like, do your own

51:20

thing. Your reality

51:22

is all that matters. Forget

51:25

about conventional, traditional

51:28

systems of

51:30

meaning. Think outside

51:33

the box, you know, be

51:35

your own, create your

51:37

own reality. That sort of,

51:40

you know, which felt

51:42

liberational. in those days,

51:44

right? You wear funky

51:46

colors and put feathers in

51:48

your hair and, you know,

51:51

do whatever feels right to

51:53

you and ignore the sort

51:55

of external expectations of your

51:57

society. That was

51:59

initially a liberational movement, but I

52:01

look now and I see, you

52:04

know, sort of what I

52:06

said before, RFK Jr. is

52:08

in government preaching against vaccines,

52:10

right? You have Russell Brand,

52:14

who's somehow aligned with Trump

52:16

in weird ways. You've

52:18

got Joe Rogan who, you

52:21

know, in many ways is kind

52:23

of a hippie. I mean, he's been

52:25

preaching psychedelic use fearlessly since the

52:27

days when it could have gotten you

52:29

in trouble. And, you know, most

52:31

people were afraid to talk about it.

52:33

Now he's aligned with this. It

52:35

kind of feels like I

52:37

don't know, it's like this sort

52:40

of energy that went out in one

52:42

direction and this circled back and

52:44

transformed into its opposite in a strange

52:46

way. Yeah, I

52:48

mean, this is a, this a massive

52:50

topic and a massive conversation. And

52:53

I'm not quite, I mean, I'm not

52:55

an expert in the history of

52:57

this political movements and how things unfolded.

52:59

I think the hippie movement, I

53:01

mean, the counterculture of the seventies, definitely

53:04

was a powerful force behind it.

53:06

But I don't think, I think that

53:08

was more of an expression of

53:10

something bigger that was already permeating American

53:12

culture. That then, you

53:14

know, maybe during the 60s

53:17

and 70s kind of like gave,

53:19

it took the shape of

53:21

counterculture, but then in the 80s,

53:23

And the nineties started taking

53:25

the shape more of kind of

53:27

the neoliberal zeitgeist. And what

53:29

what the counterculture and the neoliberal

53:31

zeitgeist have in common pretty

53:33

much is precisely what you described,

53:35

which is this kind of

53:37

like hyper focus on individual agency,

53:39

right on individual freedom on

53:41

individual, you know, kind of sovereignty

53:43

in many ways. And I

53:45

mean, it's kind of

53:47

like, when you do look at

53:49

like many other people that were hippies

53:51

back then, then it's kind of like

53:53

a joke, right? All the hippies then

53:55

become the CEOs during the 80s and

53:57

the 90s and so on and so

53:59

forth. But the values are not that

54:01

different when it comes to like individual

54:03

liberty and exactly what you said. And

54:05

I do think that the hyper -individualism

54:08

that is inherent to American society in

54:10

many ways is the thing that probably

54:12

is at the center of all these

54:14

movements, but also the thing that is

54:16

kind like enabling

54:18

in many ways

54:20

the current political

54:22

climate where there

54:24

is a weaponization

54:26

of that lack

54:28

of objective truth.

54:31

A weaponization of

54:33

that idea. That's a

54:35

good way to say it. It's my

54:37

personal truth and my intuition

54:39

and my inner voice

54:42

and my higher self and

54:44

everything that my inner

54:46

voice says has to override

54:48

any sort of data or any

54:50

sort of empirical support or

54:52

anything else because it's like my

54:54

highest truth and that's the

54:56

most thing. That's the thing that

54:58

matters the most and that

55:00

can easily be translated then into

55:02

alternative facts and fake news

55:04

and just kind of weaponizing that

55:07

to create confusion which is

55:09

definitely part of like that epistemic

55:11

chaos is something that by

55:13

design we're definitely seeing more and

55:15

more in playing the political

55:17

arenas. Yeah, you used the phrase

55:19

epistemic learned helplessness in your

55:21

sub -stack piece, which I thought

55:23

was really interesting because I do

55:25

feel like that's what's happened,

55:27

right? That there is a sort

55:29

of development of this personal

55:31

reality ethos that I think is

55:34

one of the insights

55:36

of the psychedelic culture, right? That

55:38

so much of what I experience

55:40

is a projection of my own

55:42

consciousness, which I think is legitimate.

55:45

But that is very, as you

55:48

point out, that very easily can

55:50

be weaponized and turned into, therefore,

55:53

doctors have nothing to say about

55:55

what's going on with my

55:57

body because I'm the only one

55:59

who understands what's good for

56:01

me. and all expertise is suspect

56:03

and there is no reality

56:05

out there other than my own

56:07

consciousness. One of

56:09

the main reasons why that

56:12

account exists to begin with is

56:14

because three years ago and

56:16

a little bit more when I

56:18

started that account, I

56:21

started noticing that

56:23

there was a process

56:25

that was accelerating A

56:27

lot, which is a lot of

56:30

the people that I knew, a lot

56:32

of the people that I've been

56:34

close with in these communities, in spiritual

56:36

communities, in burner communities, in psychedelic

56:38

communities, in yogic communities, were very, very,

56:40

very sharply and very, very quickly

56:42

shifting towards some sort of authoritarian reactionary...

56:45

populist stance that was for me

56:47

incredibly counterintuitive. mean, I didn't quite understand

56:49

how to process this thing until

56:51

I started looking into it and filling

56:53

it out and researching and fleshing

56:55

it out. And then it made the

56:57

obvious sense, like, oh, of

57:00

course, this was going to

57:02

happen. This was always bound to

57:04

happen. Because again, like that

57:06

epistemic chaos is a perfect way

57:08

to weaponize that sentiment of,

57:10

you know, there are sentiments that

57:12

are very prevalent among country

57:14

cultural scenes. But there's a very

57:17

high distrust of authority. There's a

57:19

very high focus on the

57:21

individual agency. There's a very

57:23

high focus on being suspicious

57:25

of official narratives. And all

57:27

of those things are healthy

57:29

in many ways. I mean,

57:31

you should always question power.

57:33

You should always be suspicious

57:35

of official narratives. I

57:37

think when COVID hit, that was like

57:39

the moment where everything imploded, because then suddenly

57:41

we had what I still think was

57:43

like a very real global emergency, like there

57:45

was a real virus and a real

57:48

pandemic, and the reaction to

57:50

that got weaponized so quickly.

57:53

So, you know, in many ways

57:55

that really fractured these communities

57:57

very heavily. What

57:59

was once maybe kind of

58:01

like a more niche subculture

58:03

of conspiracies and became pretty

58:05

much the norm for everybody

58:07

that was gravitating towards the

58:10

populist reactionary side of the

58:12

political spectrum conspiracy when mainstream

58:14

in many ways. And

58:16

that was kind of like

58:18

the most important indication that

58:20

sometimes that epistemic openness may

58:22

not necessarily lead to good

58:24

places when there's a concerted

58:27

effort to weaponize it. What's

58:29

what you said earlier about

58:31

psychedelics, right? Like that they may

58:34

have an inherent bias toward

58:36

liberation and peace and love and

58:38

all that, but they're very

58:40

easily manipulated. I mean, Charles Manson

58:42

very easily used them to

58:44

go in the other direction. And

58:46

I feel like that's where

58:48

we are now in a cognitive

58:50

sense, you know, like this

58:52

suspicion of authority is being used

58:54

by authority. It's fucking crazy. Yeah.

58:58

So do you see

59:00

any corollary to this

59:02

historical moment in the

59:05

past? Because when I

59:07

look at your stuff

59:09

on Instagram, it reminds

59:11

me of Luis Bunuel

59:14

and the surrealists, right?

59:17

Like, do you see a

59:19

connection is because that was

59:21

also, you know, the sort

59:23

of absurdism, the that movement

59:26

of of

59:28

pointing out the absurdities of

59:30

the sort of overriding historical

59:32

or cultural narrative, is that,

59:34

do you feel an affinity

59:36

with that or do you

59:38

think this is a different

59:40

kind of thing? Yeah,

59:43

mean, I'm very much aligned

59:45

with the absurdist way of

59:47

thinking. I mean, beyond maybe

59:49

my spiritual proclivities and so

59:51

on, I mean, existentialism has

59:53

always kind of like been

59:55

my main philosophical

59:58

framework, particularly the

1:00:00

absurdist component of it.

1:00:05

Do I see any any correlations

1:00:07

between that movement and today? I

1:00:09

think, yeah, I mean,

1:00:11

I think we're now

1:00:13

maybe in a historical moment

1:00:15

where the social conditions

1:00:17

and the environmental predicaments are

1:00:20

very different than what

1:00:22

they were back then. I

1:00:24

think, you know, every

1:00:26

generation probably has like their

1:00:28

own apocalyptic fears and

1:00:30

anxieties. But I think there's

1:00:33

many good reasons to

1:00:35

believe that actually now we

1:00:37

do have a real

1:00:39

catastrophic risk or an interlocking

1:00:41

series of catastrophic risks

1:00:43

hanging over our heads as

1:00:45

a civilization, which is

1:00:47

probably not the way that most people thought

1:00:50

back then. And even today, there's a lot

1:00:52

of denial about it. But I think if

1:00:54

we really want to pay attention to what's

1:00:56

happening that is undeniable that we're at the

1:00:58

edge of the precipice. I

1:01:01

think the proliferation of

1:01:03

bullshit is one of

1:01:05

the things that happens

1:01:07

in these moments of

1:01:09

increased anxiety and increased

1:01:11

instability. People are

1:01:14

grasping for meaning. I think a

1:01:16

lot of people, even if it's not

1:01:18

conscious, even if it's not like

1:01:20

a rational awareness of like, hey, we're

1:01:22

very, very dangerously at the edge

1:01:24

of catastrophic things happening to all of

1:01:26

us, there has to be

1:01:28

some sort of... unconscious

1:01:31

or subconscious drive that is driving people to

1:01:33

rest remaining. And this is also why we're seeing

1:01:35

the rise of fascism again, right? Like this

1:01:37

is like the same. It's the same drive that

1:01:39

we want to be in control of what's

1:01:41

happening. Well, at the very least, we want to

1:01:43

feel like we are in control or we

1:01:46

want to feel like we understand what's happening. We

1:01:48

want is the answers, even if they're wrong, just

1:01:50

to give us something to stand on,

1:01:52

something to grasp on. So

1:01:55

some people gravitate towards fascism, some people

1:01:57

gravitate towards like really unhinged forms

1:01:59

of spirituality. We're ascending

1:02:01

to the 5D consciousnesses evolving in the

1:02:03

world. We're all going to, you know,

1:02:05

become the three L beings in hyperspace.

1:02:07

I mean, there's also different things that people

1:02:10

will grasp on just to feel a

1:02:12

little bit of comfort and lessen the

1:02:14

anxiety of the unknown, because we are

1:02:16

in a time of transition. I think,

1:02:18

you know, like, it's a moment in

1:02:21

history where it's very difficult to predict

1:02:23

what the world is going to look

1:02:25

like in three years, five years, 10

1:02:27

years, 15 years, if at all. And

1:02:29

I think that that awareness

1:02:31

of like the you know there's

1:02:33

my kind of call the time wave

1:02:35

zero and different there's different ideas

1:02:37

to conceptualize what the singularity might be

1:02:39

like when time converges at the

1:02:41

center of the spiral and everything implodes

1:02:43

in on itself which is exactly

1:02:46

I guess what the acceleration is we

1:02:48

were talking about right like the

1:02:50

transhumanist drive that is very much driving

1:02:52

current politics in the US as

1:02:54

well I mean we all know JD

1:02:56

Vance and Peter Thiel's connection and That

1:03:00

transhumanist acceleration is dark enlightenment

1:03:02

drive is really a very

1:03:04

big influence. People want to

1:03:07

push through to the center

1:03:09

of the spiral hoping that

1:03:11

singularity, whether it's AI or

1:03:13

some sort of hyper Christian

1:03:16

rapture will somehow transform the

1:03:18

current world into some sort

1:03:20

of utopia. And I

1:03:22

think one way or another,

1:03:24

it does feel like we

1:03:26

are reaching towards that moment.

1:03:29

transcendence, whether that's a positive thing or a

1:03:31

horrible thing that is going to bring

1:03:33

suffering to a lot of people is still

1:03:35

to be seen. But that But that

1:03:37

awareness of that pull towards that center of

1:03:39

the spiral, I think, is what makes

1:03:41

a lot of people just grasping the dark

1:03:44

for whatever narrative can bring some comfort

1:03:46

and lessen that anxiety. Like, hey, you

1:03:48

know, it's okay because somebody is

1:03:50

in control, whether it's the reptilians

1:03:52

or the Jews or the, the,

1:03:54

the, the Pleiadians or the Churians

1:03:56

or anything like that. Like the

1:03:58

Galactic Federation of Light is guiding

1:04:01

humanity towards the transition to the

1:04:03

next phase. Sure. Okay. If I

1:04:05

mean, if that gives you comfort,

1:04:07

why not? I'm always in favor

1:04:09

of people finding their own narratives

1:04:11

to make meaning of things as

1:04:13

long as they're not contributing to

1:04:15

more suffering on Earth, which it

1:04:18

seems like spiritual new age wellness

1:04:20

culture by their attempt to grasp

1:04:22

to some certainty and stability. There

1:04:24

are in many ways facilitating the

1:04:26

rise of authoritarian populism, which actually

1:04:28

may not be the best thing

1:04:30

for lessening suffering of people. Yeah,

1:04:32

man. You said it. Wow. I'm

1:04:35

going to read something else from your,

1:04:37

your sub -stack piece. You

1:04:39

said, until recently, 2020

1:04:41

and the COVID era to be

1:04:44

precise, I still operated

1:04:46

under the mistaken belief that

1:04:48

I was part of

1:04:50

a fringe, esoteric, counter -cultural, and

1:04:53

hence inconsequential community. Like

1:04:55

many others, once upon a

1:04:57

time, I also felt

1:04:59

like I was part of

1:05:01

a very select group

1:05:03

of awakened souls who was

1:05:05

uniquely worthy of forbidden

1:05:07

knowledge, be it the unearned

1:05:10

wisdom underground psychonauts like

1:05:12

to flaunt the expensive tantric

1:05:14

initiations that I earned

1:05:16

and purchased, or

1:05:19

for a relatively short -lived

1:05:21

while, the absolute certainty that

1:05:23

every single thing that happened

1:05:25

in the world was carefully

1:05:27

orchestrated and controlled by a

1:05:29

handful of omniscient and omnipotent

1:05:31

secret societies, and anyone who

1:05:33

couldn't see that was either stupid, asleep,

1:05:36

or part of the plan. I

1:05:38

admire you

1:05:40

for framing your

1:05:42

current perspective

1:05:45

around your disenchantment,

1:05:47

in a

1:05:49

way. I think

1:05:51

that's a

1:05:53

very mature and

1:05:55

admirable thing

1:05:57

to do. But

1:05:59

I wonder how do

1:06:01

you integrate your disappointment that

1:06:04

you thought you had

1:06:06

found the true path and

1:06:08

at some point, I

1:06:10

don't think you say exactly

1:06:13

when and how it

1:06:15

happened, but at some point

1:06:17

you realize this wasn't

1:06:19

the true path. You

1:06:22

know, you're you're like a

1:06:25

former Mormon or a former

1:06:27

Catholic or you know, you're

1:06:29

you've strayed from your Spiritual

1:06:31

world, how do you deal

1:06:33

with that? Well,

1:06:35

I mean the Healing from Healing

1:06:38

project I guess is the main

1:06:40

the main thing one of the

1:06:42

one of the One of the

1:06:44

thoughts that I have when I

1:06:46

create When I post things it's

1:06:48

like what would have been useful

1:06:50

for me to read 15 years

1:06:53

ago, right? what would have been

1:06:55

useful for me to see 15

1:06:57

years ago when I was in

1:06:59

the throes of conspiracy rabbit holes

1:07:01

and unhinged spirituality and psychedelic, you

1:07:03

know, epistemic chaos and so on

1:07:06

so forth. And

1:07:08

the reason why I

1:07:11

try to make it funny. The reason why

1:07:13

I use humor is because I know if

1:07:15

15 years ago somebody have come to me

1:07:17

in a judgmental way like hey everything that

1:07:19

you believe is bullshit and this conspiracy stuff

1:07:21

I would have flipped them off and buried

1:07:23

even deeper into my own beliefs,

1:07:25

because that would be a confirmation that,

1:07:27

you know, that person was again,

1:07:29

like part of the plan or stupid

1:07:32

or so far, which just happens

1:07:34

all the time with anti -vaxxers with

1:07:36

conspiracy theories. Like, again, like when

1:07:38

I see anti -vaxxers, this is

1:07:40

always a tough topic. Like I

1:07:42

don't want to alienate people that

1:07:44

are actually rightfully skeptical about the

1:07:46

motivations of, you know, for profit

1:07:49

system that definitely doesn't have. doesn't

1:07:51

have human welfare as a primary

1:07:53

motivation. But

1:07:55

there's a difference between

1:07:57

skepticism and just having...

1:07:59

When I talk about

1:08:02

conspiracies, I oftentimes make

1:08:04

a distinction between a

1:08:06

conspiracy theory and conspiracy

1:08:08

theories and conspiracy epistemics. And

1:08:11

what I often talk about is

1:08:13

conspiracy epistemics. which is basically a default

1:08:15

way of looking at the world

1:08:17

always through the frame of everything is

1:08:19

a conspiracy. Everything is a plot.

1:08:21

There's all, you know, like trying to

1:08:24

understand world events and grasp meaning

1:08:26

or make meaning of things through that

1:08:28

lens exclusively. I do

1:08:30

think that, you know, the world

1:08:32

is full of people who conspire

1:08:34

in, you know, under behind the

1:08:36

curtains for nefarious purposes. That's always

1:08:38

been the history of politics in

1:08:41

the world as we know it.

1:08:43

uh, whether it's, uh, you

1:08:45

know, the club of Rome or, I

1:08:47

mean, whatever. But the point is, is not

1:08:49

about denying that people could lose for,

1:08:51

you know, shitty purposes, but rather that there's

1:08:53

a certain way of looking at the

1:08:56

world that takes into account the politics of

1:08:58

it without necessarily defaulting to always thinking

1:09:00

in the way that conspiracy theories try to

1:09:02

make sense of the world. I mean,

1:09:04

we saw it this year many times, right,

1:09:06

with the fires in LA and the

1:09:08

fires in Maui and the hurricane in North

1:09:10

Carolina and kind of like one of

1:09:12

the main narratives that was always floating around

1:09:14

all of our subcultures and cultures, like,

1:09:16

you know, direct energy weapons and the government

1:09:19

is behind it. And I mean, I

1:09:21

think it is healthy to question and why

1:09:23

things happen, but when we use those

1:09:25

frameworks to always superimpose world events and feed

1:09:27

them into a, I mean,

1:09:29

we just get into like really, really,

1:09:31

really weird spaces from which it is

1:09:33

very difficult to escape. So, you know,

1:09:35

when I make healing from healing, I

1:09:37

kind of like, hey, I want, I

1:09:39

mean, I want you guys to think

1:09:42

about how absurd and ridiculous some of these things

1:09:44

that you're saying are, but I want to alienate

1:09:46

you. I don't want to be judgmental. I don't

1:09:48

want you to, I don't want to make you

1:09:50

burrow deeper into that belief, but rather maybe illuminate

1:09:52

through humor and mental. I mean, there's kind of

1:09:54

like one of the timelines that I like a

1:09:56

lot. I don't, I don't know actually who said

1:09:58

this first, but it's kind of like a very

1:10:00

common line in all sorts of different places where

1:10:02

they say, if you want

1:10:04

to tell people the truth, you

1:10:06

have to make them laugh. Otherwise,

1:10:08

they will kill you. Right. Right.

1:10:10

And I think, in any ways,

1:10:12

that's very true. Like, if you

1:10:15

really want to mirror something that

1:10:17

is honest, that is sincere, but

1:10:19

at the same time difficult for the

1:10:21

person to accept or see, then it has

1:10:23

to be done in a way that

1:10:25

sustains the circumstance so the person can actually

1:10:27

receive the message or the release, consider

1:10:29

it with it immediately, getting defensive

1:10:32

and shutting it down. I think humor does

1:10:34

that. Humor is the best tool that we

1:10:36

have for that. And that's why humor has

1:10:38

always been kind of the primary tool that

1:10:40

I use. Yeah, I agree. And, you

1:10:42

know, that circles back to the beginning when

1:10:44

I said, I think, you know, some

1:10:47

of the best political

1:10:49

thinkers of the last 50

1:10:52

years have been comedians. And

1:10:54

that doesn't mean they had the

1:10:56

most sophisticated political ideas. It means

1:10:58

they communicated them in a way

1:11:00

that I think had an impact

1:11:02

on society. You know,

1:11:05

I grew up listening to George

1:11:07

Carlin and Richard Pryor, and

1:11:09

I feel like the two of

1:11:11

them did more to bring

1:11:13

peace and understanding and compassion into

1:11:16

American society, increase those qualities

1:11:18

than, you know, any books I've

1:11:20

ever read, I think. Yeah,

1:11:23

absolutely. Carlin is amazing. Yeah.

1:11:25

Yeah. Yeah, he was, and,

1:11:27

and, you know, he was

1:11:29

driven by anger and disappointment.

1:11:32

And, you know, he was

1:11:35

driven by dark energies. But

1:11:37

as, you know, as you are

1:11:39

and I am, I think we feel

1:11:41

like we're living in a dark

1:11:43

age, like there's bad shit on the

1:11:45

horizon. But like you, he transformed

1:11:48

that energy into humor so that people

1:11:50

could hear him. I

1:11:52

think in many ways, it also

1:11:54

may be a self -preservation strategy. I

1:11:57

don't think I have the moral

1:11:59

fortitude to be constantly consumed by

1:12:01

anxiety and anger at these things.

1:12:03

I think it would keep me

1:12:05

very quickly. Man, if

1:12:07

Noam Chomsky were funny, he'd be much

1:12:09

more effective. Well, I mean,

1:12:11

that's one of the things that I

1:12:13

also feel a lot about communicators

1:12:15

from the medical establishment, for example. I

1:12:17

think during COVID, there

1:12:19

was a very interesting contingent of

1:12:22

people who are trying to

1:12:24

educate the epidemic. If epidemiologists

1:12:26

and public health officers had a

1:12:28

better way of communicating very important

1:12:30

messages that wasn't just infographics and

1:12:32

judgmental things, then maybe it would

1:12:34

have been much easier to get

1:12:36

to the people who needed to

1:12:38

hear these things. And I was

1:12:40

trying to find, hey, where are

1:12:42

the funny science

1:12:44

communicators, where the people are using humor

1:12:46

to get to the extreme edges

1:12:48

of the anti -vaxxer nonsense. I mean, and

1:12:51

there weren't, I mean, now is I

1:12:53

can like find a few that I

1:12:55

like to repost a lot in my

1:12:58

account through my stories. But there weren't

1:13:00

many, there weren't many people that were

1:13:02

doing that. And I think you're right.

1:13:04

I mean, if we were to find

1:13:06

a strategy where we could get these

1:13:08

messages across, it would be something like

1:13:10

that. Like if people who are highly

1:13:12

trained, in public health and epidemiology and

1:13:15

different forms of science communication. And

1:13:17

you know who understands this?

1:13:20

Donald fucking Trump. Yeah, I

1:13:22

mean, he's funny. This is

1:13:24

one of the things that

1:13:26

is the most annoying. We're

1:13:29

not not annoying, but genuinely

1:13:31

funny. He is. Yeah. Oh,

1:13:35

man. Yeah, we're all gonna

1:13:37

die laughing. I don't know, man.

1:13:39

Uh, you know, I learned

1:13:41

something interesting recently. You

1:13:43

know, the beats, right? Who'd

1:13:46

start, you know, kind of pre

1:13:48

hippie movement. Yeah. Do you know

1:13:50

where the word beats comes from? Why

1:13:52

they were called the beats? It's

1:13:54

because they were fucking tired. They

1:13:58

were beat. They were tired. Yeah.

1:14:01

I don't, I don't remember where I

1:14:03

read that, but it really struck me because

1:14:05

I always imagined them as being super

1:14:07

energetic. Yeah. but they were

1:14:10

fucking tired of the world the way

1:14:12

it was. And so that

1:14:14

was the sort of impetus for their

1:14:16

response, which I can really relate

1:14:18

to. Yeah, I

1:14:21

mean, I like that. I can

1:14:23

see that. Now that I think about

1:14:25

Jack Kerouac on the road was

1:14:27

one of my seminal books when I

1:14:29

was growing up. I can see

1:14:31

the vibe of like the, not lethargy,

1:14:33

but like the despondency. Yeah, and

1:14:35

rejection. Like this just doesn't

1:14:37

work. I can't keep doing this.

1:14:39

I can't do it. This a very

1:14:42

interesting, there's a very important point

1:14:44

because again, like this, this goes

1:14:46

back to the, to the whole

1:14:48

conversation, but I do feel that

1:14:50

it's a very, very important thing

1:14:52

to be skeptical and to always

1:14:54

kind of be curious about things and

1:14:56

to question power and to challenge

1:14:58

the establishment and so on and

1:15:00

so forth. And this is why

1:15:02

It has been so heartbreaking in

1:15:04

many ways because I am kind

1:15:06

of seeing in real life all of

1:15:08

that revolutionary force, all of that

1:15:10

potentially subversive revolutionary energy just being

1:15:12

completely copped and corrupted into serving

1:15:14

power. And this has been the

1:15:17

case for the last few years

1:15:19

in all of this subculture. So,

1:15:21

you know, when we're seeing like the

1:15:23

yoga teacher who took everybody's sattva

1:15:25

vows, like suddenly just kind of

1:15:27

getting into this mega mindset or

1:15:29

the psychedelic facilitator who's all about

1:15:31

like consciousness and the expansion of

1:15:33

awareness and then like just pulling

1:15:35

this kind of authoritarian energy with them

1:15:37

like it's like man like where

1:15:39

how can we how can we

1:15:41

go back to the to the

1:15:43

raw potential of these things and

1:15:45

create better stories and better structures

1:15:47

so we can direct that energy towards

1:15:50

something that is actually You

1:15:52

know, I mean, at the very

1:15:54

least not supporting an authoritarian takeover.

1:15:56

You're healing from healing and you're

1:15:58

sort of bringing us along on

1:16:00

your journey. And I really appreciate

1:16:02

that. Yeah, it's always it's I

1:16:04

mean, I think like like any

1:16:06

like any ethnographic work is always

1:16:08

first and foremost, autobiographic. You're

1:16:20

gonna die one

1:16:22

day For example, I

1:16:24

could kiss you

1:16:26

Just because I want

1:16:28

to What's the

1:16:30

difference if you turn

1:16:32

away I'm gonna

1:16:35

die one day Why

1:16:37

do you waste

1:16:39

your time Thinking about

1:16:41

your reputation Trying

1:16:43

to meet an expectation

1:16:45

Wondering what they're

1:16:47

gonna say your

1:17:04

body isn't in a

1:17:06

mood doesn't ask for

1:17:08

much a little music

1:17:10

and a soft touch

1:17:12

why don't you let

1:17:14

it out to play

1:17:16

your heart is in

1:17:19

a bird cage singing

1:17:21

in your chest you

1:17:23

want to shut it

1:17:25

up But give it

1:17:27

a rest, you're gonna

1:17:29

die one day Why

1:17:31

do we waste our

1:17:33

time thinking about a

1:17:35

reputation? We're

1:18:00

gonna die one

1:18:02

day So

1:18:04

baby, what's a big

1:18:06

deal If you

1:18:08

wanna be free

1:18:11

Say what you wanna

1:18:13

feel And

1:18:15

spend the night with me I'm

1:18:18

gonna take you

1:18:20

up in my arms

1:18:22

And if we

1:18:25

must go down We'll

1:18:27

go sing the

1:18:29

alarms We'll into the

1:18:32

ground