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Everybody, we have some exciting news that we want to share. If you want to go on an adventure with Generation Y, we'd love for you to join us. January 26th through the 30th, 2026, we'll be sailing from Miami to the Bahamas on Wondery's first ever true crime cruise aboard the Norwegian Joy. Aaron and I will be there to chat, hang out, dive into all things true crime.

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So for some sun, fun, and just the right amount of mystery solving, come join us.

The story of SoulCycle is, you know, you get Julie and Elizabeth, who are these two incredibly media-trained, very, like, savvy businesswomen who have come up with an idea of a story that they want to tell, but it's not the whole story. There's a third person that was integral to creating this thing who was literally iced out, who was pushed out through legal means.

For whatever reason, they just figured out one day, she doesn't fit into this. Maybe it's the rule of three thing. Maybe one person doesn't fit in. I don't know. But the bottom line is that everybody knows that Ruth brought everybody over from Reebok. Everybody knows that. There would be no SoulCycle without her. But she got iced out.

You know, that's the reason why there's no clocks on the walls. Because Janet used to hate when people would stare at the clocks at Body and Soul, and she would rip them off the wall, and she would stick them on your handlebars.

At the time, I was 30 years old. It was a pretty big point in my life because I had just gotten this big job. I was a buyer at a department store.

And the reason why I bring that up is because I had like disposable income for the first time in my life. Because normally, you know, you would have classes that would be included in your gym membership. And that's what everybody did. The idea of like going outside of your gym to pay more money, like it just didn't make any sense. No one was doing that at the time.

It was before social media, but I was very online. I mean, everybody had a BlackBerry then, and I was all about my BlackBerry. I used to be able to text on BlackBerry without looking at it. I had the entire feel of the keyboard memorized that I could just, if I had to, I could type underneath my desk and not look at it. I knew exactly where all the keys were. I loved it.

And I was getting these newsletters every single day, like Daily Candy. One week they reported about this boutique spin studio on 72nd Street. There wasn't a sign outside and it was all of these women. I mean, I was literally I think I might have been the only man in the class for like at least the first like six classes that I went to.

You had to be in the know to even know that this place existed.

Then when it started to get more popular, it was just strange because then you started seeing all these new people coming in. There was this Democratic fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton was there that got national press coverage. And then you'd hear that Brooke Shields was in the class or Katie Couric or Kelly Ripa, Tiki Barber. It was much, much different after that.

I think by two months after I started going there, I came outside one day and there was just this line of town cars picking up all these like rich ladies who lunch. You know, there was no Uber at the time. So they were literally like escalate after escalate. It was it was incredible.

Julie and Elizabeth are media trained within an inch of their life. They controlled the narrative and they basically wrote her out of a story.

Julie and Elizabeth are media trained within an inch of their life. They controlled the narrative and they basically wrote her out of a story. Maybe at some point these two business women were like, wait a second, we don't need her. She's a fitness instructor. Ruth wasn't savvy enough to lawyer up the way these other two women were.

So I think that she didn't have the legal protections or the contracts in place by the time that this got very, very big and started making a lot of money. I think that Julie and Elizabeth were like, we don't need her. And Ruth didn't have the power to stay in. And all of a sudden she showed up and she realized she wasn't a part of it anymore.

So you know these people who work there. You talk to the people who are at the desk, and you got a sense that it was something that was not talked about. They weren't going to talk about it with you. And from some of the instructors, it was a non-starter. You just didn't talk about her. She wasn't talked about. She was completely written out.

Well, you have to understand something. The story of SoulCycle is, you know, you get these two incredibly media-trained, very, like, savvy businesswomen who have come up with an idea of a story that they want to tell, but it's not the whole story. There's a third person that was integral to creating this thing who was literally iced out, who was pushed out through legal means.

For whatever reason, they just figured out one day, she doesn't fit into this.

Yeah.

Well, your friend mentioned it looked like Sanskrit, but if he weren't familiar with what Sanskrit looked like in the first place, he wouldn't have identified it that way. Do you see? So that is where I think what's already more or less just rattling around comes to the fore.

You might be able to record the brain's response at that time. Is there some particular signature in brain connectivity that is associated with seeing Sanskrit, another might be seeing Hebrew, another might be Japanese? You could develop some profiles, let's say.

And yeah, you would have to give people DMT and have them look at the laser to obtain some kind of firm association between brain activity and what they're seeing.

Yeah. I wonder what percentage of people who do the experiment actually see code.

Does Danny have an idea?

Yeah. Well, in terms of like an objectifiable, replicable study.

Yeah, I don't know how you do that. Yeah, well, I think if you image the brain function or the brain activity, you might be able to discern some similarities among people and some differences.

My guess is that it would depend on the person. There are certain kinds of people, let's say, interested in Eastern ideas, Western ideas, and it would manifest in that way.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard about that study. I don't know the details.

I think that's how psychedelics work actually, is they just increase the strength and power of things which already exist in the mind. If you want to be a happier person, you might become happier after taking a psychedelic because it's convinced you that it's good to be happy.

I think it is going to be coming out.

Yeah. I've got some like information regarding it. Yeah. I think it's been accepted finally. I'm not sure, but it was from a reliable person.

Well, you know, I think there's another motivation as well, which is to demonstrate that there's a common spiritual experience regardless of your specific faith. I think that's one of the motivations.

Yeah, the mystical experience, which is kind of this unitive experience. ego-dissolved, no-time-or-space kind of experience, which is part of most psychedelic experiences, but I don't think it necessarily precludes differences in religious experience as well, which might even be more important. I think overall, too, it would make a cleric possibly more dedicated to the clergy and the religion.

Right, right. It's a wild moment in time. It is. Yeah. A few days ago, I was watching that clip of Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson discussing the demons.

Yeah, it's only 58 seconds.

They're in a car.

I haven't done DMT. That's what everybody says.

Well, I think that they're partly right. You know, the portal idea anyway. You know, I think that's one of the things that psychedelics and DMT do. They are a portal to previously invisible kinds of information.

Yeah. So if you open that portal, there is that information conveyed by the visions, which is angelic or demonic. So if you believe in angels, I always say you believe in demons. So to the extent that one believes in angels, then I think by necessity you need to believe in demons as well. It's kind of imagery of good versus evil.

I guess I could imagine ayahuasca ceremonies where there's a lot of shamanic communication and information that you would be attacked by demons. Yeah. Or it would seem as if you were anyway.

Well, that certain aspects of the psychedelic experience, which are defined by this rating scale called the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, that irregardless of your denomination, if your score on the Mystical Experience Scale was, number one, high enough, and number two, cut across all of the categories,

that there was a common mystical experience that all those volunteers had, Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, which would then lead to one being able to propose a universal religion. Oh, God. If it's all the same across all of the religions, there must be some universal religion that can be extracted. You know, but the problem with universal religion is, you know, who's universal religion? Right.

And what if you don't agree with it?

Yeah. Then you become a heretic.

Well, I don't think you can.

well i think yeah you're pointing to the issue of how do you propagate a universal religion yeah which i think uh yeah i think the cult of personality would start playing a very big role with the enhanced like transference that occurs on psychedelics because people when they're on i think you've said this before people on psychedelics are way more not just vulnerable but they're um way more like agreeable

Yeah. More suggestible.

And with repeated exposure to the same suggestion over and over on psychedelics. Yeah. I think it would get kind of fanatic in a way. It could. Yeah.

Or they become God somehow, or they're God's messenger. Yeah, the Messiah complex. Yeah, there's a lot of messianism in the idea of a universal religion, like who would be the spokesman, for example. And then you would have a religious figure. Yeah, it would be a new religion. And a couple of years ago, I wrote a book review on Bill Richards' book, who was the lead therapist at Johns Hopkins.

And I referred to the idea of a psychedelic universal religion as the psychedelic religion of mystical consciousness.

And there would be some dogma and some authority and probably a hierarchy at some point. That would be the new religion, the institute of the new religion with a certain range of ideas. You know, the problem with a universal religion based on the mystical experience is that the mystical experience in and of itself is free of any content. There's no words. There aren't any ideas in that state.

Right, right. That's crazy. Yeah, it was 1988. And I was kind of at a crossroads of where my career was going. The melatonin and pineal work hadn't quite panned out the way I wanted it to. But I was still interested in the pineal gland and in psychedelics mostly. Yeah. And I met Terrence a year or two before. He's the first person to give me DMT, actually.

All of those ideas are post hoc, like you come down, if that's the right expression, post hoc. Yeah, you come down and then you say what it was.

Yeah, but the interactive relational trip, like where there are visions that you're interacting with that's full of information, specific information, oftentimes verbal. So if there's this thing saying to you X, Y, and Z, it would be, those are words that you remember and then you write down and you transmit, talk about.

As opposed to just a feeling, which I think is the mystical experience, a very intense feeling, but there's no content. So it's made up after the fact. So it would be more dependent on the personality, I think, of the person who was in the authority.

Yeah, and the words they would use in order to describe it.

Well, your intention, which is part of the set. You know, there's set and there's everything that isn't your set, you know, the setting. So the setting would be supportive and the set would be your intent, right? And your mental and physical state at the time, your spiritual state. But you would set an intent.

So if it was for scientific purposes or for spiritual purposes or for fun, your intent will direct to a large extent the experience itself. There's also dealing with the anxiety of the initial experience of DMT. It's very intense. It's quite high speed. So you need to be able to work with anxiety as well. To make the most of a psychedelic experience is a fairly complex task.

I know, I know. That's the problem is it's a feeling. You're overwhelmed, let's say, by the intensity of the stream of information. But what is that information?

Oftentimes it's very nebulous and usually quite related to the personality of a person having the experience. Like your friend who envisioned Sanskrit. He wouldn't have called it Sanskrit without some prior knowledge of at least seeing.

But- You did the experiment, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so what happened to you?

Well, you can't move on the peak. You're a completely different place.

That's the weird thing about it. It feels like a completely different place.

Yeah, 1986 or something.

And then a couple years later, I was driving down from Canada, stopped at their place, and we spent the day up in his loft library. Wow. Yeah. And, um, you know, we just, the, uh, the war on, uh, you know, the war on drugs was in full steam ahead. Uh, there was a lot of money being poured into it.

Yeah, and what were those gears doing? Just spinning.

Spinning, like the gears were big, small.

It was kind of scary because I wasn't expecting it at all. And they didn't have the best motivation somehow. They seemed a little, they seemed kind of sinister. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. And it was an interesting experience. I was a lot younger and I was wrestling at the time with the notion of good and evil.

And with the dwarves, you usually think of dwarves as fun, but these had a malevolent feeling about them.

It's the white light. You're completely, like in most cases, your mind was atypical. Usually you have no visions on 5-methoxy. A more typical experience is it's just the white light. Things just white out. And it's ecstatic. And you're out of body. No time, no space.

It was the first time I had smoked.

Well, I've only done DMT, like I've only had one big DMT experience, which is a very strange thing. You would expect that I would have had thousands, but I know mostly about DMT through my volunteers. I mean, that's the truth. You've only done it how many times? Just one time. What? One big time, yeah. For real? And that was the time you just explained?

That was the time, you know, in the mid-1980s. Yeah, it convinced me to study DMT. Why haven't you done it since? I haven't really felt the urge to or the need to. It was so intense. I mean, you do take a risk entering into such an intense experience. And I thought I had really done well with the first one and I would just leave it at that.

And we, we, we came up with the idea of the ultimate study, give DMT to people and see what it does. You can't really, you can't really argue with that. And, uh, I describe it as an abusable drug. It's a prototypical classic psychedelic. And people were still using psychedelics. And we didn't know how they worked or really what they did in the face of like 20 years of intervening animal research.

It's kind of like, I guess, attaining the mountaintop the first time, so there didn't seem to be any need to repeat that.

Right. My Altered States.

That came out in December.

Just once, 1986 or so. Yeah, I was at the point of ending my melatonin research and I didn't know what to do. I was speaking at a conference and I was speaking about DMT in the pineal gland. And that's when Terrence came up and said, would you like to smoke some DMT? Yeah, so I said, sure.

Yeah, I went to a room. I had some good friends around.

Well, I was looking for an endogenous compound for spiritual experience. I kind of came up with this fascination in college that believing that there was a part of the brain or a substance the brain made that created spiritual experience that spiritual experiences which were like the psychedelic drug one and spiritual experiences like those brought about by meditation.

I thought there was some common biological factor that was activated in both those states. So the pineal gland was the first place I looked. I was at Stanford at the time. Jim Fadiman was there as well. Jim gave me the idea to look into the pineal. And I found out about melatonin, which nobody knew much about the human physiology back then in the early 1980s.

So there was some evidence that it was psychedelic that made dreams more intense. You know, all by itself might be psychedelic. So we studied melatonin. I was wondering if the pineal gland was that substance responsible for psychedelic experiences. Oh, interesting. Spiritual ones which had psychedelic properties.

Well, my understanding is that tryptophan is the precursor for melatonin, that it begins with dietary tryptophan. Oh, interesting. Dietary tryptophan. And that gets modified to melatonin, ultimately. Melanopsin, gosh, I think that's a protein or an enzyme. Okay.

This might be a good pee break time.

So there are pretty straightforward kinds of arguments that could have been used against studying the drug or for studying the drug. And I framed it as let's find out more and no value judgment placed on the work, no therapy or religious motivations.

My Altered States. Yeah, that came out in December. Yeah, it's an illustrated memoir of my altered state experiences in youth. Yeah, and a number of them are psychedelic experiences. First time I smoked cannabis was psychedelic. First time I took LSD. First time I, like, dissolved into nothing. Yeah. Maybe one half or so of the chapters involve psychedelic experiences. Oh, wow.

Yeah, and there's some from meditation, some from depression, some from actual physical abuse, the altered state that happens then. Yeah, and a friend of mine illustrated it, a gal from Alabama, Marilee Chalice. I think the images really are impressive. They help convey much more of the feeling aspect of the experiences than the written word alone can.

Yeah, like I've never vaped DMT.

Yeah, I smoked the free base. So what I've heard is that you don't get as high with a vape pen as smoking it.

That could be. Or you didn't take enough hits. Like, you know, could you still, you know, like when you were smoking from the vape, did you find you couldn't like inhale anymore at a certain point and you had to put it down?

think how to even hold the pen by the time he told me to do it again let alone take a hit of it so i managed to take one more hit and as soon as i did the inhale that's when i just ejected out of my body well that's a pretty intense experience yeah yeah yeah you know so that sounds a lot more like what happens when you smoke the free base but i wanted to meet an alien i didn't get to meet an alien oh well maybe next time but uh well i mean why

Yeah. Well, you know, so what would you ask it?

well that's good advice yeah i would guess i mean yeah well so where'd that advice come from though that's a good question i don't know yeah yeah my feeling is it comes from yourself yeah it might it's some sort of deep deep untapped something deep in the soul It could be that.

It might uncover what you previously weren't aware of, or it may just strengthen things you had a glimmer of their truth before.

Yeah. Stan Grof, the Czech psychiatrist who worked with LSD when it was legal, and he developed a breathwork technique as well.

described them as non-specific or non-specific amplifiers of the unconscious but they also seem to me to be non-specific amplifiers of everything which is in your mind unconscious conscious pre-conscious like it couldn't act on anything else right yeah no that makes perfect that does make sense Oh, you're asking about the super placebo idea?

Yeah. Well, back when the interest in psychedelics was really cresting, you could see an article, a scientific paper, once a week on the benefits of taking psychedelics. They make you more compassionate, more open, more progressive, more environmentally attuned. And it helped depression, helped alcohol abuse, helped end-of-life despair.

So they were basically doing everything to everyone for every condition, which made me think about a panacea, which is a cure-all. Yeah. And panaceas work through placebo or at least are kind of related to the placebo response. So if you're amplifying the placebo response, you're kind of directing the outcome in the direction that you already want it to be. Yeah.

Well, I think it works on the imagination. So if you can divide the mind into an intellectual part and an imaginative part, it's based on some of the ideas of Aristotle, that the imaginative part of the mind holds on to perceptions, emotions, feelings of certainty. And the intellectual part is ideas, abstract notions.

It's a unifying theory of how psychedelics work. They are drugs. They work on receptors and they work on functional connectivity and brain network. But subjectively or objectively, even within your body, they seem to activate innate mechanisms.

but um have you ever heard stories of people all of a sudden not being able to get high on dmt oh yeah i've i heard from somebody not long ago who described that he smoked dmt in the past you know full-on experiences yeah and then just stopped responding yeah that's that's very weird i i i well it's a mutation in their serotonin receptor i think but uh

Well, I think you need to know what's going on when you're interacting with the being. What you were describing reminded me of Zechariah, one of the prophets in the Bible, who was experiencing a vision of horses. Well, of horses, one time, another time it was the menorah, the candlestick in the temple.

vision of that and he was speaking with an angel and the angel said to him what do you see and Zechariah said I don't know that's why I'm asking you and the angel says well do you know then don't you know why don't you know and he said I don't know that's the reason I'm asking and then the angel describes the meaning of the vision

Yeah. You know, so if you know what to ask or if you know how to ask, I think it makes it more likely you'll get, you know, an answer that you can use.

You can do knockouts, knockout mutations. You can develop, let's say, a strain of rats that is knocked. The gene for the expression of a certain protein, like a receptor, is knocked out. Oh, really? Yeah, they're called knockout genes, knockout mice, knockout rats.

Yeah, you knock out the gene. For example, for the serotonin 2A receptor, you can breed animals Yeah, there's an enzyme that's involved in the synthesis of DMT. You can make knockout mice that don't make that enzyme.

They never have the enzyme. Right. No, no. And they still make DMT, which is very interesting. It's a it's an enzyme called indole and methyl transferase. And that's the way that tryptamine is methylated into DMT. In making DMT, the body first takes in tryptophan from the diet, which becomes tryptamine, and then two methyl groups are added on to the tryptamine to make dimethyltryptamine.

Yeah, and there's an enzyme, INMT, which you can knock out the gene that produces it, but they still produce DMT.

No, it just continues. Nick Glenos in Ann Arbor did his doctoral work looking at those knockout animals. And they still make DMT. Yeah, you were saying that you had Dave Nichols in the other day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, so, you know, what is endogenous DMT doing? Which is a, you know, its own conversation. Yeah. Yeah, you know, concentrations in the brain actually are rather high, Nick.

So I think that DMT ultimately stimulates the imagination as compared to stimulating the intellect. It makes things, you know, it appears, but what the appearance actually means is more dependent on the intellect.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. The presence of DMT in the pineal is still equivocal. It's still not really nailed down. Why can't we figure it out? Why is it so difficult? Um, why is that so difficult? Well, there's not much interest in endogenous DMT.

Well, people aren't doing the study.

Yeah, there's no funding, right. The woman in Ann Arbor who's overseen a lot of the DMT work there is Jimo Bergegan, who hasn't been able to get funding to look at the role of endogenous DMT. What is DMT doing in the brain of mammals and human brains?

Well, it's quite difficult in blood. Concentrations are in picograms per mil, which is in the range of billionths of grams per mil. You can't really depend on peripheral levels of DMT in the blood. In the brain, I mean, or in the living brain, the living pineal. You'd have to get fresh frozen brain tissue or something and you take a look.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the Michigan group demonstrated increases in brain DMT in the dying animal and the dead animal. Oh, really? Especially in the visual cortex, that part of the brain mediating vision. So that could be a way to explain the visual components of the near-death experience.

Yeah, yeah. Brain tissue. Okay. Wow, that's wild. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. One of the interesting elements of DMT is it's neuroprotective in ischemia. What does that mean? Well, it means when you expose a neuron to low oxygen levels, it will die. Okay. And with DMT, it allows the neuron to live longer. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and it also reduces stroke size.

Yeah, that's not been my experience. Every once or twice a year, I get a note from a family member or a friend of somebody who has smoked way too much DMT. And they develop a certain kind of mental state. It's kind of messianic that they feel they have the answer. And if people don't agree with their answer, they get mad. Yeah. So they're convinced it's kind of messianic in nature.

There's a Hungarian group that's been working on that. So it's starting to be studied anyway in stroke because it's neuroprotective, and it is like a classical psychedelic. It stimulates neurogenesis.

Yeah, yeah. There's a group in Canada, Algernon, that I've been consulting with or I have been consulting with that is working on a DMT stroke study.

Yeah, they've worked out the model. It's six or eight hours of sub-psychedelic dose of DMT. It still will have some biological effects, but it's not especially mind-altering. So it's a low, steady dose.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're moving ahead with, I think, clinical work, although I'm just not sure. But I think they're thinking about clinical work at least.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. Well, you know, shared or telepathic experiences. Like I ought to talk more about the book probably. Yeah. You know, when the opportunity comes up, and this is a good example of the first time I smoked any cannabis product, which is one of the chapters in my book, My Altered States. Yeah, I had a telepathic experience with my roommate.

in the brain. Yeah, he was probably talking about neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

We were sitting on a Persian carpet on the floor and the floor just gave out from under us. And we floated over town and we were controlling the movement of the rug as well as comparing what we were seeing down below. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Oh, look. And we were seeing it together and we were steering it higher and lower. Wow.

Well, it was hash, actually.

Yeah. It's a funny story. Like it was a Friday night in November and there was a knock on the door and The senior resident advisor came by and he said, I hear you haven't gotten stoned yet, which was true. And would you like to smoke some blonde Lebanese hash? So he came in and we smoked and some friends came in and the flying carpet experience took place. Oh, wow.

Yeah, so stem cells converting to neurons is neurogenesis. You're making new neurons.

Well, I think it would be just sort of a step up from shared feelings or shared thoughts. Why not have shared perceptions too? I think if you're close enough, vibrationally, and if DMT, let's say, were involved, which would be mediating the visions, then you might be able to share an experience like that.

And neuroplasticity is increasing the number and complexity of connections among neurons.

Yeah, I've got a colleague at Bastyr University up in Seattle who's interested in actually doing brain scans on people in distant rooms and seeing if they can be telepathic. And if so, would their brain function, their EEG be similar? Yeah. That would be fascinating. Yeah, that's a very cool study.

I don't know if it's been finished or published or whatnot, but I think that's one of the ways that you could start to study telepathy.

I don't know what that is. There are a lot of ways to try and figure out what DMT is and what it's doing. And also, I think, interesting to consider is why. Why is there DMT in our brains?

Yeah, and that's one of the ways in which they become more telepathic.

Yeah. Are you familiar with Julian Jaynes and the bicameral mind?

Yeah. Yes. So, you know, Jaynes taught that, you know, there was the spoken voice, which occurred all of the time in everyone. And then at some point biologically, at some point there were changes in brain structure and function that made the spoken voice go away. You know, it's interesting.

Within the tradition of Hebrew Bible prophecy, there's an end of prophecy that occurred at a certain point. So that would not have taken place as far back as James is suggesting.

Yeah, so it places the self on the side of the body. And yeah, there was no self. There was no personal self. You were just kind of responding to this thing.

No free will. Oh, wow. Or it was experienced anyway as no free will. And then the authority became interjected for some reason, which may have come about because of volcanic activity, earthquakes, those kinds of things, some natural catastrophes.

Yeah, the end of the prophetic stream was about, I don't know, 2,500 years ago or so.

Mostly, it's been found most recently and most objectively in the brain.

Well, I think there's a lot of similarities phenomenologically. The visions are the same type.

Ezekiel's vision is very psychedelic, very much like DMT. There's beings with wings and eyes on the wings. There's lightning and there's frozen ice and there's wheels and there's circles and flashes of lightning. It's quite psychedelic. Those are what are called the canonical prophets, the ones who have books written about them or by them.

And the canonical prophets ended at a certain point in history, maybe halfway through the Second Temple. So maybe, I don't know. When was the Hebrew Bible written?

It was written before the common era. It was closed at about 150.

It was written in Hebrew.

In the cortexes, the visual cortex, parietal cortex, there's a number of cortices on the brain. And each is responsible for certain psychological functions almost.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah. Well, you have to go even further back than that to Abraham.

Yeah. Like Abraham preceded Moses by, you know, by many generations.

Well, and you're wondering then if the stories in the Bible and the figures are real.

Well, it's been a couple of thousand years, and the Bible hasn't been replaced yet, which I think is an interesting aspect that characterizes it as possibly unique. It's been very influential. Our kids are named after figures in the Bible, our law, our theology, architecture, art, poetry, wisdom literature. It's all contained in the Bible. It's influenced governments, the church.

Christianity is founded on the texts. So it's been quite enduring and quite influential.

Which I think makes it a unique book.

Yeah, compared to Gandalf, which has influenced people, but there's not churches. There's not a clerical establishment. Yeah, it's more of a recreational at this point, probably, compared to the influence of the Hebrew Bible.

Well, you think so? You're not sure.

Yeah. Well, it's strange. It's like, you know, one half of the world's population is either Christian or Muslim. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Well, you know it when you see it.

Well, it's effect on you as well. Are you a better person or not?

Like, are you prone to destruction versus building things up?

Yeah. Do you thrive on chaos or not? Well, I think also, do you tell the truth? A few months back, I read a book on the Antichrist, which was called The Antichrist. And the Antichrist is characterized by the big lie, by the lie. The Antichrist is a liar. And that's the way he's been defined or has been defined over the millennia.

The first Antichrist. Probably people who didn't believe in Christ as the Messiah. Is Satan the first Antichrist?

um well you say was that a word yeah was it a term it was a term that only appears twice in the hebrew bible and in both times it means accuser yeah yeah like a prosecutor or opponent right or opponent right yeah yeah there's the story of that pagan uh prophet um who um my god my train of thought

Bialam had, well, he was a false prophet, as a pagan prophet, but was quite potent in his predictions and his poetry. When I get to that point, I'll remember.

Yeah, yeah. So he's beating his animal to get off the road because there's an angel placed on the road that is threatening him. And the threatening part is the Hebrew root is the formation or the basis of Satan or Satan.

You know, John Allegro?

Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a classic. I've never read it.

He was one of the initial investigators.

As far as I know, no. Yeah. There's Akkadian influences and Hittite, Assyrian. Right. And Arabic as well.

Yeah, I think it's really hard to say now what the role of naturally occurring DMT in the brain is, but you can consider it like a way it maintains consensus reality. Too much makes things get really psychedelic, and not enough might make things seem flat and boring.

Well, I think you need to be careful in analogizing or allegorizing the text. You can really take it too far from the basis of the text, which is what it's intended to communicate.

Yeah, that's taking great liberty with the word meaning.

Yeah, it is the basis of the idea of christening. And oftentimes, you know, there's an anointing involved, an anointing by oil.

Yeah, you know, so the Hebrew root has to do with anointing. And, you know, Christos, you anoint, you christen, you know, by oil. You know, and mashach, or the Hebrew root, is the root of Messiah as well. So that's where you get the anointing and the Messiah in the name of Christ from christening.

Yeah, and... Yeah, it isn't related to drugs as far as I know from the Hebrew Bible. It might have been a... Well, it's an interpretation of Allegro then. He's like back engineering almost.

Yeah, could it just be applying oil for therapeutic reasons? Like some kind of oil.

Some kind of medical oil. It would be, yeah, I think it would be anointing.

Well, and so he's primarily focusing on the Sumerian.

On the ancient Greek.

Okay, that's right.

Yeah, it was burned down.

Yeah. Was this fellow talking about the psychedelic experience at all?

Yeah. Sometimes people report mastery of a foreign language that they didn't have before. They were studying it, but then they became expert in it.

Yeah, yeah. I know a woman who's a member of one of the ayahuasca churches in New Mexico who was struggling with learning Portuguese. And then on ayahuasca was able to just really hone in on it and become quite fluent. Really? Yeah, very quickly. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Philology is interesting. The meaning of words. Yeah. When I was beginning my study of the Hebrew Bible, I had two huge dictionaries next to me and just spent all my time going back and forth.

Not from... From ancient Greek. Yeah, are you talking... I'm sorry, ancient Hebrew.

Yeah, well, you know, it's an old text, so not much has survived. The Palestinian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud are rather old, but they were written after the turn of the common era. They're written in Hebrew, but there isn't anything contemporaneous with the Hebrew Bible that has been discovered, like philosophy, medicine. I wonder if those texts are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a part of the brain called the reticular activating system, which people have considered for a long time to be that filtering mechanism.

I'm not that familiar with them.

There's no medical text.

Not that far back, but pretty far back.

Yeah.

Yeah. Have most of them been discovered? Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are. Do they still think they're? I don't know.

Some cave and a number of caves after they discovered that first one.

Qumran, yeah. Yeah, some people think that's the origin of early Christianity. It occurred within that community.

Yeah, the second temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE, but stood for almost, I don't know, 400 or 500 years.

It's at least 200 years BCE. Right. Probably not much further back.

Oh yeah, absolutely. If you really study those ancient religious languages, they put you in an altered state.

Yeah, I think it's like reading sutras in Pali, let's say, Buddhist sutras in their original language. Yeah, it produces a meditative state. I think the more you understand the language, the more it affects you mentally. Yeah. Yeah, I spend about an hour every day studying the Hebrew Bible.

Yeah, it's in the extremely primitive parts of the brain. And many people have thought about psychedelics or the function of that part of the brain as acting as a filter. Interesting. And psychedelics affect that part of the brain pretty robustly.

Yeah, and the English and the Hebrews side by side. That was the basis ultimately of that prophetic states book.

Just crazy. Yeah, there's like, well, unique words. Is it? Well, you know, the Hebrew language is based on three-letter roots. And there aren't that many, under a thousand. Yeah, you know, but the whole language is built upon words that are built upon these three-letter roots.

Um, yeah, probably, but I don't think it, oh, right. Yeah. I don't think it was that widespread. It might've been under, yeah, I don't think it, yeah, I don't think it was that common. Yeah. I just don't know that. I'm not a historian of drug use.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know, that ergot containing mixture. What was it called? The kikion.

Yeah, the Akara rock and all that.

Yeah, the whole relationship between drugs and early Christianity, very interesting.

Yeah, small price to pay, really. And if we're doing it, then other people are doing it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the CIA established these houses where people would be lured in by prostitutes. Oh yeah. And the prostitutes were front, front folks, you know, gave people LSD without them knowing about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty, pretty crazy time in history.

That's probably, let's see.

Yeah. Well, have you seen Chaos, that new documentary about Manson by Errol Morris? It's out? Yeah. What? Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's the cerebral spinal fluid.

Well, do you know Hamilton? Have you had him on your show?

Great.

Yeah. I was on a show just a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

Very interesting. The pineal gland is right in the middle there.

Yeah. Oh, you know, I could use a bathroom break.

Okay.

Yeah, I met him on my 50th high school reunion weekend, which would have been 2019 now. Oh, you met him that late? No, I met him before that. Oh, okay. Oh, my, let's see, 40th. It was the 40th reunion, so it was 2009. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's what I thought, yeah. Yeah, I heard about Joe from a person who just contacted me who said, have you ever heard of Joe Rogan?

Yeah, the reticular activating system is up on the brain stem. Yeah, so there are receptors in that part of the brain that psychedelics bind to and change the activity of the neurons there. So that could be the filter.

He's just talking about your book. And so he said, I hadn't heard of Joe at that time. And I got his number and I called him. I said, hey, thanks for putting the word out about the book.

Yeah, most of the people he was interviewing, he would ask if they had smoked DMT.

Yeah, he's really helped bring it to a larger audience.

Uh-huh, Tusco. Yeah. That was the elephant's name. It was at the St. Louis Zoo.

Well, it went into convulsions, and then he gave it a big dose of Thorazine, and then it died. So a combination of... What is Thorazine? Thorazine is an antipsychotic.

You know, theoretically.

But they gave him an elephant-sized dose, I guess.

Yeah. It was a strange time in psychedelic research. What do you think about the current interest in psychedelics? Do you think it's a good thing, a bad thing? I mean, what's motivating it?

Yeah, yeah, right now. Yeah, as compared to back then.

I can't help but wonder. If there's some underlying methodology behind or belief system behind all the research. All that's out there, I think, is beginning to focus on the religious implications of psychedelic research. Because people describe religious experiences on psychedelics. Is there a way to harness that with either new traditions or older traditions?

Yeah, like infuse Christianity with a psychedelic boost.

Yeah, I'm just not sure. Well, I think that idea is predicated on the role of the psychedelic experience in the creation of Christianity. And I just don't know if there's enough support. And if it's a good thing, you know, you'd have to be developed enough to partake. Totally. Yeah, you have to have the right intent, the right set, and the right setting.

One of my lately favorite authors is Leo Perutz. He was an Austrian writer and also a statistician.

Perutz, P-E-R-U-T-Z. And in the 30s, before the discovery of LSD, he wrote a book called St. Peter's Snow. Travis actually was the first person to tell me about that book. And it's about a chemist developing an ergot alkaloid to give to the masses to bring about a religious revolution. Really? Very interesting. And this was like 10 years before the discovery of LSD in Switzerland.

Yeah, there may have been some ergot chemistry going on way before Hoffman discovered LSD.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm just not sure. I'm not current on that.

Right.

Yeah, yeah. A continuous infusion of DMT. Yeah. I speak about that toward the end of the DMT book, The Spirit Molecule, that maybe we could keep people in that state for longer, an hour to an extended period of time. The problem with smoking or giving one injection of DMT is it's over quite quickly, and a continuous infusion would allow you to be in that space longer. Yeah.

Well, with some kind of ergot alkaloid.

Yeah, that's medicinal chemistry. I don't know. Dave Nichols would be the guy to ask.

Well, I think what you're talking about is the source of the visions. Was it just coming from them, or was it just an amplification of what was in their minds? Or was it coming from above, like an objective, freestanding source of information? So that's the difference, I think, between them.

top-down model where the divine communicates us through the visions or a bottom-up one, in which case it's just amplification of what's already there and uncovering.

Well, you'd have to go into more detail, I think, if you're going to talk about revitalizing any religion. What exactly would that mean? Would it mean more art coming out of the sect? Would it mean more literature or more involvement in the political system? Yeah, I think reviving any religion, I mean, what are you going to focus on?

Yeah. Well, I think it has to do with the source of the information. Is it just from the people themselves or from God? And like you're talking about the lack of a need for any new religion, I think it has to do with the unity of a teaching with God. So you'd have to focus on the notion of God, which is a very controversial notion.

Yeah, I've heard Buber describe it as the most maligned of all words. And therefore, Martin Buber, he was a German Jewish theologian. Yeah, that it was the most overused or abused word in the language. God? God, the word God, yeah, with a capital G. And therefore, worthy of the most study and discussion, rather than avoiding it.

You know, so there's a couple of, you know. Oh, and then a few years later, Andrew approached me and suggested that we write this paper, which describes the basis anyway for a study like that. Right. Yeah. And Imperial College in London is doing work and there's a group in Switzerland.

Well, if you look at the first DMT book, you know, there's a molecular, you know, drawing of the DMT molecule and that was written by a former Jesuit.

Oh wow. Yeah. Turned to chemist.

Well, they're studious and more philosophical, I think.

The church commission, yeah.

Well, as you mentioned, you know, the budget that the government has got for research grants is immeasurable.

Non-psychedelic psychedelics. Yeah. They are supposed to stimulate neuroplasticity and neurogenesis without the trip. Yeah, there's one which is a compound similar to ibogaine called TBG or tabernatholog. And I think that's being studied in humans now. Finally, it's one of these non-psychedelic psychedelics.

It could be, and it might be as effective as, for example, Prozac.

Well, I know, and that's still a point of raging controversy, actually, even within the academic community. Is the subjective experience necessary? You know, my feeling is that the non-psychedelic ones will be like super Prozacs and very helpful in most people who don't want to have a trip. And the drugs that continue causing trips will be used for the more difficult cases.

So you have a higher chance of responding, but also a higher chance of adverse effects. And that's the reason that you'd only use it in cases that don't respond to non-psychoactive ones.

Yeah. I've, I've read accounts. Yeah. But I don't know if they're really based on objective data, but it may be, those are the kind of studies that are occurring behind the scenes.

Yeah, I know Dana.

Well, yeah, you're laying there hooked up to a crucifix. Well, you're laying in bed, but still.

Yeah, quite a character.

Yeah, I think smaller doses would be like a microdose. Like a microdose.

And it could theoretically enhance fighting ability. At the same time, though, it might also affect somebody's desire to fight.

Yeah, did you see the movie Jacob's Ladder? No. It's about BZ, which was used on soldiers in Vietnam. BZ? BZ something, yeah. Huh. Yeah, look at Jacob's Ladder.

Yeah, Tim Roth, I think.

Anti-cholinergic.

No, no.

Yeah, live action, I guess. Well, yeah, so I think giving soldiers psychedelics is fraught. I mean, what's the guarantee?

I think they keep people in the state.

Right, right.

Yeah, which is why I think a microdose of Ibogaine might make soldiers more alert and able to endure more discomfort.

Captagon, a very interesting compound, yeah.

Yeah, it's a stimulant, that's for sure.

Yeah. Wasn't that like really an important source of income, you know, for one of the countries there? The Captagon exports.

Okay, right.

Man. No, it's reported in retrospect. You know, like you give DMT for a half hour at a prearranged infusion rate.

Oh, well, you know, this reminds me of, I've been wanting to mention that the book by Philip K. Dick, The Stigmata of Palmer Eldredge, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldredge is a book by Philip K. Dick. Yeah, are you familiar with that?

Yeah, it's a competition. What's the name of it again?

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldredge. It's a novel that describes like a war for dominion of the psychedelic market on planet Earth between a Terran psychedelic and one from an interest an interest dollar. Oh, really? Yeah.

So the one that's made on Earth puts people into the world of Perky Pat, who's in a dollhouse, and you interact with the figures in the dollhouse, and a lot of people spend time in that space with the compound that's made on Earth. And the one that comes in from interstellar space is totally weird. You take it once and you never come down. You come down, but that's just part of the trip.

It just goes on and on. It's really just this nightmarish limbo state. You know, so Captagon, methamphetamine, you know, there's all this competition for what's the, you know, what's going to be, you know, the drug that everyone is taking along the lines of Brave New World even.

And the person comes down and you ask them to describe what it was like.

You know, one of the towns in New Mexico I worked in has a big oil and gas industry. And I worked at one of the clinics in that town. Yeah, and I saw a number of their workers. And, you know, when they started to work, they were given a... They were given a lunchbox with an apple and a sandwich and methamphetamine. What? In order to help them get through 18-hour shifts on a regular basis.

Well, you could go in and out like that. I don't think anybody is doing that kind of work. I think that kind of work would be helpful for psychotherapy.

When was this? This was 2004, 2006. Wow. Is that legal? I don't think so. No, no.

Yeah, well, you know, in some of the clinical situations I've worked, I would prescribe Adderall. Yeah, and it would be helpful when it was helpful. This was in the early 2000s, though. I think people are more liberal with diagnosing people with ADHD. But if you have bad ADHD, stimulants can be like a miracle cure almost. Really? Yeah.

It stimulates the release of dopamine. I think it also directly stimulates dopamine receptors.

Well, I think it would be useful. You can be in a state for a while, DMT state or whatever. very highly altered state for let's say a half hour, you come down and you talk with your therapist and you decide what to do next. Go deeper, go back lighter, take some more time off. So I think that holds promise for therapeutic purposes too. But I think characterizing that landscape is also important.

The next day, yeah. One of my friends once gave me a, I think, five milligram dose of Adderall, and I went home and I wrote after I took it, and it was like 20 pages, and it really was effortless.

Oh, read this, Rick. It'll cheer you up.

Yeah, stimulants. Methamphetamine. He was taking meth. No, no, he wasn't taking meth. I think it was amphetamine primarily.

Yeah, yeah. Poor guy. God, he really burned bright while he burned.

Merck, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, you can still find pharmaceutical cocaine out there. It is still used in medicine.

I think, you know, mostly for things that have to do with the eye. Oh, really? It makes the cornea numb. Huh. So it is still in use. It's schedule two, actually. It's not even schedule one.

Yeah, I think that's what they put into my eyes. I had cataract surgery a few years ago.

Yeah. Wasn't Merck making MDMA too? Weren't they? I think they were. I think they were the first, you know, to synthesize.

You know, and it really wasn't, you know, explored very far for application in, you know, clinical medicine. Yeah, it wasn't until MDMA psychotherapy became a thing back in the 80s.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think that MDMA that Dave Nicholson made for MAPS is still being used. I mean, it was a huge amount.

Yeah, yeah. So David Nichols made our DMT. I met him at the Esalen Institute for Conference that was organized in 85, I think. Rick Doblin organized it. And it was a collection of people interested in doing psychedelic drug studies. Dave was there. That's where I met him. I met Shulgin, I met Stan Groff, John Lilly. So it was a place to convene.

The history of maps is very interesting, Rick's history. I've known Rick since 85, 84.

Well, especially for any kind of substance, any kind of drug with a lot of mind-altering characteristics. If the research team has been indoctrinated, let's say, in a particular model and to the influence of psychedelics, that's going to affect their treatment of a person in a psychedelic state.

Well, I think it'd be interesting to compare and that comparison has never been done. It wouldn't be that hard a study to do.

Like the beings. How do you interact with the beings once you've gotten used to their presence?

Yeah, but I think as a result of your experiences, you would be coming in with a mindset based on your own experiences. And if you hadn't experienced it, then you would just be coming in clinically, let's say.

Yeah, it would be more of a blank slate. You wouldn't have as many preconceptions about what was going to happen to the person and how to interpret it.

I met John Lilly.

Well, I think he was very interested in human-animal communication.

And he thought LSD might enhance that. Yeah, between humans on dolphins, both on acid. They would be telepathic, like we were talking about earlier.

Yeah. Well, I suppose if your astronauts are in suspended animation, you can keep them on DMT for three years and they'd still be able to communicate with each other. Really? When I was doing my DMT studies, I wrote to NASA and I said, if you want to go to Mars, this can be a long time. What are people going to do?

And I thought, well, if they were just, you know, given DMT for three years or like for extensive periods of time, you know, that would make the time go by pretty fast.

Yeah. I never heard back. Oh, God.

Yeah, but it'll be the same human problems, don't you think? I mean, you know, greed, hate, delusion. You know, we'll do that on Mars. Yeah. Are you familiar with a science fiction writer from England named Olaf Stapleton?

Yeah, you know, fascinating guy. He wrote a book in the 40s on 19 species of humans. You know, in order to perfect the species, make the species.

Yeah. It's like two billion years of human evolution. So telepathy is the final stage in human evolution. Everybody experiencing the same thing at one time.

No, it's all genetically engineered.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so one species or, you know, one variant develops a new species. Yeah. Oh, wow.

yeah what do you think of telepathy i mean do you think it's a good thing you know joe rogan and i were discussing this about the chips you know the neural the neural link stuff yeah oh my god it's terrifying to me man yeah and everybody has the same thoughts and he wondered he was i think he was you know saying that's a good thing and i was i was not so sure he seems to be

So where's that going to lead? Yeah, and most people want to keep things private most of the time.

Yeah, it would force people to get that way. That, I think, is the belief underlying.

Yeah, yeah. You would be shamed otherwise or ostracized. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. There would be a lot of self-incriminating evidence involved. Yeah. It would just be... Not necessarily.

Yeah. It's rife for misinterpretation.

Well, there would have to be a new species of human to be able to tolerate that and to be able to use it and that it would allow the preservation of the species. Otherwise, there would just be chaos, just a lot of destruction. Yeah. Yeah. You know, humans can get along, but oftentimes they don't, right?

It's those times that they don't that can be difficult.

I guess the trade-off would be eternal life.

Yeah, and that can be a good thing or not. Yeah, the final species in Stapleton's book in First and Last Men, they live 35,000 years each because that's how long it takes to acquire all of knowledge that's accessible. Very interesting. 30,000 years. Yeah, yeah, 35,000 years.

Yeah. Well, you know, John wrote a blurb for the first DMT book.

Yeah. John came by our place one afternoon, long time ago.

Compared to DMT, too, if you look at the phenomenological descriptions, the shaking and the white light and the transport and the beings interacting with you.

Telepathic communication. Well, I think there's a spectrum of contact experiences. One is just consciousness to consciousness. There's no stigma. There's no movement. It's just your mind to the mind of the alien. And there's physical examples. Part of the spectrum where people move and they've got stigmata and there's more physical evidence.

So the similarity between the DMT state and the consciousness to consciousness contact experience is very interesting.

Yeah, kind of got them to regress.

Yeah, that's just hard to say. There is speculation anyway in Stapleton's book that it is a history being told to present-day humans to prepare them, to help them accept the development of the species. So it's a message coming from the future. So, you know, it's possible to predict or to experience influence of the future on the present. Cause and effect.

Just a different type of cause and effect.

Yeah, I think people put a lot of stock in being saved by aliens or them helping us out of our jam. And the description of the aliens, I think, is the most compelling one.

Yeah, and their presence. What is their intent? What's their information? And from a religious point of view, it'd be, who do they pray to? So it isn't like they're angelic. They're being kind of influenced, supervised by something higher. You know, they were created.

Yeah. And you know, they have a mission of some sort.

Very weird. I know.

I think we can get an idea generally, but specifically I don't see how that would take place.

Yeah, well, there is so much research that needs to be done. There's a lot of information out there. I think when you're talking about the beings, you still need to speculate where they come from. Are they just figments of our imagination? Are they the brain on drugs? They really come from someplace else.

Because they're being viewed by us. Yeah. And that's all we know.

Yeah, I think it might be just our imagination, which gives them human form. Or they might have human form wherever they come from. Or we can only see them with human form when we view them.

Or it might be from some other place.

You know, which is the notion of religion, at least ones with an orientation towards an external God.

Oh yeah, that's the first chapter in My Altered States.

Yeah, a couple of previous lives. One was from the early 1900s. So how did this come about? What were you on? Yeah, I was on some variant of psilocybin that had been taken by very few people. It seemed safe in animals.

Yeah, like a molecular modification of psilocybin.

Yeah, it was a lab product.

No, this was rather experimental. It seemed to be safe in humans, I mean in lower animals. So there was a handful of people interested in seeing what its effects were like in humans. Yeah, so the experience on that was the content of the first chapter in the book. Yeah, I'm in the Ukraine, actually, in the early 1900s with my grandfather.

Yeah, and they're frightened because of what's coming upon them. The other is a concentration camp, past life, being at the bottom of a heap of, you know, corpses or almost corpses, and then being born into this life. Yeah, very powerful.

Uh, it was just one afternoon. Just one afternoon.

Yeah. It was rough, but it was very useful actually. It gave me empathy for my ancestors in a way I hadn't had before.

I think so, yeah. But, you know, I haven't come across anything. It would seem like a natural reaction you would, you know, experience past lives, or at least you would read history books maybe in a different, you know, light after a big trip like that.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Like I still consult and mentor other researchers. You know, I gave a lot of DMT back then, so I'm not that much keen on giving people big psychedelic trips. I mean, it's really very hard work, especially back then. It was just on my own. Yeah, I've been mostly working on a version of Genesis, a translation and commentary on the book of Genesis.

Well, it's been like an almost 20-year project now, and it's beginning to take form in a publishable manner. Yeah. It's now 1,200 pages, so I need to break it.

1,200. I need to shrink it down to 200 to make it readable.

Yeah, but it'll be a readable translation and commentary on Genesis, which is a really important book. I think you can understand the whole Hebrew Bible just through Genesis. So that's what I've—I'll start with that. That's the first book of the five books of Moses. Okay. It was the result of this new book, as a result of all the notes I scribbled in the margins of my translation of Genesis.

And after a certain point, I just had too many, and there was no room to write anymore. So I put them into a Word file, which was just huge. All the notes were from reading other commentaries over the years, and the derivation of the words.

Well, you know, that's just it. They say it's the word of God. Yeah. You know, so there's just no question about it.

Well, I think, you know, the visions convey information and the brain uses what's in its... Is it like, are you talking about like epigenetic information? Well, you know, that's the question. Is it information that's coming from us or from an external source?

Yeah, well.

I think it's a freestanding kind of level of existence that gradually merged into ours. You know, the world of the Bible, like Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark. You know, it took place, but on a different plane. And then, you know, gradually, you know, kind of interjected itself onto ours.

And there's more historical evidence, like of David, let's say, first temple, those kinds of phenomena.

Well, and they're very influential. I mean, it's affected all aspects. Well, in a lot of ways, the foundation of the West. It's a Bible-oriented West. Christianity, Judaism, the Muslims refer to the text as the oldest one. Yeah, I just love it. I just love the language. And the ideas are really- The Hebrew language. Yeah, biblical Hebrew.

it may be that the one god idea came about because of the loss of the bicameral mind there was no longer a spoken voice which they may have thought was an angel for example and then when all the angels disappeared they had to make up like a larger god you know to pray to and ask for advice from or to think right The three kinds of prayer, actually. Thanking, praising, and pleading.

Well, if you enter into a state as a result of doing that, then I think you're more open to the placebo or panacea response.

Zen.

I practiced and studied under the supervision of a monastery for quite a long time in my 20s. I never became a monk, but I was ordained as a layman and was involved in a local organization. Yeah. Zen Buddhism.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, speaking of the Defense Department and DARPA, when I was at Stanford, I took a class on Indian Buddhism by a freshly minted PhD from the University of Wisconsin. who told us that these departments around the country were established by the Defense Department to understand Buddhism because they were thinking, who are these monks that set themselves on fire?

And so they established centers of Buddhist studies at a number of American universities. Yeah, and she was one of the grad students.

Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was a national security kind of issue, which I can understand.

Yeah, I think it was of interest to understand what is Buddhism, what do they teach, how do they do it.

Yeah. Well, it established a number of centers of Buddhist studies around the country. So there was a positive outcome. But the motivation was kind of mixed.

Oh, really? I don't know anything about that.

Yeah. So how did they do that?

Well, I think us from the future.

Yeah, yeah. You know, kind of, you know, pulling us in a direction.

Yeah. Well, you wonder where that information comes from.

Yeah. Like, is that just, you know, like a latent bit of information or associations that they hadn't made before or some, or, you know, some kind of download from above. Yeah. Well, do you think it, like, I've always wondered whether it's all that important, at least from a psychological point of view, because it's the, you know, the message, you know, the information.

It's the message, the information that's contained in that state that's more important than what the state actually looks like.

Yeah. Well, there were those, I was wondering if those ketone bars contribute.

Yeah, that's hard to say. I mean, personalities get modified, I think, or can be modified under the influence of a psychedelic. But it's more, I think, that they made those changes more real in their lives. And that might be what people are referring to as they've changed. They maybe took more action on some of the ideas they had than otherwise would have been the case.

You might get more fine tuned.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I have.

Well, so have you looked at the red laser?

Well, you know, the one thing, like I just moved to Albuquerque last year. I was living in a town called Gallup, New Mexico. Well, in the county, actually, outside of town. And it was really quiet. Like, it just was really quiet. You could hear yourself walk. You know, there'd be a ringing in your ears.

Yeah. Yeah, it was just really quiet in Albuquerque. The main thing that I've had a problem with is the sound. Like, it's really noisy in a city.

Yeah, and it's more difficult to think. Like, I would just be alone for days and days at my place in Gallup, and that's... And I could be a lot more creative.

Productive too, with fewer distractions.

And the quiet, it would produce a spiritual kind of effect at a low level. Yeah. Just being still, because there's nothing to react to.

Yeah, yeah. And they can order through me. I'll inscribe and sign books. rickstrossman.com.

Yeah. And I just joined X, you know, so I'm on X now.

Yeah. At Rick underscore Strassman.

Yeah, I barely did that. Well, you know, it's got quite a few Easter eggs. You know, like there's a cat in the corner licking up some vomit.

It was a real cat.

Yeah, a lot of cactus and crystals and looking at the back of your hand to determine the level of your altered state. That's amazing. And the birds up above, some friends and I were seeing birds coming off of the wall and that was kind of scary.

Yeah, that's my hope, a book of Genesis. I was debating whether or not to do a volume two of My Altered States because I have a lot of notes. So I was kind of waiting to see how things went with volume one. It's been slower than my purely psychedelic work.

Usually after Torah study, like I'll spend about an hour reading the Bible. And then, you know, like if I have a big stretch of time and I'm working under contract, yeah, I'll smoke in the late morning.

Yeah, then work. You know, that's for the more creative stuff.

And once I start editing, I have to be pretty straight.

It helps to talk out loud too. That's one of the other things.

Yeah. It kind of helps you only think one thought at a time.

I have a big old Mont Blanc fountain pen from the 1970s. No way. Yeah. I write with that. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah.

Popstars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Popstars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Popstars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

We were woken from our sleep by a fire in the middle of the night. We started to scream, fire, help, but there was no one there and the doors were padlocked shut.

We were woken from our sleep by a fire in the middle of the night.

But there was no one there and the doors were padlocked shut. There were no night watchmen.

I don't know She died on the spot

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

People were afraid.

He told her to come with us at gunpoint, and he was beating her with his weapon. And then we heard shooting and the man ordering her to take it off. Bullets were falling in the area, so we hid inside the house.

This was not a war. This was chaos.

I would love to train about winter sport, learn some more skill, more style, learn some new tricks. Put everything that you can. We would love to try everything.

And it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this, the secret that's there.

To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yeah, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

She's special to me because she's my best friend. We met in hospital.

It's really nice to have a friend that's always with you in hospital. I think I'm going to be as brave as Betsy is.

Do you want to be a police officer like Daddy? No. Do you want to be a police officer like Daddy? No, Mommy. Oh.

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

One, two. So the first hit is 2d6, right? And then the next hit is 4d6. All my d6s roll like trash, so it doesn't really matter.

Oh, that's fair.

One's a natural one. Oh, twist. Yeah, twist it.

My father and ancestor had laid with a sea giant, so perhaps I've got a bit of giant blood myself.

Ooh. As my tentacle, this is the Kraken tentacle from Sea of Thieves, will whip forward and attempt to parry the blow.

23.

I had no idea. Ooh, I'd like to twist one. Twist it, twist it, twist it. That'll hit.

Nicely done, Mr. Stabiscotch. I'm going to look back and see the fucking burning troll as he's dying, and I'll say, well, it's either one or both of us.

Both of those, the AC 16? Yes. Both of those should hit. Great. The lowest was... 17. Thank god. They all hit. And so then that is just 2d46. Not great. 10 plus 14 plus...

48?

And hopefully it's sprayed with troll blood.

You never should have boarded us!

Uh...

Yeah, that's pretty important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh no!

Do you replace an attack with a grapple?

The fire will get down to the basement.

Borders in the bow! And I'm going to recklessly attack.

Okay. So he's able to... That's it. That's my turn. We're turning him into baselands!

I'm imagining Queenie. I'm just in my imagination palace. Queenie does a little rabbit bicycle kick. Is that a butterfly kick? Where she jumps up and then she goes and knocks him off.

Con, one will definitely pass, it'll be a 23, and then 16. Both pass, so you're fine.

Imagine it's Aisha.

I'm going to grab a... the harpoon that I have. Hold on, who's next after me?

Oh, Queenie.

It's always funny when you see people who are obviously very light designing, very skinny designing races, this giant, super heavy minotaur. They weigh 190 pounds.

Oh no, I'll only be 6'2". Don't ever let me row again.

That would be so funny. 612 plus...

I'll point to the eyeballs of the shark and the direwolf, like, what the fuck, man?

You don't have to role-play this, and it may just be because I'm in full Asoyath mode, but does the dire wolf being frozen to death, if Queenie had relayed that information?

So you gotta do it backwards to justify that because it's cool as fuck. Yeah.

Fuck. Well, Mr. Fireblossom, you sit in the middle with your light. I'll be in the front.

I'll climb up on top, check the controls, see if there's any turn around. Otherwise, I'm just going to fucking... Make an investigation check.

My crab legs will erupt from my back and I'm just gonna basically climb up and I'll heave the canvas up and basically get all the rigging to where I presume fashion the sail.

The sail suddenly unfolds. Very funny. All right, so do we think that this thing comes to life and breathes?

I think our kobold friends would have picked this clean.

Lots of different types of people. So she called the banners. I'm sorry I keep going on the toilet. Hey.

While this could be bad luck, you, Mr. Stabiscotch, got yourself the hex charm. You got yourself the tattoo. That's right.

Well, that was still dead.

Yeah, it's going to be a... Sorry, actions. It is going to be a... 26.

I will also, as quickly as I possibly can,

Taishen, cast your fire into the darkness. And this would be cinematically. He would shoot a fire bolt, it would go in, it would show the thing, and then it would be like a .

Mr. Fire Blossom, get ready.

I've got a fire in my belly and I'm all fired up.

Same roll, literally exact same roll.

Tonsil's aiming through.

13.

This is a combination, as I said, of DOJ and Department of Education because DOJ has the ability, you know, to file criminal charges.

I think we're just making sure that everyone knows we're very serious about this. This is a combination, as I said, of DOJ and Department of Education, because DOJ has the ability to file criminal charges. Department of Education does not.

So we'll investigate, but we will hold people accountable on both ends, where Department of Education might look at defunding mechanisms, but the Department of Justice can actually look at it from a criminal perspective.

Man, I appreciate that. Pablo Torre is one of the great journalists today. We all know ESPN, all they love these days is former players, you know, with seven or eight concussions telling us what's going on in life. But thank God for great journalists like Pablo Torre. Man, that dude's off the hook, man. Dude's off the hook. One of the best. Great guy. Great guy. Great guy.

But I'm worried about you, dude. I'm worried about you, man. I don't know if you're going to make it or not, man. You, you look like you got into Mr. Roger neighborhood there and got into his closet today, man. I mean, I mean, what's up with that outfit, man? You are the Paul Feinbaum show. You, you supposed to come in here, man. Blazer. What's up with this outfit? You got golf cardigan legend.

I thought this was okay. I love me some Pablo, but you remember this right here. You are with the insane. You are with the lame. You are with those that may not have a brain. Protect yourself, brother. Protect yourself. Appreciate your legend. Elvis has left to build it.

He had a great sense of humor. He was funny. And I know that it wasn't nothing for him to crack a joke or make you smile.

I was just applying for Strops. And she was like maybe the first person or second. I can't lie. She caught my eye. And ever since then, I just had this crush on her. You know, so I went up there for my interview one day and... I seen her. She was coming to get her check.

And I couldn't take my eyes off of her. So I was, I don't know, I was just, at that moment, I think I knew then. Like, yeah, this the one right here. I think I knew.

She didn't have a lot of makeup on. It wasn't made. And I met her at work in her uniform. So it was like, this is you and your purists. You're not dressed up in the club where you like got my attention. No, it's just you at work in a natural essence with no makeup. And you just have a natural beauty. You know, your eyes are beautiful. Your skin is just everything. And you were just my type.

So I was free floater. I do a lot around the store, but I made sure I get to the deli every day.

No, I'm an adult. I know the difference between lust and love. It was more than just that. No, this is my girl. This is who I want.

It was like, I really want to be with you. And I started just showing her more affection, talking to her more on the phone when we're not at work, being with her more after work. Like, I want to see you after work and eight hours with you. And I still want to spend time with you. Yes, it's really there. It's really there, you know. It was pure.

It was just like one of them days where you get up not knowing. It was just a nice day.

Mike was funny. He had a sense of humor. I know that much. You know, my heart belongs now. I cut my hair one time. Man, that dude called me genuine one day. That was so funny to me. It was so funny to me. I was like, okay. But he had a great sense of humor, man. He was funny. And I know that it wasn't nothing for him to crack a joke or make you smile.

Police had it taped off, and then I seen Mike, Mike. And it was just like, I didn't see nothing else after that.

Right now is the time for the mayor to step down.

How did it go? Well, Mayor Adams and Tom Homan, join us right now.

The kids and kids.

No, easy.

Well, the goal, the goal, the goal is money. I mean, but, but, but, but I can, I can, I can feel for professionals. We can fill houses within seven days and what I put out my build out, I get it back within seven days. And I just keep doing that. And the constraint is obviously finding the leases, right?

So my plan was to build it out, do as many as we can, use the cash flow to then obviously open up the kids' home, and then maybe convert some... And that's just because you want to do that, not because... All right, so you're conflicting priorities.

Kids is that three times, maybe four times. So, so I would make, so let's say for example, what I make from five properties I can make from one kid home.

When you mean sunset, please elaborate. What do you mean?

The professionals.

Yeah.

Thank you. Can I throw in one more? One more? Okay. So in terms of your top five meta skills, what are your top five meta skills you would learn that give the highest projected output in terms of increasing business value? I know leadership is one of them.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

40.

Okay.

1.1.

Cool. I would like to be at 10 million in revenue.

This is what's stopping me, I believe. Focus, skill deficiency, and belief. All right. I have two avatars, which is working professionals and local government. And yeah, I need to, I believe I need to choose between the two avatars. What do you sell again?

so support and accommodation so basically children who come from challenged backgrounds who have been in care come to us we basically help them build their semi-independent living skills so we built we help them build their independent skills so when they reach a certain age they can then move on to their own accommodation and live independently so these are kids in the system right so like

Yeah, personal development. Life skills. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Now, the issue I have is... How do you make money? Huh?

So we make money from our support services and our accommodation. So basically, we rent properties from landlords who have real estate. And then we...

sublet the rooms and then we charge the government a support package for supporting the young people and then obviously there's a risk premium because these are challenged kids and then yeah we just make the spread basically okay so the government is your is your customer yeah okay got it okay so the issue is focus and avatar why is that a problem um okay so basically So we have two avatars.

So obviously the asset we have control of is obviously the property. So we can use that for different services. So we can either rent out to professionals who need rooms on a short-term basis, which we do, or we can rent out rooms to kids in care who need support and accommodation. My issue is, which one do I pick?

Okay, so working professionals is one. Okay. The second is kids in care.

Right now, just working professionals.

Not at the moment, no. But wait, but wait, but I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why. So we were doing it, we were doing it.

So we actually, so I actually scaled it from one to six, right? And my business partner had an inappropriate relationship with one of the kids in care, and it completely fucked me.

Yeah. Well, we don't know if he fucked her, but it was inappropriate. It was inappropriate.

All right, keep going. And it's like, it really ruined the brand, and we were doing really, really well, and it's like, obviously, due to safeguarding and risk, we kind of started losing all our contracts, and they took all their kids out. I've got empty properties, so I just went to the professionals just to keep, obviously, paying my bills.

One day.

Yeah, within seven days.

Three to six months.

Yeah, so obviously the professionals is to generate the cash flow.

Okay.