Danny Jones Podcast
#285 - Psychedelic Test Subject: Billionaires are Funding a Drug Fueled Holy War | Travis Kitchens
Mon, 10 Feb 2025
Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Travis Kitchens was a psychedelic research subject for Johns Hopkins University who eventually uncovered a secret plan to revive religion with drugs. Travis is currently a freelance journalist who writes extensively on the history and philosophy of psychedelic research. He lives in Kentucky. SPONSORS http://evening.ver.so/danny - Get 15% off your first order. https://hims.com/danny - Start your FREE online visit today. https://shopmando.com - Use code DANNY for $5 off your starter pack. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Travis Substack - https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com The Most Controversial Paper in the History of Psychedelic Research - https://bit.ly/3WWoayH The Strange Case of The Immortality Key - https://bit.ly/42MzIIL FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Johns Hopkins' psychedelic study 08:22 - 'Robo-tripping' 17:00 - The Council on Spiritual Practices 25:30 - Can humans summon aliens? 43:33 - How the psychedelic renaissance started 56:11 - Did ancient mystery cults start Christianity? 01:01:25 - Graham Hancock vs Academia 01:11:30 - The fall of Christianity 01:20:47 - What happens to the brain on psychedelics 01:25:34 - MAPS 01:33:22 - The Catholic church is pushing drugs 01:38:10 - The Immortality Key: A New Reformation 01:42:59 - DARPA: Psychedelics on the battlefield 01:48:38 - Travis' weird email from Roland Griffiths 01:52:49 - MKUltra 2.0 01:57:36 - Reviving religion with Psychedelic drugs 02:15:16 - Secret unreleased psychedelic paper 02:24:33 - Who is funding psychedelic medicine research? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What was the Johns Hopkins psychedelic study about?
And it's not that so much I'm scared, I'm simply trying to report when you have behavior scientists teaming up with venture capitalists in the Catholic Church, that's worth writing about. That's a story. The pews are empty out for a reason. You lied and covered up a scandal in which you destroyed people's lives. Now let's try to rebuild it with psychedelic drugs. This is an insane idea.
what's up Travis what's happening thanks for coming brother thank you very much thanks for having me of course dude your background is fascinating how you got into journalism and how you got into this crazy weird long investigation on religion and psychedelic research and the psychedelic renaissance and the stuff with the immortality key for people who don't know who you are just can you give us like a background on how you got into journalism and what happened with you being involved in that John Hopkins psychedelic study
Yeah, yeah. I was living in Baltimore and... Sorry. I was living in Baltimore and my background is in engineering. So I was actually working at a local hospital installing and repairing medical equipment. And... I got into journalism because a friend of mine, Baynard Woods, he was an editor at the Baltimore City Paper, which is like an alt-weekly.
I'm guessing your audience knows what an alt-weekly – before the internet, all over the country, you'd have like the Tampa City Paper, the Philadelphia City Paper, the Baltimore City Paper. And alt-weeklies were a place to where – uh, non-credential journalists could write about the local scene, local bands and all of this, you know, like the village voice is kind of the prototype.
So the Baltimore city papers, like legendary alt weekly, I met Baynard woods and he said, Hey, I've been writing this column on country and bluegrass music, but I, you know, they gave me a bunch of other work. Do you want to do it? Uh, I was not a writer at all. In fact, I was making films at the time. And I said, you know what, to hell with it. I love country and bluegrass.
And I thought, why not? I'll try it. He thought I was a writer, I think. And I didn't say anything. So I was like, you know what, I'll try it. And if it sucks, they'll just fire me. So I started doing that. And then every now and then they would send me a different assignment, you know, go to the museum and write this up or go to a concert and write the concert up or interview this person.
And so I started being like, man, this is fun. compared to film where you need a lot of money and four or five different people and all kinds of equipment. You need a pencil and a piece of paper or an iPhone and you're ready to go. So I happen to live in Highland Town in East Baltimore.
and bayview hospital is the site of the johns hopkins psychedelic research center and so they advertised in the baltimore city paper and so it was there was like a novelty aspect when you write an article you want to see your byline to me it was like cool i wrote an article look my name's in the paper so i was down in fells point at bertha's muscles with my friend bernard who was the bartender down there for years and years
and i was flipping through the paper looking for an article i wrote and i passed a page and it said have you done psychedelic drugs we will pay you to participate in a study looking into the effects of hallucinogens on mood and behavior something like that and so i immediately called and some you know i was thinking that you know the bureaucracy of hopkins you know will they ever get back or will it happen but somebody actually picked up
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Chapter 2: How did Travis Kitchens get involved with psychedelic research?
So downtown Baltimore, you've got the Homewood campus, and then by my house in East Baltimore, which is actually Greektown, which is ironic considering the context here, But Bayview Hospital has the National Institute to Drug Abuse. They have the Joseph V. Brady Behavioral Biology Center, which is where we were at. Because remember, people get confused. They think these are studies in drugs.
They're not chopping up mushrooms and looking at them and putting under microscopes. They're studying religion and they're studying human behavior. They're interested in the intersection of religion. Religion and human behavior. That's what the studies are looking at. They're looking into religious experience and mystical experience, though it's sold as a study looking into the effects of drugs.
Was there a point, at what point did you start to question the drive behind the study and the intention behind the study?
Well, I got out of the study, and like most people, you know, I had five very powerful experiences. Though I had done psychedelics before, I never had anything remotely close to what I would call a mystical, spiritual, or religious experience. Taking drugs in one of these studies with a particular playlist blindfolded Music playlist?
Music playlist that's intended to drive a particular type of experience. They're trying to cultivate a very particular kind of experience. They're not going to let you pick the playlist or just hang out and take drugs. It's not like going to Grateful Dead. So they are masters at inducing a particular kind of experience that they believe is therapeutic and then studying the effects of the drugs.
So when did I begin to question the aim of the study? Yeah, and first of all, how long did you do it?
You did it for how long?
Well, it lasted several months because after one particularly powerful trip, it had weird effects on me. And Roland Griffiths said, let's wait a couple of weeks. And normally you do five in a row, five Fridays in a row. I ended up skipping a couple because of what happened in one session that was DXM.
What happened?
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Chapter 3: What unique experiences did Travis have during the study?
What we need is a scientist with a conservative reputation that can get the application approved to study them because there was an embargo on them. And if me or you would have said to the FDA or in the DEA, hey, we want to study psychedelic drugs. Would you give us a little bit? And what do you think they're going to say?
When Roland Griffiths, who had spent decades studying opioids and tobacco, he was giving opioids to apes. So he's a behavior scientist. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, so he was at Copkins his whole life. He was a very distinguished psychopharmacologist.
Didn't he criticize soda companies for putting caffeine in there?
He did. He studied caffeine, and he was on a jihad against the soft drink manufacturers, so they hate him, and they actually published hit pieces on him.
Wow.
But he was after them because a soft drink manufacturer said, we put it in there for flavor, but it has no flavor. So he accused them of putting it in there to addict the consumers.
Mm-hmm.
And so he eventually became bored with studying opioids and tobacco.
That's interesting, though. How did caffeine become such a common theme of soft drinks? Good question. Because the only reason I drink sodas is for the caffeine. Absolutely. I don't drink a soda for the taste. That's what Roland's at. If I'm drinking a Mountain Dew, obviously it tastes great. But I'm drinking a Mountain Dew because I'm going to get fucking jacked.
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Chapter 4: How do psychedelics affect human consciousness?
And he was taking pictures and uploading them to the internet.
Oh, they're all over. He has them all over his Instagram. And you've seen them. He literally came here to do a podcast with us. And he goes to me and Steven, he goes, he goes, me and you, we can go out, we'll go to the beach and I can summon these things. He takes us out to the beach. Bro, he took us to the... You can find the video, Steve.
He took me and Steven out to the beach the night before we did the podcast. Him and his daughter. And he's like praying to the heavens, like praying to God to bring these angels down to show us, right? Like, please show yourself to Danny. We're going to do this podcast tomorrow. I want him to be a believer and understand this. And he brought his video camera. Men...
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This fucking orb came out of the ocean and moved sideways, moved back the other way, and then disappeared again back into the ocean. And we got it all on video. I don't know what the fuck it was.
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Chapter 5: What connections exist between ancient mystery cults and Christianity?
I don't know if you're familiar with these. These are like dynastic Egyptian. That's a 3D print of an Egyptian vase that was, according to the academics and the Egyptologists, was created around the same time as the dynastic Egyptians, which was about 4,500 to 5,000 years ago. Yeah. when they only had copper chisels and pounding stones to create things. Right. And there's even depictions.
There's like, uh, there's depictions, drawings and stuff on caves and, and tablets where they show how they made these and they show them like going like this on wheels and stuff. But, This guy who lives down the street from here, Matt Bell. Yeah, here they are. That's how the Egyptologists believe that these were made, right? So these are made out of granite.
Some of the hardest, like rose granite and red granite, right? Some of the hardest stones on earth. And he had these measured on a laser light scanner thing at some big aerospace company. And This vessel is the ones that he purchased. The real ones from ancient Egypt are perfectly symmetrical within like one, one thousandth of a human hair. Like impossible.
It would have to have been made on a CNC machine today, like on a computer. And, and there's, it's impossible. Like how the did they make these? And these handles are made out of granite. And I asked Flint this and, And like he creates this. He is like this. To me, it's like a cop out where he says, oh, it's bullshit.
People like him don't deserve to talk about this stuff or question this stuff because he's buying these vessels that are contributing to cartels that are selling them. And it's this underground black market. And I want to be associated. I don't even want to be in the same room with one of these ancient relics. This is what Dibble told you? This is what Dibble told me.
And it's the same thing he's doing with Graham trying to call him a Nazi.
That would be my criticism of Dibble. It's whenever he turned it into a personal attack. Now look, he said that he didn't do that and I don't know and I'm not interested enough to go and look into it. But I think he was saying because of some of this Victorian literature has this romantic noble savage type of thing and there's racism in it, that makes him racist.
I do not believe for a second that Graham Hancock is racist. Sorry, I don't. Do I think he's full of shit?
Yes.
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Chapter 6: How does the psychedelic renaissance relate to modern spirituality?
Well, obviously it was an email meant for somebody else, right?
He said it was a personal note. So who was it to?
Bullshit, yeah.
And why is he tracking a clinical trial participant and who's he sending notes to and why?
That's weird. That is weird.
Isn't it weird?
Did you ask him what he meant by that?
Yes. He said, oh, it's just a form of personal note.
We can talk about this in the show or no?
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Chapter 7: Who is funding psychedelic medicine research?
Yeah. People don't want you talking about this. They do not want you, hence my little message over there. They don't want you talking about it. And most people you can dismiss, but I did the trial. I know more about this than most people do. I've been studying it for 10 years really intensely, the scholar literature.
And I not only did the clinical trial, and I've met most of these people and talked to them. So it wasn't so easy for them to dismiss me and say that, well, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, I do know what I'm talking about. I did the trial. You didn't. And it also came out, we should say, that Roland himself was using psychedelics during these trials.
While he was studying them, he had also been taking them himself at his house, which he even admitted on the Tim Ferriss podcast, convinced him that it was true, that this must be true. All of these ideas are true. Perennialism, psychedelic theory of religion.
The perennialism idea is very interesting. It is, isn't it? I think the way you described it, how everyone speaks a different language, but the fundamental...
archetypal stories are all the same just like it like presented in different packaging yes and you know how they came to these conclusions i'll give you a very very short summary the literature that they're reading what happened danny is people like mercha elliot and yung what they did is take all of this information on old mystery cults and old religions from all around the world all the different pagan religions all the different primitive religions and they synthesized them
They took reports of mystical experiences from all over the world. They synthesized them into one generic and said, these are the basic features. These are the basic features of this mystical, religious, psychedelic experience. They synthesized them. Do you see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm.
And then— Like they cherry-picked certain things.
Yes.
Yeah.
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