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How are you, man? Good to see you again.

Good. Thanks for having me back, man.

My pleasure. You made another awesome one, man. The Krishna's one. Oh, my God. There is something about these cult documentaries.

Right. It's just... Right.

That one's Do you remember the hari krishnan devotis in the airports?

Because you're like me. You're old enough of that generation that you might remember the white robe. They'd have the flowers, and they'd be selling books and shit in the airports.

I don't know if I remember them at the airports. I remember them in some places. I never have seen them. But I just always thought they were just kooks. It's interesting knowing what I know now about the '60s and what was done to to crush the hippie movement. It's interesting to see that this was connected to the Beatles and peace and love. And then you see this sect that this What was his name again?

Kirtan Ananda was the guru that went way wrong.

Yeah, went way wrong. Yeah. But it is... Well, let's just get into from the beginning, how did you get involved in this particular subject?

So there's a production company, Marwaer Junction, and they had actually sold this show to Peacock, and they were looking for a director. So this is the first show that I've made or helped to make that I haven't been involved in the conception of the story from the jump. So they had developed the story and sold it to Peacock, and they were shopping for a director, and they liked my work, and so they hired me to make it.

And so did you have any experience with the Christians before this?

No. And a lot of people had a lot of misconceptions about them. I thought that the Harry Krishna movement was invented in America in the 1960s. I just had it associated with the hippie movement. That's not the truth of it at all. It's actually a spiritual tradition that dates back thousands of years, far predates Christianity. Divinity that's based in these ancient spiritual texts called the Vedas. The written version is at least 3,500 years old, and the oral tradition goes back thousands of years beyond that. So I learned a lot about the Krishna consciousness in the making of this. And this show is about a particularly dark chapter in the history of the movement in the '70s and '80s that I don't think is a representative of the movement like today. I think it's a force for good in the world today, actually.

Yeah, I think the principles behind it, if you pay attention to the main guru, was the older gentleman? Probapod. Probapod, yeah. Yeah. My friend Duncan loves that Yeah. The whole concept behind it sounds beautiful. It's all just love and relinquishing your possessions and the hole that they have on you and just living this very peaceful, loving life and not just forgiving your enemies, but letting them into your home. And all that sounds great. But all it takes is one psycho.

Yeah, one psycho. Well, Prabhapadi took a risk. I mean, so Prabhapad was a guru. So several gurus, Krishna consciousness gurus, had come over from India to the UK or to the US, in the 1800s even, and then through the first half of the 20th century and had no luck because their timing wasn't right or they weren't the right person or both. But Prabhapad was the right dude at the right time. He showed up in Greenwich Village, New York City, 1965, and started preaching Krishna consciousness, and it just took off like wildfire. Alan Gensler got down with it. It wasn't maybe a full scale devote, but he was hanging out with him. But Prabhupad was already an old dude when he showed up in the US. And so in 1977, he died. So it was 12 years. And by that time, Christian consciousness, there were like, Krishna temples all over the country and in the UK because George Harrison had converted. That was one of his strokes of brilliance, Prabhupad. He sent a group of devoties to go camp outside the Apple Records office and just chant and dance until they Basically got a meeting with the Beatles.

He was literally like, Let's see if we can make the Beatles, Christians. And with Harrison, it took. And that song, My Sweet Lord. I mean, that's what it's about. That's about Christian consciousness. But when Prabupad died in 1977, he hadn't had a lot of time to build up successors. And most of the leaders of the movement were young, or most of the members of the movement were young. So he took a risk, and I don't think he had a choice. And he appointed 11 of his closest, longest time, devoties, all men, to be the gurus that would carry the movement forward. While you could say that it worked and that Christian consciousness is still around, it's bigger than ever, a few of those... These are dudes. These are like dudes in their 20s, okay, that suddenly are being worshiped as direct conduits to the divine. In other words, treated it as God's on Earth. And some of them were not spiritually prepared for that. It would be a kind way to put it. And some of them went wrong. And one of them, in particular, Kirtan Ananda, whose government name was Keith Ham, went really wrong.

I like the term government name. Yeah. Well, that is a thing that they always do, right? They give them spiritual names.

Yeah. You relinquish your-Yeah, your original existence. Yeah. And take a Krishna name.

There's a place out here. I built a comedy club. And before I got the spot that I have now on sixth Street, I bought a place called the One World Theater. And the One World Theater was owned by a cult. And it's a beautiful theater, and I had heard about it from my friend Ron White because I was telling him, I think we should open up a comedy club. He said, You should buy that theater. It was owned by a cult. I was like, That would be hilarious. It's by a theater that was owned by a cult. There's a documentary on them called Holy Hell. It's the same deal.

Yeah, I know that doc.

Yeah. They start off, It seems wonderful. In the in the beginning. Everyone's doing yoga, they're hanging out together, cooking meals together, and dancing. It seems like all cults, it goes sideways. In the beginning, it looks like a wonderful idea. Society sucks the way The modern world, the way it's set up, materialism, it's all foolish and spiritually vacant. There's a way to do this and the way to live, and this is the way, and everybody joins. Then Waco comes along and the The Cult Awareness Network starts investigating this guy. And so he changes his name for the third time. His name is Hyme Gomez. He was a gay porn star and a hypnotist.

He led a rich life.

Yeah. So he was already on a certain path. And then starts this... He changed his name again. And he changed his name to... I forget. There's two different names. One was Michelle, and I forget what the other one was. So he changed his name again, moves to Austin and starts this cult and has his followers build him this theater so he can dance in front of them. And that was the place that I bought. But it was all fucked up, and we wind up getting out of the deal because there was a lot of problems and a lot of issues that had to be resolved with the property. And they didn't disclose that. So I got out of it and then got this place on sixth Street. But in the process, I really started investigating the cult. And I didn't investigate unfortunately, before I signed contracts. And I had gotten a call from my friend Adam. Hey, man, did you watch the documentary on the cult? I was like, oh, no. Whatever is a documentary on the cult, it's generally a cult that went bad. And this one went bad. But it was the same deal.

They all got names. They were all given spiritual names. And they were told that you're reborn. You're reborn in this new persona.

Well, even in the '60s and '70s, I don't think it would be fair to call Krishna consciousness It's a cult. But the way that this... So this guy, Kirtan Ananda, one of the eleven disciples that probably had appointed to carry on the movement, he already had a commune up in the hills of West Virginia that's still there. It's called New Vrindavan, because the city of Vrindavan in India is the mythical birthplace of Krishna.

That cult, that compound is still there?

Still there, yeah. But it's not a cult. It's not a cult. I've been there twice. And today, again, it's a really positive place with a great spiritual vibe. But when Kirtana was in charge in the '70s and '80s, some really dark shit went on down.

How did they turn it around?

Well, finally, his followers turned on him. And ISCON, which is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which is the formal name for the hara krishnas, what we call the hara krishnas, they actually kicked the new Vindavan out of the movement for a few years, half a decade or so, and then gradually brought that compound, that commun, it's not compound, that commun back in. But they had this fucking temple there, the Palace of gold, the Brabupad's Palace of Gold, that they were originally building for Brabupad to live in. But then he died before it was completed. But it's like this Taj Mahal-esque structure that's in the middle of nowhere in the hills of West Virginia. It's like a couple hours from Pittsburgh, basically, and up in the mountains.

God, it's It's beautiful. Look at the images.

And these are like untrained disciples making this just based on ancient text that they studied.

So they just figured out how to do all this artisanship? Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah, it really is. It's worth visiting for sure. It's mind-blowing.

I like there's a big box of cash.

But this place, even now, it's Well, for sure in the '70s, it was cut off from the rest of the world. I mean, these young kids would join the Haray Christian movement. And basically a lot of the fuck-ups in the movement would get sent to Kirtan Ananda at New Vrindavan because he'd put them to work building the temple. So if you joined and you were not fitting in for some reason, a lot of times they'd buy you a one-way bus ticket to Morgentown or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you'd wind up up there in the hills under Kirtananda's tutelage. And it went sideways in a hurry, especially after Prabhapad died. He was already running New Vrindavan. Like, Papapad had visited it and approved of it. Actually, Kirtananda had gotten booted out of the Krishna movement because he tried to take it over. And at a certain point, like Prabhapad kicked him out. Keith Ham, Kirtan Ananda, mind fucked this local philosopher dude that owned the land into signing it over, promising to be like a non-denominational spiritual movement. That that's what he was doing. And as the guy put it, we interviewed his daughter and he said, as soon as the lease was signed, they put on bedsheets and started chanting.

And so now you got the Harry Christians as your neighbors. Yeah.

The documentary is really well done. Thanks. It's just like Salsquatch. I mean, you do some awesome stuff, but it's so fascinating to watch these alternative movements get co-opted and how that can happen by the wrong charismatic psycho. Right. And That's this... How do you say his name? Kirtinanden?

Kirtinanda. Kirtinanden. Kirtinanda. It's tricky, man. Dealing with all these Christian names and making this documentary, it was like...

How much research did you have to do about the movement and getting into it?

Quite a bit. Before you sit down and start doing interviews with devoties, you want to know at least a little bit about what you're talking about. We filmed in Vrindavan in India. That's how the project... That's how I started the project. I signed on to the director gig, and two weeks later, I was in India. What was that like?

Hey, Jim, can we get the coffee in here?

Well, one thing about Vindaba in India is the fucking monkeys, okay? There are these monkeys that will steal your shit, and it's a whole racket, right? You have to give them something back. Yeah, and of course, we're knocking around with bags full of lenses and camera gear and audio gear and stuff. And so we're a target rich posse for these monkeys. But they'll get your sunglasses, your phone, whatever, if you're not careful. And then they You're going to skitter up a drain pipe or a tree. And you got to buy these frozen mango packs from the street vendors and throw them up to the monkeys, and the monkeys will drop your shit back down to you. I'm convinced that the street vendors are in on it, right? They probably are, thank you.

So they probably are. Well, at the very least, it's so strange that the monkeys know that you can barter.

Yeah, they learned.

Yeah, that you can make a deal.

The legend is that hundreds of years ago, this guy that was like, he brought a circus to Vrindavan, and the monkeys came with him, and they were trained to be pickpockets, and then they just stayed behind. But I don't know if that's true or not. But that's the local legend. But there's hundreds of them, thousands of them, man. I mean, they are everywhere. And you got to watch. You got to be constantly your head on swivel because they are so quick.

And what do they live off of? Do they just live off of what the people give them?

I don't know. They probably scavenge, but also they do get a lot of mango treats from Stanley's ship. Because the Balaram Mandir, which is the head The hari Krishna temple, is in Vrindavan, India. And so the devoties from all over the world go there as spiritual tourists, basically. And so monkey steal shit from them or any other. There's a lot of Krishna devoties from all over India, too. They aren't necessarily, quote unquote, hari krishnas, but follow the Hindu deity, Krishna. So they come. It's like there's a lot of spiritual pilgrims to this city. All right? There's a lot of spiritual tourism there. And so the monkeys have a lot of targets.

And so when they steal your stuff, you have to throw it to them?

You got to buy something and then throw it up to them, and then they will relinquish it. Sometimes they'll be like, oh, no, that's a cell phone. That's a three mango pack deal, dude. Really? They'll be like, Oh, thanks. And they'll go like they're going to drop it, too. They'll be like, Oh, how about I drop it in the sewer? Oh, you don't want that? Mango pack.

They point the mangoes?

Yes. Wow. So eventually, you throw them enough treats. And they're these kids, too, that if they see that a monkey has stolen something, they'll come over and they'll be like, for a few, basically, it's like for a few roupies, I'll handle this deal for you. And then they climb up the tree or the drain pipe, and they do a direct hand-to-hand exchange. So we learn the hard way. That's the thing to do. If the monkey steals the whatever, hire the kid, he goes and brokers the deal with the mango juice guy and makes it all happen for you.

So do other monkeys Do you guys realize this is happening and try to steal the mangoes before you give it to them?

Oh, yeah, it's brutal. But they also cooperate, too. They'll run like, distraction operations. Like one monkey will come at you from an angle and bluff charge. And then you're paying attention to that one. Then boom, the other one, then boom, the other one grabs your sunglasses off your head. Wow. Yeah. But we were there to film. There's this ceremony. These two brothers, whose father, his name was Chaka Dari, his Christian name. His government name was Charles Saint Dennis. He's also known as Chaka in the movement. His sons were doing this really ancient ritual to release the soul of someone who's been murdered. And so they had their father's ashes, which he was murdered decades ago at New Vindavan on orders from Kirtan Ananda because he was challenging Kirtan Ananda's authority.

So Kirtan Ananda had people murdered, more than one?

Yeah. I think there's probably quite a few bodies up in the hills. That people just don't know about? Yeah. Wow. One of the principal sources for the documentary is a guy, he's a retired homicide cop named Thomas Westfall, who was just a local cop in West Virginia when the Christians set up shop at the New Vrindavan commune. And so he started keeping a close eye on them early and saw Kirtananda's rise to power. And he believes that there's at least a handful more victims up there whose bodies haven't been found. Because it's really remote country. I mean, I want to stress that. It's really cold in the winter. There's a lot of snow. To this day, it's a difficult place to get to.

And so this guy, when he first started running this temple, this area, when did it go? How long did it take before it went sideways?

Well, I think it was The question with Kirtananda or Keith Ham is always like, was he bent before he became a Krishna? Or was it like, did the power get to him? And I think it's both. I think he had a psychological disposition towards towards being a despot, if you will. And then once, Padhopad was gone, and Kirtananda, along with 10 of his compatriots, was appointed a guru and had that power. I think at that point, it's And combined with all the money, he had this guy that was a... Kirtananda was a genius at running schemes and scams to make money. He would dispatch the hottest young female Krishna devoties to stock car races and rock concerts and stuff to raise money for whatever. They just make it up, the starving children of India, or they just make up charities. And they'd flirt with dudes, especially at rock concerts, guys that are like, high and get them to give them cash. A dollar here, five bucks here, 10 bucks there. They work at airports, too. And they just brought in literally, like, garbage bags full of cash every week. And he trained them to deposit it in $9,900 increments to avoid the reporting.

So it doesn't show up. To avoid the reporting. Right. Yeah. Wow.

So he looks crazy. That's what's interesting. Isn't it interesting that crazy people look crazy? And I always try to say, Okay, is this because you know he's crazy or do you see something? It's hard to tell. But he doesn't seem enlightened. You look at him. He looks like a guy who's a little unhinged. And I've met people like that unhinged. And I've met people like that in the psychedelics movement. And there's a few of these movements that are so open, and basically anybody can become a part of it. The concept behind it is we're all seeking enlightenment. But then you'll see someone that gets in there and you're like, what is this guy's a schizophrenic or something? There's something going on here.

Especially you look at photos of Kirtan Ananda over the decades. He just gets More and more and more and more demented. Right.

And that has to probably be the power, right? They're washing his feet and worshiping him. Yeah.

He was molesting kids there. He was a total pedophile.

Right. Do you think that started, that he Was always a pedophile?

I think pedophiles are always pedophiles. But again, once he had access, as the movement went on, more and more Krishna couples had kids. So he had access to more and more and more children there in those hills. Right.

And that was one of the things that you highlight is that it wasn't just about releasing the possessions. It was also like not having control of your children either. Yeah.

Although I think, especially at New Vrindavan, at the place that Kirti Ananda ran, they took that belief that, yes, children are a material attachment, right? But he took it to an extreme and just basically just cut off kids from their parents entirely. And that was not unique to Nuvendaban. That happened in a lot of temples around the country in the US.

And the pedophilia happened in these temples as well?

It did. But I will say, again, to Iskhan's credit, that unlike the Catholic Church, Church. Once the evidence started to emerge that there had been, I think it's fair to say, systemic raping of kids at their religious facilities, they addressed the issue head-on. And for the part, I think, have done an excellent job of weeding out the peddos. And what happened to the kids?

Because it's not just that... It seems like it wasn't isolated. It was all the kids.

At New Van Duyn? Yeah. This But you're- Mostly boys, I think. Mostly boys. They have communities online, and there's a lot of bitterness. It varies. You can't totally generalize. But the The kids that grew up in Uvindavan, they have online communities where there's a lot of, for obvious reasons, like resentment and bitterness and anger. Still at the leadership of the hara Krishna Movement for not, in their opinion, fully atoning for the sins that occurred there.

What could they do?

All right. Well, there was a settlement. There were some lawsuits. There were some settlements. But I mean, money only-That doesn't fix anything. No. No.

No. It doesn't fix anything. It acknowledges that something happened. You're ruining a child for life. Yeah. Yeah. And you're doing it in the most evil way because you're supposed to be a part of this peace and love movement that's the optimal way to live life.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and that's why this guy, Charles Saint Dennis, Chaka, was murdered. He was calling out Kirtan Nanda for his hypocrisy. Now, I don't know if he called him out for the raping kids, but Kirtan Nanda was having gay sexual relationships with some laborers that had been hired to come help build the temple that weren't necessarily devoties. And it was like an open secret in the commune. And he called him out for it and also called him out for the materialism, for driving around in a limousine for having... They would buy him a new fancy SUV every year or whatever. And Charles St. Dennis called him on his bullshit publicly, and that's what got him killed.

Wow. Yeah. Fuck. Fuck, man. I know quite a few people that grew up in cults. In stand-up comedy, you deal with a lot of lost people, wayward folks that just didn't fit in anywhere in society. And a couple of my friends, one of my good friends, grew up a Jehovah's Witness. And it's just you live in this world that is this very strange I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. It's illogical. It's crazy. It doesn't fit. And once you start questioning things, you find you're not allowed to. It's just very bizarre how many of these... I was having a conversation with Mark Andreessen, the venture capitalist guy, and he was like, California still has a lot of active cults right now. I was like, really? He goes, oh, yeah, there's a lot. So there's ones you don't hear about where they keep it together. So I guess there's like, cults have to go completely be like, holy hell, sideways before you get a documentary. Right. So some of them, they figure out how to keep everybody together.

It's probably harder to keep shit under wraps these days than it was for Kirti Ananda in the '70s and '80s. With the Internet. Yeah, for sure. Everybody's got a phone. Yeah.

It's also like people are much more aware of what a cult is now. I bet in the 1960s, it just seemed like a beautiful alternative to... I mean, you're dealing with the civil rights movement, Jim Crow, anti anti-war movement. Vietnam is happening. You've got Richard Nixon's the President. There's all this chaos. People don't want the world that's in front of them right now, and they're searching for some alternative. Then it comes along, What about love? What about this? Yeah, that's what I want. And then the next thing you know, you're wrapped up in this thing.

Yeah. Talking about the pedophilia stuff, I'm going to take this on a detour because there's something I wanted to say last time I was on your show, which is that I am convinced that you saved at least one kid's life with something that you said the last time I was on, which is that we were talking about my own experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual assault. And you told a story about how when you were a kid, you were in a library, and this sick, fucked pedophile guy was trying to get you out of the library, and a library and stepped in and basically saved you from this guy. Do I have that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. The reason that I think you saved at least one kid's life is this, and again, speaking first-hand experience, as a male survivor, especially of childhood sexual assault, you think, How could I have let that happen to me? Why didn't I defend myself? Why didn't I fight the guy off? Even though, intellectually, you look at a seven, eight, nine your old boy, you're like, You got no chance against a grown man. But for Joe Rogan to say, A libertian saved me from this happening to me, right?

Because you're a tough guy. You're perceived as a tough guy. I think rightly so. Now? Right.

Now. Seven or eight or however it was at the time.

But I hope I'm articulating my point, which is that guys-It can happen to anyone. Yeah. And for a guy that's suffering that and thinking, why didn't... It just helps when somebody in a position like yourself says, Hey, it could have happened to me. Easily.

It almost did. I mean, I was on my way out the door. Yeah, it could have. If that library hadn't called out my I think about that all the time. What would have happened to me? Who I would have become? It's one of the darkest forces in the world. And I don't understand why it's so prevalent. And I think I've equated it to vampires. It seems like one of the things that happens to some of the people that get molested is they wind up doing it to others.

Yeah, that is a harsh truth. I mean, I try and do what I can to dispel the stereotype because that was one of the things that scared the shit out of me when I was a teenager, is the idea that I was going to become a pedophile myself. But yeah, it's unfortunate. It's that hurt people, hurt people cliché, right? But there's truth behind it.

It is with violence. It is with everything.

When something happened. Pedophilia, which let's just call it what it is, raping kids is just an incredibly destructive force in our culture and in all cultures. And it's the one criminal I think that I just have absolutely no sympathy for.

Nor do I. None. No. Most people feel the same way. When you talk about Like, one of my daughters is very much against the death penalty, and I think for a good reason. Because we've had conversations about people that are unjustly accused. And she knows that I've had many people on my podcast that spent a long time in jail for crimes that they didn't commit. And some of them were on death row, and they could have been executed. And we were talking about it, we said in a perfect scenario, when you absolutely know that the law has got the right person and that this person has done something, and then they have killed people, whether it's a serial killer or whatever it is, yeah, maybe the death penalty makes sense. But we don't have a perfect legal system. And then the subject of child molesters up and they were like, Oh, no, kill them all.

It's almost like-It's an instinctual reaction.

Yeah, especially my wife. Mothers, they hear that and it's just like, That's the one. You have to kill them.

Because they never fucking stop.

No, they don't. They never stop. It's a weird sickness. It's just so strange that it's not a very rare, uncommon thing that exists in a handful of places in the world, occasionally. But then when you hear about something like the Catholic Church, there was Pope Benedict, when he got kicked out, there was a lot of people that didn't understand what was going on. And I was looking into it and you find out what that guy did. And one of the things that he did that's so evil is he would move people. So he would take a priest that was molesting kids and just move them to in another unsuspecting place. And he went on to molest, one of these guys that they caught went on to molest 100 deaf kids, at least 100, that they're aware of. And he just go... And he knew that this guy was a pedophile. The Catholic Church in particular is just... I went to Catholic school and nothing happened to me, but things did happen to people that I know that did go to Catholic school. And it's just like, is there another religion that is more connected? When you hear the term Catholic priest, pedophile is right.

If you were playing a game, a Catholic priest, pedophile, you would say that. What is that? Charades? What's that game? When you say, tough, big, runs fast, football player, yes. You'd say Catholic priest, pedophile. You know what I'm saying?

It was an open secret for so long, too.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I think a lot of the priests were probably drawn to the church for the access to kids. Kirti Nanda, Anuvan Daven, built himself a little pedophile heaven up there once he had the power.

So how did they Did you talk to anybody from there that reformed that place? How did they, once they got rid of him?

Well, first of all, he finally went to prison for murder, murder for hire, basically, along with racketeering. He was selling counterfeit football hats and shit. Is he still in jail? Or is he dead? No, he's dead. But he still has, not within ISCON, but within the larger Krishna consciousness movement, he still has a falling. And I went to his tomb that's in Vrindavan, India, and I had a translator fixer with me. I had one camera guy, and we bullshed our way in. And it was this creepy fucking place, man. It was like this almost Soviet block-looking apartment. It was all half-finished. There was this tomb, and there were flowers and insects and photos of him and stuff. And it was basically after he got out of prison eventually as an old man, and he went to India and Pakistan and drew a following of Pakistani boys, basically, that are now men in their 20s and 30s, and they occupy this compound around his tomb. And the one that we both shared away past was starting to get a little suspicious of what we were doing and of our story, which is like that we were just tourists, basically, that had wandered by this place and we're interested by it.

And all these dudes just started coming out of these. They looked like vacant buildings, but they clearly weren't. All these follows were Kirti Nanda, and the translator is like, It's time to go now. Time to go now. Time to go And so we boogieed out of there. Wow. Yeah. But he still has followers. Frankly, even within Izkan, he still has quiet supporters. Jesus. Yeah.

Yeah. In Holy Hell, they talk about this guy that they kicked out. He's still on the loose. And they flew him to Hawaii, and he started a cult in Hawaii. And in the documentary, they show him in Hawaii with his devotés, just taking him around, opening the door for them, the whole deal. It's so strange. The cult thing is so bizarre because it's so common. And it just seems like there's so many people that want to be led by someone who has the answers. Because most people are like you and I. They're like, try to do our best, live our life, fuck up, make mistakes, try to figure out what makes you happy. Like, what's this all about? What is life? What are we doing here? And For some, when someone comes along and says, I have the answers, you're like, Oh, this guy's got the answers. I need the fucking answers. Like, what are the answers?

Yeah, I will say, I spent a lot of time with Hari Krishna or with Krishna consciousness, devoties, They're making that show. And generally speaking, they are positive, peaceful souls. They seem at peace with their place in the world in a way that I frankly found compelling and attractive. So it's easy to see. And maybe they do have the answers. Maybe this ancient spiritual tradition is at least part of the answer.

It certainly can be an answer for some people if you are of the right mindset and if you're truly trying to be on that path. But the problem is it's so easy to be subverted. It's like someone can come along and slowly take over and twist it.

True with any religion. Yeah.

I mean, look at tell evangelists, right? There's real Christians out there that are really great, wonderful people that want to live by the teachings of Christ and live a better, more just and holy life. And they really do want to live like that. And then there's psychos who want private jets and a giant arena to have all their followers, and they want mansions. Yeah, those guys are real. And they thrive. They're everywhere.

But one of Kirti Nanda's enforcer and hitman was this guy named Thomas Drescher, whose Christian name was Tirti. And he drove the bus. There was a school bus. It wasn't driving kids around, but they bought a school bus to take people from one part of the commune to another or whatever. But really, while he was there, and he was one of the dudes that joined the... He was in Vietnam, Vietnam combat vet. I think he saw a hardcore combat in Vietnam. Came back, bent in the head, was trying to find the answers, trying to find help, probably for PTSD, found the hara krishnas, joined. But the first temple or two that he was at, they were like, something a little off about this guy. So let's send him to Kirtananda. Kirtananda met this dude and was like, Oh, I got a If it was for you, brother. You're now enforcer number one. And so if you fucked up, if you weren't supposed to have a television, or if you broke the rules, or you defied Kirtananda in any way, if you got some money from your family, you didn't kick it to him, Tirta came and paid you a visit.

Okay? Wow. And when Kirtananda started whacking dudes, basically, it was Tirta that did it. He just shoot you. Yeah. Yeah. He was smart. He buried Charles St. Dennis's body, he diverted a little creek by damning it up and then buried the body and then took away the dam. So the homicide cop, Thomas Westfall, he was like, I was looking for that body everywhere and never thought to look under the little river.

Did they bring cadaver dogs to try to search for?

I don't think they brought dogs. Eventually, what happened was, and the reason that Kirtan Ananda, while they finally got him, is that Tierta flipped on him. Now, they arrested Tierta, Thomas Drescher, for murder because there was another devote that got killed in Los Angeles that was also outing Kirtan Ananda and his corruption and whatnot. So they got Dresher. Once he was in prison, like Kirtan Ananda held this ceremony and appointed him to this high status within Krishna consciousness. And of course, that was a way to try and keep him quiet. And he remained a believer. But then there was this incident known as the Winnebago incident, where Kirti Ananda was riding in a Winnebago with this, I think it was a little boy from Pakistan or India. And the curtains jostled open, and he was seen in full view by multiple witnesses, like sodomizing this kid. And too many people saw to cover it up, right? And word got to Thomas Drescher in prison that this had happened. And he heard from enough people who he trusted and believed that this was true, that he immediately flipped on Kirtin Ananda and said, Yeah, he paid me and ordered me to kill these guys, and here's where you can find the bodies.

So he didn't know that Kirtin Ananda- He didn't believe it.

He didn't believe it. He was a true believer. He didn't want to believe it. So it was only when he was... He didn't firsthand witness it himself, but it was only when he He was faced with multiple people who he trusted who were telling him, We saw this. It's true. And then to his credit, I think he immediately flipped. We tried to do an interview with him, but we couldn't get in in the prison to get him to go on camera. So in the show, we do have audio interview, excerpts with Dresher.

Wow. One of the saddest things Holy Hell, is they talked to some of the devotees that had left, and now they're lost because essentially, they had essentially... They had left 20 years of their life with this guy, and now here they were 50. And this one lady was like a dog walker now. She had just lost no real purpose in life. Her whole thing was bullshit. Her whole life was bullshit.

Yeah. And some of the kids that grew up at New Vindavan under Kirton and when it was legitimately a cult by any definition, some of them are still followers of Christian consciousness. Some of them have left it way behind, right? Yeah. And have nothing good to say about that. But some of them are still followers of Pravapad's teachings, and they believe that Kirtananda was an aberration. I think that's probably right.

I think that's probably right, too. I mean, my friend who's really into the hard Krishna, he's a very peaceful guy, and the way he looks at it is like, This is a way to live. This is a possible way to live for some people that if done correctly and done with the right spirit and the right mindset, really can be a beautiful, blissful way of existing. Right.

And I not only like, I buy into the idea of karma and reincarnation. That reads as true. That feels true to me.In reincarnation?Yeah.

Really? What reads is true? What part reads is true?

Well, then we get into DMT. All right? All right. I tried DMT. When did you do that? It was in 2013. I'm a one and done DMT guy. Don't need to do it again. Okay. So here's my DMT story. Is that in 1999, I was super in the rave scene, and I was in London at this three-day rave called The Warp. And it was the party where it was like someone ask you the time, you'd be like, it's 9:30, and they'd be like, AM or PM. It was a great party, right? Three days near the Tower of London, literally underground, an underground party, literally underground. They had DJ rooms and dance rooms, but they also had these live performance rooms. And I saw this performance artist called the Techno Pagan Octopus Messiah. Okay. And he was describing his DMT experience, and I hadn't heard about DMT. And by the way, his stuff is fantastic. I think he's come the closest of anybody except Terrence McKenna and actually capturing what the DMT experience is as a writer. Outside the room where he's performing, there's this tent that just said deep meditation therapy. I was like, oh, now I know what that means, right?

And I watched people doing DMT, and I was like, I was already rolling on three or four hits of MDMA. So I was like, not tonight. But if it ever comes my way, I'm going to do it. I made myself a promise that night. I'm not going to seek this out, but if it ever comes my way. And then it did. And in 2014, I just went to see a buddy of mine in Brooklyn. I was working on a documentary out there, and he was like, You want to try this? I was like, Okay, before I changed my mind, let's do this. And 15 minutes later, I believed in reincarnation. I believed in karma and reincarnation. I felt a lot better about death.

Yeah, I felt a lot better about death, too, after I did it.

Well, with my experience was That I got a short glimpse that's a user manual for the Cosmos. And in there was the knowledge that reincarnation is real, that the Buddhist have it right, that after you die, you go to the Bardo for 49 days. Your soul is out there. You get a chance to assess the last life you led before you take another spin on the carousel, learn what you can, get rewarded for your good deeds, suffer for your sins, and then go back. And I believe it, but I also just like it. I just like it. It feels true to me in a way that the evangelist or fundamentalist Christian idea of you can just do a bunch of bad shit and then promise yourself to Jesus and have a clean slate. Fuck that. I'm not buying that. You know? Yeah. But karma and reincarnation, I'm buying it.

There's something there. I mean, it's fascinating that that concept has existed for so long. And even the concept of heaven that existed for so long, and angels, and souls, and all those things. I think we have a very limited ability to grasp reality. And I think that limited ability is biological. It's based upon our primate origins and what we are as a thing, as a biological entity. We have essentially the tools that we need in order to survive. And And those tools are the ability to recognize danger and communicate and establish community and purpose and all these different things. But when you have real breakthrough psychedelic experiences, to me it seems like it's allowing you a vision into all that exists, not just what you're physically capable of seeing as a human being, but This chemical gateway or whatever it is that psychedelics give you allows you to see that these things... What I got out of it is that everything is connected. Every action, every thought, your thoughts, your life, your words, your deeds, the way you approach things, the way you respond to things, that they're all connected in some very strange way.

And the living my life, the more I follow that as thinking that everything is all connected, the more my life has been more beautiful. The more my life has been more rewarding and rich and more pleasing, more filled with love and community. And it's something that I need to remind myself all the time because I think the biological entity has certain human reward systems that are built into it. Try to acquire resources, to try to, to try to establish dominance, to try to succeed. There's all these different things that as a human, people or they want success. They want all these different things. And that those things can... Because you could see the physical manifestation of that work, that can over overcome the idea that everything is connected. And so that's, I think, why people cheat on their taxes or insider trade or do all these different things, fuck people over in business deals. And they don't think that they're going to experience any negative consequences. Of it. But I don't think anybody gets away free.

Again, that's why I like the idea of karma and reincarnation. You don't get away with it.

There's something to it.

There's something to Carmen. And it's, again, going back to the Vedas, the oldest spiritual, organized system of spiritual beliefs known for our species. That's core to it, karma and reincarnation.

The most complicated organism we are, the most complicated organism that we're currently aware of in terms of our ability to manipulate our environment, our ability to communicate, our ability to create things. But we don't have an operator's manual, which is crazy. So we're essentially running on this primate software that was is really established. It's almost like we have DOS or Windows 95, and we just keep refreshing it. There's no real new operating system. And it's so filled with flaws. The human operating system is designed to ward off predators and fight off neighboring tribes and to try to avoid starvation and to try to make sure that your genes pass on and that your enemy's genes don't. And to To exist in 2024 in modern Western world with all of our technology and all of our knowledge and all the information that we have available with this ancient primate software is so problematic. It's so fraught with peril. There's so many things that can go wrong, so many people that go sideways with drug addiction and gambling addiction and sex addiction and this addiction and that addiction and so much chaos and thievery and violence and deception and fraud.

And there's just so many things that exist that are negative but are tied to this concept of achieving and getting more. Which is this famine-based mentality, this resource-acquiring mentality. That really is like the monkey stealing your sunglasses so it can get mango.

No, I totally agree. And I felt like with DMT, I got a very short... I felt like there was this sentient, generally benevolent force out there in the cosmos. It was like, okay, look, I'm going to give you a lot of information. You're not going to be able to retain most of it. But you're ready? Here we go. And one of the things that I a lot back that I still believe a decade later is that reincarnation is real. That's how it works. Karma is real. That's how it works. What you do in this life affects your next one. And that also gives you the user's guide you're talking about about how to be a a better person, how to be a better species.

I didn't get a reincarnation vibe. I'm not opposed to the idea of reincarnation, but I got a vibe that there's other things and there's other dimensions and there's other experiences. And this may levels of existence, and that this existence that we're experiencing right now as human beings is just this very strange, confusing, almost like a puzzle that you are on this planet trying to solve, and you can get distracted. You can get distracted by all sorts of things in this life. But the things that bring you happiness and love, you have to sort those out and choose those amongst the different options that the puzzle gives you.

You know this podcast, Psychedelic Salon?

Yeah, sure.

I have that guy on, Lorenzo. Yeah, Lorenzo. Back in the day. Lorenzo Hagerty. He's great. Yeah, he is. I recently got to know him, and he asked me to give you a message because I guess two or three months ago, you were musing about whether or not he was still alive because he hadn't posted any new episodes. He is still alive. That's his message, Lorenzo's message. And after he heard that you'd raise that question, he's been posting. Oh, that's great. Can you connect me to him? Yeah, absolutely. Please. He's a great guy. Lorenzo and I, in the before mentioned Techno Pagan, Octopus Messiah, are in the process of collaborating with some AI animation artist on a documentary about the Stoneed Ape Theory. I think It's going to be dope.

Have you seen Dennis McKenna's assessment of it? Yeah. He broke it down on the podcast where he was explaining to me the actual mechanisms that would be involved in psilocybin accelerating the human mind and the ability to form language and concepts and creativity and all the different things that Terrence talked about. But Dennis is like, hardcore. Like fact-based scientist.

You've had several great guests on there talking about that theory. But I've been like, there's about to be already it's showing signs, but there's about to be just a glut of AI animation movies, even in documentaries. I think AI animation is going to replace recreations where they hire actors to recreate stuff. We did it in Krishna's. We recreated murder scenes using actors and firearms and stuff, prop firearms. But I think... So I've been approached I don't even know how many ideas for do AI animation docs. It's just been like, gimmick, gimmick, gimmick. But this one really felt right. I think that Terrence McKenna would have loved the idea of using AI animation to show the evolution of our species as they pick the mushrooms out of the cow shit and stuff. And also one idea that we're toying with, I think we'll go forward with now that we've actually... I think we've got the technology actually dialed in, where we've built this AI world, this Terrence McKenna AI world, where we can give it ideas, and it'll spit back imagery to us that feels right, is building some AI avatar of Terrence McKenna. So the idea is that the spine of the documentary will be any time...

Because Lorenzo has incredible archives of Terrence McKenna, stuff that nobody else has. Yeah, he has everything. And anytime you're hearing Terrence McKenna's voice describing the Stone Dope Theory, we'll take people through it step by step. You'll be seeing AI animation of what he's describing. So you're hearing Terrence McKenna's voice, but seeing AI.

So for people that don't know what the Stone Dapes Theory is, we should probably explain it to them for people who've never heard it before. And the concept is that at one point in evolution, there was climate change and that these rainforest, tropical rainforest, had receded into grasslands and that these primates had started experimenting with different food sources by flipping over cow patties and looking for grubs and all these different things. And one of the things that they would do is probably test the mushrooms that were growing in the cow patties. And in many places where psilocybin exists, these things are extremely prevalent. My friend Duncan, who grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, told me that mushrooms were so prevalent that the local ranchers, they started putting feed with the cattle feed, some antifungal thing to keep fungus from growing in cow shit because so many kids were going out to the field- and picking the mushrooms. And picking psilocybin mushrooms. He's like, They were everywhere. They were everywhere. So the concept is that low doses of psilocybin increase visual acuity, make people more amorous. So it probably heightened sexual arousal, made people more likely to breed, and made people more curious, probably because of the increase in visual acuity made people better hunters.

There's studies that have been done. I forget what the scientist did. It was a hard core non-psychédelic scientist who did studies on edge detection with patients. You know these studies? Yeah. It showed that people under the influence of psilocybin can detect deviance. If you have two parallel lines and one slightly deviates from parallel, the people on psilocybin can predict it much quicker, can see it much quicker than the people not on psilocybin, which is fascinating.

And you'd be a much better hunter.

Much better hunter.

And much better at surviving being hunted.

And also just be more tuned into things. You're more aware of... I know a lot of people that use psilocybin when they play certain sports, and they think that psilocybin low doses- It's like low dose, yeah. Yeah, low doses for playing pool and things like that. You just have a better understanding of what's happening.

I attest to it.

Microdoses for chess. Chess, huh? Yeah. Yeah?

Does it help you? Really? I think it does. Actually, I can demonstrate that it does in my game ratings. Really? Absolutely. Interesting. Now, I don't know if I buy the Stone Date Theory in the same way that I fully buy into the concept of the Bardo and reincarnation, karma, and all that. But it's sure fucking fun to think about, man.

Well, doesn't it? I mean, it mimics DMT. Silicimen and dimethyltryptamine are very closely related. Yeah. I think I think it's broken down. I think I'm going to fuck this up, but I think it's N4-4-4-aloxy-N-N-dimethyltryptamine. It's very close to what dimethyltryptamine is. We also know that dimethyltryptamine is endogenously produced. It's produced in the in your brain. We don't even understand why. And that's Rick Straussman, who wrote that book, DMT, the spirit molecules, talked about that. And they've done a lot of great research at the Cottonwood Research Foundation, trying to determine where it's produced, why it's produced. They used to think it was just produced by the pineal gland. Now they think, I believe it's produced by the whole brain. And this thing that these primates were finding was giving them that and giving them more of an understanding of the world around them and expanding the brain. And the other thing about the human, the concept of the Stone Dope theory is this bizarre fact in the history of humans that that in the entire species, like the record of species, one of the biggest mysteries is the doubling of the human brain size over a period of 2 million years.

And Mekana says that that coincides with this exact same time period where the tropical rainforest were receding into grasslands, and then they believe that these primates were experimenting on new food sources. So there's all these things that line up with it, and it makes it a fascinating idea. But if you think about, if they found out that this thing gives them this feeling, and they're repeatedly using it over and over and over again, and then their offspring did it, and their offspring did it, and you're playing this out over a couple of million years, you You could see how this would happen. Yeah.

Also the development of language.

Yes.

The glossalia. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. High doses. Yeah. So like I said, I'm not sure I buy it, but it should be a It's one movie to make.

Well, something happened. It's very obvious. It's something happened that separated us from all the other primates in a radical way. We don't look anything like them. We have abilities in We have so many attributes that are far beyond any other primate, and it makes sense. And also there's people that can achieve those states without psychedelics, which is fascinating. And I've gotten pretty close with with some breathing exercises, and especially breathing exercises in sensory deprivation. You can achieve some definite psychedelic states. I haven't had the full visual effects that are available with DMT. But, boy, you definitely get to some bizarre place where if it was a drug, it would be a very popular drug.

Back to the Christians. That's what Prabhapad was preaching. And a lot of his early devotes were people that had taken a lot of acid or mescaline or and felt like they were getting glimpses of something, but they couldn't understand it. And he's like, Let me show you how to get there without the drugs.

And what was Prabhapad using to try to get there?

Meditation. Just deep meditation. Yeah, I think there's-Chanting of ancient sacred mantras and meditation.

Well, that's the other thing that happens with DMT rituals, that they play Icaros, these ancient South American songs that enhance the experience. When you do DMT with Icaros playing, the DMT dances to the sound, and it's very strange to watch. It's beautiful, bizarre, and it's overwhelming. It's hard to believe that it's really happening while it's happening. And you got to let go and just let it happen and experience it because you're so blown away by it all. It's hard to just not just go, what the fuck? Like every five seconds. You got to just take it in and accept it.

I tried to get my dad to try DMT. My dad died recently. And about six months ago, I tried to get him to try DMT. I was like, listen, until I tried this, dad, I was like, same as you, basically, Spock, cold logic reason, right? That's my dad. Super smart, mathematical genius was my dad. And he was like, well, It sounds interesting, but I guess if you're right, I'll find out on my own. Because I was like, this is like the trailer for the movie, dad.

I'll find out on my own.

Interesting. He died two weeks ago while I was in Ukraine.

Oh, wow. What were you doing in Ukraine?

I was reporting. I was working. I wasn't filming, but I was doing some research. And I was in a warzone. I mean, the whole fucking country is a warzone. But I was in a warzone where communications were dicey at best. And I got a text message from my wife on signal. It was like, your dad's heart valve is failing rapidly. He's in the hospital. He's probably got like 48 hours to live. And the airspace over Ukraine is closed. So there's no way that I could get from where I was in Ukraine to Anchorage, Alaska, to be with him. And so I was just sending text messages on signal to the nurses, and they were reading them to him. And then I was able to record one voice memo right as he was going, because the last sense to go when you're dying is a sense of hearing. And they played him like a message from me. But to answer your question, what was I doing in Ukraine? I'm looking into a possible documentary that be set against the backdrop of the current war, but that would be more about what is actually the true nature of corruption in Ukraine and what has it been and what was it in the '90s?

And what is it today? And how has the US State Department fucked up again in the same way that we did in Vietnam and every war, like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, by backing the wrong horses?

We've never not fucked up. There's never been one. Whether it's Libya or Afghanistan, Iraq, there's not one we could point to, We nailed that one. There's not one. When there was so much resistance to the concept that Ukraine was corrupt when we first started backing them, that was what was fascinating to me because it was always talked about how corrupt Ukraine was. It was always talked about. Then all of a sudden, this was a foreboden topic. No, Russia is the aggressor and the invader, and Ukraine are their angels. And they're like, Wait a minute. That's not reality.

It was also that the US government would be like, Okay, we would designate who is corrupt and who wasn't. I mean, look, the US went through its own oligarchy, like robber baron phase in the late 1800s. That was like after we'd been a democracy for 100 years. Unfortunately, it's a step on the evolution of free democracies to have this faith days where you're like, things are super corrupt. I spent some time at an Orthodox Monastery in Ukraine last month, and I asked the head of the Monastery, what would you have to do to get rid of corruption in this country? He's like, well, I'm a man of God. He's speaking through an interpreter. He's like, I'm a man of God, so I'm not advocating this. But what you could do is you could take... Because the main problem in Ukraine right now, as I understand it, is the judicial system. They have what they call telephone law, which is basically before a judge makes a ruling, he gets a phone call telling him which way to rule. The head of this monster, he was like, you could line up every judge and shoot him. And then all the judges or all the government officials that come to their funerals, shoot them, and do that two or three times, and then we might be able to start over.

He was saying that's how systemic this is. Jesus.

A man of God is telling you this? Yeah. That's a guy who's reached the limits.

Oh, my God. But I'll tell you, my time in Ukraine really changed my perspective on that war, and I came back a real Hawk thinking that we should fully support Ukraine in the war. Really?

Why was that?

Part of it was just being with the people who the Ukraine... I just like the Ukrainians in a way that I've been to other former Soviet Bloc countries, and it's like, I won't name any of them, but I just feel like, I'm not sure you guys are really down with the freedom and democracy thing. It It was like you were subjugated for a while and you just didn't get the same vibe. I think the Ukrainians are legitimately freedom-loving people that have been under the thumb of corrupt leadership for decades now.

Yeah.

But part of it was there was something very enthralling about being in a place where everyone is so unified, like this country under attack, being invaded by a hostile force. Now, these are the Ukrainians that have stayed behind. But there's still a lot of them. Coming from America, where everything is so splintered and divided now, and to be in a place where everyone is so on the same page, there's something very attractive about that.

Well, that is what happens when you get invaded. Do you remember what it was like in America after 9/11?

Right after 9/11.

It was the most united this country has ever been. It's a horrible thing to say because it's not what you ever want to happen again to wake everybody up. But it was the thing that was required to make people put American flags on their cars. It was a horrible tragedy, but in a lot of ways, the reaction to it was very beautiful. There was so many people that were so... I was in New York City, just a few weeks or a few months after 9/11. Everybody was friendly. It was crazy. It was like everybody was just so blown away by the experience of being attacked and so just shaken out of it and so aware of how fortunate they were to not be one of those people who died, and that we are legitimately all together, and that there are forces out there that are evil, and that we have to stay united. And I hate to think that that's what's required to wake people up from this division. But I always wonder if maybe the division that we have in this country is because of the fact that we're never attacked and because of the fact that we only experienced a few of the Pearl Harbor, 9/11.

There's only a few of these moments where we've had to wake up.

Yeah. The Illucian Islands, actually, in Alaska, were attacked and occupied by Japanese forces in World War II. Oh, really? Little known fact. Yeah, that's actually American territory. I didn't know that. But I mean, we fucking... Man, I mean, the Ukrainians, they had nuclear weapons. And in 1994, the West, the US and UK, basically convinced them to give up their nukes in exchange for a guarantee that we would help them protect their sovereign territory.

Yeah, that was right after the fall of the Soviet Union. There's so many factors, right? There's the NATO encroaching on Russia's territory.

I mean, 2004, NATO started handing out membership cards like fucking crackerjack prizes, right? Putin gets reelected in 2004, 20 years ago. And all of a sudden, all these former Soviet small territory countries are now NATO countries. Hey, you want to be NATO? Well, great. Now we're signed up for a mutual defense treaty with Lithuania. Nothing against Lithuanians, but fuck, man, this is getting serious.

It's very serious.

What happens if he invades a NATO country? What are we going to do? Because China is watching. And I'll tell you, I've been under fire, it would be over dramatic, but I've had quite a few Iranian fucking Shahid drones launched in my general direction recently. It gives you another perspective on Russia's support for Iran and vice versa, like mutual enemy of ours. Those are Iranian drones being shot at us. And I don't know. Russia recently had Hamas, had a delegation from Hamas visit the Kremlin. I mean, what the fuck, man? Really? Yeah. So anyway.

This is a fucking sketchy time.

It really is. It's such a sketchy time. To say, oh, World War III is imminent. It sounds doomsayer, but it feels like it could go that way in a hurry. China, They're looking at us. That's the problem if we showed our ass and back down, if Putin keeps going, then China may just test that red line with Taiwan. Yeah.

Well, I think they're preparing for that. Yeah. At least when I've talked to people that understand.

I think that the war in Ukraine could have been prevented. I think that there was this false dichotomy where there were forces in the US government, and this is part of the documentary I want to make, is about that forced you. It was like, you either have to be a puppet of Russia or our puppet. You have to either have to be NATO or there's no middle ground. When in fact, I think that Ukraine could have been a bridge a peaceful bridge between Russia and the West, where maybe it could have joined the European Union economically free trade, but not joined NATO. Because that's what Putin was so adamant against. And you understand, I think he's a war criminal, fucking power mad asshole, right? But you can see from his perspective, if you look at a map and you start to see all these NATO countries around Russia, you see what motivates him.

Well, that's what people in the State Department had always said that was his red line. His red line was Ukraine. Yeah. And then when they're trying to get Ukraine to join NATO, it's like, what are we doing? Right. What are we doing? We're bringing about World War III. And why? And how much money is being spent? And where's that money going? And who's got a vested interest in keeping that money flowing? That's where it gets scary.

That's what I'm looking into. And I don't want to tip my hand too much, but I think I've got pretty convincing evidence that the US Department of Justice has been used by the US State Department to further US foreign policy interests in Ukraine in ways that aren't really right. Like either bringing criminal charges against people in the US, but like Ukrainians, charging them with crimes in the US, including some people that have never even set foot in the United States, charging with crimes or getting them out of trouble, like dropping criminal charges against them. And again, it goes back to our designating, you're a good guy, you're a bad guy. You're corrupt, you're not. Even though they're both just grabbing billions with both hands.

It's a fucking scary time, man. It really is. It's wild to me that Zelensky is the President, too. You have essentially a comedian who played the President on a television show. They're like, We like you.

If they held an election today, he would not be reelected. No? No. But then they support him. It's interesting. It's like you ask them, Do you support the President? They say, Yes. We're at war. Would you vote for him? No.

What was their opposition?

I think he's mismanaging the war. And also, I think they suspect that he's corrupt.

Yeah.

And I think he probably is. But the fact that 50 cents of every dollar that we send there, this isn't actually how it goes down, but even if that was the case, is going into in his pocket doesn't mean that we can just turn Ukraine over to Russia, in my opinion. I think that we should be backing them full on militarily, not with US troops, but giving them what they need to fight. Because I talked to a lot of Special Forces guys over there. They were basically like, those Russian human waves of attacks. We're just like, mowing these guys. It's not even really combat. We're just mowing these guys down until we run out of bullets and then we have to retreat. Those are the battles. That's what Putin is able to do because he's got so many guys.

And he's also letting people out of jail. Yeah. Letting people out of jail and giving them you serve and your sentence is rescinded.

Well, also people think of Russia and they think of Moscow and St. Petersburg. But you look at that country on a map, it's fucking massive. Huge. There's so much territory east of the Ural Mountains. It's just a bunch of villages, what we call flyover country, right? Well, Putin is offering deals like sign up, where it's more money than they make in a year per month, A, and then B, if you're killed, your family is set up for life. They can buy a house, whatever. So very attractive offers for these really poor people from rural Russia.

And then they're using them as just human cannonfather.

A hundred %.

It's I just can't remember a time in my life where things have just seemed so unhinged.

No, I asked my parents about that, too. My dad, before he passed, they were like, no, we don't remember. Even Watergate, Vietnam, They weren't really old enough to remember the Great Depression, but even that was just limited to the US. I know there are global effects of that, ricochets of that. But yeah, it feels It feels like it could go sideways on us in a hurry.

Yeah, it does. And then what does that look like? That's what's terrifying. What's terrifying is if you're willing to do, let's say, what Israel is doing in Gaza. If you're willing to almost eliminate a city, just bomb the fuck out of a city and kill who knows how many innocents. What are the numbers? Is it 30,000? I don't know what the numbers are. What's the line that keeps you from dropping a nuke that kills 300,000? What's the line? Why do we have this idea that it won't accelerate to that when it has in the past? It's just because we only did it once in Japan in 1945. Is that what it is?

I agree with your assessment of that danger 100 %. That's not the reason why I think that we have to help Ukraine stop Putin now, because if he keeps going into Ukraine and then he invades a NATO country and we decide that we've got to go up against him.

Is there any evidence that he would do that? That he would invade a NATO country?

I don't think he'll stop. You don't think so? I think, dude, he's been in power for a long time for a leader of Russia. I think that he... I mean, I watched that Tucker Carlson interview, right?

Yeah.

And that history lesson that he delivered at the beginning, everyone was like, what the fuck is he talking about? And Tucker just looked baffled. I got it. I actually thought I'm getting an insight into Putin's motivations and the way that he sees himself, which is a historic figure. He sees himself as someone who's going to restore a Russian Empire. He spends all day in the halls of the Kremlin with portraits of Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great, right? And I think that he's seeing himself as not the leader of a free country, certainly, but someone who's going to restore a Russian Empire. So no, I absolutely do not think he will stop with Ukraine. No way. So then if he doesn't, and then he invades a NATO country and we go up against him, man, those documents leaked recently from Russia that were showing what their lines were for when they would start using tactical nukes. I think he'd do it. I think he'd do it. I don't think he will- What are the lines? Well, they were whatever. If they started to lose a certain percentage of troops, I can't recall the specifics, but they were shockingly shockingly liberal on when they would start to use tactical nukes on the battlefield in Europe.

If they start to have certain percentages of battlefield losses, we're not in the current situation, but as they go further into Ukraine or in a war that came into Russian territory. So I just think we should stop this shit now, this shit being Putin.

Is it possible?

I think it is possible. I think it's possible to essentially let him have- What's this, Jamie?

Criteria for a potential nuclear response range from an enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers, such as destruction of 20% of Russia's strategic ballistic missile missile submarines. This is the first time we've seen documents like this reported in the public domain, said Alexander, how do you say that? Gaboev? Your guess is a good one. Gaboev, Director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. They show that the operational threshold for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can't be achieved through conventional means. Russia's tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by land or sea-launched missiles from or from an aircraft, are designed for limited battlefield use in Europe and Asia, as opposed to a larger strategic weapons intended to target US modern tactical warheads, can still release significantly more energy than the weapons dropped on Nagasaki in in Hiroshima in 1945. Although the files date back 10 years or more, experts claim they remain relevant to current Russian military doctrine. The documents were shown to the F. T. By Western sources. So to answer your question, I think that the territory that Putin has taken...

And again, also, just like we didn't back him up after the security assurances that we gave, we, the US, gave Ukraine in 1994. 2014, there was that revolution in Ukraine. And in response, Putin invaded Crimea with the little green man, the guys that didn't have an insignia. And the US State Department went to... And Ukraine was going to fight. And the US State Department went to Kyiv and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, chill out, chill out, chill out. Just let him have Crimea. We'll make sure he stops there. Let's not escalate things. So we gave him our word a second time, and then we broke it. So to answer your question, I think that that territory The territory that Putin has seized, my impression from talking with a lot of Ukrainians in recent weeks has been that they feel like Ukraine could still be Ukraine without that territory. Basically, you could have a three-week period where People could either move there if they want to be Russians or they can leave if they want to be Ukrainians. And then you could have a North Korea, South Korea DMZ situation. I think that's probably the best possible outcome right now.

But even to do that, again, we've got to properly arm the Ukrainians so that they can stop Putin from moving further into their country and actually taking territory that they could not live without.

So do you think ultimately he plans on taking all of Ukraine?

Yes, 100 %. I think he's 100 %. When I was in Kyiv and I went to how close the fighting actually got to the capital city, it was shocking how close it was. Like that town, Bucha, where there was all those atrocities committed. I saw this one auto, this massive graveyards of automobiles. And what happened was people were trying to get out of this town as the Russian troops, the Russian, because they invaded from Belarus, from the north. And they came in and they were trying to go like a lightning strike on Kyiv. And they got within, I think, 10, 12 kilometers of the city. And then they got stopped because the guys started blowing bridges. Special Forces started blowing bridges and hitting them with javelins and stuff. And they actually stopped them. Like incredibly brave fighting. But there was this one, I came across this just pile of just hundreds of blown up cars. And I asked the locals about it. And some of them have been painted now with sunflowers and Slava, Ukraine, glory to Ukraine. And artists are trying to make It was less macabre. But what it was, was when the Russians invaded two years ago, hundreds of families piled in their cars.

And there was one road out of town, but it was a trap. And the Russians cut it off on both sides, and then methodically, using tanks, blew up these cars full of civilians. Just brutal shit. And I know there's still brutal shit on all sides in all wars. But to see it firsthand like that, to talk to people that saw that happen, it was tough.

What is it like going over there? Like leaving America and going over there to try?

I mean, what was the- The craziest thing was you can just walk in. It was like it's harder to go in Tijuana than it is to go to Ukraine. I went in through. I came out. Yes, that's it. I came out through Poland, and I went in through Romania. Jesus Christ, all those cars.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

So I flew to Bucharest and then drove about 10 hours to the border and then just walked across with my duffle bag and US passport. It's really easy to get in. You just walked across? Yeah, just walked right across. It was like five minutes.

Did you have it set up already to talk to people?

I did. I had set up security. I had a really good security. These guys were like Special Forces guys, a tank hunting team, actually, that had just rotated off the front after fighting for two years. So basically keeping me alive was a vacation for them. And I got to be really good friends with this one dude, especially the guy that was like... Because they worked in different ways. It was a team. But there was one guy that was attached to my hip. He was just with me 24/7, whose name was Andre. And I got to be really good buddies with this guy just using Google Translate. Oh, wow. Even when the interpreter wasn't around, just really clicked with this guy. Anyway. But yeah, I did have it set up where I had an interpreter, a driver, and security. And then I had conversations that I'd lined up. But a lot of it was people had documents or people had information that the only way I was going to get these documents or to have them tell me this information was to go to Ukraine. That was the only way they were going to trust me.

How much different was it than what you expected?

Well, it's really back to my new love for the Ukrainian people. In Kyiv or Lviv, which is a fantastic city. It's in Eastern Ukraine, near the Polish border. It's like you wouldn't... Until the rockets and the Iranian drones started start flying into the city, you wouldn't know anything was going on. People are out dressed nicely, going to dinner, going to bars, going to clubs, like they're out and about. And then all of a sudden, the air raid sirens go off. And there's this app that I jokingly texted my wife. I was like, this is the worst video game ever because it's this app that shows you what's incoming, like what missiles and how many, and what drones and how many. And then as the air defense system shoot them down, They blip off the screen. So you can see the shit's coming your way and how many are they shooting down. It's like the worst version of missile command because you can't actually do anything, right? But yet you're watching it. In real-time. Yeah. God.

And this is just an app you can get for your phone?

Yeah. Well, the security guys had it. I don't know if anybody... Everybody has an app on their phone that alerts them when there's incoming missiles or drones.

And how do they know that that app has not been compromised?

How do they know? Great question. I don't know. Great question.

Is this an app that's... Is it Windows and Android?

Yes, you could get it on your phone right now. As a matter of fact, before I went to Ukraine, I downloaded it and installed it, and I thought it'd be geo-fenced. But it was like the middle of the night in New Mexico, and all of a sudden it's like, air raid, air raid, missiles incoming. Seek shelter. So if anybody wants to experience what it's like to be a Ukrainian right now, you can download this app. What is it called? Let's take a look.

Is it available for all phone platforms?

Yes. Anybody can get it. I may have taken it off, actually. But I'm sure if you just Google Ukrainian, air raid app.

Did you take it off because you're tired of seeing air raids?

Yes. I didn't want it to sound anymore. You can pick which parts of the country you wanted to alert you to. But yeah, it was... There was one day where the security guys were like, It's not safe to drive from where we were to Kyiv tomorrow. So That's the bad news, because every night we would have a go, no go meeting for the next day. And that was the one time that they were like, no go, no go. Too much shit's going on. It's not safe to drive eight hours to Kyiv. Good news is it's snowing in the Carpathian Mountains, so we're going to go skiing. And I was like, what? And so the next day we did, we drove five hours for the mountains, and there's this full on ski resort. And there's just people, the hundreds of families out skiing. And there's the fucking going on. And it's like a day of a nationwide red alert, which means that like, missiles were hitting all over. And so people are watching this app on their phone, and you can see this stuff that's coming to the O-blast, which is like a state that we're in.

And as the stuff is being shot down, people are cheering from the chairlifts.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

Oh, my God. That's what I mean. It's just like that fucking fuck you spirit that they have is, I think, impressive. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. I have a friend from Israel, and he's a kickboxing coach, my friend Shuki. And when he was living in America, he lives in Israel now. But when he was living in America, I went over his house for dinner, and him and his wife, they'd be playing the bongos and dancing. And I'm like, you guys are like, you have so much spirit. You're so filled with fun. And he's like, my friend, when you live in Israel, he goes, every day, you could die. Every day is party, party, have a good time. Enjoy your life.

Yeah.

And it's the same thing, unfortunately, like post-9/11. You need something horrible to happen for you to appreciate the good and appreciate peace and appreciate joy. Yeah. And that's a crazy thought is that the thing that's going to cure what ails us is conflict and getting together and banding together to fight a common evil, which is just so bizarre.

Or if we had a War of the Worlds thing, where a hostile alien race attacked Earth.

You remember when Ronald Reagan said that to the UN? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the UFO fanatic's favorite speech. When Ronald Reagan said, If we were faced with a hostile threat from an alien world, how quickly we would put aside our differences. It's true. I mean, that's one of the things that astronauts always talk about when they go to the space station. So you look down on the Earth and you go, oh, my God, what are we doing? How are we in conflict with each other over lines in the dirt, imaginary lines in the dirt that we create for what? Who's doing this and why are we doing this? We should all be together. We're this one species that can communicate with each other, attach this ball that's hurling through infinity. And yet our territorial primate instincts have us engaged in this insane conflict that no one thinks is ever going to end. If you asked anyone today, Can you achieve in our lifetime no war? Most people will say that's not possible. No way. Which is so strange.

And tragic.

Well, it's also so crazy because it's a function of human beings in large numbers, right? Because if we were in this room together and you said, Could you imagine all three of us get along? Of course, easily. I couldn't imagine us not getting along. We can talk. We'll figure things out. We have resources. Yeah, we'll be fine. Make it 3 million people. Make it 30 million. Make it 300 million. Now you got problems. And it seems to be always the same thing that you see when you have a cult. You have leaders, and the leaders don't necessarily have the best intentions for everyone. They have the best intentions for themselves and for the people that are providing them with money. And this is the trap that we're all stuck in. Everyone on Earth, all of us, being led by groups that decide that they're in control of these massive numbers of people, and they want control of the resources of these other territories, and they want to do something to those people. And they'll have people convinced, this is your enemy. You have to go kill them. People that you've never met, you have no issue with.

You don't know anything about them. You've literally never seen them before. You might not ever see them even when you're killing them. And this is the thing that we don't believe could ever be stopped in our lifetime, which is insane. If you really start to think about it that way, it sounds so insane. If you were approached by an alien life platform that said, what is the source of all this murder and killing and destruction? What is this? It's like, oh, we're being led. We're a group, and we're being led by the people that are in charge of this group that are very secretive and that are being influenced by massive amounts of money and the military-industrial complex. And they've got everyone convinced that you have to divert all of our resources into attacking this other group that is opposed to our way of life. They hate us for our freedom, whatever the fuck it is. And this is what we have to do now. They would be like, what is wrong with you fucking people? What a bizarre, wounded, tainted species that you think like this. And not just think like this, but think it's impossible to imagine this not existing.

This is the most insane venture that human beings can ever engage in. And you think it's impossible for that to not be the case. But almost all logical people, if you ask them, could you imagine no war in your lifetime?

No. Not now? No. Not now? I just turned 53. And I think that when I was a young man, I had a lot more optimism, right? And I don't think it was just a function of... Being young in the '90s, I think, was the best. It was like the time of peace and prosperity. And it seemed like we could get to Star Trek, right? It seemed like we could maybe get there, right?

Even Star Trek, the cold war. The cold war and Klingons.

Yeah, well, you got to fight somebody.

Why? It seems so crazy. I wonder if... I mean, this is going to get really weird, but I wonder if that's where AI is leading us. I really, genuinely do. I wonder Sure if the limitations of our primate architecture will not allow us to escape this never-ending cycle of war. And that may be the only thing that will would be an intelligence that far exceeds our own and doesn't have the same limitations, motivations, human reward systems, all the things that hold us in these patterns. And that an artificial intelligence that is far superior to what we're capable of generating with our monkey minds. The only thing that prevents us.

Well, back to DMT, I think that intelligence is already out there. We don't have to build it with computers here on Earth. And DMT is one conduit to it. Yeah. Mushrooms are another. Meditation is another. It's just a willingness to set aside the petty shit.

Which is also why a lot of people believe those things are illegal. A hundred %. If you We have everybody realizing that we're all one united, it would make-No money in that. Yeah, there's no money in that. Well, maybe the problem is money in general, like the concept of money. I'm not a proponent of socialism because Socialism always leads to communism, which leads to military dictatorship that are dictating whether or not you can do this or that. And there's always groups of people that have massive resources, and they keep everybody else subjugated. Anybody that thinks that socialism and communism the future. Show me where it works, ever. It's still human beings. It's just like whether it's cults or militaries or anything. So there's human beings that have immense power that is unimaginable to the common person dictating what the common people can and can't do. And the only way to enforce that is with force and with killing. That's the only way. With jailing people, killing people, fear. It's the only way to get people to listen to you and to do what you want them to do. And I wonder if what we're doing with artificial intelligence is creating...

I think we're going to merge. That's what I think is going to happen. I'm sure you've already seen this guy who the first Neuralink patient. Have you seen this?

Yeah.

So this first guy who's paralyzed with Neuralink, he's now able to use a computer, and he can move cursors around with his mind, and he can play video games with his mind. And he's been doing this, and he talks about it, and it's like, this is incredible. This is amazing. And this is essentially the Model T of this human computer interface, biological interface, something that goes into your mind, into the brain itself, and connects with it, and allows you to use things.

I get why that would help a dude in his situation. But do you have any concerns about that, like large scale? Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. My I have concerns with everything that involves human beings, because I don't think there's ever been a thing that involves human beings that doesn't get co-opted and corrupted. There's always something, someone comes along that uses it and has power. And that's the scariest thing about someone achieving some artificial general intelligence, some superintelligence, especially something that's sentient and can figure out what we're doing wrong and also figure out what was done wrong to code it and make a better version of itself. And I think it's going to lead to a new life form. I'm almost positive of that, that that's what all this stuff is doing. It's going to achieve... I mean, have you ever seen the head of Google where he was talking about how their AI has done things that they didn't expect. It learned a language instantaneously that it wasn't programmed in and can translate that language now and communicating that language, and they don't know how it did Well, hey, guys, hit the fucking brakes. You don't know what it's doing, and you're just going to keep feeding it? Okay. Where do you think that goes? It's going to be better than us at everything, and it's going to realize that we're the cause of pollution.

We're the cause of war. We're the cause of theft and rape and fraud and destruction and control of resources. It's all human beings. We are the problem that we're trying to solve. If we're trying to solve that problem by creating something that won't have those problems, it just logically seems to me that that thing is going to realize that we're the issue.

Part of me shares that fear. Part of me feels like a drowning man. And maybe AI is the life preserver. Part of me thinks that it's just going to be like the metaverse or the Google glasses or whatever. It's just going to be like a passing fad.

Oh, I don't think that. I don't think that at all. I think it's inevitable. I think we are. I've compared us to a caterpillar. That we're a caterpillar that's building a cocoon. We don't even know why. Caterpillars, they don't know. I'm going to become a butterfly. It's going to be awesome. No, we don't know why we're doing all this. Why are we so thirsty for innovation? Why are we so attached to wanting the newest, latest, greatest technology? It almost seems like that motivation is tied into the creation of artificial intelligence. That if you looked at us, I always say that if you looked at us from above, if you were some other species that came and you were looking at human beings, you would say, well, what does this thing do? Like, what does this species do? Well, the main thing it does, if you look at all the... There's all the wonderful things, the art, the music, all the wonderful things that it does for itself, food and culture and all these interesting things. But what does the species overall do? Well, it creates things, and it creates better things constantly. It's in a cycle of constant innovation.

And a lot of that innovation, almost all of it is tied to technology and artificial intelligence. And so where does that go? Well, that goes to another life form. It creates a thing. It creates an artificially intelligent Intelligent. And artificial is not a good word either, because I think it's digital intelligence. I don't think it's artificial intelligence. I think it's a computing-based intelligence that's far superior to the biological-based intelligence. And so my hope for us, because I am one of us, my hope is that we merge. My fear is that it supersedes us. My fear is that it surpasses us in every way and that it just gives us something that placates us.

It Controls us?

Yeah, gives us something. But instead of killing us off, all you'd have to do is stop us from breeding. That's not hard to do. We're doing that to ourselves. I mean, a population level, in terms of viability, they've dropped substantially over the last few decades, whether it's because of microplastics in our food that have diminished our reproductive cycles. If you look at the number of births in developing countries, what happens, how many women are having miscarriages? How many women are infertile? The numbers keep going up and up and up. It seems like there's a current trend because of what we have done with our environment, what we have done with our food supply, what we have done with medicine and pharmaceutical drugs that's leading us to be less and less viable. And all you'd have to do is step in and provide human beings with something that gives them an incentive to no longer breed, especially if it makes it very attractive to no longer breed.

And keep them entertained.

Keep them entertained, no longer breed. Provide them with robot sex dolls that are far superior to human beings. Someone who really gets them. This person really gets them. Or you just have a biological woman, he yells at you. You could clearly see how if you were a super intelligent species, a super intelligent thing that looked at us and said, well, what's the best way other in mass destruction of stopping these things from ruining the world. We'll just stop them from breeding. Just make these the last ones. Just severely limit the amount of reproduction that takes place.

That would do it. That drowning man looking for a life preserver side of me hopes that artificial intelligence or digital intelligence. I like that, by the way. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Digital intelligence. That it could be that Again, back to DMT, I felt that that sentient force, God, whatever you want to call it, was benign, was basically on my side. I'd like to think that perhaps that technology is being provided to us, that there is a bigger plan that we're just not dialed into, or that maybe it's a way to try and dial into that plan. I just want us to get to Star Trek, man. I think the goal, I think the intent for our species is to get off the rock and explore space in peace together.

That would certainly be wonderful. Yeah. That would be certainly preferable to destroying ourselves. What do you think is happening with all this UFO, UAP stuff? Do you ever think about that?

Yeah, I've looked I was to the doc on that several times. Could never quite get beyond what's already publicly available. I just think the government is covering something up for sure.

Do you think they're covering up things that they've invented?

I think that's probably the most... Again, I would like to believe that what they're covering, what I want to believe in the same way that I want to believe in the Stone Dope theory, because I think it's fucking cool, is I want to believe that they're covering up contact with It's species from outer space, other intelligent life. What I suspect is really going on is that they're covering up shit that they're making that maybe has slipped the leash or that for whatever reason, they're just trying to keep completely secret. The stuff that has maneuverability that can't be explained.

Yeah, that's my thought, too. I think both things, though. I think we're probably being visited as well. And I think we might be being visited by something that is us from the future. I think it might not even be us from the future, but being what happens when a species like us gets involved in digital intelligence and creates something that transcends the biological limitations. And then you have these things. To me, one of the things that's very bizarre is the archetype, the archetype gray alien, which is this big headed thing with no muscle, no genitals, And it seems very humanoid in a way, which doesn't necessarily make sense if you're dealing with different environments. And we think about the massive variety of species that exist on the planet that we're aware of. There's only one human. There's only one bipedal hominid. That's it. It's us, right? Why is this thing so much like us? This shitty design of walking around on two people? Why can't it fly? Why does it have these spindly bodies? Well, human beings, as we're evolving, one of the things that's very clear is that we're becoming less physical. We're weaker and softer than previous generations of humans that we can observe.

You look at our testosterone levels compared to men from the 1950s, we're far lower on average. And if you go way back and you look at Australia Pythagis and even Neanderthal, there's just super powerful physical specimens. They There were different... Neanderthal was like this 5'7, 200 pound behemoth of a creature that was... If you have a Neanderthal competing in the UFC, it would smash everybody. Their bones are bigger, they're far more powerful. If you keep going in that direction, what do you get to? You get to this thing that has almost no muscle, this thing that just has the ability to move around. It's probably communicating telepathically. It's probably using its telepathic energy to control those devices, those ships. That's one of the things that Bob Lozard said, went, and again, the Bob Lozard story is who knows? I love to believe the Bob Lozard story. I had him on the podcast. I talked to him for three hours. I had dinner with him. He doesn't seem like a guy who's lying. And one of the more bizarre aspects of his story was how many of the things that he talked about now we know are true in terms of the technology, in terms of what people have seen, 3D printing.

There's all these different things. Like the ship that he went into, there's no seams. He's like, it's all like as if it's made out of one piece of something, which is 3D printing. I mean, that's what we're doing now. And that there's no instrumentation and that somehow or another these things are integrated somehow with their minds or with something where it's allowing them to pilot these things without digital instrumentation and buttons and switches, they're using some other wet method to control these things. And that's what he was supposedly brought in to try to back engineer. To try to say, what is this? How does it work? And he talked about the limitations of having science try to be practiced in a vacuum. And he was like, the metallurgist did not have contact with the propulsion experts. The propulsion experts did not have contact with other groups that were studying these things. Everybody was very secretive and everybody was very isolated. And he's like, that's not how science works. And that's one of the reasons why they can never figure out how these things work. You need to open this up to the global scientific community and have everybody examine these things and look at it.

But the problem is the military applications. If you have something that can essentially use some new element and use this new element that's bombarded with radiation that allows you to manipulate gravity and move at insane speeds, almost instantaneously to anywhere in the universe. You can't give that to the Chinese. You can't have someone else get a hold of it before us. You can't have someone steal these techniques or these technologies. So what do you do? If you have this thing, if this thing has really been donated, which is like what a lot of these people that work on them, they call them donations. If you really have these things, what do you do? How do you how do you figure that out? I don't know. But if we have been doing this since the 1980s, which is Lozard said it's been around far longer than that, but when he was working on them, it was the 1980s. You could imagine that by now we might have figured out a way to get a drone going that uses these technologies and that these drones can appear and disappear. They can fly at the same rates of speed.

They can hover stationary at 120 knots winds like they've observed. You can imagine that that's ours.

I saw the Phoenix lights. Did you really?

Yeah. You were there?

Yeah, I saw. Whoa. Different people saw different things. What I saw was something the size of an Imperial Star destroyer from Star Wars that was at a relatively low altitude moving over Phoenix. My housemate was like, I mean, this is before we had phones, before we had cameras. So it was like we had a flip phone of anything. And he was like, Dude, you got to get out here. And I came out the front yard of our house in Tempe, and we just watched this thing move across the sky. It was like, What the fuck, man? I I believe in reincarnation because I came back from DMT thinking that I had a firsthand experience. I believe that there was something inexplicable in the sky over Phoenix that night because I fucking saw it. Okay? And it was massive and it was quiet, and then it was just gone.

So what did it look like?

It looked like a massive craft, not shaped like an Imperial Star destroyer, but of that scale. It was more tubular-shaped. And you could see- Tubular? Yeah, more like a tube. But you could see variations in it. It wasn't totally smooth. And you could see, by the way, that it was blocking out the stars. So you could see that there were like, apparatus on it of some kind. And I always thought that it was a military aircraft where they thought they had a cloaking device. See, now that's what other people saw, was these smaller things on the same night that were explained away as being some military flares or weather balloons or some shit. That's not what I saw on the same night. But I'm not the only one that saw this larger scale craft. So I always thought like, man, that could be a military ship. They thought they had some cloaking device that fucked up. It fritzed out because that's what it looked like. I could see it, and then I couldn't.

So it looked like a tube. How big were you talking about? Several football fields?

Yes. Yes.

How many football fields?

I would say the size of a battleship. Okay, huge. Not an aircraft carrier, but the size of a battleship. I would say three- What's bigger?

Aircraft carrier or battleship?

Battleship, I think, is bigger. It's a destroyer. Whatever is smaller than an aircraft carrier. Show me. Whatever the ship is that's smaller than an aircraft carrier.

So not as big as an aircraft carrier.

Not as big as an aircraft carrier.

What is a battleship?

It's either a battleship or destroyer, whatever that next one is. I would say three football fields, at least. It was huge. You You could not miss it.

And how high do you think it was above you?

No more than a thousand feet. Whoa. No more as low altitude. It was like right over Tempe. I'm not the only one. No.

I'm not the only one that saw it. No, I Oh, no. Many, many people saw it.

I actually went on the record with the newspaper I worked for right away because they were immediately dismissing those smaller lights that we just saw as whatever the explanation was. And I was like, there's something else in the sky that night, too. So I love to gamble. If I had to make a bet, I would still say it's human military technology that fritzed out.

Wow. But many people said they saw something that looked like a triangle.

No, this is not a triangle.

So maybe there was more than one of these things.

Totally possible.

You remember when the governor did that press conference and came out with a guy in an alien suit and made a mockery of the whole thing.

Which is what their tactic has been.

But then that same governor came back after he left office and talked about it and said that he saw something and admitted it. Yeah. What was the governor's name?

Fyfe-symington.

Fyfe-symington. See if you could find a video of Fyfe-Symington saying what he actually saw on witnessing the Phoenix lights. I think later he talked about it.

Well, unlike Fyfe-Symington, I was stone, but I still know what I saw. I still know what I saw. And what's interesting is when he's trying to describe the shape and he puts it at a bigger size than I have it in my memory, I do remember talking with my friend. It was hard to describe what we just saw. It was like we didn't have a reference. It's like we're trying to... Let me see if I can articulate this. We're trying to find reference points for something that really doesn't have one, I guess. I can estimate the size, but it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

Have you ever heard people describe what the Native Americans must have seen when those boats started showing up? No. That they had never seen anything that large, that it probably blew them away. You see the Pinta and the Santa Maria and these massive boats from Europe. They were like, What the fuck is that?

Well, let's hope that That the beings aboard the craft, if that's what they are, have better intentions than the people aboard those boats. Yeah, right?

Yeah. That's crazy that you actually saw it.

Yeah.

Wow. And you said it just disappeared?

Yes. It wasn't like, whoop, or anything. There was no noise. It was there. There were some lights. Like you said, I remember there were some lights that were not stars that were part of this craft.

Can you describe what those lights looked like?

No, they were not colored. They were white or off-white, because I remember thinking, are those stars? I was trying to actually see what is the shape and what is stars. That's how I was gaging how big it was. And I was like, no, those are attached to this thing. And then it was just I just couldn't see it anymore. It was like the Northern light. So I'm from Alaska, right? So it was like the Northern lights, they're there, and then they're not there. It was just this ghostly thing, and then they're gone. And it was like that. It was there. It was moving at a slow speed from my left to right. And then it was just I couldn't see it anymore. But it was like 20 seconds, at least. It wasn't like a glimpse of this thing.

And how many lights?

Half a dozen. Yeah, somewhere around there. I know people said that they saw a triangle. So then for a while, they were saying that's why he was probably talking about the B-2 bomber, the stealth bomber, because they're triangular. It was way bigger than one of those. And it was not that shape at all. I struggled to come up with what shape it was because it's a shape that I haven't really seen before. Wow.

And what was your initial thought? That that's an alien spacecraft?

No, my initial thought was not an alien spacecraft. It was basically an initial thought was just like, what the fuck is that? And then once I talked about it, that same like, want to believe, actually believe thing we talked about several times today. I want to believe it was an alien spacecraft. I believe it was probably US military technology gone awry. Really? Yeah.

Do you think they have the capability to do that in the 1990s? Because when was the Phoenix Lights?

Yeah, it was mid-1990s. I think it was '96. Might have been '97. Not sure. As more time has gone on, though, you were asking me what I thought in the moment. As more time has gone on, the needles moved towards maybe that was actually an extraterrestrial craft. Because so much has come out, especially in the last five years, as you know, as you've talked about here.

Yeah. It's just so strange that it all occurred in this one area in this one night. That has to be a real paradigm shifting moment for you.

It wasn't. Well, yeah. Well, I think I got so caught up in the government's trying to cover up its own fuck up. They're putting up... And then there was the smaller lights thing and the weather balloon. But I went on the record with the Phoenix New Times. There's a guy named Tony Ortega there that wrote a piece about it right away. And I went on the record because I was maybe one of the last... I wasn't the UFO enthusiast type in the community. I was a fairly well-known writer in the Greater Phoenix Metro at that time. And not someone that would be normally associated with being a quote unquote, UFO crazy. So I went on the record with the article he was writing. It was like, yes, I saw this. No fucking way. It was a weather balloon or a flare or whatever they're saying. It was massive.

So Man, what I would give to see something like that.

But to your point about, look at how people, about the technology, maybe it's being kept quiet because of the military applications. Look at how people flicked out when it leaked about this new Russian space weapon, a couple of weeks back, or three weeks back. What is that? Whatever. It's like an ability to disrupt satellite communications in space. Like Russia, somehow it leaked, maybe deliberately out of Russia, that they've got this far more advanced technology than we thought they had to a weapon that would be in space that could disrupt communications and satellites and really fuck us up. Okay. And it leaked, and then there was this one congressman that went Republic with it. It was like, we have a real problem. It was while I was in Ukraine, so it was maybe three weeks ago. But imagine if it was something on the scale of a weaponized ship that could be cloaked like that or some of the technology, or if we did have, as you said, this donated technology that's from an extraterrestrial intelligence that the US has been figuring out applications for, you'd have to keep that on lock. Because what if that leaked right now?

What do you think Putin would do? Who the fuck knows what he would do if all of a sudden it leaked, that we had these military capabilities that are far beyond what he thinks we have?

That's my thought about these things that they keep seeing, because they always see them in areas where they do military tests. The TicTac was off the Coast of San Diego, which is where all the military bases are. And the things that Ryan Long had seen were all off the East Coast in restricted airspace, in space where they run fighter jet training. And he said when they upgraded their technology in 2014, they upgraded their sensors. He said that's when we started seeing these things constantly, all the time. And they were getting visuals. They were seeing visual versions of these things. And that was a square. It was a sphere in a square or a square in a sphere. Do you remember? Square in a sphere. So there was this circular sphere and this black square that exists in this thing, and it's hovering, and it's hovering in very high speed winds. And it just station, stationary, motionless, and that these things are able to move at just bizarre rates of speed with no indication of a traditional propulsion system. No heat signature that shows that rocket propulsion. Nothing. Nothing that we can explain. If they had a drone that could do that, that's where they would test those things.

And what better way to test whether or not people could see them than to run them out there when people are using new jets with new capabilities? Can you see them? Okay, they see them. And the fact that the TikTok back when Commander David Fraver brought this information and reported it, and they showed the videos to these admirals, and they were nonplussed. They were like, Mm-hmm. Okay. They just left the room. Do they fucking know? How are they not... Are they just stone cold dudes who could just keep it together in the face of some alien technology? They know that we were being visited? Or is this... And the other thing was that when he When Fraver communicated this stuff, these guys who are running these sensors, they're running the detection systems, they're saying, We're seeing these things all the time, every couple of weeks. We're seeing them all over the place. Well, what the fuck is that? And this is also 2004. Did they have the ability of 2004, something to go from above 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 feet in less than a second? What is that? What the fuck is that?

And people try to argue it away or explain it away by saying, Oh, it's a failure of the detection systems, and it's a glitch. Yeah, but visuals, more than one fighter jet has seen it. They have video of this thing moving at a speed that would turn human beings into jelly. If there's a biological entity inside that thing and experiences that G-force, you're talking about some fucking insane G-force, like 1,300 times what a human being can tolerate and just gone, silent. No visual means of propulsion. No windows. What is that? Is that a drone?

What is that? The witnesses have been reliable, too. I've often suspected that in the last many years, especially in the last five, it feels like the witnesses, the guys coming forward saying, look, I know what I saw, are more the ones that are associated with the government, even commercial airline pilots will be on the FAA, but especially military pilots, they're being allowed to speak. That It feels like the waters are being tested by the government for some reason. We're going to let this out a little bit. We're going to let the people that actually people may actually believe, like a test to what they saw and see how the public reacts.

That's what I think is going on. Well, that would be what I would do If I was running the government, if I was running the government. If I wanted to hide the fact that we have these things, I would say that these are off-world crafts. That's what I would say. I would say, look, these things are behaving in a way that we can't explain. Well, I guess we're being visited. And then go right back to whatever Black Ops thing that you guys are doing, some Raytheon project. I don't know what it is, but I go back and forth all the time, whether I think it's from another planet, another galaxy, another dimension, or whether or not I think it's us. Or many people think that they've always been here. When you talked about the Vedas, in the Vedas, they talk about these things. They talk about that. I mean, it's in the Bagabha Gita. It's in The ancient Hindu text, they talk about these Vimanas, these crafts, that whatever these beings operate.

So in that case, are we just getting better at detecting them, or are they showing themselves more often?

That makes it- Well, in unique circumstances, if someone sees something like this, like you. So you see this in 1990, whatever it is in Phoenix. If you lived 5,000 years ago and you see this, what does that sound like? What does that sound to everybody. Sounds like you're out of your fucking mind. A small handful of people say it. They tell stories. People write it down. It just goes away. Unique experiences are very difficult to classify. If you have an experience with a ghost, if a ghost shows up in this room and we all see it, and it doesn't show up on camera, and we swear we saw an apparition of fucking Forrest Gump standing there. You're like, what the fuck is that? Well, you're just left with a story. If you can't measure it, you can't write it down, you Even a video of it. What are you seeing? You're seeing grainy footage of something? I'm sure you've seen these supposedly leaked images that fighter pilots have taken with cell phones from their aircraft. What are they saying? What is that thing? What is that weird, blurry-looking, metallic-looking thing? Is that a mylar balloon that they're mistaking for a spacecraft?

That doesn't seem likely. It seems like they're a lot fucking smarter than that. They're not going to I think a child's birthday balloon that's floating around at 20,000 feet is an aircraft. They're probably going to realize it's a balloon. They've probably seen balloons.

I don't know. In those videos, too, it's the commentary that sells it. Like, look at that thing move or what it means.

Like the go fast video. Look at it go. Jesus Christ. And these guys are trained pilots. They're used to seeing things, and they're seeing something that rotates. This is the other thing about the craft that coincides with what Bob Lazard said. It's moving like this, and it turned sideways. And Lazard said that's what it did, that it would direct its generator, whatever that gravity generator is. It would direct that towards the way that it wanted to go. So it would literally turn sideways to move forward. I mean, Kenneth Arnold was talking about these things in the 1950s, right? So for sure in the 1950s, we didn't have the capability to make something like that, something with no visible means of propulsion that's shaped like a saucer that fly silently through the air and moves at a speed and has capabilities in terms of maneuverability that far exceeds a jet that we had back then. What does that mean? What is that? I mean, they were seeing these things when we had propeller planes. What is that? I don't know. But part of me feels stupid for even talking about it. You know what I mean?

It's like, why are you wasting all your energy? You have so many things you have to do. Because it's fascinating.

It is fascinating.

But it makes you feel like a fool. And I think that's part of the strategy of all this stuff.

Well, ridiculing people that have talked about UFOs has been part of the government strategy from the jump.

For sure. That's a Project Blue Book. That's been documented.

But the thing on the military installations, of course, the two theories are, one is that there's some extra terrestrial intelligence that's drawn to our military activity. But what seems like the more rational explanation is, as you said, that's where they test this shit. Sure.

Or if I was an intelligent species that's willing to donate these crafts, like they claim, that they let these things land or crash, and then they'll do it in a very strategic way where they know that the military will be able to cordon off the area and isolate and stop people from talking about it. And the idea that people in the military aren't able to keep secrets, so that's nonsense. They're really good at keeping secrets. They can keep secrets, especially high-level people. Look, if I had access, not Joe Biden, He's too far gone. But if Obama called me during his administration and said, You want to see some shit? I'd be like, I want to see some shit. And he said, Don't tell anybody. I'm like, I won't tell anybody. Maybe I'd tell my wife. Maybe I'd tell one of my friends. But I wouldn't fucking go public and tell everybody. If they're willing to show me this shit, no one's going to believe me anyway. And so I'm like, What good does it do if I make myself look like a moron, A, B, now I can't have access to it anymore because I told them.

Because I told people about it, because now they can't trust me. I'd shut the fuck up, especially if I was in the military. I would shut the fuck up. Show me. You ever heard the story? It's a widely disputed story, but that Jackie Gleason and Nixon were drinking one day, and Nixon was like, You want to see some shit? And Nixon took Jackie Gleason to one of the Air Force bases and showed him this UFO. And Jackie Gleason was a UFO fanatic. I don't know if you know this, but Jackie Gleason actually had a home built in upstate New York that looked like a UFO. And he had this home built after this supposed experience. No shit. Yeah. Show the images of the home. This is the home that Jackie Gleason had built. I mean, what the fuck? Look at the outside of it, though. Not that one. That one's just a cool circular one. But that image. What the fuck are you doing, Jackie? Why you make it a UFO house in upstate New York? It seems a little odd. Take that image. Look at that. I mean, come on, man. What the fuck is that?

It looks like a sci-fi movie prop, though. It looks like a cliché of a the folk. Right.

But that's, apparently, this is the folklore. Is that that's what he saw. And so he's like, I don't want to build a fucking house. It looks like that. It's fun. But it also has this feeling of futility. It's futile thing. Why are we even talking about it? It's nonsense. It's fascinating, but it just seems like it almost seems like you're never going to know.

I think we talk about it because it gives us hope, frankly. We want to believe it's true.

Well, we certainly don't want to believe the stories that they hover over military bases and shut down nuclear weapons. My comedy club is called the Comedy Mothership, and you walk into the Comedy Club, there's a gigantic artificial UFO that we had built. So when you walk into it, as you walk in the front door, there's this big construction of a UFO that has a beam that comes down, and we use it as a projector to show who's coming soon on the big screen. But I named the rooms Fat Man and Little Boy because those are the bombs that we dropped. Right after we dropped those bombs, that's when all the UFO activity happened. That's like there's a giant uptick in UFO activity after 1945. And in the UFO folklore, it's like they realized that we have the ability to drop nukes. And so then they started visiting, and then they started shutting down nuclear weapons at bases and making their presence known at these military bases. Say, Hey, keep it together, bitches. We're watching. We don't want you to nuke this whole planet and ruin our little program. And then our program is an accelerated engineer engineering program, that we've accelerated the evolution of human beings through some intervention, and that this is why we're so different.

It's not the stone ape theory. It's the humans are engineered by some superior life form to try to accelerate our evolution and bring us to this place, and that they've helped us along the way. But we're autonomous, and we're allowed to do what we want to do. And so we do disgusting crazy shit, like drop nuclear bombs from propeller planes, by the way, right? Propeller planes on cities. And that once they did that, they're like, okay, slow the fuck down. We're here. Now, whether they've always been here, like in the Vedic text or even in the Bible, Ezequiel's description of the wheel within a wheel. Have you read that description? No. Pull up Ezequiel's description of what he saw. This is one of the favorite descriptions from the Bible, from the Old Testament, about UFOs that people love to bring up. Because Ezequiel has this thing that he describes, and it's the most bizarre depiction. I looked. I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze. Within the fire were what looked like four creatures, vibrant with life.

Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings. Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hoofed like those of a calf and sparkled with the fire like burnished bronze. On all four sides under their wings, they had human hands. All four had faces and wings and the wings touching one another. They turned neither one way nor the other. They went straightforward. Their faces looked like this: in front of a human face, on the right side, the face of a lion, on the left the face of an ox, and in the back, the face of an eagle. So much for the faces. The wings were spread out with the tips of one pair touching the creature on either side. The other pair of wings covered its body. Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit went, they went. They didn't turn as they want. The four creatures looked like blazing fire or fiery torches. Tongues of fire shot back and forth between the creatures, and out of the fire, bolts of lightning. The creatures flashed back and forth like strikes of lightning.

As I watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-face creatures. This is what the wheels looked like. They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. They looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope. They went in any of the four directions they faced, but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living creatures went, the wheels went. When the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Wherever the When the spirit went, they went. The wheel sticking right with them. For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went. When the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped. When the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Over the heads of the living creatures was something like a dome, shimmering like the light, like a sky full of cut glass, vaulted over their heads. Under the dome, one set of wings was extended towards the other with another set of wings covering their bodies. When they moved, I heard their wings.

It was like the roar of a great waterfall, like the voice of the strong God, like the noise of a battlefield. When they stopped, they folded their wings, and And then, as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice above the dome over their heads. Above the dome, there was something that looked like a throne. Sky blew like a sapphire with a humanlike figure towering above the throne. From what I could see, From the waist up, he looked like burnished bronze, and from the waist down, like a blazing fire. Brightness everywhere. The way a rainbow springs out of a sky on a rainy day, that's what it was like. It turned out to be the glory of God. Like, what the fuck, man?

I mean, to anybody that's done DMT or ayahuasca or really tripped on psychedelics, though, you read that and it feels familiar. Yeah.

The glory of God.

Yeah. The glory of God. And these visions of these beings.

And the fact that these things are constantly changing their appearance. That's the thing about the DMT experience. It's not a stationary static experience. It's constantly changing and moving in front of you. And to see something like that in the sky. And the fact that it's so noteworthy that they wrote it down in the fucking Bible.

Maybe he found some of those mushrooms. Yeah, maybe. And then the cow shit.

Well, there's What's a University in Israel, I think it's the University of Jerusalem, that theorized that the Moses experience of the burning Bush was a DMT experience. When you say Moses saw the burning bush. Well, what bush would burn that would give you a psychedelic experience? Well, the acacia tree. The acacia tree, which is very common to that area, is rich with DMT. And how do you psychoactively they acquire DMT? You smoke it. So you're smoking this tree, this burning bush, and you're seeing God, and God has brought you 10 Commandments of how to live life, which sounds like a lot of what you experience in the DMT experience. When you have that and you have these contact with the entities, they give you guidelines of how to live.

Yeah. It felt to me like a massive amount of information being downloaded, but that it was guiding in nature.

Yeah, but very difficult to hold on to. You're like, what is it? It's probably something you'd want to write down. Yeah. Like the Ten Commandments. Yeah.

Well, again, back to the Christians and probably, that was his thing. It was like, you can't hold on to it with psychedelics alone, and you don't need psychedelics to get a hold of it in the first place was what he was preaching.

And he probably recognized that the problem with taking psychedelics is that it's so accessible. You just take it. I mean, it's the beautiful thing about it. But you also could say that could be a problem because then a bunch of people with no discipline would just start popping these things and having these experiences and having no framework, no moral framework, no ethical framework, no understanding of what are you experiencing and what to do with this stuff.

No discipline. Right.

But if you acquire it biologically, if you acquire it endogenously through discipline, then you are on a path. And through that path, you can achieve this thing. And you realize that this is a very difficult thing to achieve and that you have to stay on this path in order to get this enlightenment. I could see how someone would say, no, listen, that's not the way. This is the way. That you can do it with your own mind. You don't need these things. You know Terrance McKinnon's thought on that, though? Very funny thought. He said, It reminds me of an ancient story of this monk had acquired a city of levitation and practiced this. And it said to the Buddha, when the Buddha came to town, I've spent 20 years acquiring the city of levitation, and I could walk across the water. And the Buddha said, Yeah, but the ferry is only a nickel. So that was McKenna's take on it. It's like, why would you do all that stuff when you could just take the mushrooms? But McKenna was a brilliant man. He wasn't some stoned hippie in the middle of upstate New York just tripping balls on mushrooms.

I think it's helpful to have some processing after the experience, right? Sure. Not just keep repeating it, trying to get back to that space.

Also, McKenna was a proponent of taking psychedelic drugs, so he probably would want people to think that his way is the way. He's only human. I don't know, man. But it's all... Look, just the fact that the psychedelic experience is a real thing. And when you do take that and you do have those experiences and you realize that it's a real thing, how did I not know about this? How is the most profound thing that's ever happened to me? Something that is a schedule one drug that It's illegal for whatever reason that no one's explained to me accurately. No one's ever explained it in a way that makes sense. Why is a thing that doesn't kill anybody that exists in the human mind? That was the other thing that McKenna said about DMT. It's illegal, but everybody's holding.

Right.

Everybody has it. If you want to test people for DMT, well, everybody's guilty. Everybody. The most staunch, conservative, anti-drug person is right now has DMT in their body. All of them do. Everybody does. It's literally like testing people for blood. Yeah, you have blood. Of course, you're alive. Yeah, you have DMT. You're alive. Yeah, but it's illegal. What? It doesn't make any sense. It sounds so insane. And also the fact that it's naturally occurring, not just naturally occurring in the human mind, but naturally occurring in nature, and that there seems to be some a mitigation strategy by the human body in order to keep you from tripping balls by consuming all the different plants that have DMT in it. And that's monoamine oxidase. So monoamine oxidase breaks it down in the gut. So if you consume grasses, like phalaris grass, it's very rich in DMT. If a human being consumed that, You're not going to trip because the monoamine oxidase in the gut breaks it down. So the strategy that they came up with with ayahuasca was to combine these psychedelic plants, these plants that contain dimethyltryptamine with other plants that contain harmin, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and that the two of these together will allow an orally active version of dimethyltryptamine, which is what it is.

You know what I mean? I really felt like once was enough. I know you have a different approach.

Maybe everybody's different. I mean, once is enough because it's so fucking scary. You don't want to do it again. I get it. But every time I've ever been troubled and I've done it, I feel way better.

Dmt-specifically? Yeah. Yeah, I'm talking about DMT, specifically.

Yeah. Every time I've ever done it, I'm like, God, the things I concentrate on are so stupid. The things that worry me are so foolish.

I find that with MDMA. I find MDMA to be very useful as a reset button.

Sure. Yeah. It also makes you realize how insecure you are and how insecure most people are with interactions with each other. And when those barriers are down, how wild the experience is of just not having any fear of human interaction. That's something I only did once. And the problem that I had with it was after it was over, I felt so drained. But I didn't have any strategy for taking some a serotonin booster, like 5HDP, which is what people take that really know what they're doing with that stuff. They take 5HDP to boost up their serotonin while they're doing it so that after it's over, they're not just crashed. Because the next day, I was useless. I remember I was in a coffee shop the next day, and I was trying to read a magazine, and I couldn't read. I couldn't concentrate. I literally couldn't read this magazine. I was like, oh, my God, I'm so dumb. My brain feels like a... I felt... The way I described it I had a dry sponge for a brain. Normally, it's wet and filled with water. Now, it's just this dopey dry sponge. And was it worth it?

Maybe, but I had stuff to do that day. I had a show that night.

And this was after doing what? Mdma. Yeah, you were in ETard, right? Etard. I used to call it in the 90s. You're an ETard.

That's what the experience is after it.

But you do need to do the serotonin booster. That is the key move. But I just think it's border... It's not border on a criminal. It is fucking criminal that the government has kept MDMA therapy, especially guys coming back from these fucking wars in the Middle East. They're all fucked up with PTSD because as somebody who has PTSD, not from combat, but from childhood trauma, MDMA is just like a godsend, literally, from the gods, the godsend. And that shit has been kept from... I mean, that organization, maps has been doing fantastic research with it, and it seems like it's on the path to legalization now, finally. But there are so many guys that needed that so badly.

And including the people that are making it illegal, unfortunately. That's the problem. It's an experience. It's being kept from us by people that haven't done it.

Right.

Yeah. There was another quote that was attributed to McKenna. Mckenna tried to attribute it to somebody else, but they said he didn't say it. But it was that LSD is something that causes severe psychotic experiences people who haven't taken it. Nice. I might have paraphrased that. I think I did. But it's something along those lines. We know for a fact that all that stuff was made illegal during the sweeping Psychedelics Act of 1970 that was designed to subvert the war movement and to subvert the civil rights movement and to go after the Black Panthers and all these different people that were disrupting the government's control over society. And the best way to do that is to make all drugs illegal and then go after those people and just throw water on the whole party. It worked. It worked for decades. And it severely impacted art, specifically music. If you look at the music from the '60s all the way up to 1970, and then there's this confusion period of 1970, and then you look at the music of the '80s. Like, what the fuck happened, everybody? What happened? How do you go from Hendrix to fucking whatever?

I don't want to I don't make fun of any '80s bands, but hair bands. What happened there? What the fuck happened? How did it get so dumb?

Everybody stopped tripping and started doing coke. Yeah, exactly.

That's exactly what happened. Yeah. And they just lost the plot for a little while. It seems like the plot has come back. I think the plot has come back. And I think you could credit Lorenzo from the Psychedelic Salon with the distribution of all those old recordings of Alan Watts and McKenna and all those different psychedelic bards that were talking about these things that got people more curious and interested in them. And then people realizing that we needed to do something for these soldiers that are coming back with PTSD and psilocybin ceremonies and ayahuasca and MDMA, which is being used by MAPS. Maps has done an amazing job. They really have. And they've done it the right way where they're really promoting legalization in a very structured structured way.

Yeah. It just feels like it's taken so long. But that's the only way that the government is going to accept. It's like multiple research trials.

And even then, it really takes people leaving office and dying off. It takes the old people going away, the corrupt politicians that are in charge of deciding what is and is not legal. They have to vanish, and they slowly get phased out generation after generation. And then the new people coming into play Some of them have military experience. Some of them know people that have been really helped by MDMA therapy or ayahuasca or many of the... Ibogaine, people that have severe addictions to pills and all sorts of different opiates. Ibogaine is like one of the greatest things That's the first thing that's ever been discovered to help heal people from these problems. So many weird competing factors are all happening altogether, and they're all in this wild chaos that is the age of information, the age of information and technology that's allowing people to have access to these things, but also realize how crazy the world we live in is. And then you have TikTok, where people are just being distracted all day long and being confused.

That is terrifying. It's crack. I feel more hopeful now, Joe, once we started talking about psychedelics again than I was when we were talking about war.

Well, psychedelics might be the only thing that prevents war. It might be the only thing that helps people. You can get large scale use of psychedelics sanctioned, not just in America, but worldwide. I think it will have a tremendous impact on the way people view this experience, because this is a small, tiny, finite experience that we're going through. It seems like it takes forever, but you're 53, I'm 56. It's like, Jesus, man, we're more than halfway to the finish line, and it just happened. It's like a blip. And you're still... We're all, everyone, me included, we're all just trying to figure it out as we go along. And hopefully you're better than you were yesterday at it. And sometimes you're not. Sometimes you fall down, sometimes you get back up and you climb a little higher this time, and now you're better than you were a year ago. But, boy, it's fucking confusing.

I went to College in University of California Santa Cruz. It's no secret that Santa Cruz for a long time has been a center for psychedelics. And there's a guy there, I think even if I could remember his name, I'm not going to drop it, but he got busted for making acid. And I think it was around 9/11, he had this massive underground LSD lab, like out in the middle of the country. And it was a story that never really got picked up because everyone was distracted by 9/11.

That was the missile silo guy?

Yeah, I think so. And his whole thing was like, he was trying to make what he called a planetary dose. That was his thing. I have to make enough acid for everyone on Earth to take acid. It's the only thing that's going to save humanity. And I get it. At least I get the thinking.

I get the thinking, too, especially if you're really tripping. Yeah.

I know.

Yeah. Just get everybody fucked up. Yeah. There is people that had this theory that if you just dose the water supply in major cities, that people would be forced to trip. But what dose?

I don't think that's probably a good idea.

No, it's a terrible idea. No, the correct idea is legalization and centers that are set up by ethical experts who really have experience in these things that can provide both counseling and medical services and allow people to do the correct dose safely under supervision. And then counseling. It gives them some a framework as to what to do with this, what has happened, what this means, and how you can apply this to your life. And if we could figure out how to do that in a structured way, we probably could help an enormous amount of people.

Absolutely. The integration after the trip, right? Yeah. Taking it back to Krishna, right? Because that's the series I have out. But there's a legitimate comment, which is that that's what Pravupad, and that's what Krishna consciousness, in a sense, was offering, was integration of the psychedelic experience. Here's a framework for integrating everything you've been experiencing on acid and mescaline, whatever the hippie kids were into.

Yeah. I think Pravupad and the people that were legit were really trying to do that, and they were really trying to spread this message. And if you think about what they were able to do during the '60s with the help of George Harrison, they opened up a lot of people's minds to these ideas and probably changed a lot of lives and the directions of a lot of people's lives.For the better.For the better. Listen, man, I really appreciate your work. Sasquatch is incredible, and this Krishna documentary is incredible, too. You're really awesome.Thanks.

Brother.i appreciate you.I appreciate you.

If you do this Ukraine thing or if you ever do a UFO thing, whatever you do, come back.Okay.I love to have you again.I will.Thank you very much. All right. Tell everybody it's available. It's on Peacock.

Krishna's. Krishna's on Peacock.

It's awesome. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.

Bye, everybody.