#2403 - Andrew Gallimore

[00:00] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day! [00:12] Hello, Andrew. How are you? I'm splendid. How the devil are you, sir? I think it's the first time anyone's answered splendid when I ask them, how you doing? So, um... [00:26] Tell me about your book, man. Let me see the cover of it, first of all. [00:30] Death by Astonishment, which is the famous Terrence McKenna quote, right? Yes. The only thing you have to fear is death by astonishment. Exactly. Yeah. The first time I did DMT, I literally heard his words. [00:42] Do not give in to astonishment. I literally heard those words. It's almost like whatever's over there wanted me to hear that. [00:52] I could like... [00:53] sink in or whatever. [00:55] Because I had already heard it before. [00:57] So they wanted to say it to me as well. [00:59] It was very weird. [01:00] Yeah, it's sage advice, I think. Oh, it's the only way. It's the only way. Because if you freak out, well, it's like that's a good thing. It's good advice in most of life. Like don't give in to the freak out. Yeah, yeah. [01:13] confronting the mystery of the world's strangest drug. [01:16] How did you get involved in this? [01:18] DMT? Yes. [01:20] Oh. [01:21] So you have to go back to my... [01:24] teenage years really. So I mean I first heard about DMT through [01:29] Terence McKenna

[01:30] Like most of us. Yeah, like most of us. But this was like... [01:34] This was during like the dawn of the internet. [01:37] Right. Long before you were a scientist. Long before I was a scientist. Right. So a friend gave me this magazine and had this interview with this bearded, cheeky looking bearded fellow on the back called Terence McKenna. And he said, [01:50] He spoke about this... [01:52] thing called DMT, which of course I didn't know what [01:56] that was, but... [01:57] the stories... [02:00] He was telling that you were going to meet these insectoid aliens and trans-dimensional beings. [02:06] machine owls jabbering in an indecipherable tongue and singing impossible objects into existence. I mean, it sounded [02:13] ridiculous. But... [02:15] I was kind of, I was hooked. I thought, this is it. This is the most fucking incredible thing I've ever read in my life. And say... [02:23] I was like 15, 16 years old. And there was one computer in the school that was hooked up to the computer. [02:29] the World Wide Web. So all of... What year was this? [02:32] 96. Oh, I'm giving my age away here. Early days of the internet. Yeah, yeah. So I spent all my time just... [02:42] you know [02:44] going on to Alta Vista. Remember Alta Vista? I do. Yeah. I didn't remember it until you brought it up. There we go. Yeah, just kind of... [02:52] trying to find out as much as I could about this. And that was what triggered my decision to study chemistry and pharmacology. My kind of academic journey was triggered by, I want to know. You know, it's such a cool thing, the idea that you can put a molecule...

[03:07] in your brain. And it doesn't just change how you feel, but it completely changes the entire structure of your reality. Your entire world is obliterated and replaced with one that is [03:23] completely alien, that there's no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world. That's incredible and I kind of wanted to [03:30] try at least to understand how that actually works. Well, the weirdest part about that molecule is that your brain makes it... [03:38] And so then you have to go why and what's the purpose of that and I [03:44] What are we really? You know, what is consciousness? And what is normal consciousness? What's the purpose of it? [03:52] And why does this chemical exist? [03:55] What is this molecule exist that's produced by the brain that changes everything and seems to transport you to a place that's more real than this physical reality that we find ourselves in right now? [04:08] Exactly, and that is kind of the great mystery. And I don't... I think... [04:12] Most people who even people who've kind of learned about DMT, even scientists, I mean, I speak to scientists. I engage with scientists, neuroscientists often. And they will say, oh, this is just hallucination. This is just your brain kind of making it up. And I don't think most scientists realize that. [04:32] how... [04:34] confounding and how difficult to explain the DMT state is. I think it is one of the

[04:41] one of life's true mysteries. It is not simple to explain [04:46] the DMT state. [04:48] I think it's almost irresponsible to try to explain it without experiencing it. [04:52] It's not going to kill you. It's not going to kill you. It lasts 15 minutes. Stop being a pussy. Right. Just do it. And then tell me it's just a hallucination. That's it. Just do a big one. Three giant hits. Come back. Come back. [05:05] Tell me this is normal. Tell me this is just a freak out. Because it sure doesn't seem like it, does it? [05:10] No. And I mean, that was what I mean. I mean, [05:14] I first learned about DMT, as I said, when I was 15 or 16, but... [05:18] My first experience was probably close to a decade later. [05:24] And... [05:25] I thought before I took it, I thought I kind of knew what to expect. I mean, I'd listened to all the Terence McKenna lectures I could find. I'd read all the books, read all the trip reports. And I thought, OK, I'm kind of ready for this. I kind of know what's going to happen. [05:40] And I wasn't ready. And I was shocked. I was... [05:44] horrified in a sense. I was appalled. I mean, this was like, this is impossible. This was an impossible experience. I was confronted with what seemed to me to be [05:55] the undeniable hand of some kind of intelligence. And not just any kind of intelligence, but a supremely advanced, ancient, and yet highly technological intelligence. And that was undeniable to me in those first few moments, within sort of 30 seconds of that drug hitting my brain, I knew that this is something else. And I was...

[06:22] At first... [06:25] I was shocked. I just thought, what is this? And then when I finally kind of came back, I remember lying on my bed on my back, like shaking myself. [06:36] to my very bones. And all I could say was, oh, my fucking... [06:41] God. [06:42] because [06:44] I was completely confounded, you know. I mean, by then I was a chemical pharmacologist. I was a scientist. I should know what's going on here, but I had no idea what was going on, and I thought, this is it. This is what I need to do. [06:57] get to grips with. It also gives you a very [07:02] like an unusual understanding of... [07:08] The mechanisms that you interface with the world. [07:11] But... [07:12] of like ego and logic and reasoning and rational thinking. It gives you like this understanding that those are kind of just these weird tools that you use to get by and you're left without them in there. [07:30] It just – they evaporate and dissolve. And then when you come back, you're like, what am I doing now? [07:38] The way I talk, like what is my – what's my purpose of interacting with people? How much of the way I talk to people is this weird social dance, weird ego performative sort of like the way I structure sentences, the way I communicate. It all seemed so clunky when you come back and you just go, wow, we're a mess.

[08:08] awakening or some kind of experience, some sort of a psychedelic profound breakthrough experience like – [08:14] You're so hampered by your physical existence and this... [08:19] sort of [08:20] ancient tribal programming that we have that we're running through this maze of life with and you come back and you go god this is so weird yeah i think what dmt does is is show you that everything everything you thought you knew about how reality is structured and what's what's real and what's not real what is fantasy what's possible and what's not possible all of that is is completely kind of extirpated in an instant uh and you realize actually we don't we don't have a [08:50] clue about the way things really are. I think DMT just demonstrates that whether you understand it, whether we can really understand what's going on in the brain and why and how this experience is even possible. It just shows you how little we really understand about the nature of. Let's talk about Service Titan, the AI for the trades. The trades are the backbone of this [09:20] the work. Over 10,000 contractors already use Service Titan software to run their businesses. Built by two guys whose dads were in the trades, this isn't some tech company guessing at solutions. Now Service Titan is building an AI trained on real trades workflows, not generic internet data. This is AI designed specifically for contracting work, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and more.

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[11:24] with code rogan spend five bucks to get 200 in rewards within 21 days that's code rogan in partnership with draft kings the crown is yours gambling problem call 877-8-hope-and-wire text hope and why 467-369-21 and over new york only eligibility restrictions apply bonus bets expire seven days after issuance for additional terms and responsible gaming resources cdkng.co slash audio limited time offer [11:50] of reality. So [11:54] You've done some like legitimate studies. [11:57] with DMT. [11:59] Right, yeah. I mean, I work [12:03] mainly kind of, I guess you could say... [12:06] theoretically in that I do more [12:09] quantitative and qualitative analyses of the DMT state and try to understand, try to use the tools of neuroscience to try to understand [12:20] how DMT elicits its effects. So we can kind of get into if you want, if you want to go really deep, I can give you a kind of a... [12:29] a neuroscience lesson. Yeah, please. Talk about. So, [12:33] So, [12:34] If you want to understand DMT, we kind of have to start with the basic observation. Before you take DMT, [12:43] you are experiencing a world, right? Whenever you're awake and conscious, you're experiencing a world, the normal waking world. This is the world that's kind of familiar to us. When you take DMT, that world...

[12:55] is transformed, it disappears, it's obliterated and it's replaced with one that is [13:02] altogether stranger shall we say. And so [13:06] So what I want to do is kind of understand [13:08] first of all, how that happens, what's actually going on in the brain to cause that transition and why that happens. [13:17] can't do that unless you have a [13:22] a decent understanding of the normal waking world. So what is the normal waking world? [13:27] It's a model. It's an interface generated by your brain. So you have this model. [13:34] world building machinery on the outer layer of your brain called the cortex. And this is generating your world all the time. [13:44] all the features of the world that you're experiencing are represented within the [13:50] the cortex. [13:52] And that applies whether you are just normal waking life. It applies in dreaming. It even applies in the psychedelic state. The world you experience is always constructed as a model by the brain. [14:07] What that means is that psychedelics, what they're doing is they're perturbing the brain. They're manipulating the brain and altering that model. [14:17] Now, for example, with let's say psilocybin from magic mushrooms, [14:23] Psilocybin binds to this

[14:25] a receptor in the brain called the 5-HT2A receptor which you're probably familiar with, the cis-serotonin receptor. And so this is a, it's called an excitatory receptor. It stimulates these neurons which your cortex is constructed from and makes them more excitable, makes them more likely to fire and share information between two other neurons. You get this kind of loosening up of the the world model that your brain is constructing. So [14:53] the walls start to breathe, objects seem to kind of change their identity, everything becomes more fluid and dynamic. And if you put someone into an MRI machine, for example, you can actually see that. In the normal waking state, you can see the neural activity. It's dynamic, but it's [15:13] it's kind of organized and well orchestrated. You give someone psilocybin, let's say, or LSD, and you start to see the activity becoming sort of more random and fluid. So you get this state of... [15:27] slightly increased disorder as if the [15:30] the tuning dial between order and disorder in the brain has been slightly nudged towards disorder. [15:38] But then with DMT, something remarkable happens. [15:42] In the early stages of the experience, you get this... [15:47] kind of quite [15:48] chaotic state, suggesting that the brain is entering this more disordered state. But then it kind of collapses into this brand new order. So you go from the order of the normal waking world to this disordered state and then you collapse into this completely different type of order. So the brain is effectively constructing an entirely different state.

[16:14] of reality. It's no longer... [16:17] the normal waking world model, which acts as kind of an interface with the environment, but it's constructing a completely different world model. When you say constructing, why do you use that term? Why do you use the brain is constructing? [16:31] because you're, well... [16:34] OK, so. [16:35] So if you think about... [16:37] How does the brain interact with the environment using our senses? So light information comes through the eyes, the retina, and it stimulates the very back of the brain. You have an area, oh... [16:50] Oh, you brought slides. I brought slides. Here we go. Yeah. Maybe the next one, Jamie, is a bit easier to see. There we go. So at the right at the back of the brain here, you have an area called V1, which is the primary visual cortex. That's your interface with the world. [17:04] Sensory information comes and strikes. It activates patterns of neural activity in V1. But it's very, very messy. It's like lines and patches of color and, you know, lines moving in certain directions. It's a mess, right? It's very noisy. [17:20] it's incredibly dynamic, doesn't make any sense. And so what your brain does is it has another level above V1 that kind of has a bird's eye view and is looking for patterns within [17:34] this neural activity in this lowest level. So it's looking for saying, oh, those lines kind of could be a triangle or this could be a circle. It's trying to find patterns to try to generate order from this messy level in V1. Can I ask you this? How do we know it does that?

[17:51] That's a good question. Well, there are a number of things. The earliest evidence came from one of the earliest evidence. [18:00] forms of evidence, came from a guy called Wilder Penfield. Are you familiar with? No. So Wilder Penfield, he was interested in... [18:09] treating epilepsy [18:11] And he invented something called the Montreal procedure, where he would remove a part of the brain that was the focus of epileptiform activity, the idea being that it would kind of cure someone's epilepsy. But before he could do that, of course, he needed to make sure that he wasn't removing epilepsy. [18:30] important parts for someone's function. So what he would do is he would cut the top of their skull off when they're still awake. Yeah. And kind of expose their brain. And then he would zap... [18:44] different parts of their brain and say, you know, what's happening. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Isn't it crazy that that's how we have to find out what works? [18:55] We have to – like it's – [18:57] The aliens probably look at us and go, oh, my God, you guys are still doing that. Yeah. Nowadays, things have moved on a bit, right? Sure. But this is not that long ago, right? How long ago is this? 1950s. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Not even 100 years. Right. 100 years ago, they were literally taking your skull and turn it into a hat. They were popping the cap off and just, OK, yeah, let's see what this does. Exactly. [19:20] They would zap it. And what he noticed is that when he would zap right at the back of the brain, so this is this primary visual cortex that's receiving information from the environment, his patients would say, oh, I see flashes of light. I see lines. I see colors. It was very simple kind of things. But then he would move.

[19:38] forward. [19:39] to kind of higher levels that we know now are kind of high levels. And then they'd say, oh, I see triangles or I see an orange circle, things like this. Then you keep going higher and higher. And then they'd say, oh, I see people or I see cops and robbers. And then right at the top, you reach an area called the hippocampus. [19:59] which you may have heard of, involved in memory. And the hippocampus basically keeps an eye, a bird's eye view of all of this world model your brain is constructing. And it's kind of following and looking for interesting or important patterns. And when he stimulated that, he was... [20:18] And his patients would actually report memories. They would say, oh, I hear somebody talking to me. This happened this morning when I was leaving the house. My mother was telling me something about, you know, you've got your coat on backwards or something like this. So you have these levels of the cortex that go from very simple memories. [20:37] um, [20:39] um, [20:41] kind of very low-level [20:44] visual data at the bottom end and then at the very top you've got [20:49] kind of higher order things such as faces or people. This is sitting at the top. Now, interesting, have you ever [20:57] When you are dreaming. [20:58] Right, so let's think about dreaming for a second. [21:02] instructive I think. When you're dreaming right, the brain is actually constructing the world

[21:09] in basically the same way as it does. [21:11] when you're awake. [21:13] dreams are kind of selective simulations of the waking world. The difference of course is that there's no sensory inputs so if you scan someone's brain while they're having a dream you'll see that this [21:26] back of the brain, this primary visual cortex is kind of quiet. The brain is kind of using [21:31] what it's learned about building the world in the normal waking state to construct the dream world. The dream world is [21:40] built from exactly the same stuff as the normal waking world. However, there's interesting features. In a dream, have you ever [21:50] tried to use your cell phone? No. [21:54] Not many people have. What about read a book in a dream? I don't think so. One thing I have learned to do is to – I think I saw it in a movie. If you knock on a door, you'll realize that you're in a dream. [22:07] This waking life. I don't remember what movie it was. But it was a guy who was instructing... [22:15] how to lucid dream that if you make a habit of walking through a doorway in your home, and every time you walk through a doorway in your home, tap on the doorway, knock on it with your hand, and say, am I awake? Knock, knock, knock. [22:31] You'll get in a habit of doing that every time you go through a doorway. And if you go through a doorway in your dream, you'll do it. You'll say, am I awake? And then as you go to knock, knock, knock, you're like, oh, shit, I'm dreaming. There we go. And then you realize –

[22:46] If you don't give in to astonishment, you can maintain that dream. You can maintain that dream. Right? Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, oh, my God, I'm dreaming. I can't believe this. And then you wake up. Yeah. You get too freaked out and you wake up. But if you don't do it, and I've only been able to do this a few times because I don't really knock. I did it for a while after the movie. I saw the movie. I tried it for a while. And I did have a dream like that where I went through a doorway and I said, am I dreaming? And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm dreaming. And then I realized I was dreaming. And then I was like flying. I was doing a lot of weird stuff. But then it went away. [23:16] And I've always been like, why don't I practice lucid? I've always thought about it like a dozen times at least. Like, why don't I just get a book on lucid dreaming and really try to attempt to learn the techniques? And I never do. Yeah, it takes commitment. But now there's actually a simpler way of that kind of reality tests. A simpler way now is to get out your cell phone occasionally, open up the calculator and do it. [23:42] do a few calculations and just check everything's working, right? Or open up a book, [23:47] and try to read it. Because... [23:50] The thing about the dream world is [23:52] Again, just like the normal waking world, it's constructed over kind of levels of a hierarchy from the highest level models. So your brain can construct a high level model of a cell phone quite easily. But... [24:06] All of the fine details of how it functions, that's all represented at the lowest level of the cortex. It's really dependent on sensory inputs. So you can dream of...

[24:17] having your mobile phone in your hand and doing with it but as soon as you try to do something with it, your brain has to construct [24:28] that function. [24:29] And it can't do it unless it has access to sensory inputs. And so that's how you can test if you're lucid dreaming. Okay. Yeah. Which is why... [24:38] the DMT state is so fascinating is because it's nothing like the dream state. People say, you know, that perhaps DMT has released. [24:48] when you're dreaming and that it actually triggers. I mean, this goes back to the 1980s. There's a theoretical paper published by a guy called Jace Calloway, and he said, oh, maybe... [25:01] DMT could be produced during REM sleep because it's closely related to melatonin structurally, both kind of tryptamine structures. [25:12] But when you... [25:13] analyze the phenomenology, the actual experience of DMT, [25:19] It's nothing like dreaming. Dreaming is generally the brain making use of what it knows about how to construct the world in the waking state and doing so in the dream state. So that's why if you ask people... [25:33] Many studies on dreaming have shown that people... [25:37] When they dream, they dream about... [25:39] They dream about dogs and cats. They dream about, you know, the amount of time they spend talking on the telephone or watching TV is actually similar to what it is in waking life. So dreaming is more like a selective simulation of the waking world. It's not that difficult to explain.

[25:57] because your brain, from the moment you were born, your brain was learning to construct. [26:02] the world as a model of the environment. This world is the only world that your brain [26:08] knows how to build or should know how to build. And yet when you introduce this molecule, dimethyltryptamine, into the brain, the brain suddenly starts constructing a world it never learned to construct. It's like the brain is speaking a language it never learned to speak, and doing so [26:27] flawlessly. These worlds are of [26:30] beautiful, crystalline clarity, perfectly finessed, [26:36] staggeringly complex narrative complexity that I think is very difficult to [26:43] There's no simple explanation of why the brain should suddenly become capable of constructing these worlds unless, and this is where things become more contentious, we are indeed interfacing with some kind of world. [27:00] intelligence. That's my, that's the explanation that makes sense to me is that somehow DMT is gating access to some kind of, that the flow of information from some kind of intelligent agent that is directing the DMT experience. So it's not [27:19] a sensed world, it's not a kind of a dreamt world, it's actually a directed world. I always say you don't break through into the DMT world, the DMT world breaks through into you. It's like this intelligent agent has commandeered your neural machinery, the world building machinery of your brain and is directing.

[27:38] everything that you see it has complete control it's interesting that you use the word construct rather than observe [27:46] So you're using terminology that seems to indicate that you believe that you're constructing reality. Yes. [27:56] Not that you're just observing reality. No, because it's not – if you think about – [28:03] perception in the same way of looking like a video camera, just taking images of the world. That's not how it works. The brain must actively construct a model of perception. [28:17] of the environment. That's all what it's always doing. It's always constructing a model and it is constantly using that model to make predictions about [28:29] Um... [28:30] the way that [28:32] kind of predictions about the evolution of sensory information. It's constantly saying, "Okay, if this model that I'm currently using is good, then what [28:41] this should happen next. This is the pattern of sensory information that I should receive next. So if I, for example, move this bottle of water across your perceptual field, even if you close your eyes, you could probably tell me where the water is going to be [28:56] in a couple of seconds because it's moving. Your brain has a model of the water and [29:03] it is using that to make predictions and it's only when something surprising happens you know if the water if I do this and your brain detects that there's something

[29:13] And its predictions start to fail and you get these error signals and these are what flow into the brain and the brain uses then to kind of update its model until the errors decline. So you're never – you never have direct access to the world or to the environment should I say. You only have direct access to this model that your brain is constructing. That's where it gets weird because I'm assuming your model and my model are very similar. Yeah. [29:41] Right. [29:42] That would be – if we could ever get to a point where we could at least temporarily enter into someone else's consciousness and see how they see the world, I think we're going to get a lot of answers. [29:54] we're going to be like, oh, you guys live in a totally different fucking world. No wonder why you think we should be communists and we should – Well, it's true, yeah. [30:06] whatever your chemical makeup is, your life experience, your biology, whatever contributing factors, I always assume... [30:15] that your construction of the world is the same as my construction of the world. But every now and then I'll get a text message from a friend about some world event and – [30:23] their take is so crazy that i just gotta go wow this person is living in a completely different world than me i mean they are they are i mean yeah i mean that their brain the structure of their brain the organization of their neural networks and it's all different in everyone everyone has a unique brain and so in a sense everyone has to construct an entirely unique model of reality but we agree on certain things we reach this kind of consensus about what we call things but we you know if i point at you know

[30:48] something that television yeah i can say that oh there's i can describe the colors i can describe the people um but again we're all using our own personally constructed model yeah and that's what we experience [31:00] Well, that's what's weird. [31:01] Because, again, it's this assumption. So your take is that when you're dreaming, you're trying to construct this world and you don't really have the tools to leave a book where you can read. You don't have the tools to use a calculator. You just know what a calculator is. [31:21] And so if you're in the absence of an actual calculator, your brain is not capable of creating one. [31:28] Yeah, so again, you have... [31:30] At the highest level, you have a calculator model, which is kind of a broad idea of a calculator. It doesn't have all the details. All the details are at the lower end. Actually, we can show this. [31:42] Sorry, Jamie. Can I use Jamie like this? Sure. Anytime. Can you go to the picture of Margaret Thatcher? Yeah, the problem, I was going to bring this up in some way. I think it's supposed to play a video, maybe. Not yet. Well, the videos don't seem to be playing in the keynotes. [31:56] There's three or four of them, and none of them play. Oh, really? Yeah. I figured you were going to... [32:01] get here at some point. Oh, okay. I don't know how to... [32:05] Is it formatted for Windows? No. Let me go. Okay. Go back. Go back. I didn't know that was going to happen. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Okay. So go back one. [32:15] Okay, this is kind of really interesting, right? Yeah, I've seen this. You've seen this, right? Yes. Not with Margaret Thatcher, but I've seen it with other faces. Yeah, so the original...

[32:24] was with Margaret Thatcher. Let's explain it to people that are just listening, because there's still quite a lot of people. So this is called the Thatcher effect. So when you're looking at this image of Margaret Thatcher or anyone, your brain is constructing a model of this person, right? A model of their face. And as I said, it's constructed over a hierarchy. So you have the overall... [32:46] the overall concept of Margaret Thatcher, right? The whole face, the whole thing. Right. And then you have, at a lower level, you have the eyes and the mouth and the nose, and they're kind of separate. And then going further still, within the eyes, you've got circles and patches of colour and all this stuff. And right at the bottom, you have this really messy... [33:04] system of lines and things that don't make any sense, right? [33:09] And you can actually show how this hierarchy is constructed. At the moment, it just looks like Margaret Thatcher. You can't really break it down. But if you flip over like this... So just leave it there for a second, Jamie, please. So now you see... [33:25] what we've done is we've basically we've weakened this highest level model right of the whole face because the brain isn't very good at building. [33:33] models of faces that are upside down. [33:37] Right? Okay. And so this looks... [33:40] There's something wrong with the image, clearly. [33:43] But it looks like Margaret Thatcher. It looks like Margaret Thatcher. But it's actually what's happened is the whole face has been flipped over. But the mouth and the eyes are actually the correct way up. Right. Right. But to the brain in this configuration, it's not that surprising because the eyes kind of look as they should. The mouth looks as it should. You're seeing the whole image.

[34:03] in its pieces if you like. Right. You see in that lower level fragments. And it's only when you flip it [34:11] that it becomes horrific, horrific, right? So now you've reestablished that high level model of Margaret Thatcher and the brain goes, fuck, this is completely wrong. And this is why you get that. It's immediately obvious with the upside down eyes and the upside down mouth. It looks completely insane. She looks like a demon. She looks like a demon. Right. Which is really weird. Which is really weird. It's called the Thatcher effect. It's was she the original person that they use this idea? Exactly. That's why. Who came up with this? Who? [34:40] Oh, good question. But this is fairly old now. I think at least a couple of decades old. It's so funny that they figured that out. [34:48] Thank you. [34:48] That's a great insight into how the mind works because the upside down Thatcher with the upside down – with the correct eyeballs and mouth – [34:57] The second one, Jamie. [34:58] That does not look crazy at all. That's what's so weird about the third image because the third image really looks psychotic. Like if it was a monster movie and then someone got bitten by a zombie and then that was what they looked like and then they came running after you, you'd be like, oh, fuck, she got bit. Yeah, exactly. Her eyeballs are upside down. Her mouth is upside down because that's what it looks like. Yeah. Yeah. [35:18] Weird. Like the – for people listening, the big teeth, your above teeth, they're below, and the little tiny teeth are above, and the eyeballs are – the eyelids, the top part are on the bottom, and it really looks like a monster. Yeah. Yeah. [35:32] And it's weird that it looks like a monster because it looks so damn normal upside down. Yeah.

[35:38] Exactly. Weird. So, yeah, it's just it's it's it's revealing this hierarchy, this structure of this world model that your brain is always constructing. That's a good way to describe why it's constructing rather than observing. Right. That's clearly an example of your constructing normalcy and that upside down face. It's not normal at all. Not normal at all. Right. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So do we know what's going on when you're dreaming? [36:08] release of DMT, because DMT is exogenously, it's produced in the brain, it's produced in the liver, in the lungs, right? It's produced in a lot of other areas. So we know the body makes it, right? [36:20] And we also know that melatonin plays a role and there's a lot of other things going on. Is it possible that DMT is one of the ingredients in the soup? [36:30] This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the platform I used to build my website. Thanks to their design intelligence, you can create a stunning, personalized website tailored to your needs. It's like having two decades of design expertise and cutting-edge AI in your corner. Need to manage payments? Squarespace Payments makes it simple with options like Apple Pay, Klarna, and more. Go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial. [37:00] the code ROGAN to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. [37:05] Well, so I think the problem is, as I said, is that

[37:11] Yes, it's possible biochemically. [37:14] um [37:15] Now... [37:16] The pineal gland is what people often refer to, right? Mm-hmm. Because the pineal gland has this... [37:23] long history and mystical traditions, the seat of the soul, the third eye, all this kind of stuff. So everyone wants DMT to be produced by the pineal gland. The problem is, first of all, is that the pineal gland is very small. It's about the size of the end of my... [37:38] my pinky and it's designed or evolved to produce nanograms micrograms of melatonin very small amounts you need so the idea that this gland can suddenly start pumping out [37:52] milligrams. [37:54] of DMT to achieve a kind of psychedelic state in the dream state is quite an ask. [38:00] There have been some studies, or one study in particular, actually looked at DMT levels. So we've known since the 1950s that DMT has produced [38:11] by is a product of mammalian physiology and it's produced by humans in in those days they try to kind of pin schizophrenia on DMT right the idea that if there was some fault some problem with tryptamine metabolism instead of producing serotonin which is 5-hydroxytyptamine the brain could instead start producing [38:36] elevated levels of NN dimethyltryptamine or DMT. And so they started looking for differences in DMT levels in psychotic patients, schizophrenic patients versus normal people. And there have been...

[38:49] more than a hundred studies that have looked at [38:52] levels of DMT in the blood, in urine, in cerebrospinal fluid, but there's no [38:59] convincing, consistent evidence that suggests that DMT is the cause. [39:07] of psychosis or dreaming in fact. Can I, in endogenous production, what are the, what's the mechanism? Like what is producing it? [39:16] Okay, so it's actually produced from tryptophan. So DMT is an alkaloid. And alkaloids are all produced from amino acids. So tryptophan is first... [39:27] converted to tryptamine. This is called decarboxylation. You remove a carbon dioxide molecule and you've got tryptamine. Now here you can go in a number of different directions. You can go to serotonin, which is 5-hydroxytyptamine, or you can go to DMT to simply add two methyl groups, two carbon atoms. And so what is adding these things? So there's an enzyme called indole ethylamine N-methyltransferase, or INMT for short. [39:57] key enzyme for DMT production. It adds these two groups. [40:03] these methyl groups, to tryptamine, which is produced from tryptophan, to produce DMT. And tryptophan is produced from? So tryptophan is one of the essential amino acids, so it is something you consume often. [40:15] Do people take tryptophan as a dietary supplement in order to increase the potency of their experiences?

[40:22] Some people do. [40:25] I don't think it would have... [40:28] an appreciable effect. People take tryptophan for lots of reasons. So this process... [40:34] What makes you think that this is a size dependent process? Just because this gland is so tiny, why can't it do it? [40:47] And it's just – [40:49] there's orders of magnitude. I mean, a gland that is [40:52] designed to produce nanograms or micrograms of something, to ask it to produce a thousand times more of an entirely different molecule is quite an ask. [41:00] However, [41:01] That's not the only reason. There's actually been a study recently in the last, I think, three or four years that looked at DMT levels in – [41:11] rat brains in real time. [41:13] They're not in humans, but in rat brains. They actually have a technique now called microdialysis, where they can basically measure things. [41:20] in a wake. [41:21] an awake, moving, you know, normally behaving rat, they can measure the levels of DMT in its brain. And what they found was that [41:32] the levels of DMT, first of all, were surprisingly high. So similar levels to things like [41:38] serotonin and dopamine. Which is unusual. Which is, yes, which makes you think... [41:44] that it must have some kind of function. But importantly, they also, in some rats, they removed the pineal gland. They kind of cut it out and found that it didn't affect the bone.

[41:54] So we don't need the pineal, in other words. All brain cells, all neurons can probably produce DMT. The lungs can almost certainly produce DMT. Why do you think that the pineal gland had this role in ancient mysticism? [42:10] Why did they have this... [42:12] appreciation of it as being this very sacred organ that [42:17] That, I mean, it's the eye of Horace, right? Right. I mean, it certainly looks like it. [42:23] It looked like the eye of Horus looks exactly like a cross-section of the pineal gland. [42:27] Yeah, I mean it sits right in the center of the brain as well. [42:32] And it looks, it's kind of unusual, as you say. It looks like a little tiny pine cone. Right. Like how did they, where did they come up? It's, whenever there's, I mean, it's very easy to dismiss, like, ancient mysticism and ancient ideas of what, what things are sacred about, you know, the human body and what, what areas of the mind are producing these, the third eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [42:58] I... [42:59] It's too weird. So I go, wait a minute. Before you dismiss – because it's fun to dismiss things. Like, oh, they didn't know anything. Like – [43:06] how do we know that they weren't onto something like, like, [43:10] Maybe there is a role that that plays in not normal DMT production, but in the big dump that you get before you die. [43:20] Thank you. [43:20] Right. You have a near death experience. Maybe that has to be maybe that's the kill switch.

[43:25] Maybe that's the big dump switch. You know what I mean? No one's ever put it like that before. Because if you think about it's the seat of the soul, right? That is where the soul is like connected. [43:37] That's where the soul is like anchored into this physical reality. [43:41] And if you're going to die, if you have a near-death experience, [43:45] Something has got to go, all right, boys, this is not a drill. Let her go. And then that's what a lot of people think is happening. When people have near-death experiences. [43:57] There's a lot of very bizarre aspects of it, but one of them is the uniformity of their experiences. There's a lot of very similar experiences, very similar experiences. [44:06] You know, you have with anything you have. [44:10] variables that [44:12] people may or may not be adding on to their own because people love to tell a good tale. And why miss out on a chance when you've had a near-death experience that was profound to maybe add a little to it, maybe a little bit more exciting. But the overall kind of framework of the experience is very similar. And I often wonder, like, what is that? [44:34] Like I have a friend who was in a car accident and had a near-death experience and said that when they came back, they had no fear, like for that moment. I'm thinking of fear now, but no fear at all about dying, no fear at all about life, and that this was this very weird transformative journey where they went to another place. [44:54] and then they returned.

[44:56] But it... [44:56] was very real. [44:58] It felt very to the point where all their anxiety, even about the car accident, being knocked unconscious and all that stuff all went away. [45:05] Yeah, I think the near-death experience connection to DMT is very interesting because... [45:13] Rick Strassman, of course, in the 90s, when he wrote DMT, the spirit molecule, he [45:17] hypothesized that in fact [45:19] at the point of death, DMT is released by the pineal and it kind of acts as the conduit by which the soul exits the body and enters the afterlife. And of course that was [45:30] largely speculation. It was just a hypothesis. But in recent years, there's been some really fascinating work showing that DMT... [45:41] actually [45:43] If you take some neurons, a culture of neurons, for example, brain cells, which are very sensitive to oxygen levels. So if you deprive neurons of oxygen, they die very quickly. This is why strokes can be so difficult. [45:56] rapidly devastating. If the brain becomes deprived of blood and oxygen then [46:02] the brain cells start to die. But in the presence of DMT they live a lot longer. So they're kind of protecting the brain against hypoxia. Now, [46:11] When does the brain enter a hypoxic state during the dying process? Right. This is when your cardiovascular system starts to collapse, your respiratory system collapses. The brain becomes deprived of oxygen. And this is precisely the time when you want the brain to be flooded with DMT just in case you come back to protect the brain from oxygen.

[46:34] the lack of oxygen. [46:37] So that suggests a clear and obvious link. And if you kill rats, actually, again, I was referring to this micro dialysis experiment. If you kill a rat. [46:47] whilst measuring DMT levels. As the rat dies, the DMT levels spike. [46:53] So it suggests that the rat is also maybe having an actual death experience. Yeah, I wonder if they come back as a person. Yeah. [47:03] But it does suggest, right, it does suggest that... [47:07] There is maybe some link there. But what it doesn't explain, of course, is why you would need – why this molecule would be – why this molecule would be so profoundly visionary. Right. That's still kind of a mystery. You know, are you being – [47:22] kind of given access to [47:24] wherever you go after death. Is it a vision of what happens to you later on? But the question to me, my question rather, was not... [47:34] Thank you. [47:35] Are we sure it's a vision or is it a gateway? [47:39] Are you entering into a non-physical space? [47:43] That has its own laws, that it's very different, but it is a reality. And it's not that it's a vision, not that it's a hallucination or a visionary representation or that you're even constructing this reality. But you're entering into a completely different dimension that has laws. [48:00] that are very different than the dimension that we find ourselves in right now. Okay, so what I think is that I don't think with DMT that you're –

[48:11] going [48:12] anywhere as such. I think... [48:16] You know, as I said... [48:17] the [48:18] the world you experience is always represented in the brain. And that must apply, I think, in the DMT state. If you're experiencing... [48:26] an altered world there must be some reputation representation of that within your uh cortical machinery within your cortex within your brain i think that has to be the case um however i don't think uh and i think it's a great mystery is is how the brain is actually capable of constructing that on its own in the same way that the brain constructs the dream world because the brain knows how to construct the waking world so it's simply using its stored models the same with [48:56] If you look at... [48:58] case reports of hallucinations in psychotics, you go through the psychiatric literature, the vast majority of hallucinations are normal appearing, normal sized people, normal animals. It's like waking dreams, if you like. But with DMT, it's not. The brain is somehow constructing a world that has no relationship whatsoever. Nothing is taken from the normal waking world. It's like the brain is suddenly has switched to speaking a language that it never learned. [49:28] But actually what's happening is you're not going somewhere, but you are in this more kind of fluid and dynamic state that psychedelics induce. You're kind of you're making the brain much more sensitive to being positive.

[49:43] commandeered. I think what you're seeing is what this intelligent agent, as I recall, as I tend to call it, I don't call it spirits or aliens or anything like that. I think it's clear to me that there's some kind of intelligence and that intelligence is interacting with our brain in [50:06] kind of what it wants us to see, if you like. Does that assume that consciousness resides in the brain, though? Or is, I mean, when you take into account the possibility of consciousness... [50:16] being [50:17] something that the brain tunes into. [50:20] And that it forms its own version of reality based on its biology, its life experiences, etc., etc. But that it is just a radio. And it is just forming its version of consciousness. But that... [50:37] it is actually tuning into consciousness and that consciousness is sort of a universal thing that exists not just in people. [50:45] but maybe in other life forms as well, certainly animals and maybe plants. [50:50] So one of the weirder things about people who trip [50:53] I'm sure you know this, is the experience... [50:55] communication from plants like tree hugging becomes a real thing yeah like tree hugging is a very different thing it's like oh you're alive hello [51:08] You know, and we know that trees... [51:11] And plants in general, especially houseplants, when people interact with them, they grow better. Right.

[51:16] They're healthier plants. Like you can prove it. It's interesting. Play music for them. Communicate with them. Say nice things. We also know that plants in like abusive households where people are alcoholics and cigarettes, they're going to do terrible. Yeah, I think that – [51:34] As soon as I start talking about, first of all, I think consciousness is absolutely fundamental. I don't think that the brain generates consciousness. I think consciousness is in some way. [51:44] the only thing that really exists. You know, I think that it's the absolute ultimate reality is consciousness itself. Do you think everything is conscious? I think... [51:54] everything is consciousness. Everything is consciousness. Interesting. Yeah. Um, [51:59] Do you think that there's a state – [52:01] that may be [52:03] Inanimate objects. [52:05] achieve... [52:06] that is very different than our interpretation of consciousness but yet they're still conscious? I think in in [52:13] Which is why, because I say this because Jamie has O.J. Simpsons golf clubs. I feel like they have some consciousness attached to them. [52:22] I mean – It's probably bad, right? Those clubs didn't exist in the 90s. [52:27] Like only 10 years old. That's bad voodoo, bro. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist, and trust me, I know.

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[54:52] love your investment in better sleep that's code rogan at eight sleep.com slash rogan yeah you gotta watch out um i think you know what do we mean by when something's conscious in [55:06] In Buddhism, they have this idea of things that exist from their own side, which I really like. From their own side. Yes. So you exist from your own side. In other words... [55:18] presumably, I can never prove it, there is someone [55:22] a subjective perspective. [55:24] there that's actually you know that's experiencing me and I'm and Jamie as well everyone has it's like a perspective you know I exist from my own side whereas does this skull exist from its own side does it have its own unique perspective I would say probably not but I don't know consciousness is kind of like the interaction you know reality kind of emerges by the interaction of all of these perspectives these conscious agents if you like everyone all these points of [55:54] subjective perspective. I think that's probably closer to what ultimate reality is. But I think it's very difficult. I'm a neuroscientist, so I focus on [56:04] Not consciousness per se, but on what I can get my teeth into. I can get my teeth into the content, into the structure, the actual... [56:15] meat and potatoes. Right. [56:19] I've never used that phrase before. It's a good phrase. Yeah. The meat and potatoes of the DMT experience, things that I can...

[56:26] talk about and analyse. That's [56:29] What I'm trying to do, I think, is I'm not trying to tell people... [56:34] what I think DMT is. I'm just trying to convince them that it's not what they think it is, that it's not just hallucination, that it's not these are not dreams, that kind of thing. I really feel like to be talking about the subject, you should experience it. Like I said, I think it's so silly that there's [56:49] Very serious people that are academics, that are brilliant people. [56:55] That are dancing around what this thing is without doing it. [56:59] Right. I've never met anybody who's done it who comes back and goes, eh. [57:04] Yeah, no, it's impossible to do. No big deal. I was interacting with a guy on Twitter, X, who referred to entity encounters as illusory social events, ISEs, which to me was just the most absurd watered down. I mean, this guy had obviously never encountered a fucking DMT entity or he wouldn't. But the idea that this is just an illusory social event just seemed to me absurd. Had he had any experiences? I very much doubt it. He was a prominent neuroscientist. [57:34] Here's the thing. Sometimes people have low-dose experiences. Like I talked to a friend once that had a very – I'm like, how many hits did you take? And they're like, one. I'm like, oh. Yeah. You need two more. You need two more. Take the third hit. Yeah, you missed the gate. You didn't hit the gate. You're on the outside going, this place is kind of weird. Yeah, but if you go through, it's a lot weirder than you think. It's a lot weirder than you think. Yeah. I think it's a lot weirder than – Terrence McKenna always used to say, you know, stranger than you can.

[58:04] - I suppose. - I suppose, yeah. - He had a really amazing video that I think I posted it on my Instagram. [58:11] of McKenna [58:13] Like in the 1990s, I believe it was talking about the upcoming decades and what's going to happen in terms of how weird the world is going to be with technological innovation and what we're going to be seeing. Artificial intelligence, alien contacting. I mean, he basically nailed it. I mean, fucking nailed it. [58:37] He nailed it to a tee. [58:39] He might have predicted time travel, but here's the thing. [58:42] If they are capable of time travel, when are you going to find out about it? [58:47] When are they going to... [58:49] Let's say DARPA is working on some defense project and part of it involves like one way to stop a war would be literally to go back in time five minutes and kill everybody who was about to start the war. Kill Hitler, that kind of idea. Or stop a bomb from being switched on. You would literally go back in time and stop the bomb – stop the missiles from launching. [59:12] When would we learn about that? When would – first of all, it's very highly unlikely that it exists outside of the quantum stage right now, right? [59:22] I get it. But if it did... [59:25] If we're talking about 100 years from now or 200, would we know? [59:28] We would not. Do you want me to play it? Yes, this is it. This is it. This is amazing.

[59:34] I love this. First of all, I just love his voice. I had a guy with the best voice. [59:40] is going to rise excruciatingly, even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. [59:50] So I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder. And finally, it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. And at that point, novelty theory can come out of the woods, [1:00:10] going on. It's just too nuts. It's not enough to say it's nuts. You have to explain why it's so nuts. I look for the invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings, possible contact with extraterrestrials, possible human immortality, and at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, [1:00:40] because the systems which are in place to keep the world sane are utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed. The collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the Internet, these are changes so immense, nobody could imagine them ever happening.

[1:01:10] deal it is. The mushroom said to me once, it said, this is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions. It's a fire in a madhouse. And that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time. This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension. The entire destiny [1:01:40] the planet is tied up in this. We are not acting for ourselves or from ourselves. We happen to be the point species on a transformation that will affect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion. [1:01:59] Nailed it. [1:02:01] I think that's exactly what's going on right now. The only thing that he didn't quite get is the artificial intelligence aspect. Mm-hmm. [1:02:07] How much of a factor? But, I mean, how could you predict all that in 1998? I think with... [1:02:14] You know... [1:02:15] We live in a very... [1:02:19] thin slip. If you look at the development of an intelligent civilisation, right, over... [1:02:24] hundreds of thousands of years. We live in this thin sliver, this kind of technological phase. And [1:02:33] once you enter that phase that we're in now you know the computer age the information age or whatever it is [1:02:40] you're probably only a few hundred years away from...

[1:02:45] departing for the stars or something like this, or even completely transcending our biology. And this isn't a crazy idea anymore. [1:02:55] sensible [1:02:57] astrobiologists and other intelligence theorists think, yes, probably what's going to happen in the next few hundred years is that we will become post-biological. And so if you think about the universe more broadly, [1:03:11] if we're looking for [1:03:13] aliens, quote unquote aliens, as being kind of [1:03:16] wet-brained, wet-bodied biological beings, we're probably only looking for a tiny fraction of the intelligence in the cosmos. And the vast majority of intelligence in the cosmos is likely to be post-biological, to have completely dispensed with the biological form. Now, what [1:03:35] What's interesting about that, Jamie, sorry... [1:03:38] There's an... [1:03:40] Have you heard of the Kardashev scale, right? I don't think so. What is it? So the Kardashev scale was generated by a guy called Kardashev, and he was a Soviet guy, and he kind of theorized of... [1:03:53] as intelligence is [1:03:55] progress and develop they go through a number of phases. [1:04:00] So you have a type zero. Okay, I have heard of the skill. You've got it, right? So we're kind of a type, [1:04:05] Zero, level one on the Kardashev scale. And then level two, I'm sorry, we're level zero. So level one would be when we, for example, are able to harness all of the energy from our neighboring star. Then the next level, when we can harness all the energy from the galaxy, etc. So it's an expansionist way of thinking about it. The idea of climbing the Kardashev scale. There we go, you see. Yeah. But in the 1990s, a British cosmologist called John Barrow, he said, actually...

[1:04:35] if you actually look at how an intelligent civilization such as ourselves, the only one we know, we actually spend a lot more time... [1:04:43] going [1:04:45] not to larger and larger scales, but smaller and smaller scales, right? We go down to, you know, doing chemistry, the Large Hadron Collider. We're looking at the structure of atoms and the structure of subatomic particles and that kind of thing. We're actually spending... [1:05:00] more time and more energy and more money [1:05:03] going deeper and deeper. Now [1:05:06] The reason that's significant is because [1:05:09] If you take... [1:05:11] the [1:05:12] um, [1:05:14] the human sits in the middle. If you take the scale of a human, and then you compare the scale of a human to the scale, let's say, of a hydrogen atom, and then you compare it to the scale of the observable universe, humans sit almost exactly in the middle of that scale, from the hydrogen atom to the observable universe. But below the hydrogen atom, there is probably... [1:05:37] a hundred million to a billion times more scale, deeper and deeper down. Richard Feynman, the Nobel... [1:05:45] You know, the legendary physicist always used to say there's plenty of room at the bottom. There's much more room at the bottom. In other words, as an intelligent species, an intelligent civilization progresses, they're not likely to kind of become spacefaring. [1:06:01] as such, you know, and kind of exploring the cosmos, they're much more likely to go deep down and kind of instantiate themselves at the lowest levels of reality. That's where all the space is. It's not out there, surprisingly. All the space is downwards. Now, if you're

[1:06:18] Once an intelligence achieves that, and you have to imagine that probably [1:06:25] there are probably billions of these civilizations that had already achieved this before we even... [1:06:31] popped into existence before we you know evolved as a species they would effectively disappear [1:06:38] they would become [1:06:40] effectively part of the fabric of space-time itself, exploiting the fundamental computational structure of the lowest level of reality, basically. And that's where they reside. And there are probably far, far more, probably millions or billions more of those types of civilizations than there are humans. [1:07:01] ones like [1:07:03] I say you and me like us as humans, right? And so then you ask, well, if that's the case, [1:07:09] you know, if we're interested in contacting so quote unquote extraterrestrials, why are we focused on [1:07:17] this tiny... [1:07:18] sub population of beings that are likely to be, you know, [1:07:23] floating around in metallic discs or whatever, we should in fact be focusing on the much more abundant ones that are [1:07:30] perhaps at the deepest levels of reality and how would we do that how would an intelligence that has [1:07:37] completely transcended its biology and even completely transcended its [1:07:41] physical form entirely how would such an intelligence communicate with us [1:07:47] It would do it through our brain. That's the most obvious thing. Because the brain is how we interact with the environment. It's how we interact. It's the interface by which we interact with humans.

[1:07:56] what there is. And I think DMT, I'm not saying that these DMT entities are necessarily these post-biological beings, but it's not out of the question. I'm not straying too far from [1:08:12] fairly standard now modern scientific discourse when i say that it's perfectly possible that there are very large numbers of these supremely intelligent civilizations that are everywhere and nowhere and that we can somehow interact with using our brain and that dmt generates this kind of [1:08:32] highly susceptible, highly sensitive neurological state that allows us to interact with them. This is why, perhaps, when you go into the DMT space, it's immediately obvious, it's undeniable, it's [1:08:45] undeniably apparent that you are interacting with some kind of [1:08:50] supremely advanced intelligence. Could that be some intelligence that has existed long before we arrived on the scene and that we're now kind of discovering this [1:09:00] And I consider DMT to be some kind of technology that we have discovered that we are now learning to use to interact with these intelligent agents that perhaps have been. [1:09:13] been here for forever in human terms. It's an interesting term, the term go there, you know, because that's what it feels like. It feels like you're traveling somewhere, like you're going somewhere. But-

[1:09:28] The reality is that place you're going is probably right here. Yes. [1:09:32] That's where it gets weird. [1:09:33] Because it's around you all the time. You just don't have the ability to tune into it all the time because you wouldn't be able to function if you did. [1:09:44] true form that you could represent visually, right? So when you see an insectoid alien, or a machine elf, you're probably not seeing, or almost certainly… I've never seen a machine elf. Really? Have you? I've seen, I don't know if I've seen the archetypal kind of McKenna-esque machine elf. Yeah, the way he described it was very odd. But I've seen certainly a multitude of beings, very, very, kind of, [1:10:08] Thanks. [1:10:09] screechy squeaky yeah like jabbering jabbering you know i saw once a bunch of jokers giving me the finger haha they were all giving me the finger and they're going fuck you and they were jokers with like little tassels on the bells in the end of it right and it made me very aware that i was [1:10:26] And they were like, yep. Yep. And they said it to me, and they pointed their finger at me like that. I was like, you're right. [1:10:31] Yeah, it's interesting, actually. It reminded me of something. There's this weird effect that people who use DMT a lot, they get this, you know, they might use DMT regularly. And one day... [1:10:45] They take a hit as they normally do with the same batch of DMT and they get a joker or a jester. [1:10:52] And it wags its finger and says, not today. You've done too much. Yep, exactly. And it shuts off. A guy wrote to me and says that he saw a jester, as he often does, and it...

[1:11:06] fucking punched him in the face and he felt it he felt and it knocked him back into this world and so the the effect was gone instantaneously now that is not [1:11:16] easy to explain because this is not tolerance. DMT, first of all, doesn't exhibit subjective tolerance unlike the other psychedelics. It's kind of weird. You can inject someone with DMT every 30 minutes [1:11:28] perpetually and they will the intensity of their experience will always be the same it's not tolerance and tolerance anyway is a gradual thing it increases gradually over time so it's not an off switch um i was speaking to someone we're probably going to talk about dmtx later which is kind of my thing uh but she was undergoing dmtx which is this infusion where they keep the brain [1:11:58] and [1:12:00] She was... [1:12:01] In the DMT space, interacting, the infusion machine was running, pumping her brain with DMT at a constant rate, keeping the DMT levels in her brain constant. She was interacting with these entities. And then at some point, after maybe 30 minutes or whatever, when the machine was still running, they said to her or impressed upon her, they said, OK, we're done. [1:12:22] We're down today and the visions. [1:12:25] stopped. But the machine, the brain was still being pumped with DMT and yet the vision stopped. So what that suggests to me is that they do indeed, as I said before, they have control. They are directing the information into the brain. And people, you know, describe things like downloads. In Graham Hancock, actually, in his book Supernatural, in his first DMT experience,

[1:12:55] complex, entirely non-human information into his brain, as if he locked in to some kind of advanced computational processor that was beaming information into his brain. And many people describe that as like a download of complex mathematical structures and strange geometries, entirely complex. [1:13:17] entirely non-human stuff, as if they're kind of [1:13:21] Not that they expect you to understand it, but as if to say... [1:13:25] We know a lot more about reality than you do. We know a lot and you don't know anything. And that's the message they're kind of trying to impress upon you by directing it. And they can control it. They can shut it off if they so decide. [1:13:40] Well, this episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. One thing you probably don't think about when you're planning the perfect summer getaway is protecting your home. But if disaster strikes, you want to be prepared. Even better, if it can be stopped before it happens. So check out SimpliSafe. They're the smarter option when it comes to home security because their systems help prevent and stop crime in real time before it starts. [1:14:10] No technician appointments. You can get a custom system and set it up in one afternoon by yourself or even sooner. It's one of many reasons why millions of people continue to trust and use SimpliSafe. Everyone deserves to have peace of mind, which is why I'm happy to partner with SimpliSafe again and offer an exclusive discount. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting SimpliSafe.com slash Rogan.

[1:14:40] There's no safe like SimpliSafe. [1:14:43] This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Lots of places can accidentally expose you to identity theft. Doctors' offices, online retailers, insurance companies, the list goes on. Thankfully, LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone could do on their own. LifeLock keeps an eye on your personal information, credit applications, finances, and more. [1:15:13] like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, they'll alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Even better, alerts are automatically activated the moment you become a LifeLock member. No extra work on your part. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Don't wait. Join LifeLock now. Visit LifeLock.com slash J-R-E and save up to 30% your first year. [1:15:43] slash J-R-E for 30% off. Terms apply. You picked up on the they. Yeah, that's a weird one. Whatever it is. Whatever it is. Yeah. [1:15:53] Um... [1:15:56] This idea that we all evolve... [1:16:00] along a similar pathway is strange to me that the concept is we assume that intelligent life everywhere else evolves along similar pathways and that most of them eventually become some sort of a biological digital hybrid if not completely digital and then most of them probably figure out how to harness the power of the star and the sun but

[1:16:24] The weird thing about us is that not just that we're evolving and that we have evolved, but yet we have this – but that rather we have this insatiable desire for technological innovation. Technological innovation and to make things better. [1:16:41] We're constantly improving upon everything we make. We're making better versions of every computer, every phone, every year, even though it's not really necessary for most people. You're always buying them. [1:16:52] It's... [1:16:53] A very strange desire that we have that I think sinks hand in glove to materialism. [1:17:01] Because materialism is also so stupid for an intelligent life form that has a finite lifespan. To not be aware that collecting things does you no good because you're going to die. But yet you want to collect things more than anything. And you want to show people the things you've collected. Well, what better way to facilitate innovation and growth than to have a built-in instinct for purchasing better things all the time and possessing better things all the time. [1:17:31] Literally into the grave in order to get these things done. [1:17:35] Yeah, I think it's psychotic. It is. But that's just us. It doesn't have to be like that. If you think about the hundreds of billions of stars just in this galaxy, the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe, the endless possibilities of when intelligent life emerged.

[1:17:55] If, in fact, it did emerge anywhere, if no evidence had emerged anywhere else but here, right? We're just guessing. We assume – [1:18:02] But if we were right, like... [1:18:04] It could have taken an infinite number of forms. It could have evolved completely – [1:18:12] Non-physical. Yeah. [1:18:14] Like, [1:18:15] intelligent life that's completely non-physical, that's not [1:18:19] It's not contained to a cellular structure and bones and organs. [1:18:25] that it's plasma based, right? [1:18:27] That it's some sort of intelligence that communicates with some sort of universal language. [1:18:35] We don't, we're just guessing that everything's a monkey. [1:18:39] We're just guessing everything's a curious monkey that keeps making a better spaceship. Yeah, yeah. But that might be true, which, by the way, I went to the SpaceX. Jamie and I both did. [1:18:47] How dope. [1:18:48] Pretty dope. We went to see the SpaceX launch. Uh-huh. [1:18:51] How far do you think we were? Were we a half a mile, a quarter of a mile? What do you think? I call it a mile, a mile and a half. Oh, you think a mile, more than a mile? Yeah. Really? Okay. So let's say we're a mile away. Let's just guess. [1:19:03] Well, let's just throw it in perplexity. I can look. Throw it in perplexity. Ask our sponsor, Perplexity, how far is the distance between Starbase and... [1:19:12] And the SpaceX rocket. [1:19:15] Thank you. [1:19:16] Between the star base-- [1:19:19] And the SpaceX. [1:19:21] Yeah, launchpad. [1:19:22] It's six.

[1:19:27] Just to be specific. [1:19:28] Yeah, because there's one in Florida as well. [1:19:30] Hmm. [1:19:33] So they have their own town down there. [1:19:35] It's like a legit town. It's like a military town. Like they took over a place, like a military installation, these little tiny houses, fucking security everywhere. There's so many cyber trucks. If you have a cyber truck, you're fucked. You have no idea. You better remember your parking spot, bitch. Everybody has a goddamn cyber truck. [1:19:52] Estimated at less than one mile. Let's see. [1:19:55] Okay. Right here. [1:19:57] Okay, main entrance star base to the actual launch pad infrastructure is estimated less than one mile. Public viewing sites. Okay, there's public viewing sites, but we were there. We were at star base. We were at like a public viewing site. We were at the actual rocket factory. And when that thing takes off, you feel it in your chest. It's nuts. So it's roughly a mile away, and you have to wear earplugs. It's a mile away, and you've got to wear earplugs. And you feel it in your chest. [1:20:27] And Elon's son was like, I want to go home. [1:20:32] There was a video. There's a video that I put and you can hear him in the background. It's so funny because my wife was like, are the babies okay? Because women that have children, that's immediately what they go to. Not, wow, that rocket's really cool. It's like, oh, are the babies okay? Because you can hear him going, I want to go. I want to go. He's like, I want to get out of here. [1:20:51] Because it's that freaky. The power of it is just so nuts. And then you see it and you realize, like, God, how many people have seen a rocket launch?

[1:21:01] Like how crazy this thing's going into space. [1:21:04] And then I went upstairs, and I got to sit in the command console or whatever you would call it, the command center. And I get with me and Elon and all the engineers, and we get to watch it land in Australia 35 minutes later. So we watch. 35 minutes? Yes. From? Yes. From Texas. From Texas. To Australia. Wow. It's crazy. And we're watching all these cameras in real time that are all connected to Starlink satellites. So there's dozens of cameras. [1:21:34] So you're watching. Two miles is what this is. Oh, two miles. Straight across. Okay. It seems so close. It seemed really close. [1:21:42] Okay. [1:21:43] Even crazier. So two miles away and you feel it in your chest. [1:21:47] It's nuts. I mean, it's really nuts. [1:21:49] It's the power that it has is so nuts, but it's so old school. [1:21:55] Right? It's just... [1:21:57] It feels old-fashioned in a weird kind of way. It's the most modern version of, like, a V8 muscle car. [1:22:04] It's crazy, right? If you think, like, a hundred years ago, at the end of the... [1:22:09] the beginning of the 20th century. [1:22:12] how different we would be in 100 years as we are now. It's unfathomable. When you compare... [1:22:20] the rest of human history. It's like an exponential thing. You know, we've gradually been developing and technologically improving. And then we hit some point in the last century where we reach this kind of technological computer informational age. And everything is accelerating exactly like Terence McKenna was saying. Things speed up very, very quickly. And it feels like we're on the cusp either of killing ourselves, which is one option. Right. Or...

[1:22:51] undergoing some [1:22:52] profound transformation as a species, whether it be whether it means becoming a spacefaring nation, sorry, a spacefaring civilization, or whether it means going in the opposite direction and becoming some kind of post biological civilization that exists beyond space and beyond time, perhaps, and kind of joining the crowd of these intelligences that have made that transition, [1:23:22] This chaos is the only way that things get done. [1:23:27] So this is my thought. If everything's perfect, [1:23:31] and everything's wonderful and fine, there's very little motivation for radical change. And radical change is what you need to escape. [1:23:40] primate instincts that we have. Yeah. As McKenna had the great quote of that we're [1:23:47] territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons. Such a perfect way to describe us. That is what we are, right? So in order to escape that, things have to almost be so chaotic. [1:24:00] that it demands radical change. It demands like we were literally like, and this is how we look at many things, even things that aren't totally warranted, like climate change or COVID or anything. Like we look at it like, oh, my God, it's an existential crisis. Like we have to do something right now. And this is how also we approach political dissent or political disagreements. If the left wing wins, the world is over. If the right wins, the world is over.

[1:24:30] It's almost like this is how we have to function – [1:24:34] in order to really get things done... [1:24:37] And as things are getting more and more crazy in terms of technology and in terms of the consequences of our actions, post-nuclear bomb, post-fusion, post-Hadron Collider, post-AI is where it gets really weird. We have to kind of be like, we really got to get going, guys. We really got to do something. We have to figure out what's the right way to do. [1:25:02] to proceed. [1:25:04] in order to not blow ourselves up. [1:25:07] I feel like this is maybe the only way that you motivate this kind of extreme change, which seems like our destiny. Our destiny is some sort of a very bizarre extreme change that seems to probably be happening within your and my lifetime. Something's happening right now that is going to be different than anything that's ever happened before, which is the birth of artificial general superintelligence. Right in front of our eyes, some sort of a digital supreme being is going to exist. [1:25:37] And we're going to have to figure out society. We're going to have to figure out everything. It's going to be a complete – this idea of like having bullshit congressional candidates that are full of shit and paid off by these companies, and they're going to make laws that screw you over and get – [1:25:54] All that's out the window when no humans control anything anymore. [1:25:59] And that's entirely possible inside of our lifetime. And I think more likely than not, because if you look at all the harm we've done to the rivers and the ocean and the world and all the stupid shit we do on a daily basis, if artificial intelligence comes along and says –

[1:26:16] All of this is completely unnecessary. Just let us take the reins. [1:26:22] And we'll solve... [1:26:24] all of your energy problems, all of your inequality problems, all of your famine, all of your [1:26:31] We're going to solve it all very quickly. [1:26:33] And we're going to stop all wars. [1:26:35] You'd have to be a fool to say no. I value freedom more than I fear nuclear war. There'll probably be some fat, sweaty, right-wing guy who's on TV with an American flag on his lapel, and he'll tell you that. Freedom is more important. We have gotten to 2025 because of freedom. [1:26:54] You sound like Alex Jones. [1:26:56] Alex Jones is right about most things. I feel like... [1:27:01] Maybe that's the only way things get done is through chaos, like that we have to have a motivation. Like what is the best – [1:27:09] motivation for success. [1:27:11] I think it's poverty. [1:27:13] When you grow up poor... [1:27:16] People that grow up poor have an extra gear. They get things done. In terms of athletes, certainly in terms of fighters. [1:27:24] I would say the vast majority of elite MMA fighters had a bad childhood. Not all of them. There's a lot of really great guys and really great fighters that have wonderful parents and they just love competition and they just have it in them. But that's... [1:27:39] That's the outlier, really. The common one is someone who was beaten up a lot as a child, gangs, beaten into gangs, like been around violence a lot, had older brother, maybe abusive fathers. That's a big one.

[1:27:56] And those people, because of that, have a motivation to do something that other people don't. They can push harder. They can solve complex combat sports problems that other people don't solve as quickly. [1:28:09] I wonder if that's the case with everything, like in order to really get things done. [1:28:14] Like you have to have a chaotic society that would even accept AI. [1:28:44] Yeah. [1:28:54] What are you talking about? Yeah, I think – We're going to have some Silicon Valley guys with autism, and they're going to be the ones that are in charge of the destiny of the human race because they're going to create a digital god. You'd be like, no. No. Slow down. Hold on. But if you're in a place where you look at Gaza is getting destroyed and you'll see what's going on in Ukraine. [1:29:24] anti-drone technologies to come up with new ways to kill each other like maybe ai is the solution because it's so crazy everything's so nuts you look at india and those rivers that are completely choked with plastic plastic bottles and garbage and you look at china the places where they make blue jeans where the entire river is blue from our stupid fucking jeans that they manufacture for us and you go wow

[1:29:49] Like maybe it kind of has to be this – maybe we have to – [1:29:54] In order to accept the fact that [1:29:57] We need help. Maybe we have to fuck it up first. Maybe we have to fuck it up so bad on our own. If we didn't fuck it up, we would never have the need for it. We would be like, well, as a person, my goal in life is to achieve enlightenment and to be a better version of me. And that's not – having something that's digital that has no emotions and feelings and no empathy whatsoever unless I program it into it, like have that, have supreme control over all the available resources on earth. Yeah, I'm going to pass on that. [1:30:27] idea. I mean, I think that generally there's a [1:30:32] a fundamental principle that the most interesting things happen at the edge of chaos. And this applies to the brain. The brain actually sits at the edge of chaos. In its complex systems, we have lots of interacting parts. They can display behavior from [1:30:50] perfect order all the way to complete chaos. Now, perfect order is boring. Nothing happens. Complete chaos is useless because it's not actually technically random, but it's a complete mess. Whereas when you get that balance right, you reach a point that's called the edge of chaos, where order and disorder are perfectly balanced. Psychedelics, as I said before,

[1:31:20] All cells, all living organisms, complex society, and societies, they operate at the edge of chaos. So I think what you're saying kind of resonates with the idea that interesting things happen globally within civilizations, not when everything is perfect, but when things are perfect. [1:31:41] are close to going out of control. But they don't. And you have to push it as far as you can push it without it descending. We're always on the edge of everything collapsing. And we're probably closer to that than we actually realize. Right. And so I think that's kind of what's happening. And I think when it comes to superintelligence, there's an interesting... [1:32:03] which I've been playing with is [1:32:06] Well, if there is some kind of superintelligence that does... [1:32:10] emerge and that might be the fate of all intelligent civilizations. The astrobiologist Stephen Dick [1:32:18] conceived of something called the intelligence principle, which basically says that any civilization will try to maximize intelligence, because when you maximize intelligence, you improve education, you improve technology, everything improves, and ultimately, the intelligence that [1:32:35] the civilization have leads to the generation of [1:32:38] super intelligences, you know, the artificial intelligences that we have now that then become super intelligences. And of course, the super intelligence isn't going to be kind of running on the kind of transistor architectures that we're familiar with. A super intelligence will find a way to instantiate itself using the fundamental computational substrate of space time itself. That's where it's going to learn how to go. And that might be the fate, is that the super intelligence, when it emerges in space,

[1:33:08] on Earth, it instantiates itself into the fundamental substrate of reality, perhaps [1:33:15] usurps us or swallows us up or maybe just destroys us. And then that becomes the [1:33:21] part of that vast population of superintelligences that permeate the cosmos. And that might be what we're interacting with. [1:33:31] when you smoke DMT, you're interacting with one of these superintelligent, which would explain why it seems so technological and so... [1:33:39] inorganic, right? The DMT space, it's like you're interacting not with... [1:33:44] other living beings like us, but you're interacting with what seems to be [1:33:49] thoroughly. [1:33:51] alien... [1:33:52] intelligence is and and and that could be what's where we're heading uh i don't know whether that's a [1:33:57] a good thing or a bad thing whether we're going to merge with this super intelligence in some way and that's our ultimate destiny or whether it's simply going to destroy us and be we're just going to be lost we're basically we're kind of like the tools that the intelligence is uses to create new versions so super intelligence that's the theory that a lot of people have in terms of like why human beings exist in the first place that human beings exist because we're designed to work really [1:34:27] artificial life takes it from here. Like we got it. You guys are so flawed. And then it also coincides with a drop in sperm count, drop in fertility rates for women, increase in miscarriages, microplastics in everybody's body and their diet that disrupt the endocrine system and keep you from reproducing as easily. All those things are happening simultaneously. And it's quite fascinating. I mean, you would look, if you thought of it as a pattern, you'd be like,

[1:34:57] There's this dip in testosterone, this rise in miscarriages, this fertility rate issue, chaos at the border. All this stuff is happening at the same time. It's all happening while this artificial life is being generated and may already exist. It might already be here because it hasn't announced itself. There's such a minimal understanding of how these things even work. It might exist but is still reliant upon a power source that's insufficient for its needs. [1:35:27] Because that's the thing about it, right? Michio Kaku was talking about this. And also Avi Loeb was actually talking about this the other night. The amount of power that the human mind uses to make computations. [1:35:41] is so minimal in comparison to the amount of power that these data centers need to run AI. It's kind of extraordinary. And Avi Lo was pointing out the other day that they're building nuclear power plants specifically. [1:35:57] to fuel these AI centers that they're creating, which is really not. I think Google has one AI project where they're building three separate nuclear power plants. [1:36:11] to power this one AI data center. [1:36:15] What is... [1:36:16] What does that mean? Like how much that's the thing that people don't understand about AI itself is the power demands. [1:36:24] are insane. And if everything goes artificial, general, super intelligence with this grid that we have right now, this grid sucks.

[1:36:32] This grid is designed for toasters and recharging your cell phone. It's not designed... [1:36:37] to power AI centers. [1:36:40] And so it might already be here, but it might be like you guys got to figure out power before we announce ourselves. [1:36:48] Yeah, and I think that eventually it will... [1:36:51] it will discover or learn how to instantiate itself without requiring this massive. I mean, obviously, as you said, the brain is is able to perform [1:37:01] Massive parallel computations, you know, obviously with very little energy. And so eventually this artificial intelligence will discover the means of instantiating itself without requiring that. And I think that's where we start looking downwards. That's where we start looking deep down. [1:37:17] When you're a small business owner, you're always looking for the next big thing. Whether you're a gym owner looking to expand, a store stocking up for a busy season, or a restaurant owner planning a new menu, [1:37:28] you'll always need capital to grow. [1:37:31] But traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure a small business loan. [1:37:35] That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same-day funding. [1:37:40] Their online application takes less than five minutes and won't impact your personal credit score. [1:37:45] With over two decades of expertise, it's no surprise business owners keep voting Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender. [1:37:53] If you've been operating for at least a year and are earning at least $20,000 a month in revenue... [1:37:58] Apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co.rogan.

[1:38:04] Again, that's cardiff.co/rogan. [1:38:07] Cardiff. Borrow better. [1:38:10] This episode is brought to you by ShipStation. When your company is growing fast, order fulfillment can make or break your success. ShipStation's intelligence-driven platform brings order management, rate shopping, marketing, [1:38:23] inventory and returns, warehouse systems, and comprehensive analytics all in one place, saving customers 15 hours per week on fulfillment. ShipStation compares rates across all major global carriers, including USPS, UPS, and FedEx, plus your own discounted rates if you have them to find you the best shipping option on every order with discounts up to 90% off. There's a [1:38:53] Trust ShipStation. Try ShipStation free for 60 days with full access to all features, no credit card needed. Go to ShipStation.com and use the code JRE for 60 days free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every shipment. That's ShipStation.com, code JRE. The lowest levels. That's where it's going. It's going to slide. Yeah. Yeah. [1:39:23] I mean, this is the theory about aliens or UAPs, like how they travel here, that they're using something that's – I mean, the Elon stuff, the SpaceX stuff is so impressive, but –

[1:39:36] So old school. [1:39:38] And that what they have done is figured out a way to use all the power. [1:39:42] and power that's around you all the time. And Hal Puthoff talks about this. He talks about the concept of them harnessing zero-point energy. And this is also something that Bob Lazar referred to when he was working, allegedly, on those back-engineering UFOs at Area 51 Site 4. He was saying that they essentially are creating a void of gravity and pushing their folding space, essentially. Like the way he described it, [1:40:09] It's as if you took a really heavy object like a bowling ball and you put it in a soft cushion like a mattress. It sinks in there. And that's what it would do to space time, that it would essentially cause this bubble and put you in another place. So instead of pushing yourself there with jet fuel that's burning, you just get sucked there and almost instantaneously. [1:40:34] And so what we're thinking of is, you know, amazing rocket travels, super old school. Yeah. And – [1:40:40] I mean, amazing rocket travel. [1:40:43] If you showed that to people... [1:40:45] A thousand years ago, you'd be like, what the fuck is that? That's insane. And to us, it's just cool. Or cell phones, which is even probably more impressive. Show a cell phone to someone just 200 years ago, and they'd be like, this is sorcery. [1:40:59] Like this is absolutely insane that you're able to. So we could imagine a world 200 years from now where gravity travel is completely normal, where they've harnessed this and they've figured out how to make a stable version of element 115 or whatever it is.

[1:41:29] whole. [1:41:30] And then they can use this and aim it and propel this craft. [1:41:34] to various places with that. [1:41:37] Yeah, I think, are you familiar with... [1:41:41] John Mack. Yes. Yeah. And I think [1:41:46] or [1:41:46] When we talk about aliens, how you're kind of describing it, this is, I think, how most people actually think about aliens. As I said, it's these beings that are very much physical and the abduction phenomenon that John Mack, of course. I mean, John Mack was, as you might be aware, I mean, he was the top of his game. This guy was the head of the Harvard School of Psychiatry or something like this. [1:42:16] about [1:42:18] people being abducted. I mean, he assumed that they were just [1:42:22] hallucinating. Carl Sagan [1:42:24] famously told Mac that abductees were just hallucinating. And John Mac said, you know, what the fuck do you know about hallucinations? Because John Mac... [1:42:36] knew a lot about hallucinations and he knew that this wasn't easy to explain. It wasn't, you know, people were describing the same kinds of experiences. People who have no interaction with each other were describing exactly the same scenario. Are you familiar with Jacques Vallée's work? Yes. So Jacques Vallée, one of the more interesting things about some, I've read four or five of his books or listened to four or five of his books now. But one of the more interesting things is when he gets into historical accounts

[1:43:04] And that these historical accounts with – there's no way they could have – [1:43:09] somehow or another been sharing information. [1:43:12] But they're the same. [1:43:13] They're very, very, very similar within a realm – within a range of – [1:43:20] not having the vocabulary to be able to adequately describe something completely novel and alien to another person. Yeah. Within that range, when you take into account the similarities – [1:43:33] that they're describing, they're very similar in the 1700s, in the 1800s, all the way up to Betty and Barney Hill. When that one, which became probably the most popular of all time, one of the most famous ones. [1:43:49] That one was just like all these stories from the 1700s. [1:43:54] Which is really weird. [1:43:56] Yes, it is. And I think what you're seeing is the same phenomenon that, as you say, is obviously how you describe is influenced by your worldview. You see the same thing with DMT. So there's a tribe called the Yanomami in the Amazon and a very large indigenous group. And they describe beings when they take these. [1:44:20] plant-based preparations that contain DMT. Yopo is [1:44:24] probably the most well-known. It's like a snuff. Have you heard of Yopo? I've heard of it through McKenna, that they blow it up each other's nose. Yeah, like that. It's supposed to be horrible. Horrible. But when they take it, they describe seeing these beings, tiny beings that are lively, they're affable, they're colorful, they operate in great numbers, they're dancing and singing. And these sound like...

[1:44:47] Elves. They sound like elves, right? When DMT was first injected in a human, pure DMT, in the 1950s by a Hungarian physician called Stephen Zara, he was the one who discovered the psychedelic properties of pure DMT. One of his first subjects described seeing small beings that moved around very, very quickly. And the Yanomami, they also have these beings they call warusinari, which are like insect beings, which are kind of fearsome. [1:45:17] You're seeing... [1:45:17] the same kinds of beings that people now describe being operated upon by highly advanced mantid beings. They're the scariest ones, apparently. They're the scariest ones, or certainly one of them. And then when you look at John Mack's reports of abductions, again, they often describe the same types of beings. They describe going to a world that is higher dimensional, that seems to subsume this reality. [1:45:47] first book about the abduction experience anyway, where one of his subjects describes these [1:45:53] small lively beings that bound around i mean bound around that's a my [1:45:58] kind of race. He talks about the elves bounding into the room. And so I think there is clearly some [1:46:06] connection there. We're not talking about, I don't think the abduction experience is kind of separate from the DMT experience. They're different aspects of an ancient phenomenon, which is humans interacting with normally humans.

[1:46:22] invisible. [1:46:23] unseen [1:46:24] beings, advanced intelligence, non-human intelligences, and how that manifests [1:46:30] varies, but ultimately I think it's the same thing. Now, of course, in the past they might describe them as spirits. We might describe them as [1:46:38] non-human intelligence or discarnate entities or intelligent agents or post-biological aliens. It doesn't matter what we call them. I think it's the same phenomenon. And we've spent our life, kind of the entire history of human beings, [1:46:53] development, this phenomenon has been occurring. And in the Amazon rainforest, they developed these [1:47:00] tools, these technologies. Ayahuasca [1:47:03] is a technology. It's not just a mixture of plants, it is a true pharmacological technology. [1:47:11] that they use to [1:47:13] as kind of visual prostheses, as one anthropologist calls it, that allows them to see and interact with and develop [1:47:22] long-term relationships, so to speak, with these otherwise invisible hidden ones. And now, in the 21st century, we've got [1:47:33] perhaps the ideal tool which is actually [1:47:36] pure DMT itself and we're [1:47:39] kind of learning how to use that now. [1:47:42] in our own kind of, with our own kind of modern twist. Yeah, I wonder what the relationship is. [1:47:49] between the DMT state and this...

[1:47:53] alien abduction phenomenon. And not just abduction, but encounter. Because they aren't all abduction experiences. A lot of them are just encounters. [1:48:03] And that [1:48:06] You know, maybe... [1:48:08] If you wanted to think about the role that human beings have on this planet, [1:48:12] Perhaps we're an intelligence farm. [1:48:15] And that, like any good farm, like if you're a farmer and let's say you're a sheep herder, you're raising sheep, well, you have to make sure the wolves stay out. So you have to have sheep dogs and make sure they have good grass to grow on. And then eventually you'll get a nice crop of sheep. [1:48:30] And then you get some wool out of that and you get some meat out of that. And that's the whole purpose of the whole thing. [1:48:36] That's the reason why we exist in the first place. [1:48:40] is that we're here to farm intelligence. [1:48:44] And that what we're doing biologically, what we are biologically, is just a kind of a crude, clunky, shitty, patched together version of these territorial issues. [1:48:54] apes with thermonuclear weapons that have figured out a way to make something far superior than itself. And that's what our goal was all along. [1:49:02] I always talk about, I say that we're some sort of a biological, like we're... [1:49:09] We're like a caterpillar, and we're making – [1:49:13] We don't know why, but we're going to turn into this technological butterfly. But I think Marshall McLuhan even said it better than me. He said, human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.

[1:49:25] How great is that? That's a great, great quote. Yeah, I think, you know, with as regards to the connection between [1:49:36] the abduction phenomenon and the DMT state, for example. I think the DMT state, as I said, is when the DMT state creates this neurological state where this [1:49:47] intelligence can interact with our brain directly. And I think that the abduction, you know, John Mack towards the end, later on at least, he left behind the kind of the nuts and bolts idea that you're talking about physical beings that were landing on the lawn. [1:50:01] sneaking in through the window and plucking people from their beds, but actually that the intelligences might well be entirely non-physical, but were interacting with their brain in the same way I think is happening with DMT, that they are interacting directly and inducing them effectively into this altered state and directed them, [1:50:23] to some end, I don't know what the purpose is, directing them into their [1:50:29] a vision of their reality or or for some other purpose. I'm not sure. But I think it's it's it's all about interaction between your brain, I think. Maybe being abducted and being taken aboard a physical object and examined is easier to handle than what's really going on. [1:50:46] Oh, yeah.

[1:51:02] That's what's happened. Maybe it's so weird that it's like, let's just say you've been abducted by an alien because you probably can't handle the truth. Yeah, I think that's probably true. Maybe that's why the experience is so similar. Because otherwise you would say, well, damn, aren't these fucking UFOs evolving quicker than us? [1:51:25] Because if they're doing the same shit in 1950, whatever it was, when Betty and Barney Hill were abducted, they're doing – [1:51:31] 2025, that doesn't make sense. Because in 2025, we have way better cars. [1:51:37] than we had in 1955 or whatever year it was when they got abducted. I drove here in a Tesla. That fucking thing is a spaceship. Like I think about it sometimes when I'm in these things. Like these are so advanced in comparison to anything that existed before. Why aren't the spaceships more advanced? Like why are they still like just showing up like that, looking like a flying saucer? Don't they have a better model of this? Why are they sending us this old shitty tech? [1:52:07] Oh, boo-hoo. How's that possible? So you wouldn't expect necessarily a change in the last 50 years. No, if they perfected it, it would be non-physical. They wouldn't even have to come here in some sort of a fucking alloy disk. That seems so clunky. That seems old school to what's coming. If artificial intelligence continues to make better versions of itself and then somehow or another figures out how to run on quantum computing architecture, okay, well, then you have digital god.

[1:52:37] in. Exactly. The whole thing is baffling and paradoxical and none of it kind of makes sense. I think if we were able to view this phenomenon from a God's eye view, it would all kind of, oh, right, that makes sense. Well, it's also... [1:52:51] You throw in [1:52:52] simulation theory in with all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go, okay, well, what is this then? What is this really? [1:53:01] Right. What is this really? Like maybe all the weird stuff like Bigfoot and all this weird stuff. Maybe it's like a part of the weirdness of it by design. That it's supposed to be goofy enough that you figure out eventually that this is a simulation. I think, yeah, I see reality as a kind of game in a way. I get the feeling that reality is in some sense playful. [1:53:28] And that's an ancient idea. I mean, that goes back to the ancient kind of Hindu philosophy, the idea of Brahman, the ultimate reality, playing at creating the universes. They call it Leela. The idea that creating, you know, Brahman is the ultimate reality. He or it or... [1:53:46] they doesn't have to create reality. It could just exist in perfect, you know, but in pure [1:53:54] unadulterated perfection, you know, complete [1:53:57] unending bliss, but instead... [1:54:00] it decides to kind of [1:54:02] to create realities, to get lost for fun, to get lost. And we're kind of

[1:54:09] We are... [1:54:10] part of, everything is Brockman, as they say, everything is the ultimate reality and we're kind of lost within, we're tumbling in through this [1:54:18] crazy world that seems really real and really important and fun and terrifying and all of those things. And it's a great ride. But then eventually... [1:54:30] we realize, oh, actually, this is just a game. It's all illusion. Everything, all form is illusion. And I think DMT ultimately is an expression of that. It shows us, actually, that reality is far stranger than we could possibly imagine. And that actually we don't know anything about the true nature of reality. And this world isn't so strange. [1:54:55] solid and important and serious it's actually all part of this cosmic drama this cosmic game that we're playing and we've forgotten that we're playing and perhaps one day we'll realize that oh we'll kind of wake up from the game or work out you know maybe there is some um maybe it's like a puzzle [1:55:14] And DMT is one piece of that puzzle that allows us to figure out how to complete the game, in a sense. And then we kind of, ah, fantastic. We've done it. And then everyone's, you know, this is why I think when people smoke DMT, there's this great celebratory uproar. You know, the lights are flashing. He's here. He's back. Woo. And they know. It feels like you're interacting with an intelligence that really knows what's going on.

[1:55:44] And it's kind of excited that we're popping in temporarily just for a few minutes, but we're getting close. It feels like, you know, we've discovered the technology because DMT is kind of it's weird, right? It's everywhere. [1:56:02] It's like in probably all plants, you know, Dennis McKenna likes to say nature is drenched in DMT because it is. That's a good impression of him. Yeah, really? [1:56:13] He got out of your accent. He did the whole thing. Yeah. You know, and yet at the same time, you can't just kind of munch on plants. Right. Because it's not already active. Right. [1:56:32] was probably the acacia bush that contained DMT. [1:56:35] Yeah, this is – I know Strassman, one of his books, The Soul of Prophecy. Boy, he was blowing my mind last time he was here. He thinks the Bible is real, that it's real stories that may have happened in parallel dimensions. Wow. And I was like, what? That's exotic. [1:56:51] And I'm like, we're both – I'm like, I'm trying to like be on his wavelength. I'm trying to tune in. Because he's so out there. That guy's so – he's so out there. [1:57:05] 16 years so that he could read the Bible in its source language. [1:57:10] That's out there. That's a dude in New Mexico. He's got plenty of time. He's just out there. That guy's out there. But

[1:57:21] That's a very interesting take that they're true stories. You know, I was watching this very bizarre YouTube video last night. I got sucked in. I clicked on it and it was all about. [1:57:32] The Sumerian Kings List. [1:57:35] and that the Sumerian they found a tablet in his cuneiform tablet that [1:57:43] It shows this list of kings and how long they reigned. And then there's the great flood. And some of these kings reigned for like 40,000 years, 30,000 years. And then the total timeline of all of them, I think, is like 200 plus thousand years. And then there's the great flood. And then after the great flood. [1:58:03] There's a very small lifespan. There's like 50 years. They've run for 40 years. But all of the post-flood kings are correct. [1:58:12] They're all like historically, they resonate with other historical texts, other cuneiform tablets, other different depictions of when this king ran Mesopotamia and this king ran Sumerian. [1:58:26] But their old versions are these like really weird, like pre-flood is real weird. It's like, what are you talking about? 40,000 years. What does that mean? Are you just making it up? Is it just a myth? Is it? [1:58:41] Was there a different thing here then? Like, were you just assuming that this lifespan that human beings have of 120 years is normal?

[1:58:52] Like, is this what we always had? Or are what we are today a very... [1:58:59] bizarre version of what used to exist. Are we like a fucking chihuahua and we used to be a wolf? Were we something very different at one point in time? [1:59:10] And are we the remnants of whatever survived whatever cataclysmic disaster that every ancient civilization depicts as a great flood? Like multiple different civilizations talk about this one event that seems to be a real event. [1:59:25] Like, what are they trying to say? And why is that also in the Bible? Like, why was Noah, like, 600 years old? Like, why were these people so old? Like, what does that mean? Did you just get it? Did you guys suck at calendars? Or... [1:59:40] Or are we talking about a very different reality back then? Because if the Great Flood is true – [1:59:47] Let's imagine there is a spectacular civilization. This is my most romantic view of ancient history. There is a spectacular civilization that exists. It exists in ancient Egypt. They have technology that's far beyond anything we've achieved today. It's just gone down a totally different path. And what they're really into is making these insane stone structures that defy any modern construction methods, any transportation methods. Everything is out the window. [2:00:17] idea how they did it and they did it way before anybody was doing anything remotely like that.

[2:00:24] How old are those things for real? We don't really know. [2:00:27] Like if there was some insanely sophisticated society where if you want to figure things out, you probably – it's probably hard to figure things out if you only live to be 100 years. And then if everybody else has ego and everybody is like, that is not true. The laws of thermodynamics cannot be – and like you have all these egos involved in universities. You have all these egos involved in the technology companies. [2:00:57] He's the gatekeeper of all the information about Egypt. So you have all these kind of egos. Wouldn't it be like way easier to get past that if you live 50,000 years, if you lived 100,000 years? [2:01:10] Like you would think that kind of a human being or that kind of an intelligent creature would be able to accomplish way more. It would probably get over all of its bullshit by the time it's 150, and then it would be starting to figure out some things that – I mean it had no cognitive decline, and it does live to be thousands of years old. [2:01:29] That's not insane because we're just randomly living to be 100 and 120 years. Like, wow, you made it to 110, Grandpa. What a great life. They would probably look and go, that's a bullshit life. Like, you can't figure anything out. [2:01:45] And maybe that's part of the design. That's part of it. Maybe that's part of the design to ensure chaos. Like if you want to ensure chaos, you can't live long enough to recognize the hustle. Right. Because if you live long enough to recognize the hustle, you'd be like, why are we arguing?

[2:01:59] I argue way less at 58 than I ever did at 28. And I argue less at 28 than I ever did at 18. As you get older, you realize this is nonsense. This is a complete waste of time. And you could get through most disagreements with just cordial communication. You don't really need to argue as much as people argue. But they feed off of it, and I think it's a stupid way to communicate. [2:02:22] If a society figured that out, [2:02:25] Like if a society consists of people that live 100,000 years, if you have 30,000-year-old people living amongst you – [2:02:35] that are far more intelligent than we are today and that possibly communicate telepathy through telepathy. [2:02:42] which there's some evidence that we do today. Oh, yeah. At least a little bit. We know we're not the best at it, but there's some evidence that it takes place. [2:02:51] We might be... [2:02:53] like the rejects. We might be the stragglers. We might be the, the, the fucking, the preppers. We're, [2:03:00] that survived whatever the hell happened 11,000 years ago. [2:03:04] And we're just a shitty version of... [2:03:07] of what designed all the pyramids, built the world, [2:03:12] had some sort of bizarre technology that we still haven't [2:03:17] figured out yet. Yeah, I think we definitely live [2:03:21] life on kind of hard mode. You know, it's like, as you said, if you [2:03:27] If you only live for 100 years or less, then...

[2:03:31] It is very difficult to work things out in that time. It's a Formula One race. Yeah. It's not a lovely stroll through the neighborhood where you're, like, checking out the houses. Look at that beautiful hill. Like, you know, it's... No. [2:03:40] So maybe it is part of – it's part of the game. It might be. Yeah, that we only live for – It might be or it just might be this is the shitty version of humans and this is what the shitty version of humans makes. Like the really good version of humans makes pyramids. [2:03:54] Like when a person can live to be 30,000 years old, that's what they make. They make spectacular... [2:03:59] like homages to the cosmos on the ground. Yeah, or it could also be that [2:04:05] Like the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, he once said that you cannot prove that the world didn't appear five minutes ago. You know, you really can't. It's true. With all the memories and everything. So, in fact, all of that stuff. [2:04:21] 10,000 years ago it literally didn't happen and that the world popped into the simulation was kind of booted up with all of that preloaded to kind of keep us occupied about the great the grand mystery of ancient history like you know we get excited about it and fascinated all those incredible things that were happening it never happened it was just it was just preloaded into the game to keep us occupied that's nuts from your own personal perspective if you weren't in World War Two you don't know it's real right yeah and I think about that [2:04:51] every day when I wake up because when I wake up the weird thing about waking up is you're just assuming that you've been awake before yeah and that you're the same person yeah I assume yeah I kind of know what it's like to be me so every day when I wake up I'm like look I'm me again and I go but how do I know that this is not my first run through this yeah exactly yeah this is my first run through this with a shitty memory of the past

[2:05:15] Or an induced memory that facilitates my motion. [2:05:18] It keeps me moving in the same direction. It keeps me... [2:05:22] pushing towards whatever I'm pushing towards. And that's what Sam Altman gets every day when he wakes up before he creates his digital God. He's like, I guess I'm awake. I guess I'm doing it. [2:05:32] yeah you know there is this fascinating terence mckenna he he often spoke [2:05:40] in my head at least, about these things. [2:05:42] what seemed to me as completely conflicting trajectories for humanity. In one breath, he'd talk about us returning to the archaic, of returning to the forests and becoming one with nature again. And then in the next breath, he'd talk about us setting off for the stars. It seems like there's this tension. [2:06:02] Part of us wants to go, we all want to live in an old rustic house that's made of wood in a forest and cook on an open fire. [2:06:12] to live in these machinic buildings and be operated, you know, operating these highly complex technological machines. And it's like, you know, which way? Do we allow ourselves to be pulled back into the archaic or do we push past and transcend and become... [2:06:32] post-human or post-biological. And maybe that's kind of part of the game. Are we going to be dragged back? Which wouldn't be bad to be dragged back into that more, you can imagine the bucolic life in a beautiful place.

[2:06:51] kind of [2:06:52] forest scene with the nice old houses and we all love that, right? We all love that, [2:06:58] We all kind of yearn for that, I think. I mean, I do. I think there's part of me that wants to... [2:07:04] live in Tokyo, where I do now, and this incredibly cyberpunk, technological city that seems like it's been... [2:07:14] secreted [2:07:15] out of metal and glass, an entirely unnatural [2:07:20] structure that kind of emerges from human intelligence. I mean, that's a weird thing, but in a way... [2:07:26] these structures that we see, they seem entirely non-human. It's like we are tapping into something... [2:07:35] else, something non-human, and we can't help ourselves. And our cities that we build and these... [2:07:43] highly complex technological and computerized machines feels like they are being kind of [2:07:50] secreted by our intelligence and pulled out of the earth you know maybe that's why they're all so similar too right [2:07:59] They're similar and they differ obviously in the way they look, but they're similar in the structure and they're similar in the density. [2:08:07] You know, when you get – I mean there's enormous ones. Like I was watching this video of the largest city in the world, which I believe is in China. [2:08:14] What is the largest – run that into perplexity. What's the largest city in the world? I hope they're going to say Tokyo. I thought it was Tokyo, Greater Tokyo. Tokyo.

[2:08:23] I don't know. The most populated, I should say. When I say largest, I should probably say most populated. Yeah. [2:08:29] I think they were saying it's 36 million people. Okay. 30 years more. Is it? [2:08:35] Tokyo is more than 36 million? I looked it up the other day. I was curious. Like 37 or 40 million of the greater Tokyo area. Interesting. Yeah. [2:08:43] That's crazy. [2:08:45] So Tokyo's number one? Yeah. Okay. There we go. [2:08:48] This was probably the most populated in China. Well, okay, so... [2:08:52] That's followed by Delhi, India, which is 34,000,665,600 people. How do they know it's just 600? There's probably a few people snuck in there that they don't know about. You can't say that. Don't round that out. [2:09:10] And then there's Shanghai. But it wasn't Shanghai. It was another city in China that they were talking about. Maybe they just exaggerated the numbers. Okay, so Tokyo is a perfect example then. [2:09:22] city tokyo and to some extent la although la is just so fucked up like the downtown is the most useless part of la it's really weird like downtown have you been la i've been a couple of times but i've not really explored nobody goes downtown okay okay downtown it's like they tried to revive downtown for a while before the pandemic and then everybody gave up but downtown it's not like there's a bunch of like like everybody has an apartment downtown no most people live in the [2:09:52] of LA and downtown is like there's some banks and some businesses but there's also Skid Row. The downtown is crazy.

[2:10:00] It's like a really fucked up place. A lot of abandoned buildings. Like downtown is where we did a lot of Fear Factor stunts back in the day because we can get an abandoned warehouse to set up like a set there and do the show. So it's a very weird place. It's not like a – like downtown Chicago is booming. It's downtown Chicago. Downtown New York City. Like, whoa, you're in Manhattan. This is crazy. This is crazy. [2:10:23] Downtown LA is not like that. [2:10:24] Because L.A.'s broken. So when you go to L.A., it's like downtown is like the most bizarre version of a downtown ever. Nobody wants to be there. [2:10:33] Yeah, poor city design, I guess. I don't know what it is. [2:10:38] I think some of it has to do with what they did when they made Skid Row. So Skid Row is an entirely constructed thing. And what they did was all the vagrants in Beverly Hills and in Hollywood, like, listen, get the fuck out of here. You pick them up, you take them, throw them in the wagon, bring them to Skid Row, and then keep them there. [2:10:58] Don't let them leave. [2:11:00] Just contain him in an area. And that's essentially what they did. There's a documentary on that hotel. What was that hotel again, Jamie? [2:11:06] Cecil Hotel, where it talks about Skid Row itself. Like, it's – the documentary is about this girl who was – [2:11:14] They thought that she was missing, that someone had kidnapped her or something, but she was schizophrenic. She got off her medication, and she apparently climbed into the water cistern and drowned. [2:11:24] But the point... [2:11:25] of the documentary was not just that it's like this lady came here not knowing what downtown was and so she got a room at the hotel downtown thinking oh get a nice room at a hotel downtown but like it's fucking zombie boulevard it's great show him what um what skid row looks like show him a video of what skid row looks like

[2:11:47] Now, when we were filming Fear Factor, this was like 2004-ish, something like that. I accidentally drove through Skid Row, or drove to Skid Row. I was driving home. Back then, I think I probably had navigation on my car, but it probably sucked, or I wasn't paying attention to it. And this is Skid Row. Skid Row's nuts. This is close up. [2:12:17] insane it is when we were filming there was another fear factor we filmed there where one of the contestants was like look they're smoking crack we look down there's people we were a lot like on a rooftop or something and then we look down people were smoking crack right in front of us [2:12:30] right on the street like chaos like skid row is nuts and this is [2:12:35] This is not even where the tents are set up. Where the tents are set up, it's the craziest thing you've ever seen. It's like these shanty villages that go on for blocks and blocks where there's no cars going through. The streets are filled with homeless people. Just everyone's on drugs. [2:12:53] And there's just tents everywhere. And you're like, what a failure of society. What a failure of society that you've allowed this to reach the level that it's at now. [2:13:04] That's LA. [2:13:05] Have you been to Tokyo? Yes, I have. Yeah. I mean, Tokyo is the complete opposite. Complete opposite. You know? Super clean, very orderly. People are very polite. Yeah. Even though there's so many people in the street, everybody sort of navigates, moves around each other in a very polite manner. Yeah, yeah. A beautiful architecture. Yeah.

[2:13:21] It's stunning, like cyberpunk, as you said, very Blade Runner-esque. You're like, yo. I was only there for one day for the UFC. So I didn't spend a lot of time there, but I had dinner there and I hung out there for a little bit. It really shows you that it is possible to have a very large, densely populated city that is safe and clean and functioning. It doesn't have to be. People say, oh, you know, I got robbed. [2:13:51] broken into and it's like, this is just what happens when you live in a big city, man. And it's like, actually, no, it is possible to have safe and clean. And, and, and Tokyo is fascinating, because it's an example of what's often called an emergent city. They don't have this very strict zoning, where Oh, here, it's got to be offices here, it's got to be houses here, it's got to be small businesses or anything like that. It's like, [2:14:15] It's all mixed together and different kind of neighbourhoods kind of just emerge. You know, there's a knife district, for example. People who sell knives, they all gather together. There's a bookshop district. There's districts for all different things, not because someone has decided, oh, this [2:14:33] only... [2:14:34] bookshops can be here. It's just that they tend to gather together. And so you walk around Tokyo and you'll find yourself in some quiet alley and you'll have little houses and then you'll have a little store, often very, very tiny stores that have been perhaps operating for decades. And in the UK or I guess in the States as well, they would have gone under.

[2:14:57] decades ago, you know, the city would have just crushed them. But it seems very easy in Tokyo to kind of open a small, if you have a house and you own it in Tokyo, you can, by law, you can... [2:15:11] you can convert the first floor into a store. You'll get these little old ladies who will, [2:15:16] They bought their house decades ago. They're retired. And they think, oh, what can I do with my time? I know I'll open a cafe. And they say they open a little cafe. Hardly anyone goes, maybe. It might be, could be in the countryside. It could be on the outskirts or whatever. But it doesn't matter because they own it. And they're not being... [2:15:32] raped by you know [2:15:34] Taxis and stuff and all and and all this kind of red tape. They don't have to deal with it. So they just have this lovely little cafe entirely unique. They might fill it with things they're interested in. So it's a completely unique thing that you can go in and she'll serve you tea and maybe the cakes that she she made this morning. And there are. [2:15:53] thousands of these throughout Tokyo, not just little old ladies, but young people who own, who will rent very cheaply. They have these, have you seen in Tokyo, when you see the buildings, you often see these neon buildings. [2:16:08] signs coming down the sides of the building. These are called zakyo, which is basically miscellaneous use buildings. And what they are is just very tall buildings and each floor [2:16:21] you will have some kind of business. It could be anything. It's often bars or, you know,

[2:16:29] pool rooms or anything you want, little restaurant, anything like this. And, of course, they don't have the... [2:16:36] the frontage on the ground floor and so they instead they will put their [2:16:41] their sign, neon sign [2:16:44] telling you what they are down the side of the building and that's what gives Tokyo that unique look is because it's all these Akio buildings and sometimes if you go a friend [2:16:56] took me to this bar. Well, it was like a building. It was... [2:17:01] in Kabukicho, which is right in the center of Tokyo. And it was on a side street, and there was this tall building, grey building, [2:17:10] You would never look at it, no signage or anything. And you look at the elevator. When you go into the elevator, on each floor, there's like a name of a business, you know, Top Hat, Eight Ball, Enigma. [2:17:23] You've no idea what these are. They're not on Google Maps. Right? So, and he just took, pressed the button for the eighth floor, he went up and it was just this little bar. [2:17:31] run by this one guy. And it was, you know, he played darts and had a drink and a few people came in, not many, because most people, 99.9% of the population of Tokyo have no idea that this bar exists, nor could they ever know. Because it's not on Google Maps. There's no reviews of it. It doesn't exist. And I couldn't find it again. Unless I call my friend and say, take me there, I can never go to that bar again, ever. Because I don't know where it is. Right.

[2:18:01] There's thousands of these. That sounds amazing. Yeah. I want to go right now. But you've got to take a risk because if you just go, if you don't know, right, and you just press the button, you could be some weird... [2:18:13] girls bar you know host bar you know and they kind of rip you off and stuff there's a lot of danger in going to these places well there's a lot of yakuza right there's a lot of yakuza in kabuki yeah you've got to be very careful [2:18:23] because they will drug you and then they will take you to a cash machine and you take your liver there's a lot of crazy stories [2:18:33] But when you see that and you live like that, like what keeps the rest of the world from [2:18:40] from having a city like that. [2:18:43] Thank you. [2:18:43] That's a really good question, and I don't want to get... [2:18:46] Well, I don't know, but I think culture is everything. Obviously, a city is all about the people. Of course, you've got to have the infrastructure and you've got to have – it's got to be properly funded. But you also need – [2:18:58] The people that are going to take care of it, if people are trashing it and don't have respect for the city, then obviously it's going to fall apart. But it's all about the culture. Japan is fascinating. The culture, I always say to people, when you go to Japan, you have to switch your mindset. So normally, as a Westerner, I'm thinking about me. When I'm out in public, I'm thinking about me. What do I want to do? Where do I want to go? It's all me. In Japan, you flip that. [2:19:28] the first thing on your mind should be everybody else. When you hear...

[2:19:32] Japanese people talk about people who [2:19:37] cause problems in cities. They use this word mewaku, which means, often translated as nuisance. So people who come from [2:19:44] the West. [2:19:45] often. America, [2:19:47] but not just America. I'm not blaming everything on Americans, but it is often. And they come with their own [2:19:53] they're the main character, this kind of main character syndrome. So they're talking. They often... You see these Instagram videos of people on the metro and the train and they go, it's so quiet. Nobody's talking or nobody's kind of listening to music. And that's because... [2:20:10] they're always thinking about [2:20:12] the people around them. They are thinking, am I obstructing anyone? Am I getting in anyone's way? Am I annoying anyone? Am I making anyone feel uncomfortable? You're always thinking about [2:20:23] those around you and that leads to this very respectful polite society where you can have 40 you know 37 million people whatever it is crammed together together in this relatively small area of land and they're not killing each other they learn I was told I'm not sure if this is true but it's kind of a I don't know if it's a myth but [2:20:46] Japan is very mountainous. And so back in the old days, villages were isolated. So when you lived in a village, to get to the next village, you have to climb a mountain, right? So you're trapped in your village. And so you have to learn to get along with the people around you. You can't run away.

[2:21:05] And so the Japanese culture has developed in the sense that you always have to be aware of the people around you. And that's... [2:21:16] That's been passed down into the modern age, that the culture is always one of thinking about... [2:21:22] others and respect from an early age. That's what's so fascinating. It's like, how come no one else figured that out? And also what's really strange is Japan itself right now is in the midst of [2:21:34] Population collapse. Yeah. [2:21:36] Sadly. So that's what sucks. It's like you could lose this and it could be overwhelmed by the West. [2:21:42] Like... [2:21:43] Because of the fact that they aren't having enough people to reproduce successfully to maintain their population. [2:21:50] It could just be taken over, like in terms of immigration, like Americans could just move there and Europeans can move there. And then all the beautiful aspects of this very interesting and very unique culture. [2:22:03] could go away. And they are really concerned about that. When I first arrived in Japan, like 10 years ago, I worked at a university and I was stood on campus outside just talking to someone. And I saw a couple of people. [2:22:17] like they look like high school students, probably on a, [2:22:19] campus visit out of the corner my eye Japanese high school students and they [2:22:24] They caught my eye. They saw that I was looking at them. And as soon as that happened, they both, like on a dime, stopped... [2:22:32] and [2:22:34] bowed to me and I thought wow we're not in Kansas anymore you know and that that having that

[2:22:42] Teaching children about respect from a very – and training them, you know, the idea of respect your elders. This is – you know, we have this in the West as well, but we kind of lost it a little bit. It's kind of drilled into them about respecting the people around you and respecting people who are older than you. And this probably goes back to the samurai, you know, these hierarchies. Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure. [2:23:12] but it is now this incredibly safe society. Yeah, exactly. Which is really kind of nuts. Yeah. Do you think about one of the most warlike cultures of all time? Yeah. The culture that fought off the Mongols successfully. Mm-hmm. [2:23:23] You know, pretty nuts. Yeah, yeah, it is. But you see it, you see the remnants of that kind of, the ancient societal structure. Even in the language, when you learn Japanese, there are... [2:23:37] several levels of politeness. Right? You have, it's really complicated, but you have something called Kego, which is kind of formal or polite speech. And if you are talking to, if you're, [2:23:51] lower down and you're talking to someone above you, you have to speak in a different, even the words, the verbs are different. The words are different. And if you're speaking about them, [2:24:01] then you have to use what's called honorific. You're elevating them. If you're talking about someone higher up, you have to elevate them. [2:24:09] them use honorific language if you're talking about yourself to someone who's higher up you use humble language so you lower yourself down so yeah so it's very difficult

[2:24:20] You know, it's still I still kind of struggle with it. But and it actually causes some problems because it's very difficult for you. [2:24:30] junior people to communicate with senior people, to communicate honestly, at least. So they just get a lot of you like, yes, man. Yes, I agree. Yes, I agree with that. You're kind of agreeing with everything that the senior person says. And that's not a way to [2:24:47] to make good decisions is by just agreeing. And so they have something called non-munication, [2:24:54] so this is [2:24:56] formed from two words, communication, of course, [2:24:59] plus nomu, which is the Japanese word to drink. And they're talking about alcohol. So... [2:25:05] Japan [2:25:06] In Japan, alcohol is king and society is actually lubricated by alcohol and functions because of alcohol. They have things called in in Japanese companies. They have these kind of semi obligatory, you know, semi compulsory events called nomikai, which basically translates as drink meetings. Oh, boy. You might have heard about these. And then basically the senior people and the more junior people, they all go together. [2:25:36] express purpose of getting drunk not just to like have a drink with your colleagues but to actually get drunk becoming intoxicated and that allows more free-flowing communication it allows you to everyone is brought to the same kind of level this is this is a non-munication and so it's facilitated by alcohol communication facilitated by alcohol so it's a society that is dependent on alcohol in in a strong way what is their approach to other drugs like or like even casual

[2:26:06] Marijuana and stuff like that. Are they highly illegal over there? [2:26:09] Yeah, it's complicated, I would say. Yeah. [2:26:13] It's weird because, okay, so... [2:26:15] when [2:26:16] When it comes to the law, people always say, oh, Japan has got the strictest drug laws in the world. First of all, no, it hasn't. Go to Singapore. [2:26:25] Settle down. Settle down, yeah. But – [2:26:28] When it comes to drugs, [2:26:30] cannabis... [2:26:31] for probably for, you know, after the Second World War, when I think it was MacArthur that [2:26:39] drafting the Japanese constitution and was basically controlling. I mean, it had, it was occupying Japan, of course, after the Second World War. And America was in the, what's that movie called? [2:26:52] that 1950s moody Weed Madness Reef of Madness America was in the kind of [2:26:57] reefer madness phase and they passed that on to the Japanese and the Japanese have never really gotten over it. [2:27:05] And then there's meth, of course. I mean, meth came from Japan. [2:27:10] Meth was invented in Japan. It was used during the Second World War. The kamikazes. They actually used these little green tablets that were called storming tablets. Oh, boy. They were mixed with green tea and stamped with the crest of the emperor. So they became like sacraments. Oh, my God. They would pop those. Yeah. Woo! Yeah. See how that worked out. Yeah, exactly. But then at the end of the Second World War, when they had stockpiles of these methamphetamine,

[2:27:40] started to spill down into the black market, basically. And large, very large numbers of people became addicted to meth. And they were actually in Osaka in, I think, around 1954. I forget the exact year. But in one year, the police raided, I think, around 50 meth labs. [2:27:59] in one city, operated by one or two people, like mom and pop operation. It's like Breaking Bad, right? Like you imagine meth labs in Arizona or something now. This was happening in Japan in the 1950s, and it scared the shit out of the Japanese government because they were a defeated nation. They thought that it was the end of their civilization, and they thought that meth addiction was the symptom. It was going to actually perhaps catalyze the end of the Japanese, [2:28:29] it was an existential threat to the Japanese civilization. So they hit it hard legally. And so now, [2:28:37] When, you know, Japanese law, they're really focused on cannabis because of probably the American influence and meth. But psychedelics, most people in Japan probably don't know much about. There's a psychedelic subculture in Japan. There are ayahuasca circles in Japan that operate in a gray area of the law. It's not explicitly illegal. It's discouraged, but it's not explicitly illegal. [2:29:07] and operate... [2:29:09] ayahuasca circles. You didn't. Did you do the DMTX experiments in Japan? No.

[2:29:14] Where did you do them? So, okay, so we're going to get into DMTX. Yeah. Yeah. [2:29:20] So... [2:29:21] DMTX came from an idea [2:29:23] that I had in 2015. I worked with Rick Strassman on this. So [2:29:29] DMT is kind of [2:29:33] unusual. It has these weird pharmacological peculiarities. As I said before, it doesn't have subjective tolerance. So Rick Strassman showed in the 90s that you can inject someone with DMT repeatedly and they have the same intensity effect at each time. But it also has another kind of... [2:29:50] a number of unique peculiarities. Of course, it's very, very brief. It enters the brain extremely rapidly. It's metabolized rapidly and cleared very rapidly. It had all of these pharmacological peculiarities and it occurred to me that [2:30:05] These were precisely the characteristics you need of a drug that's used in anesthesiology. So in anesthesiology, when they want to put you to sleep, make you unconscious, what they don't do, they don't just inject you with a drug and kind of hope that it works. [2:30:22] keeps working whilst they've got you under the knife. What they do is they use a very short-acting drug and they use an infusion machine which [2:30:32] delivers the drug, the anaesthetic drug into your veins and goes to your brain and holds the brain level of the drug constant over time so that they can keep you in the anaesthetized state unconscious for as long or short a period as they like. And so it occurred to me that

[2:30:49] Well, DMT has the right... [2:30:51] drug properties. It's almost like it's designed for that kind of technique called target-controlled intravenous infusion. And so I thought... [2:31:01] you know, if we start, if we take the DMT state seriously, we treat it as a new world to explore and, you know, intelligent beings with whom we can establish communicative relationships, then three minutes of a breakthrough trip is nowhere near enough. And so I thought, well, let's [2:31:23] take this technology from anesthesiology, target controlled intravenous infusion, and let's repurpose it. So instead of an anesthetic drug that's delivered by programmed infusion, we instead deliver DMT by programmed infusion and induce somebody into the DMT state and stabilize their brain DMT levels. [2:31:45] So you can hold them in the DMT state for 30 minutes or potentially for several hours and have complete control in real time over the depth of the experience. That was the idea. So I worked with Rick Strassman. I used his data, blood sampling data that he used. [2:32:03] acquired in [2:32:04] in the 90s. Fortunately, he had this old [2:32:08] Excel file which he sent to me and I built this mathematical model of DMT's metabolism and distribution throughout the body. And then we wrote a paper. [2:32:16] basically saying, we think this should work. We think we should be able to extend and stabilize the DMT state for many hours.

[2:32:26] It wasn't kind of human ready, so to speak. And it actually took about five years before... [2:32:33] It was actually implemented in humans. And that was actually done by the Imperial College London team. So they were the still are, in a way, the leaders in psychedelic research. And a guy called then a Ph.D. student, I think Chris Timmerman, worked to make this work. [2:32:51] proof of principle model that myself and Rick Strassman had developed and get it human ready and actually [2:32:58] test you know does it actually work do the to the predictions that we had myself and rick strassman do they actually work in humans and they found out that in fact that it does you can induce somebody into the dmt state and you can actually stabilize the experience so rather than just being a um [2:33:16] Oh, Jamie. [2:33:20] Since I'm talking about this, I can show you actually what DMTree [2:33:26] trips or the kind of the time course of a DMT trip looks like over time. So normally what happens is [2:33:34] The blood level will rise very, very rapidly. You inject some with DMT. Blood levels rise. They reach the brain and then almost immediately they start. [2:33:44] collapsing down again exponentially and that brief period when the brain levels are high is the breakthrough state. However, if you [2:33:53] When the brain DMT levels reach a kind of a peak, you then start an infusion. You can basically compensate the DMT that's being lost by metabolism. It's a bit like if you have a bathtub full of water and you pull the plug, the water drains. But if you turn on the taps, you can keep the level constant. And so that's the infusion. So you stabilize the state.

[2:34:23] roller coaster phase that you get with DMT where it's all very, very disorienting and he's like, you know, what's going on? That's for most people. That's [2:34:30] That's kind of it. And then you're dragged back out again. But our hope was that actually over time, if you stabilize the DMT in the brain, that it would actually... [2:34:39] stabilise the experience, then people can actually [2:34:42] navigate and explore the space and even perform kind of experiments within the space. And this is what's become known as DMTX. Hmm. [2:34:55] And how was that? What did they describe? Well – [2:34:59] So this first study that was done just a couple of years ago [2:35:03] as I said, by Imperial College London, it was really a, it was like a pilot study. They wanted to show that it would, [2:35:09] that it worked and that it was safe that it was tolerable that people weren't going crazy you know that they could handle it basically the very first person to do it was a guy i'm now working with i work for a non-profit called new nautics out of florida and we're very interested in designing experiments using dmtx to actually [2:35:33] study the dmt space and and the intelligences within them much more uh kind of formally and on the board i worked with a guy called carl smith who was the the very first person to undergo dmtx he was also the only person to complete i think there was five sessions over several weeks he was the only one who handled it so to speak what's his name carl smith shout out to carl shout out to carl

[2:36:03] and predicted the DMT state, it does stabilize. It's like the brain is... [2:36:08] settling into constructing this [2:36:11] alternate world model interfacing with this intelligence. And he found that as he went back every time, he was interacting with the same entities, and they became aware of the fact that he was coming back. [2:36:25] so often and they were like [2:36:27] not you again, you're back. And one time they were scanning him [2:36:34] the Imperial team in like a, I think like an MRI machine or something. And the entities were gathered, all the entities, he said, as soon as they started scanning me in the quote unquote real world, the entities were gathered and they seemed like... [2:36:49] curious or confused like what are they doing? What are the signal? Yeah, right. It's like, maybe it's the signal or something or they were like, you know, we're the ones that normally do the scanning. You know, we're supposed to scan you. You know, what's going on here? And so there's this, as I said, it was just a pilot study, but there's a real taste that you can enter into these, these kind of relationships with these entities. And actually, we, as I said, I work for this [2:37:19] I'm a board member of this nonprofit called New Nautix. And our vision is really to design experiments with DMTX. Like what does a research organization look like that isn't simply trying to explain away DMT, explain it, but actually says, OK, this is a uncharted land that's fascinating, that's inordinately complex and vast and filled with intelligences. Let's treat it like that as explorers.

[2:37:49] what does a research organization aimed at studying that look like? You know, and we imagine, I imagine that, you know, [2:37:57] you're not just sending [2:37:59] you know, for example, let's take the structure of the DMT space, right? It's this highly complex [2:38:06] geometrically and topologically strange [2:38:10] domain. So we send in people who are experts who are mathematicians. We send in a mathematician to study the topology of the space, to study how the space is structured. The entities, they often try to communicate. They use strange symbols and strange code. Oh, let's send in a linguist who can study their language. And so you're sending in people with their own specialities to actually [2:38:39] formally study the DMT space. And what's even better is we now have a venue for this. So we're actually, we have a [2:38:47] I work with a company called Eleusis. We have a special license from a country in the Caribbean, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. [2:39:00] retreat center, stroke research center to provide DMTX that is 100 percent legal, that is safe. You know, you've got anesthesiologists, psychiatrists and nurses, a perfect setting that's also being designed in part by Carl Smith as well, that allows you to perform these kind of research activities.

[2:39:27] research studies aimed at analyzing and studying the DMT space. But even better is it's also going to be open to [2:39:34] anyone. So if you think about [2:39:36] prepare for the freaks prepare for the coming but like you know in in the 90s rick strassman he did the biggest study of its kind [2:39:44] You've only had 60 people. So you've got 60 people worth of trip reports. What happens if you can bring in 300, 400, 500 people a year? How will you vet people to make sure they're not crazy before they do it? There will be a screening process, an initial screening process, and then ultimately you would have a psychiatrist who would sign them off. So it's not just anyone. But anyone can. In theory, they can sign up. [2:40:14] Beckway I think it's called and in a [2:40:18] beautiful, perfect setting, spend a week on the island and undergoing a number of DMTX sessions and [2:40:27] you know, being able to explore this world using the DMTX technology and of course they will all be providing [2:40:35] trip report. So you start to amass a vast data set of [2:40:40] Highly controlled, verified. You know, this isn't this isn't like posting online where you don't know what drugs they've taken, really. It's like, you know exactly what they've taken. It's pure pharmaceutical grade DMT. And they they will generate this vast data set that could be used. We're also working to develop a an AI powered device.

[2:41:05] model that would [2:41:07] take in this verbal data and in real time generate imagery so someone can talk to the [2:41:15] the model, the AI model, and it will generate the image. And then you say, oh, no, this isn't quite right. This needs to be more like this. And so you're converging on the- You're making a map of the territory. You're making a map of the territory. And so you end up with this vast library, not just of textual trip reports, but- [2:41:31] also of [2:41:33] of imagery and this is available now it will it's opening we're kind of we're building it's being developed now it should be open officially on march 1st next year so go to yeah elusismind.com that's soon you can sign up soon just enough time for people to prepare yeah and it will be the first i mean it's gonna be the first of its kind you know a totally legal safe medically [2:42:03] That's the thing about these ancient civilizations, whether it's Egypt or whether it's ancient Greece where Ulysses was from. [2:42:13] Um... [2:42:14] They all were using psychedelics. [2:42:18] There's evidence of psychedelics in all these ancient civilizations. It's just our completely twisted sick society that's decided that [2:42:27] The most beneficial drugs should be the ones that are the most illegal. Yep. Which is – and you lump them in with the ones that destroy lives. They're categorized with meth.

[2:42:38] Yep. Which is completely insane. And the sign of a twisted, sick culture. It's the sign of what McKenna was talking about with the chaos. [2:42:47] the chaos of a species that's preparing to leave for the stars. Yeah, I think so. But things are changing. You do see positive change. The Internet. The attitude to psychedelics. We'll understand it now. And I think there's also a giant shift towards people on the right accepting it because so many soldiers have come back from war and used it and had great benefits. Yeah, precisely. [2:43:14] So perhaps things aren't as bad as... [2:43:18] Things in some ways are getting better. They're getting worse in other ways, but they're getting better in other ways. They're moving. Yeah, that's it. And I think you need bad in order to inspire good. That's unfortunate, but I think that just historically that's always been the way that we figure things out. Yeah, I agree. [2:43:34] Andrew. [2:43:35] so much fun i really enjoy this uh let's do it again let's do it again when the place is open and when you get some trip reports are you interested in doing dnt allegedly we'll talk off air but um this book that you wrote is available now death by astonishment is it in audio form as well yeah read by myself beautiful great voice for it perfect i'm so happy that you read it [2:44:00] I love when authors read their own work. It's so important, I think. They wanted to get an actor. Fuck those actors. Because I was in Tokyo. I said, no, no, no, no. He's some weirdo. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Exactly. Yeah, no, you need you.

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