why is it that psychedelic use has played the role that it's played in your interests and your pursuit of knowledge what do you think it's done for you that's been valuable I think we are in a weird place in society where the term drug is a blanket and it covers things that have vastly different effects it covers caffeine it covers nicotine and it covers dimethyl tryptamine which is crazy it's crazy that all those things are drugs Aderall is a drug benzo diazene is a drug Xanax there's a million of them they're all different and they're all drugs and the idea that psychedelics are a drug for lack of a better term that's what we use I don't think that's what they are at all I think they are probably why we became people I think they are probably why Society Advanced and I think every great ancient culture probably celebrated them and used them it seems like there's so much evidence out of Egypt of the use of psilocybin various different drugs various different psychedelic experiences the iconography of the pineal gland seems to be a big part of multiple cultures not just Egyptian but even Catholicism if you go to the Vatican there's this enormous pine cone that is a statue there and I was very lucky when I went to the Vatican we got a guide we hired a private guide that was a scholar from France and when he's not working on the Summers he gives these tours and they're very thorough and he was brilliant guy I wish I could remember his name brilliant guy so he takes us through showing us all this artwork this incredible explaining why they had little penises and he's explaining the whole thing that big penises were thought to be barbaric and it was not representative of like someone of class and dignity and education and so we get to this pine cone and he says to me he goes do you know what this represents and I said is it the pineal gland and he goes yes and then we start this conversation of what why why these Catholics would have this enormous representation of the pineal gland which they reference as the seed of the soul and that this gland which is in the center of your brain is thought to be literally a third eye and on reptiles it actually has a cornea and a lens this gland like literally it's exactly where the third eye of Eastern mysticism is and they've got a representation of it right here and it's thought to be where dimethyl tryptamine is produced this whole connection to it is so old that it seems like you go back to the John marro aler stuff you go back to the the Dead Sea Scrolls which are the oldest version of the Bible the only version I believe the only version they've have in Aramaic of all those stories if John Marco algro is right it all kind of makes sense that these people were having these experiences much like the Greeks were with the ucini Mysteries much like multiple different cultures in the Amazon all over the world have experienced these profound ceremony experiences that lead to these Journeys into the spirit world these connections with higher Consciousness this something that when you're experiencing it seems very very real but also very Preposterous when you try to explain it to people that aren't experienced you know it's like Hendrick have you ever been experienced well I have like it's that like with that understanding that that's possible the world changes because now you know that that's possible you could live your whole life and not know that the most shocking profound thing in existence is three hits away and all of a sudden you're in a completely different Universe in 20 30 seconds that's nuts and the fact that that is dismissed that people look at it as like oh you're just escaping reality and you like it might be the source of civilization itself it might be the source of language it might be the source of the expansion of the human mind over a period of two million years the doubling of the human brain over a period of two million years which Terrence McKenna felt directly coincides with the shifting of the tropical rainforest turning into grasslands which would force these primates to experiment with new food sources and these undulate cows that were everywhere that would [ __ ] and then these cocy and mushrooms would grow in their [ __ ] observed primates flipping over these Cow Patties looking for beetles and grubs and things to eat there it's everywhere like you could see it all over Africa if there's something on that they're going to try it out and if these things are trying it out and they're doing this over a period of two million years and they develop language and culture and weapons and they start thinking about things and they become different than every animal around them and this was McKenna's Stone date Theory which I'm sure you're familiar with and Dennis McKenna who is you know a legitimate scientist Dennis explains it even better because he explains it with the actual mechanisms that your brain that the things that fire up when you encounter high do psilocybin experiences that would lead you to the development of language glossolalia the the connection of sounds and and objects and and bringing things together in a in a manner of communication also so they they realized that in low doses it increases visual Acuity it makes people more uh Amorous makes people hornier they're going to have more sex they're going to be better Hunters because they could see better they're going to be a more sensitive to the the environment they're going to be more aware Edge detections different there's like so many different things that happen that if you're thinking about what made people people it's a mystery we want to pretend that we understand things because of the fossil record and this and that sure we kind of understand but every now and then we find a new human that we didn't even know exist like Dennis ens what was that not even 20 years ago I don't think so now there's a whole other branch of human beings that they weren't even aware of 20 years ago whatever the [ __ ] happened that took us from all the other primates that are still here and made us this it's pretty profound and I have a feeling that psychedelics were at least involved in that process that's my belief and my belief is that the sweeping psychedelics Act of 1970 that they passed essentially to Target civil rights activists and anti-war activists that's what they did they wanted to go after the hippies and they went after the hippies with MK Ultra with Tom o Neil So brilliantly outlines in his book chaos they went after it and they created the Manson family they created that family they they taught that guy how to do that so that that guy would kill people and he would be a psychopath and now hippies would be psychop pass and then all this anti-war [ __ ] would just get stopped by sensible people then schedule W everything everything Sil ayid marijuana all down the board everything becomes schedule one the most illegal of illegal things so all these people who are experien all these Ken keesy people and you know all the LSD people of the 6s all those people become criminals instantly and they just threw water on the whole movement and it worked it really worked it was Nixon and and all the people that were in charge back then if you look at what happened from 1960 to 1980 this confusing era of the 70s where the effects are wearing off and then you get into the 80s and everybody's doing coke and they have makeup on and big hair and the music sucks it's like something happened something happened and what happened was they completely removed the very thing that had changed culture so radically from the ' 50s to the' 60s like I'm a gigantic fan of 1960s automobiles I love them there's something about the shapes of them the way they sound I mean part of it is that I grew up in the'80s and those are the cars we all wanted when we were kids you know if a guy drove by in a 1969 Camaro we would all be like whoa look at it look at that thing it was but there's something about those shapes there's something about the designs of those cars that resonates so strongly today a 1990 car ain't worth [ __ ] nobody wants your [ __ ] 1990 car 1990 Camaro get the [ __ ] out of here with that thing but if you have a 1968 Camaro people will stop in a parking lot and stare at it what is that I think those guys were on drugs I think all those guys were on drugs I think the guy who created a Corvette had to be on drugs they felt something the same way Hendrix felt something when he was on stage playing guitar and a away no nobody had ever heard before that guy came out of nowhere and everybody was like what the [ __ ] is he doing it was so different that Eric Clapton watched him for the first time and was like I should probably quit playing guitar like what the [ __ ] am I doing compared to this guy like Jesus Christ everybody was like humbled and confused by it psychedelic inspired 100% 100% And there's something about throwing water on that in the 1970s that I think is a massive disservice to our civilization a massive disservice because it's equated these things with people that have poor discipline and bad social skills and Naro Wells who fail in society and that's not true and all these people that I know that are billionaires I know people that are like super rich people that run these uh financial institutions and I know a lot of like brilliant venture capitalist guys and Brilliant Tech Guys and almost all of them are enthusiasts almost all of them have had these experiences and they're all kind of quiet about it and it's very unfortunate it's very unfortunate because of these stupid laws that were passed 50 years ago we've gotten ourselves in this weird crunch where we've made things illegal that could massively help people progress in life and sort things out if we could figure out how to manage them correctly if we could run proper studies about what is the correct dose is there a person that has a certain sort of biological makeup that makes these drugs problematic should we find out who's maybe someone's allergic to them there's many medications and many different compounds and many plants and natural things that people are allergic to Let's avoid that let's try to figure out what works for some people what what doesn't work let's have legitimate counselors that could guide people through experiences people that have experienced it themselves and can understand how to do this with intent and possibly Aid your life they have been shown to be hugely beneficial for soldiers for our military men coming and women coming back from overseas experiencing horrific trauma to help them get past that and yet they're illegal still we're both middle-aged men right so who is telling us what we can and can't do this is preposterous this is other men our age that haven't had these experiences maintaining this control on them in an a completely ignorant way they don't even know what they are they don't know what these things are they don't know what the experience is and yet they want it to be kept out of the hands of kids we got to keep it off the streets we've got to keep drugs away from our society and you don't know what you're talking about it might be what why we're here and it also the absence of it might be why we're so [ __ ] up it might be why we're so disconnected why we're so disjointed and our society is so hypocritical I mean the most pro-life people are also pro-death penalty it's like across the board everything the people that you know want no crime but don't want to stop the emergence of crime by funding programs to try to fix the inner cities and they want to there's our whole thing is disconnected and I have a feeling that a big part of that is that we have not been given access to tools that have helped people literally become what we are today you know if you read Brian Mur rescue's work and if he's correct and these people that are studying the ucini Mysteries and the the literal emergence of democracy as we know it probably all of it came out of psychedelic experiences e