Transcript for:
Exploring Drugs and Warfare History

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day you go pleasure to meet you I'm very happy to be here I'm actually quite thrilled I'm quite thrilled to have you here uh this is your book it's called tripped Nazi Germany the CIA and the dawn of the Psychedelic Age first of all how did you get involved in studying this well this had a lot to do with my previous book which is called Blitz drugs in the Third Reich and um I mean the Nazis were really into math basically they were the first ones to understand that methamphetamine can be can change the war effort they basically doped their soldiers so that was an interesting story that I told in Blitz and also uh I spoke about Hitler's consumption which is quite outrageous actually and while I was doing the research I was in many archives because um I'm not a historian I I I usually write novels I started out writing three novels and then suddenly I became a non-fiction writer I I was I was trying to understand what does that mean and I I thought it meant to do historical writing to actually go into archives and look at original documents and not just lean on other books which is what many historians actually do which I found out later they just read books from colleagues and then make up their own [ __ ] but to actually go into the archive is very time consuming uming but I thought everyone does that actually no one does that so I was looking at all the archives and at one point I was in the archive of the memorial of the Concentration Camp of DHA so very serious archive because they host like all the documents what the SS did in D and so it's a it's an intense experience to go to that archive and actually look at because they wrote down everything like every experiment the the Nazis did in concentration camps was like written down because it was like pseudo science so I found documents while I was researching Blitz relating to tests with psychoactive substances and that was like that was not what I expected because the Nazis had been you know enthusiastic about methamphetamine but I had never that was the first time I saw like something that related Nazis and psychedelics and I thought that's that's quite strange that's quite interesting obviously I need to get to the bottom of this so I asked the arist can I see like all the all the dark doents what did the SS actually do with psychedelics which ones did they use why did they test them what were they looking for and he said well I'm very sorry but all documents are in America because when American Military liberated d one of the things they do is they take a lot of documents and they took all the Psychedelic research done by the Nazis with them so I knew I had to go to America probably to the national archives in in college park close to Washington biggest archive in the world find it there but I didn't have time while I was doing blitzed and blitzed was also already a complete story so I thought I save that that psychedelic theme for another book and this other book is now being published as tripped wow so before this you'd had no understanding that the Nazis had used psychedelics you you only knew that they we we all know that the meth thing and we've seen Hitler at the 36 Olympics where he's rocking back and forth he's look he's jacked out of his mind I mean the joke about Blitz is that I was actually the first one to write about this I mean now we all know about it but before that no one knew about it before 2015 when this book was published in Germany the Nazis were still seen globally and also in Germany as this like pure movement that was like I spoke to my grandfather when I was a teenager and I I was you know obviously criticizing him for his involvement I wanted to know what did he do and he did some [ __ ] and then he always said under Hitler everything was in order like he praised that Law and Order aspect and that Law and Order aspect of the Nazis obviously doesn't correspond to like a drug using Society so no one knew that the Nazis were taking drugs until I found out until I found documents for blitz so um but this so I was not surprised to to to find more and more stuff what what they were doing with drugs but then I I I was surprised that they actually also used psychedelics because psychedelics were totally knew you know 43 LSD was invented so it was it's kind of I really was wondering whether Nazis already getting their hands on LSD which was just so new that partly anyone in the world knew about this so this is this is the story of trip so Hoffman he synthesized LSD in 43 correct right so was there any evidence of anyone using something similar to LSD before that I know they they've studied some of um ancient pottery from G and they found Urgot in it and Urgot which contains very similar compound to LSD well OT is the alkaloid U of of of the fungus uh which which grows on rye and and and and so so LSD uh LSD uh like this from Urgot LSD is made basically so actually LSD is not a synthetic drug as many people believe but it actually is based on on a fungus extra which grows on Ry and the Swiss the Swiss company Sandos they produced only Urgot based medicines like they started uh after um the first world war it was like a startup Sandos was a color manufacturing company and they made a lot of money after the war because everything had to be rebuilt in Europe stuff had to be repainted so companies that made paint made a lot of money so they invested in a pharmaceutical branch and they hired one guy to kind of come up with an idea how to make money in the pharmaceutical world this guy was arur stol he later became the CEO of Sandos and arur stol was the first one to crack Urgot because this fungus is is quite poisonous actually in the Middle Ages this created Mass hallucinations in Europe un you know unwittingly people were eating like contaminated bread right we're having like horrific Visions actually limbs fell off because this ergot is very very poisonous alkaloid but as we know from par celus the dosage makes the poison so if you that was st's idea you take a very poisonous thing the ergot and you extract like you you you're still able to use the the force that's within it as a medicine this is how biochemistry that's basically the foundation of biochemistry so sto was able to crack the Urgot and the first medicine he made was a was a migraine medicine which which came out I think in 1923 by sunos very successful so he immediately hit the jackpot wow he became like the Urgot god of the pharmaceutical world so he developed more and more medicines with Urgot one of them for example is still used today when in childbirth it contracts the the the blood vessels after the birth so you can stop a bleeding otherwise I guess bleeding would go on much longer in childbirth so Sandos made the first effective medicine because Urgot kind of makes you makes the blood vessels contract yeah weren't they trying to develop a drug to induce labor when they initially created LSD or this is this is all the Urgot kind of research I mean the whole company was just doing Urgot so they were looking at all kinds of things that Urgot could be good for just to you know make have new products on the market so and and Urgot before I mean this is a company based in Switzerland which is now novaris something like the fourth biggest pharmaceutical company in the world or something I mean very successful company still they they bought Sandos and now it's noar but it's it's kind of the same thing so Sandos at one point needed so much Urgot that they started manufacturing it in switzland like they went into a specific region called the ental which was famous for its cheese and it's it's also famous for its bad weather so mold grows on rye anyhow so they thought this is the right area to industrialize um the the Urgot uh uh manufacturing like the growth of Urgot and the farmers were like we were always trying to get away from the Urgot the Urgot is poisonous and suddenly they had to make it and and the Swiss company paid 20 Franks I think a kilo 20 Franks a kilo and Ry was only like seven Franks a kilo so the the farmers switched to basically producing poison and then I mean not poison but a very poisonous mushroom you could say like a fungus like you don't want to eat this thing you know you don't want to that was the problem you harvest Rye you make bread out of it and then there's like a little bit of Urgot because on some of the of the of the Rye uh Urgot grows and then the bread is poisonous that was the problem in the Middle Ages so right Farmers don't like it now they had to produce it and suddenly SOS in Basel Switzerland had um huge amounts of Urgot in their storage and they needed to make more and more products to you know use the raw materials that they had so expensively produced in the Ile so stall hired further chemists one of them was Albert Hoffman the famous discover of LSD so he was not looking for like a mind-blowing drug or anything he was looking for actually a stimulant because this was late 30s in Germany Nazi Germany a stimulant um that was made from the nicotine acid nicotine acid diamide no it was actually a Swiss product but from from another company nicotine acid diamide was I don't know the brand name it had a brand name it was quite successful medicine and he thought if I take lysergic acid diamide lysergic acid being the acid within the ergod maybe we'll also have a potent stimulant but they didn't they weren't looking for a stimulant actually for the mind they were looking for a physical stimulant like something like pervitin like meth like something that keeps you going I mean this was this was at a time when stimulants were you know sought after not they didn't have coffee like we have today we just go we drink a coffee in the morning they didn't really have that that's why methamphetamine was so successful in Germany because you could just you know buy it anywhere and you take a tablet in the morning and it's like drinking like it's like being on coffee the whole time you know so the stimulant was was was was what he was looking for and then like he something came into his bloodstream it's a it's it's a bit you know he tries later he tried to make it a bit mythical sounding like somehow the substance got into his bloodstream and he felt like weird Sensations and different he saw different colors so he thought this is actually a very different type of thing like what is this lysergic uh acid diamide LSD what is it so he did then a first self experiment which was kind of normal at the time he took a very very low dose what he thought 250 micrograms but as we know today that's actually quite a high dose of LSD so he had an ex an extremely strong experience and he told this to stall the CEO he said I just took this like 250 micrograms I mean this is a Swiss chemist in a Swiss lab and suddenly he's like full on tripping he tried to get home somehow his assistant like brought him home on a bicycle he was at his house and the wall started you know collapsing onto him and the doctor came and he said to his doctor I I think I'm going mad you know I I I'm po poisoned myself I don't know what's going on the doctor was like feeling his pulse pulse normal like eyes normal like on LSD you don't have a strong physical reaction but you have very strong mental reaction so so he had this and the doctor just couldn't see it and before actually Hoffman had tested LSD uh on on mice uh and at sandor and the mice also didn't show anything because you can't they didn't like run around excitedly like if you give mice cocaine they're like they you can see the difference but if you give them LSD you can't see it because you can't get into their mind maybe they don't even have a trip because they don't have a conscious like us but certainly on humans it works very potently and so he communicated this with the CEO and CEO was like I don't believe you I think you made a mistake with the dosage then they they repeated it and then they actually created at zandos and I think this is kind of funny if you picture like a conservative pharmaceutical Swiss company in the late 40s in basa they they created an intoxication room like they made a nice room within the company they didn't they called it Rous R meaning intoxication in German and Hoffman said I had a very strong Rous with this stuff I don't know what this is so they invited like uh secretaries and bookkeepers and chemists and people working in the cafeteria they all could come into this room and take LSD like the secretary is actually sitting there typing what they would what they would relate and they all had a great experience that's the funny thing because they had never had any bad today when we take LSD we have so much uh discourse about LSD in our mind automatically they didn't have that they just took strangely substance like LSD 25 they took like 50 micrograms and they wrote down I I I I write about this in trip like for the first time I feel connected to my human to my to my fellow human being so I'm looked out and saw the clouds and like had like ideas about uh connectivity and how we are part of the of the universe basically like these kind of hippie LSD thoughts that we classically associate with they they had them like very purely like from that they just had them wased down and then they were thinking and this was in 1943 imagine the situation in Europe in 1943 it's at the height of the of World War II people are dead injured traumatized so they they thought at sunders maybe this is going to be like a blockbuster you know we give this then they tested it also on sick people in in a in a hospital in Zur they gave it to like a depressed patient like I also stud these reports like a depressed Swiss farmer was like chronically depressed he takes LSD and he took it like three times and he could they they released him out of the psych psychiatric ward of because he was cured he was he was good he said I'm fine I I re I'm not depressed anymore so Sanders really thought they had a blockbuster they thought this is LSD is going to be the big thing and um the big question of obviously is what went wrong you know that is what interested me in tripped what happened because also why I researched LSD and I I had been interested in LSD for a long time but then I decided to write a book and I researched it and I found a study by a company called jusus which is an American company their name referring obviously to the Greek ritual and they had done um lowd dosage tests with LSD on Alzheimer patients and they found that the very same receptors that Alzheimer degenerates and kills these receptors are being stimulated by LSD so they their study which I then discussed with an leading Alzheimer researcher in Germany and he also he's looking at this white paper and he said this is actually quite good and I said so when is it going to happen he said well this is a bit more complicated than you think you know because LSD is illegal it's not even this in America I guess you have like universities can do research but this is also a new thing you know when Nixon illegalized LSD in 1966 all the research was illegalized so couldn't even research whether it's as dangerous as you know the government said it would be so let me just finish finish this thought uh I I bring this white paper to my father because my mother suffers from Alzheimer and I I'm saying to him I'm writing this book as you know and I found this and shouldn't we have a look at this because he's he takes care of my mother and he's quite frustrated that that there's no potent medicine available to him that his doctor basically says sorry um and he's a former judge he was quite a high judge in Germany he sent people to prison for drugs so for him to even consider giving an illegal drug to his wife is a big leap for him but you know he's a rational thinking man so he looked at this white paper he studied it and he said you know what in court when I was in court as a judge I always you don't know what is the truth but you you know what is a good story like a incredible story that's how I determined as a judge what I believe if someone tells something that Rings true to me and right now I'm having a study that LSD is helpful but also I'm having the law that it's illegal can you please find out the true story now what is LSD why is it illegal so from that point onward I did the research that is in tripped which was supposed to be called LSD for mom actually that was my working title for the book and I think it's a better title that's a good title yeah it's a great title so LSD for Mom that was my I who who picked tripped did the editors pick tripped my German editor didn't want LS de for Mama which is the German translation which I think is the perfect title it's not even it's even better in German for Mama he somehow convinced me to use a different title in Germany and all the you know this is translated to many different countries and they always go to the German if the Germans would have called it LD for it would be called LSD for in America LD p in France but because in Germany a different title was was chosen the strongest stuff which is a little bit different in German St then every country was like thinking what how should we call it I guess they call it trip because of the success of Blitz they wanted to have but I think LSD for mom is a better title I like it yeah it's great um because it's true you know I was then really research for my father and my mother and I came back after all this research uh with the Swiss company and the Nazi connection which will come to I guess in a second I came back to my father and I presented him this story and then he decided to actually try it because he said I understand now that LSD is not illegal because it's dangerous that there are different reasons why it's illegal and these different reasons are explained in trip so we we gave we spoke obviously to my mother also because you have to get consent yeah so she gave her consent and she started using LSD once in a while you know not not chronically obviously um but like twice a week or maybe the next week only once only low dosages and my father also took them he never felt anything because a micro do you're not supposed to feel a trip or intoxication it just works in your brain um but my mother actually did feel it because her brain is attacked by Alzheimer so for her that was like her cheeks became redder she would look at us one time um we also then did mushrooms which is a very similar uh molecule actually COC cybin is very similar to the LSD molecule on Mother's Day we gave her a little piece of mushroom chocolate and she took it and there was a newspaper on the table and she hadn't even you know looked at newspaper as an object of desire for her for about a year my father then later told me and she picked up the newspaper when the chocolate was working and started reading the headlines and my father was like this is a medicinal miracle and my father's really like a a rational skeptical guy you know but it was it was amazing so that is also what I what I write about in tripped AK LSD for Mom well it's so fascinating there are so many people suffering from alimer in the world and it's illegal basically everywhere except for countries like Portugal that criminalize everything but yet I mean dementia is like the pandemic of the future if I want to use that ugly world pandemic but uh to not allow our scientists to examine this properly for example the p in the pandemic a lot of um during the pandemic like regulations in regards to developing medicines a vaccine especially were lowered because we wanted the government the society wanted a vaccine quick but so this is what has to happen with psychedelics now because we are we are moving like in 2050 I read the numbers there also in the book like a lot of people will have dementia like we will all know someone or we will have it ourselves or our like it's going to grow exponentially or at least a lot so I think our Society should actually shift its focus towards preventing that because I when I spoke to the Alzheimer expert he said yeah of course this could be you could you you could prevent Alzheimer if you would know like how to stimulate the brain and so far by 2050 153 million people expect to be living with dementia worldwide up from 57 million in 2013 2019 rather largely due to population growth and population aging um don't they believe that Alzheimer's has something to do with diet as well isn't that what they're calling type 3 diabetes yeah and I think it could be true um I mean the reason for Alzheimer is you know you have to see it separately from The Cure you know the reason the reason I think I've come actually to the conclusion that sugar is quite bad for you and um yeah I have I was quite a sugar addict I really was like I could not put down a a a bar of chocolate I could not eat one piece I just couldn't because I love it so much but then I just realized it's not good and I stopped it and it's actually possible to stop I eat like now like a little bit and it's actually no problem um so I I think well there's there's a few reasons for for dementia one is also the um the so-called neuroinflammation of the brain and that could be caused obviously by Sugar um by by you know by by imbalances in in in in in in in the sugar uh U diet I think um and the inflammation of the brain and that is scientifically proven is being decreased if you take psychedelics so if you take psychedelics every time you take psychedelics your neuroinflammation goes down so that is something that needs to be examined like maybe we should all take maybe once a week a low dosage of it let's say LSD or solos cybin maybe we could prevent like 50% of dementia I mean it's I I I think it's quite plausible and I think not to look into it is not very smart by a society because the costs of dementia I mean the human costs my father suffers quite a bit my mother of obviously she has the disease she suffers the family suffers if someone in the family has Alzheimer the whole family suffers and of of course our you know medical system is very expensive to treat you know dementia like put them in homes whatever so I think we making a a big mistake by not examining this absolutely well it's just a stunning amount of ignorance on our part all the at least anecdotal evidence of the positive benefits of some of these things particularly in micro do usage well it's just not a focus of politics like to legalize drugs has not become a very popular meme among politicians in the 20th century this is also what I examined in tripped I kind of looked at where did where did it actually start where does this prohibitionist approach come from because it's kind of weird as a child I watched a Star Trek it was a TV an American TV show even on German television it was called RI Enterprise in German like spaceship Enterprise and I was always very touched by the beginning when they say boldly go where no man has gone before like that was for me the American like the Western philosophy to to always transcend where you are and and and and uh and that is that totally contradicts our prohibitionist policies um it's like a it's like a chemical wall that the government is setting up in our brain saying like you can go this much with stimulating your brain but you're not allowed to go further like you're not allowed to use LSD which does stimulate the H2 ta receptors you're not you know I think it's contradicts the Western philosophy and actually also I think it contradicts the idea of democracy which uh I which I always uh you know was hot for you know I was always I was I grew up in a small town in in West Germany which was actually occupied by American forces so I was very much connecting with with American culture early on and I I I I always like uh Associated Western culture with freedom and Transcendence and boldly going where no man has gone before that is for me the strength of the West and that is you know what this is for example not what Islam offers Islam says you're not allowed to inter talk you can only believe in this you cannot go further this is actually the problem of all monotheistic religions but for me the West was always like going beyond that so uh I was curious how did this happen this prohibition like who was there one person that decided no people cannot use this anymore and there's there there actually is one person and his name is Harry J ansing I'm sure you're familiar with the guy so I I for this for trip I also went to the Harry J anslinger archives at Penn State University University which was quite interesting because you can see in the archive and in the way like it smells and what what he collected and the letters he wrote and the language he used you can it's a very closed mindset and he was actually able to convince Democratic and Republican president he was like serving under he was bipartisan basically so his anti-drug regime that he was that he was able to create and he created it because the AL prohibition failed and his federal bureau uh of Narcotics was about to be extinct because he had completely failed with the alcohol prohibition and then he thought I have to find a new enemy and the new enemy for him was Mar was actually cannabis and he coined the word marijuana because marijuana sounds foreign it sounds Mexican it sounds something that we don't want in our clean uh White American society well it was a Mexican wild tobacco it was a slang for a Mexican wild tobacco it wasn't cannabis yeah right yeah yeah so that is uh so basically what we could say is that and unfortunately an singer was quite a racist he was like he he openly used words to describe uh afroamerican colleagues that shouldn't be used by white men I guess in like memos this went all the way up to the president wow so but they they always kept him because he was the man that defends America from The Scorch of foreign influences which is drugs in this case from China the opium from Mexico the marijuana so he was he was very good politician basically like a anti-drug lobbyist that you know everyone in Washington um loved and so the reasons for the for the for the prohibition in America is not that this anslinger was actually studying LSD and finding out that this is actually dangerous and or marijuana is dangerous that's we really even though we're free in our society we have to you know we have to curb this we have like this is not how it went it's like he wanted to attack the Jazz scene and he knew that the Jazz musicians were smoking a lot of weed so he's you know it's it's very hard to make it illegal to play jazz but you can make marijuana illegal and then you can you know Target Jazz musicians so it's called racial profiling why were they going after jazz music he hated Jazz he thought that he thought that uh I think he he had a I think I think it's a sexual thing actually he because he actually said once when black men smoke reefa they think they're as good as white men and they're going to sleep with women or something like that like that was kind of the world that he was so was it because the Jazz musicians were on stage and people loved them they were cool and they they were only cool because they smoked the weed you know that gave them that that diabolical power like over the audience and like the groove you know if you take the weed away from them they're just they're going to be like boring people you [Laughter] know that so that guy that guy really did a lot of damage in my mind to the American society it's just stunning that 90 years later we're still dealing with the aftermath of that you know and also in conjunction with his uh Union with William Randolph Hurst yeah William Randolph Hurst who owned Publications had a vested financial interest in keeping marijuana illegal or making marijuana illegal because of hemp right you know the whole story about the decorticator yeah are you talking about the wood now no decorticator was a a device that was manufactured it was created in the early 1930s and it was on the cover of Popular Science magazine when they called it they said hemp the new billion doll crop of the future all right so because hemp was a very difficult plant to take the fiber and convert it into paper and convert it into textiles things like that they used slave labor for the most part until the cotton gin came along when the cotton gin came along that became more effective to use cotton than to use hemp it was easier then in the early 1930s they came out with the decorticator now the decorticator was this machine see if you could get get a version of that Jamie um so the decorticator allowed them to effectively that's the decorticator so this machine they would run the hemp stocks through it and it would break them down uh far more uh economically much much easier more more effectively than the way they would do it by hand previously oh right so hemp the new billion doll crop so hemp you know find that cover of that magazine so hemp um was a far more effective paper it's much more durable like give you take hemp very difficult to tear and in fact uh the earliest drafts of the Declaration of Independence were on hemp so this hemp the billion dollar crop so this was Popular Science magazine and um William brandolph Hurst didn't just own Hurst Publications he also owned paper mills yeah um so he had thousands and thousands of Acres of trees and forests that they were converting into paper and now all of a sudden there was this new product that was going to destabilize his industry and so yeah hemp is a disruptor you know exactly so when they made marijuana illegal a lot of the people that were voting on this didn't even understand they were making cannabis illegal they didn't understand that it was the same thing yeah they didn't understand that it was the same literal textile that created canvas all the great works like if you look at you know Leonard Da Vinci's paintings is on hemp it's on hemp it's on hemp it's on canvas it's on cannabis paper it's on a very durable form of paper have you ever touched cannabis paper like hemp paper it's crazy it's really hard to tear my friend uh Todd McCormack he was a uh early um um grower in Los Angeles when marijuana was medically legal and he wound up going to jail because in federal court you couldn't say that it was for medical purposes they just Pro they just prose Ed him based on the fact that he was a drug dealer instead of someone who was legally in the state of California growing medical marijuana he had a stock on his table of hemp I don't know if you've ever felt a Hemp stock have you ever picked one up no it is crazy it's like Styrofoam you pick it up it feels like nothing but it's hard like Oak but it's not heavy it's very strange it's like an alien plant very very weird so that stuff converts incredibly to clothing you can make building materials out of it there's a thing called hemp cre that is this incredibly effective building material that you can make houses out of out of hemp and it's incredibly sustainable because if you have an acre of trees if you chop down that acre of trees and make paper out of it it takes forever to grow enough trees in that acre to grow them to the point where you could Harvest them and make paper out of them cannabis if you're growing hemp rather if you grow grow hemp stocks in the same field you got new hemp in a few months and now you have paper again so you think so William Randolph Hurst demonized cannabis for the particular interest that he had with paper with his paper mills and to stop the hemp industry I mean they were quite close allies in a way yeah anslinger and Hurst and in his Publications the word marijuana was for the first time mhm publicized so they kind of and with a racial Elemental blacks and Mexicans were smoking this new drug and raping white women right right exactly and then the reer madness movies which are fantastic pieces of propaganda they're absolutely hilarious if you watch them today especially knowing what we know about marijuana like these people were just crazed it was more meth-like than it was you know what they were depicting right absolutely so anslinger 90 years ago the propaganda that he pushed out into society the way that infected people like a mind virus the effects of that still today when people find out that you have taken marijuana or that you regularly enjoy marijuana people freak out they're like oh what are you doing what are you doing to yourself oh my God you're out there taking drugs meanwhile this person's on anti-depressants and they drink alcohol smoke cigarettes and take Xanax like there's sanction drugs that are far worse for you it's not a drug-free Society yeah I mean I I talked about this sugar thing that I sto that's crazy drug and that actually made me realize that we as humans take drugs every day like every human takes drugs every day I'm drinking coffee I got these little nicotine pouches yeah which is interesting you know that we don't acknowledge that really we think like or people who are against drugs they they kind of vote they kind of say we stand for a sober Society but it never is a sober Society no we just have some legalized drugs and some drugs that are illegalized my friends that are in Alcoholics Anonymous they all drink cigarettes and drink or drink coffee and smoke cigarettes they're all doing a drug they're just doing a drug that doesn't completely destroy their life I mean I thought about this you know writing having written Blitz and trip both on drugs and history I was I'm now trying to come up with a with a more with a larger narrative and I'm I'm I mean we at your in your podcast a lot has been talked about the stoned ape Theory right yes I think it's very interesting and I think it's time for kind of a new uh a new world history as you may I think because we I think we actually are Stone sapiens I think that this cognitive Revolution that happened in Africa it's it's uh as Stam said it's not a theory it's a what is it a a theory is when there's already proof it's a hypothesis it's a hypothesis but I think that a lot speaks for this hypothesis um I think it makes sense if you see that early humans were for example depicting mushrooms in drawings that these mushrooms have some kind of relevance to them and um our Edge uh which is something that Harari writes about over other uh homos like the Neanderthals or also just monkeys large monkeys our Edge was that we that we had this cognitive Revolution that we had a Neo uh cortex forming and that we suddenly had an understanding about time so we're not just living in the moment where we know there's a past and there's a future so that creates a different language and the the different language more abstract more complex language than for example the Apes you know Apes can organize up to like a 100 then their language kind of fails them but humans suddenly not suddenly I mean this is over long periods of time could could develop a language that enabled them to form larger groups that's how they became dominant also dominant o over other um homo species like the Neanderthals and um we know today that they have had um uh these plans uh at their availability so it it makes sense to imagine that actually we found maybe it was a mushroom maybe it was iboga which is something still used uh in African societies and which now is again being examined as the new psychoactive hot drug uh it it could be a mixture or some groups could have had this others could have had that but it seems to be pretty clear that like the founding moment of our race is actually this Transcendence like suddenly you realize this moment where I'm in is not all there's more like there's a future there's a past that is what Transcendence is so we are basically um that's why I call our species this we're Stone sapiens like we were stoned from the start so drugs which transferred into language into also music into rituals because we wanted to keep the drug also secret from others who are not you know from from apes or neand so rituals start existing like a person who kind of has the drugs and hands them out so this is at this is at the beginning um of uh of our race I think uh and and we were we were so powerful because we could we could develop that larger language than the Apes we would only organize up until 100 and now we have the problem uh we poor Stone sapiens that we have created Global problem but we don't have a global narrative like we're falling into the Western camp we have China we have like we have we we don't have a global narrative like our narrative usually stops within the national context like there's the American narrative there's the Western narrative which also includes Europe there's the German narrative but there's no human Global narrative and that's what I intend to change with my book Stone sapiens which will be the next book and kind of conclude the trilogy of these like how how drug and humans kind of SYM symbiotic in a way well there's a for lack of a better term there's a Consciousness that exists in mushrooms there's something that you interact with and we don't necessarily understand what's going on but if you could imagine a lower primate interacting with a higher Consciousness on a regular basis and then adapting this is the theory of why the human brain size doubled over a period of 2 million years and if you ever listen to Dennis mcken described this Dennis McKennon describes it brilliantly because he's an actual scientist and the way he explains the effects of psilocybin how it had you know what the effects it would have on the mind in terms of developing language and just expanding our creativity expanding our ability to see things makes better Ed Edge detection makes you have better visual Acuity makes them more um more horny they're going to more likely to breathe more Community there's the there's also this potential for a type of you know for a lack of a better term a type of Mind melding you know there's a there's a a type of Consciousness expanding yeah energy that happens that it seems to be connected in a in a in a way that we can't measure where human beings interact with each other without words you know telepathine was exactly what what they when they first found harming they when they found some certain trees that were part of the uh components of iasa they they try to call it telepathine but due to the rules of scientific nomenclature that substance had already been identified as harming but the researchers that were taking this are saying we are experiencing these telepathic melds there's something that's going on with these things and we want to get to the bottom of it was let's call it telepathine because it it imparts a type of telepathy well for tripped I became very interested in that question that you just um uh articulated what actually happens in the brain because that is quite hard to figure out actually how do they work and what actually changes in the brain and there's one researcher in Zurich again in Switzerland they're really experts on psychedelics actually because they didn't sign all the UN treaties because they're like a neutral more neutral country than others so they actually have a little bit more freedom for research and um there is a professor called France Fen Vier at University in Zurg and he was able to start in the early 90s giving his patients psilocybin and LSD and DMT and then he put them in like he examined their brains in brain scanners like Imaging like Hightech you know imaging technology and he found that actually that you can actually measure it you or you can see the changes that happen in psychedelics and what happens is that the so-called default mode Network that is a term that brain scientists use to describe what Freud would just just would call the ego like the center in our brain like the boss in our brain like the the guy I guess it would be um other the woman in our brain that like says now I'm on The Joe Rogan podcast and everything's cool and you know I I'm I'm a writer whatever and you like this is this is like we have always this control in force within us otherwise we would go basically insane like what's going on here this is this cool am I in danger you know basically am I in danger like there's this thing with the Ghost with the with with the rifle is going to shoot like so the default mode Network makes sure that this doesn't happen that we function and it makes a lot of sense and actually under psychedelics he could measure that this part of the brain gets a little less energy so it's a little it's it's not switched off completely I mean if you take a lot of psyched it might be switched off completely then you have what's called like a full IM verion experience but if you take a little it's also Switched Off like a like gets a little less energy and that other parts of the brain peripheral parts that are usually like following the main guy they they can communicate more on on psychedelics so what happens in your brain is actually it is actually a change in you know the brain chemistry and what also happens is what is called the neuroplasticity is enhanced neuroplasticity is the ter term for basically the brain is not obviously like a a fixed like uh non-moving object like my fist or something it's a it's constantly kind of moving the brain you know and neuroplasticity describes that um that ability to constantly adapt to like the situation and it be flexible be know make new connections that's neuroplasticity and he could also measure that neuroplasticity is enhanced ened when you take psychedelics that's why also it could become dangerous if it's enhanced too quickly and you're not experienced I mean we're on the jogan experience so we we we're all experienced I hope we have an experienced audience but if you're unexperienced that could be too much you know then then the the stimulation of your brain or the change or the disruption of your daytoday way of thinking could be overwhelming but if you if you handle it properly it's actually uh that that is that is I guess what is The Beneficial aspect of the Psychedelic experience you enhance neuroplasticity in a way I don't know if becoming smarter is the right term because what is Smart what is intelligence but we it's a fact that neuroplasticity is enhanced and because of this kind of Orthodox thought forms like depressed people always think the same thing like I'm not worthy or I can't you know depression is a is a loop or Loops in your brain of always this and LSD especially s and they disrupt that because you know other parts of the brain suddenly and come into play and the default mode Network which has you know this disease of depression suddenly is not you know the calling the shots anymore that's why psychedelics have proven effective against depression the first study that showed this clinical study was done in 2015 actually in America at John's Hopkins University that psilocybin helps against you know very severe depression when nothing else um helps so we know a little bit about what happens in the brain but obviously the brain is still a black box that's why so many scientists when LSD came out um in the in the late 40s and early 50s especially in America were enthusiastic they thought finally we have a tool with which we can you know shine like a torch shining into the black box of the brain because it works in such small quantities there was actually a lot of Hope in the beginning that original uh enthusiasm enthusiasm by sers that I talked about when they thought we have a game changer we have a blockbuster that everyone will become you know will heal from LSD um that many scientists actually believe that and the interesting question is and we're like making a long circle now what went wrong like why wasn't it developed into a medicine that you can get at your dispensary like you can get cannabis products now for example in the state of California uh why well you can get them here too which is weird Okay you get them here like I said there's like different Deltas so we can get legal cannabis sell it Society is still very insecure when it comes to drugs because we have been bombarded with the propag are horrifically dangerous prop you know this propaganda when I was in high school was this is your brain on drugs you know it was just say no Nancy Reagan everyone was just say no yeah I was I was also in America actually in high school I graduated from Flint poers Catholic High School in Michigan class of 88 and I had been taught because I was sent from Germany as like a German exchange student I was taught before don't mix with the drug people there will be drug people at the high school and they will approach you and they will try to draw you in and then you won't get out again and I really believed that I mean I was like well there are people like that that is true look if you fall into the opiate crowd if you fall into a crowd of people right well weed is very different but the the the problem is the blanket term right the blanket term of drugs yeah it's a big problem yeah but also if you fall into the weed crowd in high school it's very possible that you'll fall into a crowd of Nar duells who will ruin their lives and they they just get high all day and they wake and bake and they abuse it just like you can abuse sugar right just like you can abuse alcohol I actually think that cannabis Is A Dangerous Drug because it is quite addictive yeah it can be unlike LSD LSD is not addictive LSD is actually when the the guy who invented AA he he himself had made an LSD uh therapy and got away from alcohol using LSD and he wanted to incorporate LSD therapy into the AA program and then didn't do it because I guess it was pressure or whatever we'll come to the we'll come to the pressure in a second um so LSD is actually non a non-addictive drug that's for example in Germany now we legalized cannabis it's legal everywhere in the country I think they should have legalized LSD and not cannabis because cannabis is is actually harder to use I think it should I think it should be legal you know I I think I'm I think it's good that it's legal but I think it's a little bit of a more problematic drug actually to legalize because it's also so easy to use um but um to legalize LSD which is like I think it I think it should be legalized you know all over the globe because I think think it's a it's a brain food that's what I think after studying it you know but saying this sounds like completely outrageous you know LSD like so many people are afraid of it so I hope with trip to take a little bit of the edge of you know to actually show where it comes from and I would like to tell that story where that comes from yeah if I may please CU that's the core story because when I had found these SS records that they had used because you asked before was there another psychedelic substance yes there was masculine masculine was already kind of investigated by scientists since the 20s it was also a German there was a German um scientist called bearinger he was really he was at the University of heidleberg and he was really into masculine and he was like doing it with his students and making tests and how does it change Consciousness and what happen so he was he was basically one of the pioneers of psychedelic research you could say so the Nazis knew about masculine and the Nazis wanted to find a truth drug Hitler was a paranoid person he always thought it's actually true that people are conspiring against him there there were quite a lot of assassination attempts on his life he survived them all but there were a lot of people who didn't like him I mean Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship and most people supported Hitler but there were also people who did not you know there were people in the resistance even within you know the Army who thought he was an idiot uh high ranking officers who like were like a bit more brilliant than him and who knew that he was running things to the ground so he wanted he gave the order uh to find a truth drug like it's the wet dream of intelligence you give someone a substance and then you can control that person you can extract secrets from that person you can kind of you you that you can control a person and the Nazis the the SS even with their torture methods had been unable to extract all the secrets they wanted to extract from prisoners especially polish uh resistance Fighters had been very resistant even against SS torture like they wouldn't say I got the job from the British intelligence or what you know they they just wouldn't talk even when you tortured them so Hitler wanted this the drug that would solve this problem and um one man that was put in charge with this is a chemist called rishard [ __ ] Richard [ __ ] um who actually received the Nobel Prize for chemistry he was a brilliant mind but he was a Nazi so he didn't like many scientists left Germany or writers left Thomas man left Germany when the Nazis took power but some people States some writer states site some scientist State and this [ __ ] actually became you know he's really working for Hitler he was developing a Nerf poison um Zarin which was deadly for Hitler he was and if you worked for Hitler as a scientist obviously you got all all the the re the grants you need the money you needed you were you know you had a great time basically if you sold your soul to the devil so richad [ __ ] was in charge um with h finding the truth drug and um and and then the interesting thing is um because I was in the Novartis Archive of Sandos because I wanted to find the link between a Swiss pharmaceutical company Who develops LSD and then the SS who tests it in daa like how did how did the SS know like and did they really test as uh LSD also in D or was it just masculine because they write in the reports that I then found in the US masculine and another odorless colorless substance was being used and LSD is that famous odorless colorless substance like I could put put a drop of LSD in your coffee you wouldn't even notice it which is good for SE for intelligence service you want to uh do someone without that person knowing it so LSD was kind of perfect but how did the Nazis did did they actually know about LSD was it LSD that was kind of what I wanted to find out and when I was in the archive of Sandos I wanted to find like papers like did they sell LSD to the SS I was curious to find something and the archivist um he was very skeptical of me because he sensed that I was on to something like he was protecting basically the archive because the archive SOS is not a public archive if you go to the National Archives of the United States or the federal Archive of Germany it's a public archive the archivists want you to find the information they will reveal like the find book which like has like it's a database it has it shows you everything that's in the archive so you have a it takes sometimes days or weeks to actually figure out what's all there but you have theoretically an overview of everything that's in the archive but a company archive like Novar archive there was no find book The archist said to me just tell me what you're looking for and then I will find it for you which is basically [ __ ] you know CU in a way you have to he it's basically under his control the documents that he gives to you you know you have no you don't even know what's in the archive behind that guy sitting in front of you um but and I wanted to see like I knew that Albert Hoffman wasn't a Nazi like I had learn I had known a lot about Albert Hoffman and he I never heard anything about him having Nazi connections like giving LSD to Rishad [ __ ] or something but I wanted to see what his boss sto the one we talked about before had the whole like the Urgot God like who was this guy because he as the CEO called the shots for Sanders the pharmaceutical company and then um the iist didn't want me really to see these papers I could sense that and I wanted to come again to the AR how how did you sense that well the first time I was there um he said why is everyone always so interested in LSD you know we have so many beautiful products here and there was like a a Showcase with all the products that Sandos has made and LSD wasn't one of them I said LSD is actually missing from that showcase here and he said well it was never a product I said it was a product it actually had a name it was called delit that was the brand name of LSD it existed you know and he's like yeah you know but we're not so you know it's illegal so they don't they have a a difficult relationship with LSD um and um what the only thing he gave me were the original lab books of Albert Hoffman and it's very easy to flatter like it stuns you like if you're interested in LSD you see like the original lab book you see like his handwriting when he for the first time takes LSD and then his handwriting like he can't hold the pen anymore and you see like this line on the paper that's exciting you know yeah but it's not new you know people have seen that before but so he kind of tricks you into like you see that you're say oh great thank you bye-bye like after you go home but then I was in the Swiss Mountain I was actually visiting a scientist that had researched this OT producing and in the ental I visited this guy on the mountain he showed me the former fields of Sanders uh and then I had the idea I must go back to the archive and look at the papers of the CEO because the CEO calls the shots why wasn't the CEO able to turn this potential game changer into a lucrative medicine what what went wrong was probably on the on the CEO level of the company not not on like the chemist level of the company uh so I wrote an email to the archivist said I'm going to come back tomorrow and I want to look at the papers of the CEO and then he wrote back to me well sorry tomorrow I have too much work you cannot come anymore kind of like that but I just showed up I just showed up at the archive and he opened he said well you're here I don't have any time and I said well I'm here I know it's an archive I can use it and then I was sitting there and I was thinking what can I do and I actually at the time I had some LSD with me because I already I I was already getting it for my mother like so I had it with me and I I said to him I suddenly had an idea and I said to him uh have you ever actually seen LSD and he's like in his Swiss a like no it's illegal I have not seen it and then I asked him do you want to see it he said sure I would like to see it but where could I see it it's no one has it anymore and I said well here here here you go this is this is LSD and he's like studying it he was quite interest like suddenly became interested like oh this is actually LSD that's how it looks and the LSD I I had received had printed on it like these papers the old logo of Sandos so like the chemist who had made this actually in Basel it was made in a black lab obviously kind of made a joke and and put like the logo of s on and he said this is the logo of our old company how is this possible and I said well maybe it's like an omage by the chemist who made these I said do you want one he said what do you mean I said well I give you one as a gift you know you've been so helpful to me and he's like oh this but this yes okay I'll take one and I gave him a trip and um what is the dose that was like 100 micrograms which is quite strong you know I said to him take legit it's legit I said to him take it like when you're in the beautiful Swiss mountains like you're on a walk you know then maybe it's a good time and he's like interested yeah and then he gave it back to me he said I can't I can't for legal reasons I don't think I can accept this I said okay fine took it back and then he said but is there something you want to see maybe today in the archive because he was you know we we had formed a connection suddenly right right and I said yeah actually I would be interested in seeing the the papers of the CEO of atol he said that's not a problem at all and just went and he brought me the folder and as I'm looking through the folder I can see that there's one man that sto was communicating with all through his career and that one man um he sto himself had learned under vetta vetta was the Jewish German master of biochemistry who later by the uh he had to leave Germany you know the Nazis were Prosecuting him also because he was Jewish and vetta was this genius who also received the Nobel Prize and who had uh found out that you know sto's idea from potent plants you extract and then you make medicines from Plants basically because plants are very powerful obviously um so vetta was like the the scientific father of Schall and schol had one other Prodigy child and that was Rishad [ __ ] who by then had been the leading Nazi biochemist so [ __ ] and stall which I saw then in the letters in front of me had been best friends because they had the same had had the same like you know teacher they had exchanged already in the 20s all their research in the 30s especially the Urgot research Kun is very interested in it so now he has the job by Hitler to find the truth drug and then sto says we found this almost magical substance that even in microgram dosages has this strong effect on the mind and [ __ ] obviously became very interested in it and I found a letter um maybe we can pull that one up I don't know if you can find it from 1943 October where [ __ ] and I found this in the archive this was The Smoking Gun basically where [ __ ] thanks uh sto for sending ergotamine which is the precursor to LSD it's like from ergotamine you do one step and then you have LSD and we received agatam Meine in October 1943 from the Swiss company and then um you know the Nazis had their hand on LSD and then it becomes very interested interesting what happens when the Americans find out about that because when the Americans liberated Germany from national socialism uh when they when they won the war basically um certain units had uh attached to them the so-called alsos unit alss oos and the alos unit was responsible for finding German uh nuclear scientists and interviewing them about their research for the nuclear bomb in Nazi Germany because Nazi Germany was also trying to develop a nuclear weapon and the Americans thought they're probably quite far ahead because they're good in science like everything they do they [ __ ] rock um which in this case actually probably wasn't true I don't think the Nazis were so Advanced it's still a bit obure like how far the Nazis really were with nuclear technology uh but this alos was in place and the second job of alus was to find out about biochemical weapons because they also thought rightly so that Hitler had biochemical weapons so one of their first scientists they interviewed was Richard [ __ ] because Richard [ __ ] was a leading Nazi biochemist so in the spring of 1945 and liberated Heidelberg after World War II [ __ ] is being you know interviewed you know and for [ __ ] it's a question of will I cooperate with Americans or will I go to the nberg trial as like a war criminal because he could have ended up on the on the bench for developing sarin a nerve poison so he you know decided to rather extend his career he later came to America was teaching in America um so he told them about LSD he said we were very interested in LSD and those experiments in t could not be finished because there was not enough time D was already liberated they were in the middle of you know finding out if I give a psychedelic to a prisoner can I extract his Secrets can I fully control him these these tests take a bit of time you know you have to do it with several yeah you know it's you don't do it like in in a day so that these these tests were not finished yet but these findings then were very interesting to the American uh military because after the war what started immediately the next War the Cold War against the Soviet Union which was what this then CIA was was founded which CIA called the CIA director Dallas he called it this is brain Warfare It's a totally new type of war and we have to know we have to get ahead of them and they probably are working on brainwashing techniques um so we have to be you know ready to defend ourselves against the Soviet Onslaught with their brainwashing techniques so the the Americans learned actually a lot from the Nazis I I once met in Florida on the beach uh together with my father an SS Marine that was in the 80s when I was an exchange student in Flynn Michigan we took a vacation met my my par my German parents in Florida and we we spoke with this marine and he said yeah we learned so much from the SS and it's true you know the SS the German system was a very was evil system obviously but it was it it was a very functional system you know there was a lot to be learned from them in terms of warfare you know um so the Americans because the Nazis were so interested in this truth drug thought this must be you know this must be interesting we have to look at this so they started now first the American Military then the CIA started now to investigate can LSD actually be the truth drug can it be like uh a pharmaceutical weapon so this is this is actually what went wrong so what went wrong was the Swiss CEO sending samples to the German Nazi biochemist from him it the knowledge goes to the American you know military and then intelligence apparatus that LSD could be abused as a weapon this is what really put LSD on the wrong foot in a way CU there was there was also at the same time in the early 50s a lot of hopeful research at universities in America like brain scientists were they were looking at LC it wasn't illegal yet you know it was it was an interesting thing but the at the then the CIA took took over um the military research first it was the US military they had a professor at Harvard University called beer beer was like the drug expert of the American Army he had also been in the war and then he like he looked at the SS reports from daa and he made a report called report on ego depressant drugs which he sent to Washington so he was kind of the knowledgeable guy that would interpret you know how could uh psychedelic uh molecules be used as drugs and then when in 47 the CIA was founded basically the CIA took over this truth drug research from the from from the military and then becha was sending his reports to the CIA this was done by a guy called Sydney GLE I don't know if you've heard that name he was the head of MK Ultra MK Ultra is basically uh a program first to see whether LSD could be used um as a weapon and godly traveled to Basel Switzerland because he had heard that suos was also selling LSD to the other side of the Iron Curtain there was rumor that the Soviet Union had purchased like 20 million dosages of LSD so he flew to Basel with a suitcase full of cash and put it on the table of stall the CEO and said I want the whole the world supply of LSD I'm here here by buying the world supply of LSD uh which was he said uh your supply like his intelligence like told him that the Sandos had produced something like I don't know it's in the book I forgot the number like 4 kog of LSD and he said I want to buy the whole you know 4 kog is quite a lot you know because it's already potent in micro dosages St said well we only made 400 gram so far they they hadn't even made that much but so he bought the 400 grams and he set a mechanism in place that sto would always inform sto would not sell to the other side of the Iron Curtain that's what the Sandos had to you know basically assure him of course the payback is Sanders can still sell it's all the other medicines in America doesn't have problems with the FDA and the American you know that's that's the that's the pressure yeah um and and and then like Godly takes you know the 400 gr back to the States and is now from now on always informed when like a scientist in an American University acquires uh LSD from zandos because they would not sell it openly in the beginning they would only give it away basically to scientists they were still in the product development phase because they still weren't sure what can LSD like what do we write on the package basically what is what's the indication so um Godly was basically in the driving chair of LSD at that time he got all the information from Basel Switzerland who had LSD in the country he had the most LSD and then he had the idea to really look at how LSD can be used to manipulate people basically that was that was like the big goal and that's not an easy thing to achieve and the way he did it was he let all the universities in the country I think over like over 60 institutions like you know the big universities of this uh big country he let them all you know in their in their special you know uh uh uh uh um uh departments investigate LSD but these tests are expensive and what godp the idea God lip had was University test are often funded by foundations let's say the Rockefeller Foundation like a university wants to make like some pharmaceutical you know test series that goes over two years and involves all these uh uh people that you know have to be paid and it's it's it's expensive like it cost like let's say $200,000 to make like one serious clinical test so that money comes from the Rockefeller foundation for example and the money first goes from the CIA to the Rockefeller foundation so he used not only the Rockefeller Foundation but also the Rockefeller Foundation but other other foundations as like goete so he gave them money and they would Finance uh uh research done in universities which are supposed to be I guess neutral like just trying to figure out like what is you know science is you know you don't want a CIA guy to finance your science and then kind of manipulate through that money how your research is being done and especially all the results going back to the people who you know bring the money so that he was he was uh he was very efficient in setting up this program which then I guess was called MK Ultra and um but that's also that's that's that's that's how LSD really that's what really went wrong with LSD MK Ultra yeah because it dominated a controlling force over the research and uh a lot of research then was tailored to like there was crazy stuff happening like there was even in Canada at a university uh I I I I write about this in in trip this guy and it sounds bit like Stanley kubri movie like he he put people on constant LSD and then had uh speakers under their pillows which would tell them like single sentences like he was he was trying to see can you break can you like really Drive someone mad with LSD for example can you deprogram a brain with LSD so these these are very creepy experiments these are actually human experiments in a way they were a continuation of what the SS started um in D but much more sophisticated and they were done on American uh citizens like the M part of MK Ultra were so-called safe houses the safe houses that was one in um the West Village in Manhattan one on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco um and in these safe houses people would be you know would be approached on the street or in bars uh in in in lower Manhattan and you know invited to like a party come we want to come to to my pad you know I have booze and and and it was like a cool apartment and but there was one large mirror and behind the mirror set an operative was filming and listening in and recording and then they checked like what happens to a person if they receive unwittingly a dosage of LSD you know so this this is uh quite unethical um work that was done they also did Operation midnight climax yeah that's in Telegraph Hill in San Francisco that was a brothel yeah it was it was an apartment they called it the pad uh but they hired um sex workers which then you know got an additional fee from the CIA for giving their clients from them also they received their fee obviously and then giving them LSD but it was kind I think it was a stupid actually uh experiment I mean it's kind of spectacular operation midnight climax looks great in a film I guess sounds good yeah I mean it's it's it's it just show it's but it wasn't very effective you know what do what do you gain what do you see like someone of course has a little bit different sex on L I guess I sex on on LSD but it's it's kind of stupid it never LED anywhere basically Sydney godl wasted a lot of tax money and he brought a lot of suffering to people who were subjected to these unethical tests and he had no result it's definitely not a good thing that they did but if you put your mind into their perspective back then trying to understand the effects of these drugs they probably had limited resources and and without making these things legal and without like opening up the research to everybody to this potentially powerful lifechanging drug I mean this drug could be something that could be used by Foreign governments it could be used against us so they they're probably very secretive in their approach I mean we we kind of had the benefit of of uh you know 2020 hindsight because we're looking back yes it was the Cold War and um I think that they really believe that there these threats from the Soviet Union they were threats from the Soviet Union obviously and um brainwashing is a is a specialty of Communism you know MH so it's uh it's it's clear that they wanted to be um from his perspective it makes sense you know right so um but it didn't help LSD to become a medicine because that was a time when there were no anti-depressant yet developed and no anti psychotics so I think LSD would have had a chance to actually become a very helpful medicine instead of being kind of an an unhelpful weapon because it never worked as a weapon so right no it's definitely unhelpful what they did yeah and it might be understandable but it's it went the wrong way it went the wrong way but it was also indicative of the kind of control that those people wanted over society and population especially coming after World War II there's there's a whole new order in the world the United States emerges Victorious and you know then there's this clamoring for trying to figure out okay what are what is the enemy up to what are these powerful tools that could be used against us and some of them could be mind control I mean this is obviously at a time where uh you know the Red Scare right they were the McCarthy era they were worried about communism and communism infiltrating our society and they're probably very terrified of things that disrupted which is what was going on in the 1960s you know I um Jamie I'm going to send you this this is a a video of hippies in the 1960 and what it it kind of shows you that a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now with the disruption of society this is it's very similar to what was going on in 1968 with an anti-war movement the free Palestine movement has a lot in common with a lot of other anti-war movements of the past where these people want peace and love and and back back then in the 1960s in particular they were dropping acid this is the Timothy leery days and you know tune out and drop out and so play this I want like if I want 1968 Wheels I do that if I want to climb a tree I do that you have all these young kids coming from a very rich affluent middle class Society where they've been taken care of since they've been babies and never really had to do anything for themselves in a serious way and now they come here and they want to be taken care of one of the first questions they'll ask is what do you do and so I say I live and they say no I mean do you work or what and I said no I just live a lot of people say to me what are you doing you're not doing any work you're not working at a job you tell them that you don't do anything and that you come to the park it's like they can't believe you we're doing the hardest work in the world because we're growing we're trying to change we have a group of young people from uh upper middle class families who have moved into a physical environment that is an effect to reversion they're living in Gross insanitary conditions uh with a great deal of overcrowding there is a very high incidence of infectious hepatitis about 1/4 or 1/5 of our total case load in the veneral disease clinics appear to be hippies now I'm going on the appearent soy and uh we have one case history in which um young chap has been into the clinic 12 times in 3 months with 12 different cases of Gara okay so so that guy that last guy with the salt and pepper hair and the tie and the nice suit those are the people that were from another generation and we're seeing this younger generation that was completely dropping out of society and the what was causing that there was a lot causing that the anti-war movement but a lot of it was fueled by psychedelics and they wanted to stop that they wanted to stop this this radical shift in society that they were seeing from the 1950s to the 1960s yeah there's an interview with One Main Aid of Nixon afterwards when he was already retired and he said that they couldn't make it illegal to be black and they couldn't make it illegal to go on rallies and be against the war like it's an American principle that you can go to a demonstration but they could make it illegal to take LSD and then criminalize yeah people so it's it's kind of the same thing that anslinger started much earlier yeah I mean it's a cycle that repeats itself over and over again when the whenever there's a powerful disruptor that might be ultimately great for the human race but bad for the power structures that are in place currently they step in and they do their best to throw water on it and what they did from the 19 the late 1960s into the 1980s they radically shifted culture everything changed music sucked cars sucked everything sucked it there's there's direct evidence that it had a huge impact on our creativity if you look at the music from the 1960s it was so radically different from the music from the 1950s something had happened I mean that's why John Lennon said we have to thank the CIA because they gave us LSD I mean it is kind of interesting also uh Young guy called Ken kesy uh was working at a psychiatric ward uh in Meno Park California and he was part of MK Ultra basically I mean he was a guinea pig he uh received 75 US dollars for taking LSD and then he took LSD and his default mode network was default mode no default mode network was you know had less energy and he had like he said suddenly understood the crazies you know he was walking through the psychiatric ward and understanding a lot better like what's actually going on in the brain and that's when he had the idea for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest um which made him so much money that he then decided to stop riding and buy a bus and drive around the country with his friends and dish out LSD so it's kind of a he made like a career change yeah I could see how the powers it be I could see how the CIA and the government were like we have to stop this we have to put a stop to this is it going to be the downfall of society certainly downfall of the people that are in control of the government currently and these people are necessary to be in control of the the country because we are in a cold war with Russia we just got out of World War a hot war with Vietnam I mean that that war was taking a big toll on the American society and suddenly there's like young people [ __ ] on it you know saying what the [ __ ] I'm not going there so that that creates uh that created a strong counter reaction by the regime yes which is to legalize LSD but poor LSD you know poor LSD and what's really unfortunate is that if that had not happened who knows how transformative those substances would have been to society globally if there was a great Reckoning in the United States if we understood things if we got our our act together if we we really cleaned up all the problems in society and did so on an egalitarian plane we like recognize that there's work that can be done here where we can make life better for everybody have everybody recognize that we are literally all in this together and we are all connected we need each other we are a part of each other and we should treat each other all of us like we are a community I think that's the globalized narrative that we need and I think that is it's the only way we survive yeah I mean this is the perspective that astronauts have when they go to the space station they look down at this ball and they go this is so crazy like that we are we're fighting over imaginary boundaries that we've created lines in the dirt I think it really is a problem of our language and of our communication skills because we can only create a discourse within the United States possible you have the media you have the TR Rogan Experience you have you know you have a discourse and you have a discourse in Other Nation States but there is no Global discourse I mean maybe when there's like a Olympic games that's a type of global discourse that's happening maybe right now why people kind of like to watch it right now because they feel we're connecting like from all over the world without being like total [ __ ] Sports together isn't that nice you know and we like when the opposing teams hug each other and make friends yeah we we need positive Global Communication because we have a lot of negative Global Communication we have two I mean two very prominent Wars right now and a lot of other conflicts and we have Global problems um like um the heating up of the planet which leads to Refugee floods and crisis and migration I mean we have we have a global theme but how do we talk about it there's no there's no Global government not that we we need one or we should have one but there's no Global basically there's no Global end there's not there there's nothing you know right I don't necessarily think a global government's the rule because the problem is whenever people have control over people they just want more it's just it's like like everything else it's like if you have money you want more money if you have power you want more power you want control you you want more control and it makes it easier for them to stay in control and if you had a global world government that could tell people no you can't move to Switzerland where the laws are different you can't move to Costa Rica you have to the laws apply everywhere it's a global world order we decide what you can and can't do and we're not deciding it based on empirical evidence fact objective analysis of reality we're we're doing it on the basis of what's the most effective way that we can control and govern I I think that's like a horror scenario that we might be moving into we're in it right now we're we're battling it you know there's rational logical people that understand the consequences of these things that are fighting against it and talking against it and then there's people that are saying we need centralized digital currency to compete with China like Jesus Christ and we're leading ourselves into a position that's very similar to many other positions that have that societies have faced in the past including ancient Greece where ancient Greece the where they developed democracy the ucan Mysteries and then all that stuff got made illegal and then Society crumbles Things Fall Apart it's no longer the center of intellectual discourse in the world everything goes away they threw water on it in the 1960s with the the psychedelics acts where they made everything schedule one they they locked people up that were anti-war protesters they they figured out a way to squash this sort of new movement of thought I think yeah I think it would be a step a step into the future if psychedelics were made legal and if we kind of move more towards you know because the psychedelics as we said before are and humans are about Transcendence you know yes it's about basically including the other and not being afraid of the other and that fear of the other leads to violence against the others the Psychedelic is is is moving in the opposite way right so it is you know obviously not a surprise that Nixon would illegalize you know the psychedelics um they're dangerous they're dangerous to power they disrupt so but it's great for everyone that's the crazy thing the people that are making it illegal are the people that haven't experienced it that's correct yeah that's where it's crazy because it would be beneficial to them they are human beings with a finite lifespan their experience on Earth would be greatly enhanced if they had the perspective of a psychedelic encounter well if I was um chancellor of Germany which I will never be but if I was I would make a psychedelic year like After High School you have the opportunity to actually experience these substances I think it would be very good for societies to think about um rituals or mechanisms or discourse like what you said about the mysteries of elus mhm that was the defining ritual of ancient grie the essence the Athens society would move there in September like they would go there they would have this experience they would talk about this experience yes because of that experience they could relate to each other they could relate to their to the planet that they live on so that was a very healthy thing and we today because it's illegal we can't we don't have we don't have this and I don't know what I mean some things like uh Burning Man obviously are like attempts to create like ritualistic spaces and I've never been there and I heard it's it's it's it's kind of it's kind of stupid because it's so expensive and kind of elitist I don't know if that's true but basically we need we need something but we need a legitimate structure because there's also a thing like that is described called spiritual narcissism where you you you start doing these things and you think that you have all the answers and then you have people that are the ones who speak to these groups of people and they have all the knowledge and we're all in this together and it's essentially a cult and it's really easy to run a cult if everyone in the cult is naive and they're looking for a leader they're looking for an answer maybe they've had a listless life that's that lacks in Direction and all a sudden someone comes along and through this ritual we can all transcend and you know becomes are we bull well we need real shamans we need actual legit shamans and the problem is that term is in the in our society is much maligned right that term is it's silly people that in the jungle that are doing you know Voodoo but but we need someone who is a legitimate psychedelic experiencer who is who has a a genuine a genuine goal of advancing Consciousness and Advance advancing conscious grow and doing it in a very responsible way one of the things that we would have to be careful of if you have something like uh a year of psychedelics is schizophrenia we don't understand I I I didn't I didn't say we they young people should take psychedelics for a straight year but maybe a year where they could take they have a possibility they have a possibility and some kind of structure maybe a place you can go and we need I think we need a structure for everybody I think that's really the goal of this thing is to develop a sensible objective structure based on actual research based on a real knowledge of real clinical data on dosages a real knowledge on which compounds are more effective for which particular ailments iban which you talked about iboga very effective for addiction um my friend Ed went over to Mexico and got into an abigan Clinic when he got hooked on pills and it cured him of it wow just one one Experience One experience that's what I heard also I've known many people that have had real problems with pills and have knocked it with one IA gain experience so there's there's a lot of different things that can be done that can benefit Society tremendously but it has to be done responsibly and it has to be done with real knowledge and that real knowledge is only going to be available if they open everything up to real research and and instead of being biased about this and like Let Let It be open to everyone to have an objective analysis of what is actually going on have the naysayers and the the the people that are converted everyone debate this and try to have some sort of an understanding of what is good what is bad what's the right dose what can be done and what is the most effective setting because set in setting the part of the ritual aspect of it is important too because you're setting an intention before you do these things which is why a lot of these people that are serious users of psychedelics they don't like the concept of micro doing and they don't like the concept of recreational use they don't like they think these things are sacred and they should be used only in in this one particular way and I think this conversation would benefit everyone in society including the people that want it illegal that's what's ironic about it the people that want it illegal they are just human beings they're just human beings that are trapped in this Paradigm they're trapped in the the world that they live in they're trapped on the momentum of their actions and all the life that they've lived up until this moment and they would benefit from it I mean it would also give the Western Society is a tremendous push you know if psychedelics were allowed and that could be research and there could be you know it would probably encourage like a cultural flowering and right now we have kind of a decay of Western culture like western western Society is in crisis and we don't really know how to get out of it and the the current um recipes given to us by the camps that are now also competing for the US Presidency They Don't Really solve the problem I mean we all feel like in the last couple of years more and more people feel that something is wrong and that something should change I think somehow people are ready for a revolution but no one knows exactly what kind of Revolution it should be so people who tap into that are quite successful even though they might not even provide you know what what what is actually needed to have that change but we we do need a change on a national level in Germany in America in other countries as well as on a global level and um I think opening up our societies to psychedelic research and psych psychedelics uh I would be curious to see a society which which treats itself with that you know Liberty and relaxation and curiosity right now we're all tense and we're saying No this is the you know the chemical wall in our brain I just I just don't think it works for for a democratic Western free Society to have a chemical wall in in the brain it's it's it's a contradiction it keeps us back from really developing a society that is much better than the current Society because the current Society is pretty shitty actually it is and we really moved into it and um and we're trapped we're trapped but there is of ways out there can always be a we talk about one right now this is what's crazy this isn't theoretical right and these are actual substances yeah we're talking about it now and um Kanye West on this show said he's the leader of the Free World maybe we're maybe to today we're now the leaders of the Free World and we're going to start a psychedelic you know Revolution from this podcast I think it has to be done everywhere with everyone they they have to demand freedom and if you have freedom the you Freedom over your own Consciousness is what mckenic talked about often yes that it means nothing if you don't have freedom over your own Consciousness especially Freedom over your own Consciousness with substances that have been shown to have dramatic positive effects on people yeah so there's a lot of drugs that are very good positive drugs that people use on a regular basis that if you take too much of them you will die so we know what the substances are we understand what the correct dosage is we understand what the ld50 is and we know how to prescribe them correctly we should apply that same logic to psychedelics I mean Albert Hoffman was thinking about this in the 50s this was another document I found in the archives he set up a memo to stall the CEO writing that Sanders should now focus on these psychedelic substances we should examine all the possibilities we should create new compounds we should you know we should become the psych delc pharmaceutical Powerhouse in the world and that idea is really it's a great idea it is a great idea and sto just said no because he had been visited by Sydney GLE who basically said no don't do it well it's guys like that guy in the suit and tie with the salt and pepper hair There's No Nonsense Republican right-wing controlling but I think it's also these guys are a little bit of the past I mean I'm I'm quite surprised for example in America I get approached by you know different camp about Tri in a very positive way because I think somehow that anti-drug rhetoric is losing ground that's the feeling I have well it's that makes me a little bit optimistic it's losing ground because of the internet so the narrative up until the internet came around was that these things destroy lives and then all a sudden people are saying you know actually not really and then you have the positive effect that it has on people that are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder coming back from the war which is what Maps is concentrating on yeah right the mainstream media really is a problem in this regard because they're a problem with everything well they're they're they're essentially a propaganda Network that is passing itself off as the news it kind of comes from Randolph Hurst in a way I mean it certainly does I mean he kind of set the tone absolutely but I mean I'm sure there were people doing that before if you have control of the newspaper and especially back then with her Publications there's very few newspapers in in the country and especially ones that were respected if you have control over that narrative you put something in the newspaper and people read it they read that as that oh my God that is a fact this is what's happening people today are far more skeptical particularly after the pandemic I think the pandemic kind of shook things up to a point where it's much more difficult to pass off propaganda today than it was even just four years ago I mean that's why I was quite excited to come on this podcast on this experience because I think you have actually created a space where free thought is possible and free communication it's like a stage that you've created I think it's actually quite an quite an important artwork that you have established here I mean it's not so easy to create like your own media that has a global reach so thank you uh I don't know how it happened it just happened I think it made itself maybe yeah I I think so because the concept was right well I think uh look I'm the one who's the host of it so I would be the best judge I do not think think I'm really responsible for this thing I think this thing wanted to be made and it made itself and it did it in a very sneaky way it did in a very sneaky way where originally it was just me having fun with my friends just with a webcam me and Brian and then Eddie Bravo and Tom sigur and all my friends we just come over and just talk just have a good time and then it started to be where it got enough downloads where I could contact someone like Graham Hancock and say hey um tell me about ancient civilizations come on my podcast Anthony Bourdain tell me about your travels and then it became much much bigger and it sort of I I genuinely believe it tricked me into making it when was the breaking point when it got big like what it very gradual it was very gradual I'll tell you when I realized it I think it was like 2011 or 2012 I was on stage in the Chicago theater and I was doing comedy and I I I asked the audience I was going to tell a story from the podcast and I said how many of you guys listen to the podcast and it was just yeah 3,700 people cheering and I was like whoa I'll never forget that moment cuz I was like oh one of the things that I used to do and I still do is I don't look at the numbers I don't pay attention I don't pay attention to how many downloads I'm not like feverishly checking the what's good and what's bad what I don't look at like what the retention is when people drop out I don't that's up to them my job is to just have an interesting conversation with people that I'm act actually excited about talking to that's my only job so the way I book it I completely book it based on my interests I don't I don't have a publicist that's like examining Trends and this person's Pop I don't do any of that I think it made itself I think it made itself I think it's a trick I think it's like the Muse like the Muse sort of like brings these ideas into your head I think the universe gave birth to this thing and I know it's a stupid hippie thing to say it sounds ridiculous but if anybody should know it's me and if anybody should want to take responsibility and be proud of something it would be me right but I'm not I I feel like it's not really me I feel like this thing wanted to be made and I think this is one of many of these things that want to be made all around the world and that's why podcasts are developing I think there's a hunger for honest discourse and real conversations with people that exists everywhere and I think that's why podcasts exploding that's that's what where you don't have a gatekeeper anymore to your ability are so frustrated with mainstream media well you shouldn't have Gatekeepers you shouldn't have someone who you're the The Narrative that you're pushing out to the world is heavily influenced by the people that are advertising on your channel yeah heavily influenced so there's certain things you cannot criticize there's certain things you will Gaslight the media into or the the public into believing is a good thing when it's probably not really a good thing you will say things in a very biased perspective you will attack particular individuals you not just attack political individuals you'll attack them with a very specific narrative that gets repeated over and over and over again to the point where they make these compilations of these media pundits saying the exact same thing over and over and over again this is not news this is not real discourse this is not real human beings discussing things and trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong this is propaganda and this is most of what people get and inside that propaganda are some real news there's there's actual specific information about the weather there's actual you know real reports about conflicts breaking out overseas and all sorts of different things but at the end of the day it's not real conversation so real conversation was able to flourish because people had this hunger for it and they didn't even know they wanted it until they got it I it was thought when we first started making podcast that everyone was moving to a much shorter attention span right and that most of the things that were going to be popular in the future were like 10minute things like very quick things you know which is like a lot of the truth today with Tik Tok and Instagram reals and you know all these things that we that people like short attention span just it just captures you and gives you nothing and you just keep scrolling and looking and we thought that's what people are moving to yeah but then podcast came along and podcast came along with three-hour conversations with scientists that get 50 million views and then people are like whoa okay so it's not that people aren't intellectually curious It's not people aren't want they don't have this want to be engaged they do everybody does just just they're not being fed correctly I mean that's also one of the Beauties I mean I'm here as a writer of literature actually I mean if I decide to work on a book I don't get influenced by anybody and I have a very large space in which I can develop my thoughts and my narrative um that's why I'm actually active in this field I think there might be similarity between a podcast and literature because they both go into the long form and into immersion into something absolutely yeah absolutely I mean literature is the ultimate form of that right because the amount of time that it takes for you to ponder the sentences and the paragraphs and putting them all together and the order in which you say things and the way you Captivate and compel the reader all it's very similar and it's all coming from your mind too which is also very similar when I hear you talk on a podcast if I'm a listener I'm listening I hear one human being who's talking about your analysis of all the data and all the research that you've done to create this book that's not really available in most places anymore right but people want that CU they want to know what what did this guy find out what does he know and how does he know it let me listen to him and along the way especially we're having a three-hour conversation along the way let me hear says some crackpot things let me hear if he says some things like oh that guy's kind of a c oh that guy's not really thinking clearly oh that guy's kind of full of [ __ ] oh he's saying that but there's no way he really believes that okay now I know now I'm suspicious now I now I can kind of like look at this through a filter of reality so I think maybe we should talk a little bit about blitzed and Nazis and drugs sure yeah yeah yeah that's I thought that's why you had me here I thought that would be like your subject of Fascination oh it's part of it for sure I I want to talk to you about everything you know I just was interested in talking to you soon I immediately when I saw the what you where talking about when I saw you on the Jesse Walter show oh okay that was kind of funny to me because um that was really speaking to an audience I usually don't speak to but it was great you know yeah well he loved the book they're willing to take much more chances on Fox News than they are on other networks a strange way well I think they had started with Tucker Carlson in a lot of ways but the Jesse Waters thing was interesting because you got to scratch the surface a little bit yeah it was just seven minutes not three hours yeah so tell me about blitzed what do you want to know well first of all um what was when was the first when was the creation of amphetamines and when did it start getting utilized by military and by people like Hitler well there's like a rumor going on that it started at the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936 because an American afroamerican athlete named Jesse Owens uh was running faster than the white Aran German superheroes jumping further and winning I think five gold medals the rumor was he must be on something similar kind of to anslinger like the Jazz people are only so good because they're on something you know right so there was like was he on benzidine because benzidine was an American product that was already available and it's basically speed and there were no doping checks at the at this at these Olympics I think they were the last Olympic games without doping checks yeah so you could basically take everything but it's never no one knows Jesse oh he was just good you know so but there was a guy called Theodor TLA who was the head of the TLA Factory and um he said to his chemist Fritz house Shield after the Olympic Games we have to create a better amphetamine like a better than the American amphetamine this this can never happen again that like like an afroamerican is faster than the white white guys you know so and then house Shield was the chemist's name he like did research about amphetamines and he found that in Japan a chemist called nagai in 1970 17 quite a quite a while ago actually this was in 1936 so already 19 years earlier a Japanese chemist had made meth amphetamine and methamphetamine is stronger than amphetamine so hosel thought I'm going to make a new meth amphetamine so he found a new way of synthesizing math you know you can there's different ways you can make math I guess and he found a specific way that this TLA company then uh patented the patent was issued in Berlin in October 19307 and then they put it on the market in 1938 methamphetamine became available no one said it was like a a drug or anything it was just a new medicine you didn't even need a prescription you could just like a child could go into a pharmacy and say I want 10 packages of methamphetamine and you know it was cheap also and you got it it was it was branded as pervitin pertin we say in German there it is there is p there's ptin and ptin and pavinee um then became very you know fashionable look how innocuous that little container looks Who Would Imagine that's how they sell meth nuts I think I think this could already be and I'm going to get to this in a second for the military but first it was a drug that was just on the market in the Civil Society there was no war yet in 1938 1938 was actually kind of the height of the Hitler regime like people loved him there was Full Employment I mean there were was oppression against the Jews but if you were like a national socialist you thought that was good basically so the problem was or I mean there were many problems but the the the reality was that it was like like a steam engine like it was the society was really working everyone had a job everyone was taking part that also created it was basically a modern capitalist society that also created a lot of stress you Al always have to compete like you have to go from meeting to meeting like the the German economy was booming so people loved meth there was no coffee available because Germany didn't have like colonies like France where they you know they couldn't bring in coffee I don't even know if there was coffee you know probably you could get it maybe somewhere but it was not a normal thing to like go into a cafe in the morning and have a coffee so this methampetamine became very popular like workers used it in the factor they could you know increase their output and um party people used it because it was also it boosted your ego so it was you know you go into a meeting an important meeting you take a bit of meth before so it was it wasn't stigmatized you know it was just it was they called it um performance enhancing a performance enhancing substance so it was that's a neutral term you know they made studies at universities uh showing that um that is actually good against anything also against depression and it would increase your sexual drive and it was like people thought this is the greatest thing basically there was no studies being done yet on addiction which which which obviously is a problem of meth but also we have to understand that this meth that TLA produced is not the crystal meth that's being produced in a in a in a trailer somewhere you know in a in a in a in a in in in in southern in a Southern state or I don't know it's a different you know it was made by a pharmaceutical company the way I found out about petine was actually uh is actually a funny story because I didn't know anything about no one knew anything about Nazis and drugs as I said before like and in 2010 I'm asking a friend of mine who's a DJ in Berlin Alex is his name I said to him what should I write about next what should my next book b because I had written three novels and no know what's about to write the fourth novel and he said you should write about Nazis and drugs I said well but they didn't take any drugs you know because and he said they did and I said how do you know no one's ever talked about this before he said well yesterday um I received pavinee which I said what is pavinee he said well it's methamphetamine from the so-call from the Third Reich Third Reich being a propaganda term by the Nazis that's why I like to say the so-called Third Reich um how did this happen he had a friend who was an antique dealer and in 2010 this antique dealer in East Berlin had purchased like in an old like in an apartment that where people died like you know then the antique dealers come in and they take furniture like they pay maybe a little like he bought a medicine chest and he opened the medicine chest and there was pavinee inside from the 1940s and that antique dealer who was a friend of Alex the DJ he looked at it and it said on the package contains methampetamine he's like what so he took it uh with his partner they were curious you know and I later met this guy and he said for one month we took this pavinee and it was like so great like it was he said it was not too strong it was it made us happy we were very active we worked a lot we had great sex it was like great and then Alex the DJ being very interested in all kinds of drugs he also took it and he told me this in my writing Tower in Berlin he said after the first ptin I could feel that something's coming on that that was you know there was like increased energy level then I took another one and these are pills which are which were like 70 years old and they were still fun they were still working and then I took a third one and my writing to was right at the river in Berlin and there was like a big ship passing by and he said and I felt like this ship when the big engines turned on and the the the Sho like the push of the of the engine like moving the whole big ship forward that's how I felt after three tablets I said this is insane you know and I Googled it and there was like just a little on the internet there was one medicine historian who had like totally uh totally unknown guy but I mean a researcher who had written like a two-page thing that the German Blitz cre which is the German word for Speed War like the Nazis strategy how to lead a war was only possible because of methamphetamine because of this pavinee and I read this and I said this is crazy maybe I should write about this and I contacted so it's a it's a very odd Story how this came about you know and I contacted this academic he was at the University of olm I traveled down there I met him and he said yeah this there's actually a lot more to find but I just didn't have the time because he's investigating all kinds of things you know he was just this was just a side project of his and he he gave me the uh signatures in in in archives you get a signature every every document has a signature and he gave me like the signatures where I can find like all the documents on the meth on math during uh the during Nazi times this was in the military Archive of Germany which is housed in friborg in southern Germany Germany's a decentralized country so not all the archives are in Berlin for example the military archive is in this small town called fryborg the military archive is almost bigger than the town you know cuz the German military has done so much [ __ ] you know in the first really we lost two World War I mean that's quite that's that's world record for sure so and everything that the German armies did is you know documented because the Germans Lov document like everything is written down so the military archive is huge and because I had the signatures from this guy he basically did the leg work for me I I I could look at all the files and then I realized that the German Army was using methamphetamine and it it's it's another interesting story how that came about because a professor called Ranka he was the head head of the uh Institute for defense physiology of the German Army and basically his job was to enhance the fighting capability of the soldier so he was researching in 38 how can we combat fatigue because he said not the Russians our biggest enemy not the British not even the French you know our biggest enemy is fatigue because you get tired in the evening you fight the whole day and then you need to sleep what a what a waste you know that's not good we have he was looking for a way to com to to beat this enemy uh sleep yeah and then when ptin came onto the market he started reading uh studies done by universities and they very clearly show that on math uh and I think this is an experience that people who have used meth probably would sign you know you you don't sleep as much you know it keeps you awake because all your dopamine is released so your brain is basically in a fight or flight mode like your methamphetamine makes you extremely alert over a very long period of time and then at one point obviously you drop down and you get the urge to take it again this is how the addiction works but he was not he was not you know looking at addiction problems he was just looking at does it really work to keep a soldier awake maybe for two hours longer on the battlefield because there's this saying from Napoleonic times the last 15 minutes in a battle the that's the decisive 15 minutes like who's who wins in the end wins you know right so if you have a if you have something that keeps your men awake for longer than the enemy has then you have a a decisive Advantage so he made tests um I don't know I I have like there's photos of it in my book blitzed where you see like the young medical officers like he was working in a in a institution that was breeding medical officers for the German army so he gave these young guys Placebo methampetamine coffee just to check check and like can they sustain longer on math and they could they could actually they were more active like these tests started at 8:00 p.m. and went until 10:00 a.m. and the meth people like they were awake the whole night you know they were filling out you know they he had tests like you had to draw things or repeat orders or like solve mathematical questions and the math people were like going at it until 10:00 a.m. and then some said and now we want to go out like now then they wanted to party while the cine people um I don't know if you can see that image it's kind of funny can you pull that up I'm not like the your mic's on on Jamie just not sure which one it is I'm looking at it's just it's a lot of images in their own uh go yeah yeah this one so these guys are all methed up well you see like going up maybe you see like the S you know sleeping there s means shine Teta which is Placebo to the left of him is a pervitin guy he's quite happy to the right of him is a benzidine guy that's the B and that's another stimulant that's that's the American stimulant which is not as potent as methamphetamine I mean methamphetamine is more potent than amphetamine it's like a difference between like a Mercedes and a bicycle or something okay what is a c c is coffee coffee yeah there's a few more images where you like this is like a taken at 4:15 in the morning this is taken at 5:50 in the morning yeah go back maybe to the 4:15 that guy's head's moved well I mean here we here we see photos I mean then he obviously like he obviously looked at the results of you know the people filling out there's more pictures later in the day when the when the when like the S person is like yawning well you see in front of him the pervent person like he's not yawning he's like he's like ready he's ready for the next question there you know he can't sleep for like another day but the guy in the back though that's a p his head is down I think see him the far right I think he's solving a yeah he might be studying things well in any case maybe go one picture down yeah that one I like that's how that's how the the test like he did so he's he saw that uh with if you take two times uh Z 6 milligrams of pavinee uh on the right there that black bar they people they don't show any fatigue at all he basically came to the conclusion it does work it does keep you awake and he also found out something which is I think is kind of funny he found out that on math you are less capable of solving higher complex higher complex questions so meth keeps you up but it makes you a little bit Dumber like things that are really that demand like abstract a very abstract thinking or you know you know more complex you know things you're not better on math is it because meth sort of rushes you to come to a conclusion yeah and also you feel too good about yourself that self-criticism is lowered right right and he concluded that this is perfect for the German Soldier it makes you awake longer and makes you a little bit more stupid because a soldier just needs to follow orders he just needs to shoot for a long time you know right right and um so he he he got all excited about it this was in 38 his last test he did it was in 39 then Germany was about to invade Poland September 1st 1939 beginning of World War II and he said to his you know his Superior was in America it's called the Surgeon General German that's a different name but the highest medical guy in the Army who you know determines basically at the end of the day what is given to the soldiers so he wrote to his boss and this was kind of an old school guy the boss like he was still from the first world war and he read the reports and he's like why we need to use a chemical drug to enhance the per like he didn't get it basically so he said we're not using this uh in the in the attack on Poland and then Ranka uh the professor really believed in meth and I wrote I read his War diary like every officer was required to write like a diary during the war and in his War diary you can clearly see that he himself became addicted to to meth wow he writes about it so great I don't even understand how I could even do a day at the office without meth why is not everyone taking it but then like a few months later it's like I feel very depressed this morning even the ptin I'm using does not help me anymore against my depression like he didn't understand that this was actually the problem that he was becoming addicted himself and he needed hire and higher dosages he did yeah and he became quite unhinged but he was like the meth guy of the German Army but was still doing you know his job and um he asked the um medical officers in the field in Poland Poland was beaten by Germany within a few days actually I 17 days or something it was a quick a quick Victory actually quite surprising that it was so quick but it it happened so quick and a lot of medical officers wrote back to him that pavinee was actually quite helpful it they say things like and I studied all these reports for Blitz and I quot I'm quoting some of them in Blitz like it really helped our soldiers achieve their work like do their workload which was basically killing or you know invading a foreign country so ranga again was very excited and he he said to his to the sergeon general because then after the successful campaign against Poland it was now going against the West France the old enemy of Germany like we had had a war uh 1865 Germany won then in World War I Germany lost and now Hitler wanted like the Revenge you know now we have the the third one we're going to win the third one but his high command was saying let's please not do it because the French army La Grand Army was supposed to be the best army in the world at the time in in the late 30s early 40s like they were really proud of their army the French and it I mean it wasn't good but they everyone thought it's good and they also had an ally which was very powerful great britainy you know the world's Empire you know so these two powers to attack from Germany these two Powers was considered insane by the high command like they thought Hitler is just a lunatic and Hitler wanted to attack the West already in November 1939 like Poland was beaten the the German military actually needed a lot of repairs because even in a successful campaign you lose a lot of Machinery you lose a lot of people you know so everyone said let's not do it let's just you know you know get back on track and and and develop a strategy which we with which we can win against the West because they knew there is no strategy because that was exactly what happened in the in in World War I Germany attacked from the north of Belgium and there was a stal made and then in the end Germany lost because Germany is one country and it cannot win against you know so many countries so they they said it's not going to work you know and but Hitler was very stubborn and he said it will work but they blocked him there was even a coup attempt in uh November 39 against him which failed and then he had a breakfast meeting uh February 17th 1940 three kind of revolutionary tank generals Fon manstein Gan and raml RL later becoming very famous tank General came to Hitler in Berlin in in the rice chancellory and said we have a plan we know it's going to work we can beat them because we will not use the T tanks as everyone expects us to use the tanks which is kind of more in the back kind of backing up the Infantry and you know being like the backup guys like the heavy guys in the back like we will use the tanks in the front and make the tanks kind of overrun the enemy and Hitler's like w this is a crazy thought he loved crazy thoughts so he's like this is a good thought but how where are we going to do it and they said we're going to do it in an area um and also I also sent an image I don't know if we need it but it's a it's it's interesting they decided on an area which is the Aden Mountains and the Aden mountains is a mountain range in Belgium which is exactly between the North of Belgium where the Western allies were massing their defense forces and France where the French also had heavy defense but in this mountainous terrain it wasn't heavily fortified so they said we're going to go through the Aden mountains within three days and three nights but we can't stop at night because if we stop and kind of sleep at night you know they will know that we're there and then they will come from the North and the South in the pins movement destroy our advance so we have to you know not stop and within three days and three nights we have to reach through Belgium the mountains the Swiss sorry the French Border Town of sedon we have to get there because then we will be faster because they will still be stuck in the north of Belgium like we will be faster than them and we will race through all the way to the uh Channel and then we will be in the back of them and Destroy them so we will have kind of surrounded them this is what church later called the sickle cut and this was a this is the sickle cut you know you see you see where they're going through and and then kind of you know Branch off to the to the north and to the South and encircle the Allied Forces there in the North and the French forces there in in in the South like being further within enemy territory than the Defenders it's a crazy plan and um the only problem is that that that thing of not sleeping for 3 days and three nights so they were not sure how to solve that problem actually and Hitler said this is not a problem the German Soldier is so convinced of the ideology of national socialism of fighting for me the furer they will not sleep I didn't sleep in the first world war Hitler was a soldier in the first world war and he claimed that he was awake and didn't need sleep and stuff like that so he he kind of said that uh the ideology will make the normal German Soldier into the Superhuman Soldier doesn't need to sleep which is [ __ ] obviously everyone needs to sleep you know not because you're convinced of an idea you don't need to sleep and another fact is that actually soldiers were not convinced at all you know the German Army was the German army of course there were many Nazis in the German Army but at the beginning of the war they were also just you know young guys and they were not like burning for Hitler they were actually quite pissed there had to go to war against the West like they were they were scared like I read reports on like Mass depression before the attack started of people who just said we we're going to lose you know this is not possible because to launch a successful Invasion into enemy territory you need a 3 to one superiority in Manpower and in weaponry and the Germans were actually they had less people less soldiers than the west and their their uh um weapons were not as good for example that tanks were not as good as the British tanks so it was basically there was a lot of a lot of doubt out that this madman plan by these three young revolutionary generals and Hitler supporting this madman plan would actually work but then Ranka thought this is my calling now this is my hour and he presented his findings that actually you don't need to sleep for three days and three nights on math it's possible if you give enough math to a person you can stay awake uh for 5 days um so suddenly his findings became very interesting he was invited to the high command he was giving lectures he wrote a so-called stimulant decree I don't know if you want to see that uh I found that also in the in the archive in fryborg it was the first official paper by an army where the soldiers were basically invited or ordered or it was suggested to them to take uh a powerful you know synthetic stimulant which is this is the stimulant decree it says for example this was distributed to all the medical officers so they knew you know how to use the math so for example it says what to what what you could give if someone took too much like then you give like a sleeping sleeping pill It also says it's quite interesting what are the side effects and the side effects are aggression so that was like a desired side effect you know so um Rano was suddenly very popular he he was on he was on top of the world um uh there's another paper I found which then which shows how many dosages then the German army ordered from the TLA company just before they attacked France and this is uh 35 million dosages so finding that document was also kind of fun wow 35 million yeah and so were they on a large dose of this when the the soldiers well it's interesting then to see how those 35 million dosages were being used because they were used asymmetrical they were handed out especially to the tank troops because the tanks were were at the Forefront and these tanks could not stop so everyone in these tanks was basically high on crystal me crystal meth like all the way through the advance and um there's reports by the French uh by the French army that they simply could not understand their opponent anymore like they didn't sleep they just chased through they behaved like madman basically roml was seen at one point totally high on meth like standing in the tank like the lid was open he was standing there and they were racing at night through a French Village where the French army had camped because they needed to sleep because it's kind of uh I guess funny I don't know funny is the right word but France also had sort of not a stimulant decree but they had the rule that in a in a war situation and this had been beneficial in World War I each French soldier has the right to drink 3/4 of a liter of red wine per day so when France was attacked by Germany uh I think it was 177,000 trucks with red wine drove from the French wine regions to the front lines and distributed the red wine so the French guys were like drinking red wine which is a mood enhancer but it does make you tired you know especially 3/4 of a liter so the Germans were methed up and the French were like kind of drowsy so that that scene with Ral I described he's standing in the open lid of the of the tank going through this Village at night and left and right are kind of the French soldiers kind of sleeping basically and he just fires with the tank left and right and he runs over people and he's like a complete madman and then the French got scared they got very scared and they B their defenses collapsed Germany beat France in a few days you know big neighbor that in First World War Germany had been fighting like they had been fighting four years like moving like a meter a day and the next day back and this time because of the methamphetamine charging through and uh you know Hitler was in Paris uh in in in June already you know that's the story of blitzed in a nutshell or of a part of Blitz wow isn't it incredible that's that that's not taught in school seems like massive I do give talks now in school yeah no no but no historians touched the subject right I I spoke to uh for this book um I I collab not collaborated but I had advice from a leading German historian an elderly gentleman who passed away momson like the leading German historian national socialism really cool guy I met him uh I showed him my findings from the archives and he's like we overlooked this the whole time because we historians have no clue about drugs like we don't we never it it has to enter your mind in in a way that this might have a relevance historians are very Square people or at least used to be very Square people and national socialism is such a serious topic that out of the box thinking is not really encouraged within the Academia at least you know and but me being a non-historian I I could think out of the box so yes he said this is the missing puzzle piece that we need to know to understand what actually went down in World War II so he was very much behind it and wrote a preface to the German Edition also so it was it was interesting to communicate with W with him um obviously uh about it because he helped me you know also put things into perspective because also he what one thing he said was don't argument in a monocausal way like it's kind of flippant to say the blitz was only possible because of methampetamine it's a it's it's it's methamphetamine played a huge role and I examined that huge role I think it was probably one of the decisive factors but you know many fact in a war many factors come together so but if you can't stay awake for three days none of it works yeah then World War II would have been very very different if you want to make cement you have to add water yeah yeah and I mean it's not a if you look at it from a military standpoint it actually makes you know lot of sense the the the the problem in Germany Nazi Germany they then had was that the Army was so crazy about meth and also the Air Force they were using um giving it to pilots in the uh we say Luft uh in the in the air battle against Great Britain that was like a decisive air battle in the late you know late 1940 after France had been beaten by Germany conquered then it was Germany against Great Britain there was a lot of fighting in the air between royal Air Force and the German Lu R and the German Lu D was you know methed up to but because they had less pilots kamakazi pilots right that's a big one for suicide flights we we've talked about that before Japanese Factory workers also use methan Japan was an ally of Germany um they were part of the evil AIS so Japan had knowledge that methamphetamine was successfully used uh in the European theater of of this war so they used it also in their coming Kazi Pilots against American you know ships and stuff um so um where were we we were the effect of meth um on the soldiers and also the effectiveness of it during the blitz Greg but then also the Japanese Pilots the Japanese were using it the kamakazi were using it I mean the pro oh yeah no I wanted to talk about something that became a problem than the German military because then suddenly there were guys uh in the uh for example the so-called Health fura which is like the minister for health in ger na Germany was called the health furer he was like an enemy of pavinee because he said he like used the old argument we are superheroes anyhow from our genes because we are a superior race you know we don't need a stimulant to perform these miraculous acts on the battlefield so he wanted the Army to stop the methamphetamine and I studied all the letters going back and forth between like high command and the Ministry of Health and the the Army basically said we're not stopping this we're a modern Army we're using modern means to you know achieve our goals um so this actually shows that that hit Hitler is full of [ __ ] when he says you just need to install the right ideology in people and then they are you know mo motivated it's actually Germany was Nazi Germany was a very you know modern system that was using this to their advantage and the Army was modern you know War Machine and they used it very effectively and that's why also other than armies who learned about this it took them a while like uh the British needed uh quite a while to understand what was going on but there was one point a headline in America in the British newspaper when does Churchill uh you also use victory in form of a pill because in an Italian newspaper uh in the fall of 1940 there was an article on the German Luft Rover using uh Pila kajio like a courage pill which was this methamphetamine so then the British became like we have to we have to examine this and they actually made tests um in England comparing methamphetamine with amphetamine and decided that for the British guys for the English guys amphetamine is better because it's not so strong like the Nazis always take the strongest and the British were like a little bit more hesitant and it is actually a smart choice because methamphetamine does burn you out obviously it's a it's an addictive drug that's not heal healthy uh amphetamine is also not healthy you know but it's not as Ed it doesn't make you as edgy so you can you can take it over a longer period of time I guess well methamphetamine really Burns you out I spoke in my research for Blitz with one medical officer that was still alive that had served uh in World War II for the German Army in stalling in Stalingrad actually he was in Stalingrad and he said he still had pervitin and he gave it to like these guys that are like freezing to death being you know killed by the Red Army and he said it's not it's it didn't work anymore but it you know it just gave us like another day of artificial um energy you know so methamphetamine is a very in a long War it's very problematic in a short war it actually works that's why um after the October 7th attack of Hamas on Israel I was interviewed by harit which is the leading Israeli newspaper because there was rumor that also these combatants or these terrorists whatever you want to call them had used Capon which is um another form of meth that's a brand name that's very popular actually in the in in the in the Middle East and um I had found a paper uh from um April last year so April 23 was a report you can find it online by some newspaper that um a large shipment of captagon was seized at the Gaza border actually by Hamas border forces who claimed that actually Israel was smuggling this into Gaza to kind of corrupt the Gaza youth I don't know if that's true you know was just what Hamas said but for sure there was captagon in the Gaza Strip and I'm totally convinced that uh uh people used it when they when they when they attacked Israel and that is not the only case when the terrorist attacks in Paris happened they found amphetamines um they seiz $1 billion doll worth it's captagon amphetamin rer that the Assad regime in Syria is actually behind large scale manufacturing of captagon at the moment that's how they get their money because Capon is like the cocaine of the poor man you know 13 tons whoa Dubai Police uncover 13 tons of the drug known as captagon hidden in doors and wooden panels wow so captagon is a is is a wow it's Aug and Capone has a similar effect to methamphetamine it's is it like it's very similar it's a very similar molecule wow I guess it's very strong well it makes sense that that would be very effective in times of War especially for short campaigns I had a reading in LA from Blitz and afterwards a special uh um a Navy SEAL approached me who had been in the audience and he was not on the team that killed aama Bin Laden but he was like on a parallel team like he he knew a lot about it like he wasn't a he did stuff like that and he said before they go into an operation like that an operation that requires them to stay awake for let's say 50 hours and not only stay awake but to stay very alert for 50 hours it's obvious that you use an amphetamine it doesn't matter if you burn out later you just take a week off you know um so the Nazis invented methamphetamine for War the idea you know by Ranka to use it for war purposes and it has been copied already in the Korean War uh American Pilots were on amphetamines like amphetamines are like a staple now of of of armies and of you know terrorist groups Freedom Fighters or whatever you know because in a it it also lowers this was what Ranka also found out it lowers your uh fear level so when you're on meth you're less afraid um it lowers your level of inhib like you're not as inhibited like you would rather kill someone in a brutal way than you would sober because it's very hard actually to kill another human being it's a it's a very stressful and we don't really want to do it but studies found that on math you're more likely you it's easier for you to do it so it's really uh the Nazis that are hor you know they they they pioneered in it how similar is that to the effects of Aderall Aderall is obviously aamine and there was I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 39 million prescriptions in a recent year it's a it's another one of these contradictions like we make like drugs are illegal but adal is legal which is basically it is amphetamine so it's just like a certain type of amphetamine and I know quite a few people who are addicted to these types of pills and it's not a nice addiction I think and because it's also you know it's legal like your psychiatrist says take this so you function well Norman you need to take it what did you just say you need to take it you should take the medication I'm very sorry I came on the show sober I would have been so amazing otherwise no I mean but I know many many people especially journalists I know a lot of journalists and a lot of writers who use ader to to be productive yeah and um I would say why not if you want to pay the price of using something that's maybe bad for your brain and maybe makes you addicted but maybe you think you write better on it so that's that's that's like a chance that WR some writers take like who wrote um do Electric Sheep No do Android Dream of Electric Sheep um is that Philip K dick yeah right he was using a lot of amphetamines I heard that Jack kirak wrote on the road like in two weeks on amphetamines so I mean you drugs are basically neutral you know you don't become a Nazi Soldier when you take amphetamine you know it just it it creates a certain state in your brain you release all your dopamine you're highly alert you might be very creative but you also might write a lot of [ __ ] you know because your your self-criticism is lowered you so kek being a very good writer he like wrote The Wave you know he was like just just writing this on the road thing I have friends that have tried amphetamines particularly Aderall and then done standup comedy and they say it's abs absolutely terrible it's terrible for don't you lose that subtlety right you lose the subtlety you lose a connection with the audience and you're not having fun anymore it's like you're you're not being silly and your self-criticism is out the window so you think everything you say is brilliant yeah I wouldn't recommend it no maybe I mean but some people find it very beneficial for productivity which is interesting because like they are it probably depends what you need to do you know it also depends on your self-control right can do you have the amount of self-control and amount of objective analysis about what you're doing with your life to recognize that what you're doing is detrimental are can you manage that can you figure out how to back off can you figure out how to take time off can you figure out when to use it and just use it effectively and say to yourself in a very disciplined way I'm going to take x amount of this Aderall stuff because I have a deadline I'm going to get this done I'm going to do my best and then afterwards I'm not going to [ __ ] with it anymore a lot of people can't do that but a lot of people can I guess and it's sort of like all other drugs we should sort of figure out what's the dose what's effective what's not effective and then also strategies for helping people get off of it like IA gain you know I think having any kind of legalization strategy so if they legalize drugs in this country I think it has to be done in conjunction with a treatment strategy and I think that treatment strategy was is I and yeah absolutely I mean the psychedelics do get you off other drugs that's a fact also DMT gets you off other drugs so they work Against Addiction so right that old scare of you know some drugs are like you take one drug and then you take the next drug you know until in the end you land with Heroin that's kind of stupid you know because if you take LSD you're not going to land with Heroin you know if you take Ian for sure also not well marijuana is the great one right the the gateway drug people I think alcohol is a great gateway drug that's the real one because alcohol lowers your your inhibitions it lowers your judgment and then all of a sudden you're like I'll try that yeah right yeah and then there's also people take cocaine when they drink too much alcohol to wake up yeah I spoke with a actually with an ioan researcher Deborah mash from University um Miami and she found that alcohol and cocaine together create a new metabolite in the in in in the body and that is the one that many people go for it's like it's like 1 + 1 equals 3 basically so you won't get that high from alcohol alone and you won't also get won't get it from cocaine alone most people don't take cocaine alone they always drink when they take cocaine because they want that that particular form of metabol of of intoxication going interesting it's obviously very unhealthy so here it is uh how do you say that word cylene cyline is a byproduct of concurrent consumption of alcohol and cocaine as metabolized by the liver normally the metabolism of cocaine produces two primary biologically inactive metabolites benzo how do you say that benzoline benzo leonine and echine ecgonine methyl eer yeah it's this cool well that's a that's a big factor too right like how it's metabolized by the liver that's the difference between um eating cannabis and smoking it right so 11 hydroxy metabolite which is created by the liver which is five times more psychoactive than THC oh right yeah so there's a lot of factors and these the the thing is like we don't know if you it's kind of crazy that your book and your work is was really Illuminating the effect that this had on one of the most historically significant events in human history which is World War II yeah I thought that was quite strange I mean um I went onward with my research uh from I I wanted to expand and I wanted to look at Hitler also um and I was going to ask you this before you get to that if methamphetamine was created after the 1936 games what was Hitler on during the 1936 games when you see him rocking back and forth and he's tripping was he doing cocaine was he what was he on I mean I I I studied the notes of his doctor his doctor's personal physician Theodore morel uh who was um kind of a celebrity doctor uh in Berlin before he met Hitler like he was famous for treating diseases that don't exist so he gave mood enhancing shots injections and he was also a a vitamin Pioneer like he believed in vitamins and at the time vitamins were kind of unknown so it he was he he thought if you inject someone with like such and such inject someone with like vitamin C that would be that would be like a mood enhancing effect and actually that's true um so he cured um Hitler's photographer uh hubus Hoffman of a sexual transmitted disease in 36 and then Hoffman said I have to bring you to my uh to a special patient and then there was a spaghetti dinner with Morel and Hitler and Hitler was complaining of bloating problems he always was like he had digestion problems and Morel who was like an alternative doctor gave him like vitamins and the probiotic which was also new at the time and Hitler was cured and he appoint he appointed Morel as his personal physician and they became kind of best friends they were like Hitler spend more time with Morel than with anyone else all the way up uh to the end so morel's notes are very interesting to study because he was like one of these German nerds that wrote everything down and I went to the another Federal archive in Germany and I checked out all the papers of morel and I could see that basically no one had looked at these papers like kit is the most examined person in the world like the most literature ex about one person is actually about Hitler but no one had I mean the last time someone checked out these notes I I I could see it in the record of the archive was like in 1986 and then someone in 1961 so like like I was like the fourth person to look at this so it's it's it's kind of crazy because Morel describes like in detail like what he gives to Hitler and what that's why I'm a little bit surprised by this famous video of him like I think maybe it's a fake I don't know because in 36 up until from 36 when they met and Morel was was with him at the Olympic Games until uh 41 basically Hitler only received vitamins vitamin C vitamin B1 and and and sometimes glucose like sugar was injected into maybe it was on a sugar rush you know because sugar is a strong drug because sugar immediately kicks you know in the brain so but there was no like heavy substances in 36 I not that you know I I Morel wrote everything down so I don't think he would you know and morel's introduction to Hitler was what year 36 so it was at the same time yeah a little bit before so so the introduction was before the Olympics yeah is it possible that Hitler is taking something without the knowledge of morel no no because Morel was very protective of his patient he called him patient a and before that Hitler had had like an array of like Specialists hit didn't like specialists in general like he didn't like like there was K brand he was like the highest SS doctor and he wanted to be like the personal physician of Hitler but Hitler didn't want like an SS guy to have so much knowledge about his body so he always kept brand at Bay and then Morel was like perfect for Hitler because Morel was like this kind of chubby good humored kind of house doctor with the crazy recipes and the crazy injections Hitler thought this is this this is my guy basically and Morel became like morel's wife was very much against that that his her husband became the personal phys of Hitler she said to him like we'll never we won't spend that much time together from now on Mor like no I have to take this chance you know I can be the person he was like a celebrity doctor before now he's the personal physician of the fur of the most powerful man of Europe so Morel re very much controlled what Hitler took there Hitler didn't take anything that Morel didn't you know talk about or authorize and and write down he was he was his doctor like he was always there you know um so I I see basically three phases in Hitler's drug taking from and from 36 to 41 it was mostly was mostly these vitamins and Hitler was never ill during this time like he had a pretty good health in general except from the bloating because he ate wrong he he was a vegetarian that basically ate like bread bread and sugar so that leads that's a very that's very unhealthy for your gut we know these days you know they didn't know that so he was always farting basically that was a problem for him and Morel kind of cured him with the probiotics and then the vitamins and you know Hitler kind of grooved along to this kind of treatment and he was you know very successful also in the beginning he was very healthy he won all the wars like he was on top of the world and then in 1941 Germany decided he decided uh to attack the Soviet Union and um also the Soviet Union C that the campaign against Russia was very successful in the first three months a lot of methamphetamine was given to the soldiers just like in the attack on France and they overran the Red Army like crazy like within three months they made huge territorial gains there were in October 1940 they already standing in front of Moscow like they could see like one officer could like look with his binoculars and he could see the tram like the last tram station of Moscow he could like see that so they were right in front of Moscow and thing was what happened was in the in August 41 like in the middle of the campaign the campaign started June 21st 1941 so August 41 they were already they had huge you know made gained a lot of territory but Hitler for the first time became sick he had what they call the Russian flu like he was you know camping you know he the headquarters was moving with the troops so he was you know maybe drank bad water or something and he had uh the Russian flu which uh made him stay in bed he had very high fever he was like uh diarrhea and vomiting so he was really not in a good shape so he said to Morel and Morel wrote all of this down like I was sitting in the in the national archives in Germany and reading all this stuff and I really felt like the fly on the wall that could look at things that no one had seen before like he describes that you know Hitler coming in sitting down the decisions that had to be made that day Hitler saying I need something stronger than vitamins I mean Hitler was lying in bed you know and and then the generals were deciding on that important military briefing how to further advance and the the generals wanted to move towards Moscow and Hitler wanted to split the troops and go to Leningrad which is now St Petersburg and to the South like he had a different strategy and um so he wanted to be at that at that briefing and he said to Morel I need something stronger than vitamins and moral gave him for the first time a very strong opioid which was called dolante which was a German product and that that opioid you know is different it's a different ball game than vitamins he got an injection of a very potent opioid and he gets up from the bed he goes to the military briefing he can call the shots you know troops will be separated like high command was like what the [ __ ] you know but they you know he's the leader so he decides and from that moment on we can see in the notes of morel that Hitler's drug consumption actually changes like he becomes more and more interested in potent substances and from 41 to 43 Morel experiences a lot with um also animal hormones like when Germany invades the Ukraine and has the whole territory of the Ukraine Morel gets the Monopoly for all the organs of all the slaughtered animals and all of the slaughter houses of Ukraine it's like a it's like an order that I found like an order that I found like an official paper all the or of all the slaughtered animals of all slaughter houses of occupied Ukraine will go to Hitler's personal the fur's personal phys toine huh was that for toine yeah I mean he experiment he had like his own pharmaceutical company by the time Morel in occupied Czechoslovakia where like his chemist was like getting aul and organs and thyroid uh glands and you know all kinds of very potent things and then making like concoctions with it like there was a famous liver concoction like from from pigs liver and Morel morel's problem was that at the time in 43 it was a war economy in Germany so it was very difficult to bring new medicines onto the market basically it was not possible like all the tests that usually are done in peace times on a new medicine so he said he said this to Hitler like I'm developing all these new medicines from all these organs and um I cannot bring them on the market they cannot help the German people sustain in this war and then hit said this is yeah this is [ __ ] I the fura will be your guinea pig and I will test all these dubious concoctions that you make and then because when I take it every German you know can take it and we kind of bypass all the regulations and this is exactly what happened so Hitler actually became the guinea pig for like harmonial concoctions uh for for for Morel so this is it really it's really an insane uh story that is is beautifully documented so you can like read like train wagons going from the Ukraine from the German Army like very scarce it was to have a a whole train wagon because they needed to ship you know wounded soldiers back or ammunition or and he just you know required like whole train wagons filled with his awful with his awful from the slaughter houses and all the the livers of all the slaughtered pigs in the Ukraine and then the Army was like we can't do this we need these wagons for like War sensitive stuff you know and then Morel would run to Hitler and say the Army is blocking me transporting these precious materials that I can turn into drugs for the common good of the German people and Hitler wrote an order and then the the wagon was going through and then Morel was creating these concoctions and Hitler actually uh he took too many of these weird things you know he his health started deteriorating in 43 like he was quite healthy until 41 41 to 43 when he took all these organ things and all these hor hormones and you know crazy stuff you know today you would send the doctor that prescribes you that stuff to prison you know but you know there was no checks checks and balances like Hitler just took because he liked Morel and he like to experiment and they were always talking about new you know enhancement of the body that was a whole Nazi idea you know to to become more powerful more strong you know so he was he was he was interested in in these things and and he actually his his health started to deteriorate and then by 43 he had already become quite quite a different man he aged quite a lot I mean you can see it if you compare the young Hitler with like just 5 years later he looks like 20 years older you know and then in 43 because he's doing so poorly like his Chi you would say today your physical energy was like really down if you take like if you get like one pck liver extract injection a day you know you can imagine how you're going to how you're going to feel like gu after like a year or so it's it's not very healthy so it it it di what was the goal of the pig liver extract they just enhance energy like they then gave it to the German soldiers like they they they they drank this this stuff because it's like liver is always like filled with like nutrients I guess so that's why you know some people think and I would probably agree that it's healthy to eat like liver like they think like an ounce of liver a day is probably the the right amount but injecting pig liver so Hitler uh technically speaking wasn't a vegetarian at all because he was using all these animal you know supplements and just wasn't consuming them with his mouth right right so what do you know the famous story about Hitler meeting musolini where melini wanted to get out of the war yeah yeah I write about that um uh in in in Blitz because that is the first time like Hitler was quite depressed before the meeting because and felt betrayed because musolini wanted to leave the war effort this was in July 1943 like musolini said this is not working we we rather get out okay is that fine with you if we just leave the act the AES now and hit's like no it's not fine you know so he was very nervous before that meeting it was in a villa in Northern Italy and he asked Morel again for something stronger and then Morel for the first time presented with then would become Hitler's Favorite Drug and this is a was a German drug called o codal and um it's quite interesting ooal was made by the Merk company which is still a pharmaceutical giant today and it's an opioid uh it's an opioid that makes you if you inject it intravenously quite euphoric but also quite calm you know you're not crazy if you're if you're onod intervenous you're like you think you're like on top of the world it's like you feel so great and Hitler loved this drug like he he got it injected uh before the meeting with musolini on the way to the plane he asked for another injection he loved it so much and then like people who were at the meeting in this Village said that Hitler was just you know talking nonstop like I'm doing right now like talking no we're actually having a convers we're having a conversation Hitler and musolini did not have a conversation Hitler was talking like for three four hours without stopping and musolini became very sweaty and like AIDS came in and and handed him papers that Rome is being bombed the very minute but he like he couldn't get up like Hitler was was very dominant in the room very very dominant in the room and from that moment on ooal became kind of his favorite drug and now comes the pun um when Germany lost uh a lot of patents were also lost from Germany and became possession of America and the the patent of oal also traveled to America and oal is oxycodone so what has created the American opioid crisis is the very same opioid that was Hitler's favorite opioid wow sold in America as pills but you know crushed and sniffed whatever you know inject I don't know you know Hitler was was injecting it from the start you know he he he he didn't [ __ ] around with pills you know because pills because he he still had these stomach problems he didn't like a medic medic to go orally like into the he didn't like it took too long you know you don't know he takes something now and it's acting like in 45 minutes then not good you know the injection is the immediate effect so that's what he wanted he would go to a military briefing when the war was in 44 you know the generals were just you know they knew it was lost you know they they came from the Eastern Front you know people were dying like every day like it was it was over but they came to the meeting to tell Hitler basically or they you know you want to save your men you know this but Hitler on oxicodone onoda as it was called then had so much power in the room like so much Charisma he was very charismatic early on but he had lost his Charisma in the meantime but through oal he could reinstall his his Charisma being good in the room and he would like and I read like a lot of witnesses reports like from generals a lot of them wrote books afterwards or made you know made notes what happened they said when they were with Hitler in this room they were convinced that Hitler knew something that they didn't know like he had a wonder weapon up his sleeve like he knew that the war would turn around and we would win the Germans would win in the end because he was so convincing on this oo so Hitler was very clever actually in um in in using that drug to you know for his like horrific Vision you know wow yeah and you can you can look at you can like examine this like Day Day by by day you know by studying the papers of morel and then also studying like other you know accounts you know because it's always good to look at more not only have one source but there is there's quite a lot on it so it is quite surprising no one ever wrote about that before well it's fascinating because if you think about how much is written about Hitler and how much Hitler has been studied that they didn't study that it's totally crazy actually because it has such a profound effect on the way you think and behave it does yeah I mean there was one we we all know that um on July 20th 1944 there was the most success I mean it wasn't successful but almost successful assassination attempt when the Bomb by Stenberg blew up in the in the headquarters uh in in in the East um operation Valkyrie it was called it was a code name and um afterwards like Morel rushes in the doctor rushes in Hitler's quite injured actually which Nazi propaganda later said like the fura was not injured he was quite injured by that detonation I mean he was sitting there and the bomb was like on the other side of the table leg and the table leg was quite thick so and the table was thick so he was he was very lucky that he didn't die but he had like hundreds of splinters in his body and he his eard drums were blown and he was bleeding from his ears and he was like totally you know he was I mean he was he was injured you know and Morel immediately comes in and gives him oo because in the evening musolini came for a meeting he was already in the train so you can see like an hour later like Hitler like you know on top of his game again you know with joking with musolini and like the the other like officers lose have lost a leg die like so and and um and then actually from that moment on Hitler that's like July 20th 1944 until the very end may may uh 8th 1945 when the war ends that is his heaviest drug consumption because then he's really like this is this is the most intense time one of the things for example that happens is that um to treat his blown ear drums which you know were connected with heavy pain that he experienced a new doctor came in geesing was his name and he had cocaine uh he brought cocaine which was a legal product at the time also by Merc um Germany was uh importing the coca leaves from Peru mostly and then Merc cocaine was supposed to be the best in the world like were even like uh product forgers in China who like replicate the Merc label with the Merc cocaine MC cocaine was you know was the best cocaine and this doctor came in and he wanted to give the cocaine because it was something to numb the pain basically it was an anesthetic and and Hitler was like I want more of this stuff and ging writes this down I found these documents actually in Washington in the in the National Archive um he Hitler demands to use use um cocaine like he wants the doctor to uh to uh brush it into his nose nostrils which is you know the most effective way to take cocaine I guess and then he's like finally I can think clear again and and the doctor realized this is a drugged guy like he once he gets like onto a potent drug he like completely Embraces it and wants it more so ging became very you know like tried to get the coke away from Hitler Hitler demanded more of these COA cocaine treatments because I can feel finally I can I can breathe again and I don't feel like injured anymore and and actually on cocaine he developed the strategy of a second Arden offensive we talked about the mountainous terrain of the ardens in Belgium in 1940 and Hitler wanted to do it again in 19 late 1944 like a surprise attack and like his generals they they couldn't believe it because it was a ridiculous idea because the Americans were already in the on the continent like it was no chance it could have worked out it would just mean that a lot of people lot of young German soldiers are going to die you know that's what it meant his second ENT offense but he had it on cocaine you can see it very clearly like Morel and Morel didn't like this you know he didn't like this other doctor coming in with the cocaine like the doctor started competing it's called the doctor's War because the one guy gives him cocaine and Morel gives him uh oxycodone which is an opioid so Hitler was kind of speedballing oh God in August and September 194 44 and made very crazy then decisions very bad very for the German for the Nazi war effort very bad decisions for the world you know it was good that he was so [ __ ] up I actually spoke to a British historian um uh who told me that he had investigated Anthony Beaver is is his name great colleague of mine he had investigated the British intelligence's plan to assassinate Hitler because obviously there were these plans you know and they had realized uh in 44 that it's actually not good to assassinate Hitler because he was already so off the rails that he weakened you know the the German war effort let's say Hitler was assassinated then let's say um you know himla becomes the fur or something like this like himla he was also a total freak like he did two hours of yoga each morning cuz he thought the Aryan you know Aryan race is connected with ancient vidic you know so he was he was into yoga but he was not into drugs so let's just say they would have had an efficient leader would have been more dangerous basically to the Allies than keeping totally drugged out Hitler wow so they wanted him to stay [ __ ] up because it was better yeah they actually did not bomb pharmaceutical companies until like in December 1944 Brit Brit Britain bomber British bombers bombed the Merc company and then oo could could not be made anymore and actually Hitler then moves to the bunker and he doesn't have ooal anymore which was you know his drug of choice he received it every other day in a very high dosage 20 milligrams intravenously of the most potent opioid so he became a junky he became addicted to this so then when he moves to the bunker in the end phase of the war just before that the Merc uh production uh site had been bombed who was supplying it Morel doesn't have it anymore and that creates quite a friction between patient a as Morel called Hitler and the doctor because the doctor basically made him hooked on a substance and suddenly it's like it's like the M mistake of the the dealer shouldn't make make your client hooked and then you don't you can't Supply anymore and also no one else could Supply you know Hitler couldn't go somewhere else there's a report by Morel driving on a motorcycle through bombed out Berlin like February March 45 like going from Pharmacy to Pharmacy trying asking do you still have like a supply of ooal you know wow so the situation became you know Hitler Lost World War II which was not good for him but he also was was on withdrawal heavy withdrawal from opioids which made him feel like [ __ ] so wow that leads to the complete degeneration of the character um wow so that that that Third Reich kind of crumbled in on on itself fascina probably would have lost anyway but still fascinating that it all happened and it's kind of ironic that it happens while he's in full withdrawal yeah I mean the only drug really that he had left in the end was harine which we spoke about harine like I studied like what Morel still had like in his back basically like looked at this bottom of his b he still had harine so he gave harine to Hitler so Hitler was a I don't know what Haring does to you if you just take it singularly but it's doesn't you know and and sugar like more and more demanded um cake because sugar does actually give you a little high I mean it does you know even if you're in the bunker losing um World War II you still kind of crave that that sugar high but at the time they had to already crumble the cake for him because he couldn't like he was shaking so much from the withdrawal like he like he like took it in a spoon and kind of put it in his mouth wow yeah wow it's in Blitz we find like a new biography in a way of Hitler a more accurate one actually that is so fascinating wasn't there um recorded instances of JFK didn't he have a doctor that would prescribe some sort of amphetamines to him as well JFK is a very interesting case um he had chronic pain and um there is um reports that he used also methamphetamine also he had depression so he had a kind of a doctor Feelgood yeah and one time I found a connection but I don't really I I didn't re I couldn't research more about it that this this doct Feelgood of JFK actually had studied what morale had given to Hitler um but it's you know you probably don't even need to study Morel it kind of that's that's what's out there so um JFK I think received quite a lot of medications um that's why it's interesting um um what I what I what I wrote about in trip is his possible LSD experience I don't know if you're familiar with that yeah you talked about that with Jesse Waters yeah I mean there's unfortunately there's only one source for it and we always have to be skeptical if there's only one source if there's two sources it's always much better but one source and it's actually Timothy L's autobiography he describes um and I don't think he made this up I have no reason to believe that he made this up he describes how a woman called Mary pincho visits him at Harvard telling him um because he was known as the you know he was still employed by Harvard he was you know the LSD guy basically if you wanted to know about LSD he would ask liry he had done the most research also some of the research very good very you know it's very interesting so she went to him she was like a social in Washington um Mary pin show she had been married to to a CIA guy but they had been divorced she was probably too quote unquote left for him she was like a more like a peace person I guess and she was also um a very good friend of JFK um they were rumored to be lovers she was in the White House a lot he took her to functions like she was a part of his life and she visited ly um saying to LY I have a very powerful friend this was in April 63 and I wanted you know do the experience with him and lirry was all you know he kind of probably thinking is this JFK know but she didn't disclose it she didn't disclose who this powerful friend was and L said yeah I'm going to come with you we're going to do it together and she said no no no just give it to me I want the stuff the LSD and I want to kind of get some guidelines from you how do you do like a LSD session like so they had this you know lry told her a bit about what he thinks how it should be done set and setting MH you know JFK shouldn't do it while he's like doing a press conference he should do it when there's maybe he doesn't have to go on camera anymore that day you know maybe it's in the evening you know in the white house so um she takes the LSD and then there's no record that they actually took it together because there's just no record there's one there's her diary but we'll come to her diary in a second what happened was a little bit later and you can pull that up on on YouTube you can see that it's quite interesting Kennedy gave his so-called peace speech at the American University uh which is I think in Washington or maybe not but is it Washington yeah and in this peace speech it's kind of funny actually to see him because we have to understand that JFK was quite a hawk like he was really a cold war guy like he was he was a Democrat like the Democrats they're all for war you know they like you know it's confrontation we know we have to be safe you know we have to protect the country you know we're serious you know arms raised you know that was his thing he was not different than other presidents but in this peace speech um that he gave uh a few weeks after Mary Pino received the LSD from from ly he has complet he has a completely different agenda and he he sounds like um he sounds like basically like a hippie he says like yeah like very presidential you know giving a speech of all these you know students and like nice day in America and he gives pres com and give a speech and and he talks about you know we all live on this planet together even the Russians you know we all care for our children and we're all like you know we're all in this together and he basically shifts course like he become he he he says that this arms race is kind of ridiculous it just burns resources and we must come to a different understanding and then he gets killed like a few months later so that is uh that is just those are the facts you know and and I think I'll leave it at the fact so um fact also is that Mary pincho was shot in the head a few uh weeks or months after the assassination of JFK and that day of her death she was jogging uh in Washington close to her apartment there was a breaking into her apartment and her diary was taken so maybe that's the other that's maybe that's the source actually that that links JFK to LSD and maybe JFK was eventually killed because he took LSD and changed his mind but maybe uh there's a lot of factors why he was killed right it's a it's yeah obviously I mean it's it's kind of a mystery why he was killed you know why does he need to be killed but maybe that change of mind becoming like saying like arms race must stop which you know pisses off a lot of people in the mil milit military industrial complex who are like base their whole thing on the arms race you know maybe that becomes a very big threat and he must be eliminated who knows you know but um maybe it was he had a change of mind for sure maybe because of LSD maybe because of the love making with Mary pincho or maybe they were just smoking joints they were seen it there there are sources for that they had smoked uh joints in the white house before but I don't know if cannabis would kind of bring about this change of mind but LSD certainly certainly could because the default mode Network which is Cold War arms race sudden gets a little less energy other parts of the brain is like maybe we should do it differently and also the realization that if anybody can change things yeah he literally has a responsibility to express himself in that way absolutely if he really is a leader yeah Norman thank you very much this is a fascinating conversation that was just 3 hours is that crazy just flew by um thank you very much for all your work I mean what what you've done by just the the Hitler stuff just explaining all that it's a it's so Illuminating it's so interesting and uh I I really hope everybody goes out and buys your books so uh tripped and uh blitzed is the other one yeah um and are they available it's actually a present for you oh thank you very much that and you can have the tripped also thank you are these available in audiobook as well they are but I do encourage everyone to read but they are available in all it is great to read but sometimes people are stuck in traffic right and this it's a great way to consume out there in audio books yeah thank you very much really appreciate you I hope we will see each other again yeah let's do it again well when is this next book that you're working on going to be out Stone sapiens will be out I think in the fall of 25 okay in the fall of 25 come on back let's do it thank you sir appreciate you all right bye everybody [Music]