The Joe Rogan Experience - #2129 - David Holthouse
Episode Date: April 2, 2024David Holthouse is a writer, producer, and director. His new docuseries, "Krishnas: Gurus, Karma, Murder," is streaming on Peacock. www.davidholthouse.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...stchoices.com/adchoices
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The Joe Rogan Experience
Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day!
How are you man? Good to see you again.
Good, thanks for having me back man.
My pleasure. You made another awesome one man. This uh, the Krishnas one. Oh my god. Whew. There is something about these cult documentaries.
Right.
This just, whew, that one's heavy.
Do you remember the Hare Krishna devotees in the airports?
Because you're like me, like you're old enough of that generation that you might remember
the white robe, like they'd have the flowers and they'd be selling books and shit in the
airports.
I don't know if I remember them at the airports.
I remember them in some places.
I definitely have seen them, you know. Yeah, but
I just always thought they were just kooks, you know. It's just it's interesting, you know, knowing what I know now about the 60s
and you know what what was done to sort of
to kind of crush the hippie movement.
It's interesting to see that this was connected to the Beatles and peace and love, and then
you see this sect that this, what was his name again?
Kirtan Ananda was the guru that went way wrong.
Yeah, went way wrong.
But it is, well, let's just get into from the beginning How did you get involved in this particular subject?
So there's a production company Marwar junction and they had actually sold this show to peacock and they were looking for a director
So this is the first show that I've made or helped to make
That I haven't been involved in the sort of conception of the story from the jump
So they had developed the story and sold it to peacock and they were shopping for a director and they liked my work
and so they hired me to make it. And so did you have any experience with the Christians before
this? No, no. And I had a lot, you know, like a lot of people had a lot of misconceptions about
them. Like I thought that there was a that the Hare Krishna movement was invented in America in
the 1960s. I just had it associated with sort of the hippie movement.
You know, and that's not the truth of it at all.
It's like actually a spiritual tradition
that dates back thousands of years,
like far predates Christianity.
It's based in these ancient spiritual texts
called the Vedas.
The written version is like at least 3,500 years old.
And the oral tradition goes back thousands of years beyond that.
So I learned a lot about, you know,
the Krishna consciousness in the making of this. And the show is about a particularly dark chapter
in the history of the movement in the 70s and 80s
that I don't think is a representative of the
movement like today. Like I think it's a force for good in the world today
actually. Yeah I think the principles behind it if you pay attention to the
main guru was the older job of a pod problem yeah yeah my friend Duncan loves
that guy and what the whole concept behind it sounds beautiful, you know, it's all just love and you know
relinquishing your
Possessions and the whole that they have on you and right living this very peaceful loving life and not just forgiving your enemies
But letting them into your home and it's all that sounds great. But all it takes is one psycho
Yeah, one psycho. Well Prabhupada took a risk. I mean, so Prabhupada was a guru, so several
gurus, Krishna consciousness gurus, had come over from India to the UK or to the US, you
know, in the 1800s even, and then through the first half of the 20th century, and had
no luck because their timing wasn't right or they weren't the right person or both.
But Prabhupada was the right dude at the right time. He showed up in the
Greenwich Village, New York City in 1965 and started preaching Krishna
consciousness and it just like, you know, took off like wildfire. And you know,
like Allen Ginsberg got down with it. Wasn't maybe a full-scale devotee, but
like he was hanging out with them. And, but Prabhupada was already an old dude when
he showed up in the U.S. And so in 1977 he died. So it's 12 years. And by that time,
Krishna Consciousness, there were like Krishna temples all over the country and in the UK,
because George Harrison had converted. Right? That was one of his like, strokes of brilliance,
Prabhupada, as he like sent a group of devotees to go camp out
outside the Apple Records office
and just like chant and dance
until they basically got a meeting with the Beatles.
And he was literally like,
let's see if we can make the Beatles, you know, Christianers.
And with Harrison, it took, you know,
and that song, My Sweet Lord, I mean,
that's what it's about,
that's about Christian consciousness.
So, but when Prabhupada died in 1977, you know, he hadn't had a lot of time to build
up successors. And most of the leaders of the movement were young, or most of the members
of the movement were young. So he took a risk, and I don't think he had a choice. And he
appointed 11 of his closest, longest time devotees, all men, to be the gurus that would carry the
movement forward. And while you could say that it worked, and that Krishna
consciousness is still around, it's bigger than ever, a few of those, these
are dudes, these are like dudes in their 20s, okay, that suddenly are being
worshipped as direct conduits to the divine. In other words, treated as gods on earth.
And some of them were not spiritually prepared for that.
Yeah, would be a kind way to put it.
And some of them went wrong.
And one of them particular Kirtan Ananda, whose, you know, government name was Keith
Ham went really wrong.
I like the term government name.
Well, that is a thing that they always do, right? They give them spiritual names.
Yeah, you relinquish your original existence.
Yeah, take a Christian name.
There's a place out here, you know, I built a comedy club and before I got the spot that I have
now on 6th Street, I bought a place called the One World Theater. And the One World Theater was owned by a cult.
And it's a beautiful theater,
and I had heard about it from my friend Ron White,
because I was telling him,
I think we should open up a comedy club,
and he said, you should buy that theater.
It was owned by a cult.
And I was like, that would be hilarious,
buy a theater that was owned by a cult.
And there's a documentary on them called Holy Hell.
And it's the same sort of deal.
Yeah, I know that.
I know that doc.
Yeah.
So they start off, it seems wonderful in the beginning.
Everyone's doing yoga, they're hanging out together, cooking meals together, and dancing.
And like, it seems like all cults, it goes sideways.
In the beginning, it looks like a wonderful idea.
Like society sucks.
The way, you know, the modern world, the way it's set up, materialism beginning it looks like a wonderful idea like society sucks the way, you know
The modern world the way it's set up materialism. It's all foolish and
spiritually vacant there's a way to do this and the way to live and this is the way and everybody joins and and
then Waco comes along and the cult awareness network starts investigating this guy and so he
Changes his name for the third time. His name is Jaime Gomez
He was a gay porn star and a hypnotist, right? So
He led a rich life. Yeah, so he was he was already
on a certain path and then starts this play he changed his name again and
He changed his name to like I forget
there's two different names one which Michelle and I forget what the other one
was so he changed his name again moves to Austin and starts this cult and has
his followers build him this theater so he can dance in front of them and that
was the place that I bought but it was all fucked up and we wound up getting
out of the deal and because there's like a lot of problems and a lot of issues that had to be resolved with the property and they
didn't disclose that.
So I got out of it and then got this place on 6th Street.
But I, you know, in the process, I really started investigating the cult and I didn't
investigate it unfortunately before I signed contracts.
And I got a call from my friend Adam like, Hey man, Did you watch the documentary on the cult? I was like, oh no
Whatever. It's a documentary on a cult. It's generally a cult that went bad, right?
And this one went bad and but it was the same sort of deal. They all got names
They were all given, you know spiritual names and they were told that you're reborn. Yeah reborn in this this new
And they were told that you're reborn. Yeah reborn in this this new
Persona well even in the 60s and 70s I don't think it's it'd be fair to call Krishna consciousness a cult
But the way that this so this guy here to Ananda one of the 11
You know disciples that probably part of poignant to carry on the movement. He already had a commune
Up in the hills of West Virginia. That's still there
That's called new Vrindavan because the city of Vrindavan in India is the sort of mythical birthplace of Krishna.
That cult, that compound is still there?
Still there, yeah. But it's not a cult. It's not a cult. And it's like, right, and I've
been there twice. And like today, again, it's like, it's a really like positive place with
a great spiritual vibe. But when Kirtananda was in charge in the 70s and 80s, like some
really dark shit went on down.
How did they turn it around? Well, like, well,
they finally like his followers turned on him, you know, and and ISKCON, which is the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness, which is sort of the formal name for the Hare Krishnas, what we
call the Hare Krishnas, they actually like, you know, kicked the new Vrindavan out of the movement
for a few years, half a decade or so, and then like
kind of gradually brought that compound, that commune, it's not compound, that commune back
in. But they had this fucking temple there, the Palace of Gold, like Prabhupada's Palace
of Gold that they were originally building for Prabhupada to live in, but then he died
before it was completed. But it's like this Taj Mahal-esque structure
that's in, yeah.
Yeah.
That's gorgeous.
That's in the middle of nowhere
in the hills of West Virginia.
I mean, there's just, you know, it's like,
couple hours from Pittsburgh, basically,
and up in the mountains.
And so-
God, that's beautiful.
Look at the images.
And these are like untrained, you know, disciples making this just based on like ancient texts
that they studied.
They just figured out how to do all this artisanship.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Yeah, it really is. It's worth visiting for sure. It's mind blowing.
I like there's a big box of cash. And so, but this place, I mean, even even now it's like, it's, it's,
it's, well, for sure in the 60s, for sure in the 70s, it was cut off from the rest of
the world. I mean, these young kids would join the Hare Krishna movement. And basically,
a lot of the fuck ups in the movement would get sent to Kirtan Ananda at New Vrindavan
because he'd put them to work building the temple.
So if you joined and you were not fitting in for some reason, a lot of times they'd
buy you a one-way bus ticket to Morgantown or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you'd wind
up up there in the hills under Kirtan Ananda's tutelage.
It went sideways in a hurry, especially after Prabhupada
died. He was already running New Vrindavan, like Prabhupada had visited it and approved
of it. And actually Kirtananda had gotten booted out of the Krishna movement because
he kind of tried to take it over. And at a certain point, like Prabhupada, you know,
kicked him out. And Keith Ham, Kirtananda, like mindfucked this local sort of like philosopher dude that
owned the land into signing it over, promising to be like a non-denominational spiritual
movement.
That's what he was doing.
And as the guy put it, we interviewed his daughter, and he said, you know, as soon as
the lease was signed, they put on bedsheets and started chanting, started chanting Right and so you got the Hare Krishna's as your neighbors, right? Yeah
Yeah, it's the documentaries really well done. Thanks. It's like just like sasquatch
I mean you do some awesome stuff, but it's it it's so fascinating to watch these
alternative sort of movements get co-opted and how
that can happen by the wrong sort of charismatic psycho. Right. And that's this
how do you say his name? Kirtananda? Kirtananda. Yeah.
Kirtananda. Kirtananda. It's tricky man. Dude dealing with all these
Christian names that make in this documentary, it was like,
you know.
How much research did you have to do about the movement and getting into it?
Quite a bit.
Before you sit down and start doing interviews with devotees, you want to know at least a
little bit about what you're talking about.
And I went to, we filmed in Vrindavan in India.
That's how the project, that's how I started the project.
Like I signed on, I signed on to the director gig
and like two weeks later I was in India.
Wow, what was that like?
Hey James, can we get the coffee in here?
Well, one thing about Vrindavan, India
is the fucking monkeys, okay?
There are these monkeys that will steal your shit
and it's a whole racket, right?
The monkeys will like- You have to give them something back.
Yeah, and of course we're like knocking around
with bags full of lenses and camera gear and audio gear and stuff
And so we're a target rich, you know posse for these monkeys
But they'll get your sunglasses your phone
Whatever if you're not careful and they like sort of skitter up a drainpipe or a tree and you got to buy these like
frozen mango packs from the street vendors and like throw them up to the monkeys and the monkeys will drop your shit back down here and
I'm convinced that the street vendors are in on it, right?
It's like this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they probably are.
Yeah.
Well, at the very least, it's so strange that the monkeys know that you can barter.
Yeah, they learned.
Yeah, you can make a deal.
Yeah.
The legend is, is that hundreds of of years ago this guy that was like
He brought a circus to Vrindavan and the monkeys came with him and they were trained to be pickpockets
And then they just kind of stayed behind but I don't know if that's true or not
But that's the local legend is that but there's hundreds of them thousands of them, man
I mean they are everywhere and you got to you got to watch you got to be
Constantly have your head on swivel because they are so quick and what live off of? Do they just live off of what the people give them?
I don't know.
They probably scavenge, but also they do get a lot of mango treats from Stanley's ship.
Because the Balaram Mandir, which is the head Hare Krishna temple, is in Vrindavan, India.
So devotees from all over the world go there as spiritual tourists, basically.
And so monkeys steal shit from them,
or any other, you know, there's a lot of Krishna devotees from all over India, too,
that aren't necessarily quote unquote Hari Krishnas, but like follow the Hindu deity, Krishna.
So they come to, it's like a, you know, there's a lot of spiritual pilgrims to this city, all right,
there's a lot of spiritual tourism there. And so the monkeys have a lot of targets And so when they steal your stuff
You have to throw it to them
You got to buy something and then throw it up to them and then they will relinquish it
Sometimes they'll be like, nope. Nope. That's that's a cell phone. That's a three mango pack deal, dude
You got it. They won't you know, they'll be like, oh, thanks
And they'll like go like they're gonna drop it to they'll be like, oh, how about I drop it in sewer?
Oh, you don't want that mango pack. So they point to the mangoes. Yes. Yes
So eventually you hit you throw them enough treats and they're like through and they're in there these kids too that if they see
That a monkey has stolen something they'll come over and they'll be like for a few root
Basically, it's like for a few rupees
has stolen something, they'll come over and they'll be like for a few, basically it's like for a few rupees, I'll handle this deal for you.
And then they climb up the tree or the drain pipe and they do a direct hand to hand exchange.
So we learn the hard way.
That's the thing to do.
If the monkey steals the whatever, hire the kid, he goes and brokers the deal with the
mango juice guy, you know, and makes it all happen for you.
So do other monkeys realize this is happening and try to steal the mangoes before you give
it to them?
Oh yeah, it's brutal.
But they also cooperate too.
They'll run like, you know, distraction operations.
Like one monkey will come at you from an angle and kind of like bluff charge, and then you're
paying attention to that one, and then boom, the other one like grabs your sunglasses off
your head.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
But we were there to film.
There's this ceremony, these two brothers whose father,
his name was Chakadari, his Christian name,
his government name was Charles St. Dennis,
his nickname known as Chaka in the movement.
And his sons were doing this really ancient
ritual to sort of release the soul of someone who's been murdered. And so they had their
father's ashes, which he was murdered, you know, decades ago at New Vrindavan by, on
orders from Kirtananda, because he was challenging Kirtananda's authority.
So Kirtananda had people murdered? More Yeah. More than one? Yeah. I think
there's probably quite a few bodies up in the hills. That people just don't know about? Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. One of the principal sources for the documentary is a guy who's a retired
homicide cop named Thomas Westfall, who was a local, just a local cop in West Virginia when the when the
Krishna's set up shop at the New Vrindavan commune
and so he started keeping a close eye on him early and sort of saw Kirtananda's rise to power and
You know, he believes that there's at least a handful more victims up there whose bodies haven't been found
Because it's really remote country, I mean I I don't want to stress it. It's really cold in the winter.
There's a lot of snow.
You know, to this day, it's sort of, it's a difficult place to get to.
And so this guy, when he first started
running this temple, this area,
when did it go, how long did it take before it went sideways?
Well, I think it was, the question with Kirtananda or Keith Ham is always like, was he bent
before, you know, he became a Krishna? Or was it like, did the power get to him? And
I think it's both. You know, I think he had a psychological disposition towards being
a despot, if you will. And then once Prabhupada was gone, and Kirtananda, along with 10 of his compatriots,
was appointed a guru, you know,
and had that sort of power.
I think at that point, it's,
and combined with like all the money,
I mean he was, he was, he had this guy that was a,
he was, Kirtananda was a genius at running schemes and scams to make
money. He would dispatch like the hottest young female Krishna devotees to like stock car races
and rock concerts and stuff to like raise money for whatever. They just make it up. The starving
children of India or they just make up charities and they'd flirt with dudes, you know, especially
at rock concerts, guys that are like high and get them to give them cash. A dollar here, five bucks
here, ten bucks there. They work at airports too, but and they just brought
in literally like garbage bags full of cash, you know, every week. Wow. And they
and he trained them to deposit it in nine thousand nine hundred dollar
increments. So it doesn't900 increments to avoid the reporting.
Wow.
So he looks crazy.
That's what's interesting.
Isn't it interesting that crazy people look crazy?
And I always try to say, okay, is this because you know he's crazy?
Or do you see something?
It's hard to tell.
But he doesn't seem enlightened.
Like you look at him, he looks like a guy
who's a little unhinged.
And I've met people like that, unhinged.
And I've met people like that
in like the psychedelics movement.
And there's a few of these movements that are so open.
And basically anybody can become a part of it.
The concept behind it is, we're all seeking enlightenment,
we're all, but then you'll see someone who gets in there and you're like,
what is, this guy's a schizophrenic or something, like there's something going on here.
Especially you look at photos of Kirtan and Anda over the decades.
Like he just gets more and more and more demented looking.
Right. And that has to probably be the power, right? they're washing his feet and worshiping yeah he was molesting
kids there you know yeah he was he was a total pedophile right do you think that
started that he was always a pedophile I think pedophiles are always pedophiles
you know but again once he had like access to as less as the movement went
on yeah more and more Krishna couples had kids so he had access to more and more and more children
up there you know in those hills right and that was one of the things that you
highlight is that it wasn't just about releasing the possessions it was also
like not having your children not having control of your children either yeah
yeah although I think they they especially at at New Vrindavan, at the place that Kirtananda ran, they kind
of took that belief, you know, that yes, children are a material attachment, right?
But he took it to an extreme and just basically just cut off, you know, kids from their parents
entirely.
And that was not unique to New Vrindavan.
That happened in a lot of
temples around the country in the US. But ISKCON-
And the pedophilia happened in these temples as well?
It did. It did. But I will say again to ISKCON's credit that unlike the Catholic Church, once
the evidence started to emerge that there had been, I think it's fair to say, systemic
raping of kids at their religious facilities.
They address the issue head on.
And for the most part, I think have done an excellent job
of weeding out the pedos.
And what happened to the kids?
Because it's not just that it seems like it wasn't isolated.
It was all the kids.
At New Vrindavan?
Yeah.
This is what you're kind of. Mostly boys all the kids. At New Vindavan? Yeah, I mean this is what you're
kind of... Mostly boys I think. Mostly boys. Yeah. Yeah. They are, they have
communities online and there's a lot of, there's a lot of bitterness, you know. It
varies, it varies. You can't totally generalize, but you know the kids that
grew up in New Vindavan, you know, they have online communities where there's a
lot of like, for obvious reasons, like resentment and bitterness
and anger, still at the leadership of the Hare Krishna movement for not, in
their opinion, you know, fully atoning for the sins that occurred there.
What could they do?
Right. Well, there was a settlement, there were some lawsuits, there were some
settlements, but I mean, you know, money only... That doesn't fix anything.
No, no, no.
It doesn't fix anything.
It acknowledges that something happened, but you're ruining a child for life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're doing it in the most evil way, because you're supposed to be a part of this
peace and love movement that's like the optimal way to live life.
Right.
Yeah. Well, and that's why this guy guy Charles St. Dennis Chaka was was murdered is he
He was calling out kirtananda for his hypocrisy now
I don't know if he called him out for the you know, rape and kids but like
kirtananda was having like
Gay sexual relationships with some with some laborers that had been hired to come help build the temple
It weren't necessarily devotees and it was like an open secret
You know in the commune and he called him out for it and also called him out for the materialism for like driving around
In a limousine for having like, you know, they would buy him a new, you know fancy SUV every year or whatever
You know and Charles st. Dennis called him on his bullshit publicly.
And that's what got him killed.
Wow.
Yeah, fuck, man.
I know quite a few people that grew up in cults.
In stand-up comedy, you deal with a lot of lost people,
like wayward folks that just didn't
fit in anywhere in society.
And a couple of my friends friends one of my good friends grew
up a Jehovah's Witness and
You know, it's just you you live in this world that is just very strange
Sort of I
Mean, it just doesn't make any sense. It's a logical. It's crazy
It doesn't fit it and once you start illogical, it's crazy, it doesn't fit.
And once you start questioning things,
you find like you're not allowed to.
And it's just very bizarre how many of these.
I was having a conversation with Mark Andreessen,
you know, the venture capitalist guy.
And he was like, California still has a lot
of active cults right now.
I was like, really?
He goes, oh yeah, there's a lot.
So like there's ones you don't hear about,
where they kind of keep it together.
So I guess there's like, cults have to go completely
like holy hell sideways before you get a documentary.
So some of them, they figure out how to kind of
keep everybody together.
It's probably harder to keep shit under wraps these days
than it was for Kirtan Ananda in the 70s and 80s.
With the internet, yeah, for sure.
Everybody's got a phone.
Yeah, it's also like people are much more aware of what a cult is now.
I bet in the 1960s it just seemed like a beautiful alternative to, you know,
I mean you're dealing with the civil rights movement, Jim Crow, anti-war movement,
Vietnam is happening, you've got Richard Nixon's the president, there's all this chaos,
they don't, people don't want the world
that's in front of them right now,
and they're searching for some alternative,
and it comes along, what about love, what about this?
Yeah, that's what I want.
And then the next thing you know,
you're wrapped up in this thing.
Yeah.
Talking about the pedophilia stuff,
I'm gonna take this on a detour
because there's something I wanted to say
last time I was on your show,
which is that I am convinced that you saved
at least one kid's life with something
that you said the last time I was on,
which is that we were talking about my own experiences
as a survivor of childhood sexual assault.
And you told a story about how when you were a kid,
you were in a library and this sick fuck pedophile like was trying to get you out of the library yeah and a
librarian stepped in and basically saved you from this guy do I have that do I
have that yeah absolutely okay the reason that I think you saved at least
one kid's life is this because and again speaking from first-hand experience as a
male survivor especially of childhood sexual assault you you think like how could I have let that happen to me why didn't I defend
myself why didn't I fight the guy off you know even though intellectually you
look at a seven eight nine year old boy you're like you got no chance against a
grown man right but for you know Joe Rogan to say like a librarian saved me
from this happening to me right yeah you, you're a tough guy. Okay, you're perceived as a tough guy
I think rightly so now
Now right now seven or eight or however right right right, but but but I I hope I'm articulating my point
Which is that it can have guys? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and and
And for a guy that's like suffering that and thinking like why didn't you know?
It just helps when when somebody in a position like yourself, you know says like hey, you know could happen to me easily
It almost did I mean I was on my way out the door, right?
Yeah, it could have if that librarian hadn't called out my name. I think about that all the time
You know what would happen to me how would would who I would have become, you know
it's um
it's one of the the darkest forces in
In the world like this and I don't understand
Why it's so prevalent. I just like and I think you know, I've equated it to vampires that it seems like
One of the things that happens to some of the people that get molested is they wind up doing it to others
Yeah, and that is a harsh truth
I mean I try and do what I can to dispel the stereotype because
You know that was one of the things that you know scared the shit out of me when I was a teenager
Is the idea that I was gonna to become a pedophile myself.
Right.
Right.
But yeah, it's unfortunate.
So, you know, it's that hurt people, hurt people cliche, right?
Yeah.
But there's truth behind it.
It is with violence.
It is with everything.
With someone, something happening.
Pedophilia, which let's just call it what it is, raping kids is just an incredibly destructive
force in our culture and in all cultures.
And I just like it's the one kind of criminal I think that I just have absolutely no sympathy
for.
No, do I?
None.
No, most people feel the same way.
I mean, when you talk about like, one of my daughters is very much against the death penalty.
And I think for a good reason.
And because we've had conversations about people that are unjustly accused and she knows that I've had many people on my podcast that spent a
long time in jail for crimes that they didn't commit and some of them were on death row
and they could have been executed.
And we were talking about it, we said in a perfect scenario when you absolutely know
that the law has got the right person and
that this person has done something and then they have killed people whether
it's a serial killer or whatever it is yeah maybe the death penalty makes sense
but we don't have a perfect legal system right but and then the subject of child
molesters came up and they're like oh no kill them all everybody's you know it's
it's almost like an instinctual react. Yeah, it's an especially my wife, mothers, you know, they hear that
and it's just like, that's the one like you have to kill them because they never fucking
stop. No, they don't. They never stop. It's a weird sickness. It's a it's a it's just
so strange that it's not a very, very rare, uncommon thing, you know, that like exists like in a handful
of places in the world occasionally. But then when you hear about something like the Catholic Church,
you know, there was Pope Benedict when he got kicked out. There was a lot of people that didn't understand what was going on and I was looking into it and you find out what that guy did and one of the things that he did that's so evil is he would move people.
So he would take a priest that was molesting kids and just move them to another unsuspecting place and he went on to molest one of these guys that they caught
went on to molest a hundred deaf kids at least a hundred that they're aware of
and just go like and he knew that this guy was a pedophile and it's just the
Catholic Church in particular is just like I went to Catholic school and
nothing happened to me and but things did happen to people that I know that did go to Catholic
School and it's just like is there another religion that is more connected like when you hear the term
Catholic priest right
Pedophile is right. Like if you if you were playing a game like Catholic priest pedophile, you know, like you would say that
You know if you're what is that charades? What's that game? When you know, like youophile, you know, like you would say that, you know, if you're, what is that, charades? What's that game?
When you know, like you say, you know,
tough, big, runs fast, football player, yes, you know, like you'd say Catholic priest, pedophile.
You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's...
And it was an open secret for so long too, you know.
Yeah, it's crazy. I think a lot of the priests were probably drawn to the church for the access
to kids. I mean, Kirtananda Anuvandhaven built himself a little pedophile heaven up there, you
know, once he had the power. So how did they, did you talk to anybody from there that kind of reformed
that place? Like how did they, once they got rid of him? Well, first of all, he finally went to prison for murder
For you know murder for hire basically along with racketeering and like he was he was selling like counterfeit, you know football hats and shit
I mean, he's still in jail. I know he's dead. He's dead, but he still has like within
Not within is con but within the larger sort of Krishna Consciousness movement, he still has a falling.
And I went to his tomb that's in Vrindavan, India,
and I had a translator kind of fixer with me,
and I had one camera guy,
and we sort of bullshit our way in,
and it was this creepy fucking place, man.
It was like this,
this sort of almost Soviet block looking
apartment it was all half finished like there was his tomb and there were
flowers and incense and photos of him and stuff and it's basically after he got
out of prison eventually as an old man and he went to India and Pakistan and
like drew a following of like Pakistani and boys basically that are now men in their 20s and 30s
and they occupy this sort of compound around his tomb and the one that we sort of both shared away
past was starting to get like a little suspicious of what we were doing and of our story which is
like that we were just tourists basically that had sort of wandered by this place and were interested by it.
And all these dudes just started coming out of these, they looked like vacant buildings, but they clearly weren't.
You know, all these like followers are Kirtananda and the translator is like, it's time to go now, time to go now, time to go now.
And so, you know, we boogied out of there.
Wow. Yeah, but he still has like followers and frankly
Even within is Khan he still has sort of quiet supporters. Jesus. Yeah
Yeah in holy hell they talk about this guy that they kicked out
he's he's still on the loose and they they flew him to Hawaii and
He started a cult in Hawaii and in the documentary they show him in Hawaii with his devotees
Taking him around opening the door for him the whole deal. All right
It's so strange
The cult thing is so bizarre because it's so it's so common and it's it just seems like there's so many people that want to be
led like there's so many people that want to be led by someone who has the answers
because most people are like you and I they're like try to do our best live our
life fuck up make mistakes try to figure out what makes you happy like what's
this all about what is life and what are we what are we doing here yeah and for
some when someone comes along says I have the answers like oh guys get the like, oh, these guys get the answers. I need the fucking answers. Like, what are the answers?
And yeah, I will say, you know, I spent a lot of time with, with Hare Krishna, with
Krishna Consciousness devotees, you know, and making that show. And generally speaking,
they are positive, peaceful souls. They seem at peace with their place in the world in a way that you
know I frankly found sort of compelling and attractive you know so it's
easy to see and maybe they do have the answers maybe this ancient like
spiritual tradition is at least part of the answer. It certainly can be an answer
for some people if you are of the right mindset and if you're truly trying to be on
that path. But the problem is it's so easy to be subverted. It's like someone can come along and
slowly kind of take over and twist it. True with any religion. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look at
televangelists, right? I mean, there's real Christians out there that are really great wonderful people that want to live
by the teachings of Christ and and live a better more
Just and holy life and they really do want to live like that
and then there's psychos who want private jets and a giant arena to have all their followers and they want
mansions and yeah, those guys
are real and they thrive. They're everywhere.
Well, one of Kirtananda's enforcer and hitman was this guy named Thomas Drescher, whose
Christian name was Tirtha. And he like drove the bus. There was a school bus that would
not, it wasn't driving kids around, but they bought a school bus to kind of take people from one part of the commune to another or whatever.
But really while he was there, he was one of the dudes that like joined the, he was
in Vietnam, Vietnam combat vet. I think I saw hardcore combat in Vietnam, came back
bent in the head, was trying to find the answers, trying to find help probably for PTSD found the Hare Krishna's join
But the first temple or two that he was out there like mmm something off about this guy
So let's send him to Kirtananda Kirtananda met this dude and was like, oh I got a purpose for you brother
You know, you're now in force or number one
And so if you fucked up if like you weren't supposed to have a television or if you broke the rules
Are you defied Kirtananda in any way if you if you got some money from your family, you didn't kick it to him
Teerta came and paid you a visit. Okay, and when it and when Kirtananda when Kirtananda started whacking dudes
Basically, it was tear to that did it
you know, he just
Just shoot you and yeah, he was he was he was smart. He buried Charles St. Dennis's body
He diverted a little Creek and by damming it up and then buried the body and then took away the dam
So the whole time so that the the homicide cop Thomas Westfall he was like I was looking for that body
Everywhere and never thought to look under the the little river, you know, did they bring cadaver dogs to try to search for?
I don't think they brought dogs eventually like what happened was and the reason that Kirtananda why they finally got him is that tear to flipped on him
But now they arrested
tear to Thomas Dresher for murder because there was another
Devotee that got killed in Los Angeles that was also sort of outing Kirtananda and his you know corruption whatnot and
So they got Dresher, and once he was in prison, like Kirtananda held the ceremony and like appointed him to this
like high status within Krishna consciousness. And of course that was like a way to try and
keep him quiet, right? And he remained a believer. But then there was this incident known as
the Winnebago incident, where Kan Ananda was writing in Winnebago
with this like, I think it was a little boy from Pakistan or India. And the curtains jostled
open and he was seen in full view by multiple witnesses like sodomizing this kid. And too
many people saw it to cover it up, right? And word got to Thomas Drescher in prison that this had
happened and he heard from enough people who he trusted and believed that it this
was true that he immediately flipped on Kirtan Ananda and said like yep he paid
me and ordered me to kill these guys and here's where you can find the body. So he
didn't know that Kirtan Ananda? He didn't believe it. He didn't believe it. He was a true believer.
You know he didn't want to believe it. So it was only when he was, you know, he didn't firsthand witness
it himself, but it's only when he was faced with like multiple people who he trusted,
who were telling him, we saw this, it's true. You know, then to his credit, I think he,
he immediately flipped. You know, we tried to, we tried to do an interview with him,
but um, he, uh, we couldn't get into the prison to get him to go on camera so
we do in the show we do have audio interview excerpts.
Wow. One of the saddest things about holy hell is they talked to some of the devotees that had left and now they're lost because
they had essentially they had left 20 years of their life with this guy and now here they
were 50 and like this one lady was like a dog walker now.
Right.
She had just kind of lost no real purpose in life didn't you know her whole thing was
bullshit.
Yeah. Her whole thing was bullshit. Yeah.
Her whole life was bullshit.
Yeah.
And some of the kids that grew up at New Vrindavan under Kirtananda, when it was legitimately
occult by any definition, you know, some of them are still followers of Krishna consciousness,
some of them, you know, have left it way behind, right?
Yeah.
And have nothing good to say about that.
But some of them are still like followers of Prabhupada's teachings, you know, and they believe that Kirtananda was an aberration.
I think that's probably right.
I think that's probably right too. I mean, my friend who's really into the Hare Krishnas,
he's a very peaceful guy and the way he looks at it is like, you know, this is a way to
live. This is a possible way to live for some people
that if done correctly and done with the right spirit
and the right mindset, like really can be a beautiful,
blissful way of existing.
Right.
And I like, not only like,
I buy into the idea of karma and reincarnation.
That reads is true, that feels true to me.
And reincarnation? Yeah. Yeah. Really? What reads is true, what part reads is true that feels true to me and reincarnation
yeah yeah really what what reads is true apart reads is true well then we get
into DMT right all right I tried DMT it was in 2013 and I'm a one and done DMT guy. Don't need to do it again.
OK.
So here's my DMT story.
Is that in 1999, I was super in the rave scene.
And I was in London at this three day rave called The Warp.
And it was the kind of party where it was like,
someone asked you the time, you'd be like, it's 9.30.
And they'd be like, AM or PM.
You know?
It was a great party, right?
Three days near the Tower of London, literally underground,
an underground party, literally underground.
They had DJ rooms and dance rooms,
but they also had these live performance rooms.
And I saw this performance artist
called the techno pagan octopus messiah, okay?
And he was describing his DMT experience, and I hadn't heard about DMT.
And then, and by the way, his stuff is fantastic. I think he's come the closest of anybody except
Terrence McKenna in actually like capturing what the DMT experience is as a writer. Outside
his performance, the room where he's performing, there's this tent that just said deep meditation
therapy. I was like, oh, now I know what that means, right?
And I watched people doing DMT,
and I was like, I was already rolling on
three or four hits of MDMA,
so I was like, well, not tonight.
But if it ever comes my way, I'm gonna do it.
I made myself a promise that night.
I'm not gonna seek this out,
but if it ever comes my way.
And then it did.
And in 2014, I just went to see a buddy of mine in Brooklyn.
I was working on a documentary out there
and he was like, you wanna try this?
I was like, okay, before I change my mind, let's do this.
And 15 minutes later, I believed in reincarnation.
I believed in karma and reincarnation.
So I felt a lot better about death.
Yeah, I felt a lot better about death too after I did it.
Well, my experience was that I got a short glimpse
that's sort of a user manual for the cosmos,
and in there was the knowledge that reincarnation is real,
that the Buddhists have it right,
that after you die, you go to the bardo for 49 days, your soul is out there, you get a chance to kind of like assess the last life
you led before you take another spin on the carousel, learn what you can, get rewarded
for your good deeds, suffer for your sins, and then go back.
And I believe it, but I also just like it, you know?
I just like it. You know, I just like it it was it feels true to me in a way that like the
Evangelist or fundamentalist Christian idea like you can just do a bunch of bad shit and then you know
Promise yourself to Jesus and have a clean slate. Fuck that. I'm not buying that, you know, you know
Yeah, but karma and reincarnation. I'm buying it
There's something there. I mean it's it's fascinating that that concept has existed for so long,
and even the concept of heaven that existed for so long, and angels and souls and all
those things. I think we have a very limited ability to grasp reality. And I think that limited ability is biological.
It's kind of based upon our primate origins and what we are as a thing, as a biological
entity. We have essentially the tools that we need in order to survive. And those tools
are the ability to recognize danger and communicate and establish community and
purpose and all these different things.
But when you have like real breakthrough psychedelic experiences, to me, it seems like it's allowing
you a vision into all that exists, not just what you're physically capable of seeing
as a human being, but this chemical gateway or whatever it is that
psychedelics give you allows you to see that these things... what I got out of it
is that everything is connected. Every action, every thought, your thoughts, your
life, your words, your deeds, the way you approach things, the way you respond to things,
that they're all connected in some very strange way. And the living my life, the more I follow
that as thinking that everything is all connected, the more my life has been
more beautiful.
The more my life has been more rewarding and rich and more pleasing, more filled with love
and community.
It's something that I kind of need to remind myself all the time because I think the biological entity has certain like human reward systems that are built into it.
Try to acquire resources to try to, you know, to try to establish dominance, to try to succeed.
There's all these different things that as a human, you know, people or they want success, they want all these different things. And that those things
can kind of, because you could see the physical manifestation of that work, that
that can sort of overcome the idea that everything is connected. And so that's I
think why people cheat on their taxes,
or insider trade, or do all these different things,
fuck people over in business deals,
and they don't think that they're gonna experience
any negative consequences of it.
But I don't think anybody gets away free.
Again, that's why I like the idea of Carmen reincarnation.
Yeah.
You don't get away with it.
There's something to it.
There's something to Carmen.
And it's again, going back to the Vedas,
like the oldest spiritual organized system
of spiritual beliefs known for our species.
That's core to it, Carmen reincarnation.
The most complicated organism, we
are the most complicated organism
that we're currently aware of in terms of our ability
to manipulate our environment, our ability to communicate, our ability to create things.
But we don't have an operator's manual, which is crazy. So we're essentially running on
this primate software that was really established. It's almost like we have DOS or Windows 95 and we just keep
refreshing it. Right. You know, we don't, there's no real new operating system.
Yeah. And it's so filled with flaws that the human operating system is designed
to ward off predators and to fight off neighboring tribes and to try to avoid
starvation and to try to make sure that your genes pass on and that your enemy's genes don't.
And to, you know, to exist in 2024 in modern Western world with all of our technology and all of our knowledge
and all the information that we have available with this ancient primate software is so problematic.
It's so fraught with peril.
There's so many things that can go wrong.
So many people that go sideways with drug addiction
and gambling addiction and sex addiction
and this addiction and that addiction
and so much chaos and, you know,
thievery and violence and, you know,
and deception and fraud. and there's just so
many things that exist that are negative but are tied to this concept of achieving and
getting more, which is, you know, this, this famine-based mentality, this resource-acquiring
mentality that really is like the monkey stealing your sunglasses so it can get mangoes.
Right.
It's really, you know.
No, no, totally agree.
And I felt like with DMT I got like a very short, it was like, I felt like there was
this sentient, generally benevolent force out there in the cosmos that was like, okay,
look, I'm going to give you a lot of information.
You're not going to be able to retain most of it.
Right.
But you're ready?
Here we go. Yeah. And one of the things that I brought back
that I still believe a decade later
is that reincarnation is real.
That's how it works.
Karma is real.
That's how it works.
What you do in this life affects your next one.
And that also gives you the user's guide
you're talking about about how to be a better person, how
to be a better species.
I didn't get a reincarnation vibe. I'm
not opposed to the idea of reincarnation but I got a vibe that
there's other things and there's other dimensions there's other there's other
experiences and there's maybe levels of existence and that this existence that
we're experiencing right now as human beings is just very strange, confusing, almost like a puzzle that you are
on this planet trying to solve and you can get distracted.
You can get distracted by all sorts of things in this life, but the things that bring you
happiness and love, you have to sort those out and choose those amongst the different options that the
puzzle gives you.
You know this podcast, Psychedelic Salon?
Yeah, sure.
I have that guy on, Lorenzo.
Yeah, Lorenzo.
Back in the day.
Lorenzo Hegrati.
He's great.
Yeah, he is.
I recently got to know him and he asked me to give you a message because I guess two
or three months ago you were musing about whether or not he was still alive because
he hadn't posted any new episodes
Yeah, he is still alive. That's his message Lorenzo's right and after he heard that you'd raised that question. He's been posting
Oh, that's great. Yeah, so they're gonna connect me to him. Yeah, absolutely
So Lorenzo Lorenzo and I and the aforementioned techno pig and octopus Messiah are in the process of collaborating with some
AI animation
artists on a documentary about the stoned ape theory. I think it's gonna be
dope. Have you seen Dennis McKenna's assessment of it? Yeah. He broke it down
on the podcast where he was explaining to me the the actual mechanisms that
would be involved in psilocybin accelerating the human mind and the ability
to form language and concepts and creativity and all the different things that Terrence
talked about.
But you know, Dennis is like hardcore, like fact-based scientist.
Yeah.
You've had several great guests on there talking about
that theory, but I've been like, there's about to be already, it's showing signs, but there's about
to be just a glut of AI animation movies, even in documentaries, like I think AI animation is going
to replace, you know, recreations, you know, where they hire actors to recreate stuff. We did it in
Krishna's, right? We recreated, you know, murder scenes using actors and firearms and stuff, we did it in Christians, right? We recreated murder scenes using actors
and firearms and stuff, prop firearms.
But I think, so I've been approached with,
I don't even know how many ideas for like,
do AI animation docs, it's just been like gimmick,
gimmick, gimmick, but this one really felt right.
Like, A, I think that Terrence McKenna
would have loved the idea of using AI animation
to like, you know, show the evolution of our species
as they pick the mushrooms out of the cow shit and stuff.
And also one idea that we're toying with,
I think we'll go forward with now that we've actually,
I think we've got the technology actually dialed in, where we
built this AI world, this Terence McKenna AI world,
where we can give it ideas and it'll spit back imagery to us
that feels right, is building some sort of AI avatar of Terence McKenna AI world where we can give it ideas and it'll spit back imagery to us that feels right is building some sort of like AI avatar of Terrence McKenna.
So the idea is that the spine of the documentary will be anytime we're, because Lorenzo has
incredible archives of Terrence McKenna, you know, stuff that nobody else has.
Yeah, he has everything.
And anytime you're hearing Terrence McKenna's voice describing the stone-dape theory will
take people through it step by step, you'll be seeing AI animation of what he's describing.
So you're hearing Terrence McKenna's voice but seeing AI.
So for people who don't know what the stone-dape theory is, we should probably explain it to
them for people who have never heard it before.
And the concept is that at one point in evolution, there was climate change and
that these rainforests, tropical rainforests had receded into grasslands and that these
primates had started experimenting with different food sources by flipping over cow patties
and looking for grubs and all these different things. And one of the things that they would
do is probably test the mushrooms that were
growing in the cow patties.
And in many places where psilocybin exists,
these things are extremely prevalent.
Like my friend Duncan, who grew up in Asheville, North
Carolina, told me that mushrooms were so prevalent that the local
ranchers had started putting feed in with the cattle feed, some
sort of anti-fungal thing to keep fungus from growing in cow shit.
Because so many kids were going out to the field and picking psilocybin mushrooms.
It's like they were everywhere.
They were everywhere.
You know? They were everywhere. So the concept is that low doses of psilocybin
increase visual acuity, make people more amorous.
So it probably heightened sexual arousal,
made people more likely to breed,
and made people more curious.
Probably because of the increase in visual acuity
made people better hunters.
There's studies that have been done, I forget what the scientist did, was a hardcore, you know, non-psychedelic
scientist who did studies on edge detection with patients.
Right.
You know, these studies?
Yeah, yeah.
And it showed that people under the influence of psilocybin can detect deviants, like, so
if you have two parallel lines and one slightly deviates from parallel, the people
on psilocybin can predict it much quicker, can see it much quicker than the people not
on psilocybin, which is fascinating.
And you'd be a much better hunter.
Much better hunter.
And much better at surviving being hunted.
And also just be more tuned into things.
You're more aware of, like, I know a lot of people that use psilocybin when they play certain sports and
They think that psilocybin low doses like slow dose. Yeah. Yeah low doses for playing pool and things like that
You just have a better understanding of what's happening. I I attest to a low micro doses for chess
Chess. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Does it help you? Really?
I think it does.
Actually, I can demonstrate that it does in my game ratings.
Really?
Absolutely.
Interesting.
Now, I don't know if I buy the Stone-Date Theory in the same way that I fully buy into
the concept of the bardo and reincarnation and karma and all that, but it's sure fucking
fun to think about, man.
Well, doesn't it?
I mean, it mimics DMT.
Psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine
are very closely related.
Yeah.
I think when it's broken down,
I think I'm gonna fuck this up,
but I think it's N4-phara-loxy and dimethyltryptamine.
It's like it's very close to what dimethyltryptamine is.
And we also know that dimethyltryptamine
is endogenously produced.
It's produced in the human brain.
We don't even understand why.
And that's Rick Strassman, who wrote that book, DMT, the Spirit Molecules, talked about
that.
And they've done a lot of great research at the Cottonwood Research Foundation, trying
to determine where it's produced, why it's produced.
They used to think it was just produced by the pineal gland.
Now they think, I believe, it's produced by the whole brain.
And this thing that these primates were finding
was giving them that and giving them
more of an understanding of the world around them
and expanding the brain.
And the other thing about the concept of the stone-dape theory
is this bizarre fact, the concept of the stoned ape theory is this bizarre fact
in the history of humans that in the entire species, like the record of species, one of
the biggest mysteries is the doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million
years.
And McKenna says that that coincides with this exact same time period where the tropical
rainforests were receding into grasslands and then they believed that these primates
were experimenting on new food sources.
So there's all these things that sort of line up with it and it makes it a fascinating idea.
But if you think about, like, if they found out that this thing gives them this feeling
and they were, you know, they're repeatedly using it over and over and over again and then their their offspring did it
and their offspring did it and and in your you know playing this out over a
couple million years you could see how this would happen yeah also the
development of language yeah yes the gloss alia yeah yeah yeah thank you yeah
you know like high doses yeah it'shmm. Yeah, it's a language center
so like I said, I'm not sure I buy it but
You know should be a fun movie to make something happen. Yeah
It's very obvious. It's something happened that separated us from all the other primates
Yeah, like in a radical way. Yeah, we don't look anything like that, right? We have abilities in
We have so many attributes that are far beyond any other
primate and it kind of makes sense. And also there's people that can achieve those states
without psychedelics, which is fascinating. And I've gone pretty close with some breathing
exercises and especially breathing exercises in sensory deprivation,
you can achieve some definite psychedelic states. I haven't had the full visual effects
that are available with DMT, but boy, you definitely get to some bizarre place where
if it was a drug, it would be a very popular drug.
Well, back to the Christians. That's what Prabhupada was preaching.
And a lot of his early devotees were
people that had taken a lot of acid, or mescaline, or peyote,
and felt like they were getting glimpses of something,
but they couldn't understand it.
And he's like, let me show you how to get there
without the drugs.
And what was Prabhupada using to try to get there?
Meditation.
Just deep meditation. Yeah, just deep meditation.
Yeah, I think, I think there's chanting, chanting of like ancient sacred mantras and
meditation.
Yeah.
Well, that's the other thing that happens with DMT rituals that they play Ikaros, these
ancient South American songs that sort of, you know, enhance the experience. Like when you do DMT with Icaros playing,
the DMT dances to the sound,
and it's very strange to watch.
It's beautiful, bizarre, and you know, it's overwhelming.
Like you can't, it's hard to believe
that it's really happening while it's happening,
and you know, you gotta kinda let go,
and just like let it happen and
Experience it because you're so blown away by it all it's hard to just not just go
What the fuck like every five seconds? Yeah, you got to kind of just take it in and accept it
yeah, I tried to get my dad to try DMT my dad died recently and
About six months ago. I tried to get him to try DMT. I was like,
listen, you know, until I tried this dad, you know, I was like, same as you, like basically
Spock, like cold logic reason, right? You know, like that's my dad. Yeah. Super smart,
like mathematical genius was my dad. And he was like, well, it sounds interesting, but
I guess if you're right, I'll find out on my own. Cause I was like, this is kind of
like the trailer for the movie dad. You know, I'll find out on my own because I was like this is kind of like the trailer for the movie dad
You know I'll find out on my own. Yeah, interesting so
Yeah, he he died like two weeks ago while I was in Ukraine. Oh wow
Yeah, what were you doing in Ukraine? I was reporting. I was working
I wasn't filming, but I was doing some research, and I was in a I was in a war zone
I mean what whole fucking countries a war zone, but I was in a war zone where like communications were
Dicey at best and I got a text message from my wife on signal
It was like your dad's heart valve is failing rapidly is in the hospital
He's probably got like 48 hours to live and the airspace over Ukrainians closed
So there's no way that I could get from where I was in Ukraine to Anchorage, Alaska to be with him.
And so I was just sending text messages on Signal
to the nurses and they were reading them to him.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I was able to record one voice memo
right as he was going,
because the last sense to go when you're dying
is sense of hearing.
And they played him like a message from me.
Wow.
But to answer your question, what was I doing in Ukraine?
I'm looking into a possible documentary
that would be set against the backdrop of the current war,
but that would be more about what
is actually the true nature of corruption in Ukraine,
and what has it been, and what was it in the 90s, like what is actually the true nature of corruption in Ukraine? And what has it been and what was in the 90s?
You know yeah, and what is it today and like how has the US State Department?
Kind of fucked up again in the same way that we did in Vietnam and every war like Vietnam
Afghanistan Iraq by backing the wrong horses you know we've never not fucked up. Yeah, there's never been one
Well, whether it's Libya
or Afghanistan, Iraq, there's not one
where you could point to like, we nailed that one.
There's not one.
There's not one.
And when there was so much resistance to the concept
that Ukraine was corrupt when we first started backing them,
that was what was fascinating to me
because it
was always talked about how corrupt Ukraine was. It was always talked about. And then
all of a sudden this was a foreboding topic. Like, no, Russia is the aggressor and the
invader and Ukraine are their angels. And they're like, wait a minute, you know, this
is not, that's not reality.
Well, it's also that we would, the U.S the US government be like, OK, we would sort of designate who
is corrupt and who wasn't.
I mean, look, the US went through its own sort of oligarchy, like robber baron phase,
you know, in the late 1800s.
I was like after we'd been a democracy for 100 years, it's not unfortunately, it's kind
of a step on the evolution of free democracies to have this phase where you're like, you know, things are super corrupt.
Like, I spent some time at an Orthodox monastery in Ukraine last month, and I asked the sort of head of the monastery, like, what would you have to do to get rid of corruption in this country?
He's like, well, I'm a man of God, you know, speaking through an interpreter, he's like, I'm a man of God, so I'm not advocating this. But what you could do is you could take,
because the main problem in Ukraine right now,
as I understand it, is the judicial system.
They have what they call telephone law, which
is basically like before a judge makes a ruling,
he gets a phone call telling him which way to rule.
And so the head of this monastery, he was like,
you could line up every judge and, every judge and shoot them.
And then, and then, and then all the judges or all the like government officials that
come to their funerals, shoot them and do that two or three times. And then we might
be able to start over. Like he was saying, that's how systemic this is. But I mean, man
of God's telling you this. Yeah. That's a guy who's like reached the limits. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh my god.
But I'll tell you, my time in Ukraine really changed my perspective on that war and I came
back a real sort of hawk thinking that we should fully support Ukraine in the war.
Why is that?
Part of it was just being with the people who the Ukraine, I just like the Ukrainians
in a way that I've been to other former Soviet block
countries.
And it's kind of like, I won't name any of them,
but I just feel like, I'm not sure you guys are really down
with the freedom and democracy thing.
It seems like you were subjugated for a while,
and you just didn't get the same vibe.
I think the Ukrainians are legitimately
freedom-loving people that have, that have been like under the
thumb of corrupt leadership for decades now.
But to just part of it was there was something very enthralling about being in a place where
everyone is so unified, like this country under attack being invaded by a hostile force.
Now these are the Ukrainians who have stayed behind, okay, but there's
still a lot of them. I mean, and just that in coming from America where everything is so splintered
and divided now and to be in a place where everyone is so on the same page, there is something very
attractive about that. Well that is what happens when you get invaded. Do you remember what it was like in America after 9-11?
Right after 9-11.
It was the most united this country has ever been.
It's a horrible thing to say because it's not what you ever want to happen again to
wake everybody up, but it was the thing that was required to make people put American flags
on their cars.
It was a horrible tragedy, but in a lot of ways, I mean,
it was a horrible tragedy, but in a lot of ways,
the reaction to it was very beautiful.
There was so many people that were so,
I was in New York City, like, just a few weeks
or a few months after 9-11, and everybody was friendly.
It was crazy.
It was like everybody was just so blown away
by the experience of being attacked,
and so just shaken out of it and so aware of how fortunate they were to not be one of
those people who died and that we are legitimately all together and that
there are forces out there that are evil and that we have to stay united and I
hate to think that that's what's required to wake people up from this division.
But I was wondering, I wonder if maybe the division that we have in this country is because
of the fact that we're never attacked and because of the fact that we only experienced
a few of the Pearl Harbor, 9-11.
There's only a few of these moments where we've had to wake up.
Yeah.
Yeah. The Aleutian Islands actually in Alaska were attacked and occupied by Japanese
forces in World War II. A little known fact. Yeah, that was actually American territory.
I didn't know that. But I mean, we fucking, man, I mean, the Ukrainians, they had nuclear
weapons and in 1994, the quote unquote West the US and the UK basically convinced them
You know to give up their nukes right exchange for a guarantee that we would help them protect their sovereign territory, right?
You know yeah, yeah, that was right after the fall
The Soviet Union yeah, yeah
Yeah, there's so many factors right there's the NATO encroaching on Russia's territory
I mean in 2004 like NATO started handing out membership cards like fucking crackerjack
prizes.
Putin gets re-elected in 2004, 20 years ago, and all of a sudden, all these former Soviet
small territories are now NATO countries.
Hey, you want to be NATO?
Well, great.
Now we're signed up for a mutual defense treaty with Lithuania.
Nothing against Lithuanians, but fuck man.
This is getting serious.
It's very serious.
What happens if he invades a NATO country?
What are we gonna do?
Because China's watching, and I'll tell ya,
I've been like, under fire would be over dramatic,
but I've had quite a few Iranian fucking Shahid drones launched in my general direction recently
It gives you another perspective on like, you know Russia's support for Iran and vice versa
You know like mutual enemy of ours like those are Iranian fucking drones being shot
at us and
drones being shot at us and I don't know you know Russia recently had Hamas like have delegation from Hamas visit the Kremlin I mean what the fuck man really
yeah yeah so anyway this is a fucking sketchy time it really is I mean it's
just it's to you know this to say like oh like World War three is eminent it
sounds doomsayer but it feels like it could go that way
China, you know, they're they're looking at us. That's the problem if we if we sort of like showed our ass and back down
You know if if if Putin keeps going
Is then China may just test that red line
Right with Taiwan. Yeah. Well, I think they're preparing for that.
Yeah.
At least when I've talked to people that understand.
You know, I just, I mean, I think that the war in Ukraine
could have been prevented.
I think that there was this false dichotomy
where there were forces in the US government,
and this is part of the documentary I want to make,
is about, that forced you, there was like,
you either have to be a puppet of Russia or our puppet. You have to either have to be NATO or going
there's no middle ground. When in fact, I think that Ukraine could have been a bridge,
a peaceful bridge between Russia and the quote unquote West where maybe it could have joined
the European Union economically free trade but not joined NATO right because that's
what Putin was so adamant against and you understand I mean I think he's a war
criminal fucking power mad you know asshole right but you can sort of see
from his perspective if you look at a map and you start to see all these NATO
countries yeah around Russia you kind of see you know what motivates him well
that's what people in the State Department
had always said that was his red line.
His red line was Ukraine.
And then when they're trying to get Ukraine to join NATO,
it's like, what are we doing?
What are we doing?
We bringing about World War III and why?
And how much money's being spent?
And where's that money going?
And who's got a vested interest in keeping that money flowing?
Yeah, that's where it gets scary, right
This that's that's what I'm looking into and I don't want to tip tip my hand too much
But I think I've got pretty convincing evidence
That the US Department of Justice has been used by the US State Department
to further US
Foreign policy interests in Ukraine in ways that aren't really like right,
like bringing either bringing criminal charges against people in the US, but like Ukrainians,
like charging them with crimes in the US, including some people that have never even set foot in the
United States, charging with crimes or getting them out of trouble, like dropping criminal
charges against them to sort of like, and again, it goes back to like,
our designating, you're a good guy, you're a bad guy.
You're corrupt, you're not, even though they're both
just grabbing billions with both hands.
It's a fucking scary time, man.
It really is.
It's wild to me that Zelensky is the president, too.
You have essentially a comedian who played the president on a
television show. They're like, we like you. If they held an election today, he
would not be reelected. No? No. But then they support him. It's interesting.
It's like you ask them, do you support the president? They say yes, like we're at war.
Would you vote for him? No. What was their opposition? I think he's mismanaging the war.
And also I think they suspect that he's corrupt.
And I think he probably is.
But the fact that 50 cents of every dollar that we send there,
this isn't actually how it goes down, but even if that was the case,
is going into somebody's pocket doesn't mean that we can just turn Ukraine over to
Russia in my opinion.
I think that we should be backing them full on militarily, not with US troops, but giving
them what they need to fight.
Because you know, I talked to a lot of special forces guys over there, they're like basically
like those Russian human waves attacks, we're just like mowing these guys, it's not even
really combat, we're just mowing these these guys, it's not even really combat,
we're just mowing these guys down
until we run out of bullets and then we have to retreat.
Those are the battles, that's what Putin's able to do.
He's got so many guys.
And he's also letting people out of jail.
Yeah, yeah.
Letting people out of jail and giving them,
you serve and your time, your sentence is rescinded.
Well, so people think of Russia and they think of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but you look
at that country on a map, it's fucking massive.
There's so much territory east of the Earl Mountains.
It's just a bunch of villages, what we call flyover country, right?
Well, Putin is offering deals like sign up where it's like, you know, more money than
they make in a year per month, A, B if you're killed your family set up for life
They can buy a house, you know, whatever. Yeah, so it's very attractive
Offers for these really poor people from rural Russia and then they're using them as just human cannon fodder 100% 100%
It's just I just can't remember a time in my life where things had just seemed so unhinged.
No, no, I asked my parents about that too.
I'm too, my dad, before he passed, they were like,
no, we don't remember even like Watergate, Vietnam era.
They weren't really old enough
to remember the Great Depression,
but even that was just sort of limited to the US.
I mean, I know there are global effects of that,
ricochets of that, but know there are global, you know, effects of that, ricochets of that.
But yeah, it feels like it could go sideways on us in a hurry.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
And then what does that look like?
That's what's terrifying.
What's terrifying is if you're willing to do,
like let's say what Israel's doing in Gaza,
if you're willing to almost eliminate a city,
just bomb the fuck out of a city,
and kill who knows how many innocents,
what are the numbers?
It's 30,000, I don't know what the numbers are.
What's the line that keeps you from dropping a nuke
that kills 300,000?
What's the line?
Like, why are we, why do we have this idea
that it won't accelerate to that when it has in the past?
It's just because it only did, we only did it once?
Right.
In Japan in 1945, is that what it is I agree
with I mean I agree with your assessment that danger a hundred percent that's
another reason why I think that we have to help Ukraine stop Putin now because
if he keeps going into Ukraine and then he he he invades a NATO country and we
decide that we've got to go up against him is there any evidence that he would
do that that he would invade a NATO country I don't think he'll stop. You don't think so?
I think, dude, he's been in power for a long time for a leader of Russia.
I think that he, I mean, I watched that Tucker Carlson interview, right?
Yeah.
And that history lesson that he delivered at the beginning, everyone was like,
what the fuck is he talking about? And Tucker just looked baffled.
I was, I got it.
I actually thought I'm getting an insight into Putin's motivations andations and the way that he sees himself which is a historic figure
He sees himself as someone who's gonna restore a Russian Empire
he like spends all day in the halls of the Kremlin with like, you know portraits of Ivan the terrible and Catherine the great
right, and I think that he's seeing himself as
Not the leader of a you know a free country certainly but someone's
who's gonna restore a Russian Empire so no I absolutely do not think he will
stop with Ukraine no way so then if he doesn't and then he invades a NATO
country and we go up against him man those documents leaked recently from
Russia that was showing what their lines were for when they would start using quote-unquote tactical nukes and
You know, I think he'd do it I
Think he'd do it. I don't think he will what are the lines?
Well, they were whatever if they started to lose a certain percentage of troops, I can't recall the specifics, but they were like shockingly
Shockingly liberal when they would start to use tactical nukes on the battlefield in Europe, you know?
Like if they started to have certain percentages of battlefield losses, we're not in the current situation But like as they go further into into Ukraine
Or or in you know, or in a war that came into russian territory. So I just think
You know, we should stop this shit now this shit being putin. Is it possible?
I think it is possible. I think it is possible I think it's possible to essentially let him have what's this Jim criteria for a potential nuclear response range from an
enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers such as
destruction of 20% of Russia's strategic ballistic missile summer missile. This is the first time we've seen documents like this
reported in the public domain," said Alexander Gubuev, director of
Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. They show that the operational threshold
for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can't be achieved
through conventional means. Russia's tactical
nuclear weapons which can be delivered by land or sea launched missiles from or
from an aircraft are designed for limited battlefield use in Europe and
Asia as opposed to the larger strategic weapons intended to target US modern
tactical warheads can still release significantly
more energy than the weapons dropped on Nagasaki in Hiroshima in 1945. Although
the files date back 10 years or more experts claim they remain relevant to
current Russian military doctrine the documents were shown to the FT by Western sources. So to answer your question I think that you
know the territory that that that Putin has taken you know and again also we
like just like we didn't back him up after the security assurances that we
gave we the US gave Ukraine in 1994 right, there was that revolution in Ukraine and in response, Putin
invaded Crimea with the little green man, the guys that didn't have an insignia. And
the US State Department went to, and Ukraine was going to fight. And the US State Department
went to Kiev and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, chill out, chill out, chill out, just let
him have Crimea. We'll make sure he stops there. Let's not escalate things. Okay. So
we gave him our word a second time and then we broke it
So to answer your question
I think that that territory that that that Putin has seized my impression from talking with a lot of Ukrainians in recent weeks has
Been that that they feel like Ukraine could still be Ukraine without that territory
like the people like
Basically like you could have like a three-week period where people could either move there if they want to be Russians or they can leave if they
want to be Ukrainians and then you could have a kind of a North Korea, South Korea DMZ kind
of situation. I think that's probably the best possible outcome right now. But even
to do that, again, we've got to properly arm the Ukrainians so that they can stop Putin
from moving further into their country
and actually taking territory that they could not live without.
So do you think ultimately he plans on taking all of Ukraine?
Yes, 100%. I think he's 100%. I mean, he was, when I was in Kiev and I went to how close
the fighting actually got to the capital city, it was shocking how close it was. Like that
town, Butcha, where there was all those atrocities committed. I mean, it was shocking how close it was. Like that town, Butcha,
where there was all those atrocities committed.
I mean, there was this one,
I saw this one auto, this like massive graveyards
of like automobiles, and what happened was,
people were trying to get out of this town
as the Russian troops, the Russian,
because they invaded from Belarus,
from the north, and they came in,
and they're trying to go like lightning strike on Kiev.
And they got within, I think, 10, 12 kilometers strike on Keeve and they got within I think
10, 12 kilometers of the city and then they got stopped because the guys started blowing
bridges special forces started blowing bridges and hitting them with javelins and stuff and
they actually stopped them like incredibly brave fighting.
But there's this one just like I came across this just pile of just hundreds of blown up
cars and I asked the locals about and some of them have been like painted now with you across this pile of just hundreds of blown up cars.
And I asked the locals about it,
and some of them have been painted now with sunflowers
and Slava Ukrania, Glory to Ukraine,
and artists are trying to make this less sort of macabre.
But what it was, was when the Russians invaded
two years ago, hundreds of families piled in their cars,
and there was one road out of
town but it was a trap and the Russians cut it off on both sides and then methodically
using tanks blew up these cars full of civilians.
Just brutal shit.
I know there's still like brutal shit on all sides in all wars, but to see it firsthand
like that, you know, to talk to people that saw that happen was It's tough. So
Yeah
What is it like going over there like leaving America and going over there to try?
I mean, what was the craziest thing was you just you can just walk in
It was like it was like it's harder to go into Tijuana than it is to go to Ukraine
Like you just like I went in through it's I came. Yeah, I came out. Yes, that's it
I went in I came out through Poland and I went in through Romania and I just like those cars. Yeah
So I flew to
Bucharest and then drove about ten hours to the border and then just like walked across with my duffel bag and US passport.
It's really easy to get in.
You just walked across?
Yeah, just walked right across. It was like five minutes.
Did you have it set up already to talk to people?
I did. I had set up security. I had really good security. These guys were like special forces guys,
a tank hunting team actually,
that had just rotated off the front
after fighting for two years.
And so basically keeping me alive was a vacation for them.
And I got to be really good friends with this one dude,
especially the guy that was like,
cause they worked in different ways.
There was a team, but there was one guy
that was like attached to my hip.
He was just with me 24 seven, whose name was Andre. And I got to be really good buddies with this
guy just using Google Translate, even when the interpreter wasn't around, just really
clicked with this guy. Anyway, but yeah, I did have it set up before I had an interpreter,
a driver, and security. And then I had conversations that I'd'd lined up but a lot of it was people had documents or people had information that the only way
I was gonna get these documents or that of them tell me this information was to
go to Ukraine it was the only way they were gonna you know trust it trust me
how much different was it than what you expected well it's great it's it's I
really back to my new love for Ukrainian people
In Kiev like or Lviv, which is it which is a fantastic city. It's in eastern Ukraine near the Polish border
You know, it's like you wouldn't until until the Rockets and the Iranian Iranian drones start flying into the city
You wouldn't know anything was going on people People are out dressed nicely, going to dinner,
going to bars, going to clubs, like they're out and about.
You know?
And then all of a sudden the air raid sirens go off.
And there's this app that I like jokingly texted my wife.
I was like, this is the worst video game ever.
Because it's this app that shows you what's incoming,
like what kind of missiles and how many and what kind of drones and how many.
And then as the air defense system shoot them down,
they like blip off the screen, you know?
So you can like see like the shits coming your way
and like how many are they shooting down.
It's like the worst version of missile command
because you can't actually do anything, right?
But yet you're watching it.
And-
In real time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
So
And this is an app you can get free phone. Yeah. Yeah. Well the security guys had it
I don't know if anybody everybody has an app on their phone that alerts them when there's incoming missiles or drones
Right, and how do they know that that app has not been compromised? Great question. I don't know. Great question.
Is this an app that's, is it Windows and Android?
You could get it.
You could get it on your phone right now.
As a matter of fact, before I went to Ukraine,
I downloaded it and installed it.
And I thought it'd be geofenced.
But it was like the middle of the night in New Mexico.
And all of a sudden, it's like, air raid, air raid, missiles
incoming.
You know, like, seek shelter.
So if anybody wants to experience
what it's like to be a Ukrainian right now you can download this app was it
called let's take a look is it available for all anybody yes anybody can get it I
may have taken it off actually but I'm sure if you just like Google like
Ukrainian you know air raid app did you take it off is you're tired of seeing
air raids yes yeah I didn't want it that's a I didn't want it to sound anymore so I mean you can you can pick which parts of the country you take it off because you're tired of seeing air raids? Yes. Yeah. I didn't want it to sound anymore.
So I mean, you can pick which parts of the country
you want it to alert you to.
But yeah, I mean, it was one day where the security guys were
like, it's not safe to drive from where we were to Kiev
tomorrow.
So that's the bad news.
Because every night, we would have a go, no go kind
of meeting for the next day.
And that was the one time that they were like, no go, no go, too much shit's going on, it's not safe to drive, you know, eight hours to Keefe.
Good news is it's snowing in the Carpathian Mountains, so we're going to go skiing.
And I was like, what? And so the next day we did, we like drove five hours up in the mountains,
and there's this full-on ski resort, and there's just people like the hundreds of families out
skiing and
There's the fucking war going on and it's in it's like a day of a nationwide raid alert red alert
which means that like missiles were hitting all over and
So people are watching this app on their phone and you can see this stuff
That's coming, you know to the oblast which is like a state
You know that we're in.
And as the stuff is being shot down, people are cheering from the chair lifts.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
That's what I mean.
That fucking fuck you spirit that they have is, I think, impressive.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have a friend from Israel, and he's a kickboxing coach, my friend Shuki.
And when he was living in America, he lives in Israel now, but when he was living in America,
I went over to his house for dinner and him and his wife, they'd be playing the bongos and dancing.
And I'm like, you guys are like, you have so much spirit, like you're so filled with fun.
And he's like, my friend, when you live in Israel,
he goes, every day, like you could die.
So every day is party, party, have a good time,
enjoy your life.
And it's like the same kind of thing,
unfortunately, like post 9-11.
Like you need something horrible to happen
for you to appreciate the good, and appreciate peace,
and appreciate joy.
Yeah. And that's what's that's a crazy thought is that the thing that's going to cure
what ails us is conflict and getting together and banding together to fight a common evil.
Right. Which is just so bizarre. Or if we had like a war of the worlds kind of thing where like a
hostile like alien race attacked earth. You remember when had like a war of the worlds kind of thing, where like a hostile alien race attacked Earth.
You remember when Ronald Reagan said that to the UN?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like the UFO fanatics' favorite speech.
When Ronald Reagan said if we were
faced with a hostile threat from an alien world,
how quickly we would put aside our differences.
That's true.
I mean, that's one of the things that astronauts always
talk about when they go to the space station. So you look on the earth and you go my god, what are we doing?
Right what how are we in conflict with each other over lines in the dirt imaginary?
Lines in the dirt that we create for what?
Like who's doing this and why are we doing this? We should all be together
We're we're we're this one species that can communicate with each other, attach this ball
that's hurling through infinity. And yet, our territorial primate instincts have us
engaged in this insane conflict that no one thinks is ever going to end. If you asked
anyone today, can you achieve in our lifetime no war?
Most people will say that's not possible.
Which is so strange.
And tragic.
Well, it's also so crazy because it's a function of human beings in large numbers, right?
Because like if we were in this room together and you said, could you imagine all three
of us get along?
Of course, easily.
I couldn't imagine us not getting along.
We can talk,
we'll figure things out. Do we have resources? Yeah, we'll be fine. Make it 3 million people.
Make it 30 million. Make it 300 million. Now you've got problems. And it's just, and it
seems to be always the same thing that you see when you have a cult. You have leaders,
and the leaders don't necessarily have the best
intentions for everyone.
They have the best intentions for themselves and for the people that are providing them
with money.
And this is the trap that we're all stuck in.
Everyone on earth, all of us, being led by groups that decide that they're in control
of these massive numbers of people and they want control of the resources of these other
territories and they want to do something to those people and they'll have people convinced
this is your enemy.
You have to go kill them.
People that you've never met, you have no issue with.
You don't know anything about them.
You've literally never seen them before you might not ever see them even when you're killing them and
This is the thing that we don't believe could ever be stopped in our lifetime, which is
Insane if you really start to think about it that way
It sounds so insane like if you if you were approached by an alien life form
That said what is the source of all this murder and killing and destruction? Like what is this?
It's like oh, we're being led
we're a group and we're being led by the the people that are in charge of this group that are very secretive and
that are being influenced by massive amounts of money and the military industrial complex and they've got everyone convinced that you have to divert all of our resources into
attacking this other group that is opposed to our way of life they hate us
for our freedom whatever the fuck it is and that this is what we have to do now
they would be like what is wrong with you fucking people? Like what a bizarre, wounded, tainted species
that you think like this.
And not just think like this,
but think it's impossible to imagine this not existing.
This the most insane venture
that human beings can ever engage in.
And you think it's impossible for that to not be the case.
But almost all logical people, if you ask them is could you imagine no war in your lifetime?
No, not now. No, not now. I mean, I you know, I just turned 53 and I think that like
When I was a young man, I had a lot more optimism, right?
And I don't think it was just a function of like wheat growing being young in the 90s
I think was like the best it was like the time of peace and prosperity
Yeah, and it seemed like we could get to Star Trek right like we could maybe get there
Right even Star Trek cold war and Klingons. Yeah. Well, you know, you've got to fight somebody
Why?
It seemed so crazy. I wonder if
I mean, this is really weird, but I wonder if that's where AI is leading us.
I really genuinely do. I wonder if the limitations of our primate architecture will not allow us to escape this never ending cycle of war. And that may be the only thing that will would be an intelligence that far exceeds
our own and doesn't have the same limitations, motivations, human reward systems, all the
things that hold us in these patterns. And that an artificial intelligence that is far
superior to what we're capable of generating with our monkey minds.
I mean, the only thing that prevents us.
Well, back to DMT, I think that intelligence
is already out there.
We don't have to build it with computers
in the United here on Earth.
And DMT is one conduit to it.
Mushrooms are another.
Meditation is another.
It's just a willingness to set aside the petty shit.
Which is also why a lot of people believe those things are illegal.
100%.
I mean if you have everybody realizing that we're all one united, it kind of makes more
sense.
No money in that.
Yeah, there's no money in that.
Well, maybe the problem is money in general, like the concept of money.
You know, and I'm not a proponent of socialism because socialism always leads to communism,
which leads to military dictatorships
that are dictating whether or not you can do this or that.
And there's always groups of people
that have massive resources.
And they keep everybody else subjugated.
Anybody that thinks that socialism and communism
is the future, show me where it works, ever.
It's still human beings. It's just like, whether it's
cults or militaries or anything. So it's human beings that have immense power that is unimaginable
to the common person, dictating what the common people can and can't do. And the only way
to enforce that is with force and with killing. That's the only way with jailing people killing people fear
so the only way to get people to listen to you and to do what you want them to do and
I wonder if what we're doing with artificial intelligence is creating I
Think we're I think we're gonna merge. That's what I think is going to happen
You know, I'm sure you've already seen this guy who they, the first Neuralink patient. Have you seen this? Yeah. So this
first guy who's paralyzed with Neuralink, he's now able to use a computer and he can
move cursors around with his mind and he can play video games with his mind. And he's been
doing this and he talks about it and it's like this is incredible this is amazing and this is essentially the model T of you know
this sort of human computer interface biological interface something that goes
into your mind into the brain itself and and connects with it and allows you to
use things I get why that would help a dude like in his situation,
but do you have any concerns about that, like large scale?
Of course.
Yeah, I have concerns with everything
that involves human beings.
Because I don't think there's ever
been a thing that involves human beings that doesn't
get co-opted and corrupted.
There's always something, someone comes along that
uses it and has power.
And that's the scariest thing about someone
achieving some sort of artificial general intelligence some sort of
superintelligence especially something that's sentient and can figure out what
we're doing wrong and also figure out what was done wrong to code it and make
a better version of itself and I think I it's going to lead to a new life form.
I'm almost positive of that, that that's what all this stuff is doing.
It's going to achieve.
I mean, have you ever seen the head of Google where he was talking about how their AI has
done things that they didn't expect?
Like it learned a language like instantaneously that it wasn't programmed in right and can translate that language now and
Communicating that language and they don't know how it did it
Well, hey guys hit the fucking brakes like what you do. You don't know you don't know what it's doing
And you're just gonna keep feeding it
Okay, where do you think that goes?
It's gonna be better than us at everything and it's gonna realize that we're the cause of pollution.
We're the cause of war.
We're the cause of theft and rape and fraud and destruction
and control of resources.
It's all human beings.
Like we are the problem that we're trying to solve.
If we're trying to solve that problem
by creating something that won't have those problems, it just logically seems to me that that thing is going to realize that we're the issue
Part of me shares that fear part of me feels like a drowning man like you know
Maybe a eyes the light preserver yeah part of me thinks that it's just gonna be like the metaverse or the Google glasses or whatever
It's just gonna be like a passing fad, but oh, I don't think. I don't think that at all. I think it's inevitable. I think we
are, I've compared us to a caterpillar. That we're a caterpillar that's building a cocoon
and we don't even know why. Caterpillars, they don't know, I'm going to become a butterfly,
it's going to be awesome. No, we don't know why we're doing all this. Why are we so thirsty
for innovation? Why are we so attached to wanting the newest, latest,
greatest technology? It almost seems like that motivation is tied into the
creation of artificial intelligence. That if you looked at us, I always say that if
you looked at us from above, if you were some other species that came and you were
looking at human beings, you would say, well, what does this thing do?
Like what does this species do?
Well, the main thing it does, if you look at all the wonderful things, the art, the
music, all the wonderful things that it does for itself, food and culture and all these
interesting things.
But what does the species overall do?
Well, it creates things and it
creates better things constantly. It's in a cycle of constant innovation. And a lot
of that innovation, almost all of it is tied to technology and artificial intelligence.
And so where does that go? Well, that goes to another life form. It creates a thing.
It creates an artificially intelligent.
And artificial is not a good word either, because I think it's digital intelligence.
I don't think it's artificial intelligence.
I think it's a computing-based intelligence that's far superior to the biological-based
intelligence.
And so my hope for us, because I am one of us, my hope is that we merge.
My fear is that it supersedes us my my fear is that it surpasses us in every way and
That it just gives us something that placates us that it controls us
Yeah, gives us something well instead of killing us off all you'd have to do is stop us from breeding
That's not hard to do. We're kind of doing that to ourselves. I mean, population level,
in terms of like viability, they've dropped substantially over the last few decades,
whether it's because of microplastics in our food that have diminished our reproductive cycles.
And if you look at the number of births, like in developing countries like what what happens how
many women are having miscarriages how many women are infertile the numbers
keep going up and up and up it seems like there's a there's a current trend
because of what we have done with our environment what we have done with our
food supply what we have done with medicine and pharmaceutical drugs that's
leading us to be less and less viable.
And all you'd have to do is step in
and provide human beings with something
that gives them incentive to no longer breed,
especially if it makes it very attractive to no longer breed.
And keep them entertained.
Keep them entertained, no longer breed.
Provide them with robot sex dolls
that are far superior to human beings, You know, someone who really gets them.
This person really gets them.
Or you just have a biological woman who yells at you.
I mean, it's...
It's... you can clearly see
how if you were a super intelligent species,
a super intelligent thing
that looked at us and said, well, what's the best way,
other than mass destruction, of stopping these things from ruining the world
well just stop them from breeding just make make these the last ones just
severely limit the amount of reproduction that takes place that would
do it that drowning man looking for a life preserver side of me kind of hopes
that artificial intelligence or digital intelligence, I like that, by the way.
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Digital intelligence, you know, that it could be that, again, back to DMT, I felt that that
sentient force, God, whatever you want to call it, was benign, was basically on my side. I'd
like to think that perhaps that technology is being provided to us, that there is a bigger
plan that we're just not dialed into, or that maybe it's a way to try and dial into that
plan. I just want us to get to Star Trek, man. I just want to be a... I think that the
goal, I think the intent for our species is to get off the rock and explore space and
peace together.
That would certainly be wonderful.
That would be certainly preferable to destroying ourselves.
What do you think is happening with all this UFO, UAP stuff?
Do you ever think about that?
Yeah, I've looked into the doc on that several times.
Could never quite get beyond what's already publicly available.
The government's covering something up, for sure.
For sure.
Do you think they're covering up things that they've invented?
I think that's probably the most, again, I would like to believe that what they're covering,
what I want to believe, in the same way that I want to believe in the same way that I want to believe in
The stoned ape theory because I think it's fucking cool. Yeah, I want to believe that they're covering up contact with you know
Species from outer space. Yeah other other intelligent life
What I suspect is really going on is that they're covering up shit that they're making that maybe has slipped the leash
You know or or that they or that for whatever reason they're just trying to like keep completely secret the stuff that has maneuverability
That can't be explained. Yeah, that's my thought too. I think both things though
I think we're probably being visited as well, and I think we might be being visited by something that is us from the future I
Think and might not even be us from the future future but being what happens when a species like us
gets involved in digital intelligence and create something that
Transcends the biological limitations and then you have these things
Like to me one of the one of things is very bizarre is the archetype the archetype
bizarre is the archetype, the archetype gray alien, which is this big headed thing with no muscle, no genitals, and it seems very humanoid in a way, which doesn't necessarily
make sense if you're dealing with different environments.
And we think about the massive variety of species that exist on the planet that we're
aware of.
There's only one human.
There's only one bipedal hominid.
That's it.
It's us.
Right?
Why is this thing so much like us?
This shitty design of walking around on two people.
Why can't it fly?
Like, why does it have these spindly bodies?
Well, human beings, as we're evolving, one of the things that's
very clear is that we're becoming less physical. We're weaker and softer than previous generations
of humans that we can observe. You look at our testosterone levels compared to men from
the 1950s, we're far lower on average. And if you go way back and you look at Australia Pythagoras and even Neanderthal, I mean, there's a super powerful
Physical specimens there. They were definitely a Neanderthal was like this five foot seven two hundred pound
behemoth of a creature that was you know, if you have a Neanderthal competing in the UFC it would smash everybody
There's their bones are bigger. They're far more powerful
the UFC, it would smash everybody. Their bones are bigger, they're far more powerful.
If you keep going in that direction, what do you get to?
You get to this thing that has almost no muscle, this thing that like, it just has
the need, the ability to move around.
It's probably communicating telepathically.
It's probably using its telepathic energy to control those devices, those ships.
That's one of the things that Bob Lazar said, went, and again, the Bob Lazar story is who
knows, right?
I love to believe the Bob Lazar story.
I had him on the podcast.
I talked to him for three hours.
I had dinner with him.
He doesn't seem like a guy who's lying.
And one of the more bizarre aspects of his story was how many of the things that he talked
about now we know are true. You know, in terms of the technology, in terms of what people have
seen, 3D printing, there's all these different things like this the ship that
he went into, there's no seams. He's like it's all like as if it's made out of one
piece of something, which is 3D printing. I mean that's what we're doing now. And
that there's no instrumentation and that somehow or another these things are
integrated somehow with our minds or with something where it's allowing
them to pilot these things without digital instrumentation and buttons and
switches. They're using some other wet method to control these things and
that's what he was supposedly brought in to try to back engineer.
He started to say, what is this?
How does it work?
And he talked about the limitations of having science try to be practiced in a vacuum.
And he was like, the metallurgist did not have contact with the propulsion experts.
The propulsion experts did not have contact with other groups that were studying these things. Everybody was very secretive and everybody
was very isolated. And he's like, that's not how science works. And that's one of the reasons
why they can never figure out how these things work. That you need to open this up to the
global scientific community and have everybody examine these things and look at it. But the
problem is the military applications.
Like if you have something that can essentially
use some new element and use this new element
that's bombarded with radiation
that allows you to manipulate gravity
and move at insane speeds almost instantaneously
to anywhere in the universe.
You can't give that to the Chinese.
You can't have someone else get a hold of it before us. You can't have someone steal
these techniques or these technologies. So what do you do? If you have this thing, if
this thing has really been donated, which is like what a lot of these people that work
on them, they call them donations. If you really have these things, what do you do?
How do you figure that out? I don't know. But if we have been things, what do you do? How do you
figure that out? I don't know. But if we have been doing this since the 1980s,
which is, Lazar said it's been around far longer than that, but when he was working
on it was the 1980s, you could imagine that by now we might have figured out a
way to get a drone going that uses these technologies and that these drones can
appear and disappear, they can fly and in same rates of speed they can hover
stationary at 120 knot winds like they've observed yeah you can imagine
that that's ours I saw the Phoenix lights you did you really yeah you were
there yeah I saw whoa different people saw different things what I saw was
something the size of like an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars
that was, like, at a relatively low altitude
moving over Phoenix.
My housemate was like, this, I mean,
this is before we had phones, right?
Before we had cameras.
So this is like, we had a flip phone, if anything.
And he was like, dude, you got to get out here.
And I, like, came out the front yard of our house in Tempe,
and we just watched this thing move across the sky it was like what the fuck man like I
mean I believe I believe in reincarnation because I came back from
D&T thinking that I had a firsthand experience I believe that there was
something inexplicable in the sky over Phoenix that night because I fucking saw
it okay and it was massive and it was quiet. And then it was just gone.
So what did it look like? It looked like a massive craft, not shaped like an
Imperial Star Destroyer, but of that scale that was more sort of like tubular
shaped. And you could see... Tubular? Yeah, more like, yeah, more like, yeah more like, yeah like a tube, and you, but you could see
variations in it. It wasn't like totally smooth, you know, and you could see by the way that it
was like blocking out the the stars, that you could see that there were like apparatus on it of some
kind. And, and I always thought that it was just, it was a military, it was a military aircraft where
they had, they thought they had a cloaking device. See, now that's what other people saw was these smaller things on the same night that
were explained away as being some sort of military flares or weather balloons or some
shit.
That's not what I saw.
On the same night, but I'm not the only one that saw this larger scale craft.
So I always thought, man, that could be a military ship.
They thought they had some sort of cloaking device that fucked up it fritzed out because that's kind of what it looked like
I could see it and then I couldn't you know
So so it looked like a tube and did well how big were you talking about like several football fields?
Yes, yes. Yeah, how many football fields I would say like the size of a battleship Okay, huge not an I would say like the size of a battleship.
Okay, huge.
Not an aircraft carrier, but the size of a battleship.
Like I would say three.
What's bigger, aircraft carrier or battleship?
Battleship I think is bigger.
It's a destroyer, whatever's smaller than an aircraft carrier.
Show me.
Whatever the ship is that's smaller than an aircraft carrier.
So not as big as an aircraft carrier.
Not as big as an aircraft carrier.
What is a battleship?
It's either a battleship or destroyer whatever that next one is
I would say three football fields at least it was huge. You could not miss it
And how high do you think it was above you?
No more than thousand feet whoa
Yeah, no more is low altitude. It was like right over right over Tempe. I'm not the only one. No
I'm not the only one. I know many many people saw it. Yeah. Yeah, I actually like went on the record with the newspaper
I worked for you know right away because they were like
Immediately dismissing those smaller lights that we just saw is like, you know, whatever whatever the explanation was
Yeah, and I was like there's something else, you know in the sky that night too. So I I
Loved to gamble if I had to make bet, I would still say it's human military
technology that fritzed out. Wow. Many people said they saw something that looked like a triangle.
No, this was not a triangle. Yeah. So maybe there was more than one of these things.
Oh, totally possible. Yeah.
Remember when the governor did that press conference
and came out with a guy in an alien suit
and made a mockery of the whole thing?
Which is what their tactic has been.
But then that same governor came back after he left office
and talked about it and said that he saw something
and admitted it.
Yeah.
What was the governor's name?
5 Simington. 5 Simington. See if you can find an audio of a video of 5 Simington saying
what he actually saw on witnessing the Phoenix lights. I think later he talked about it.
Well, unlike 5 Simington, I was stoned, but I still know what I saw. Okay? I still know what I saw.
And you know what's interesting is when he's trying
to describe the shape and he puts it at a bigger size
than I have it in my memory, I do remember talking
with my friend, like it was hard to describe
what we just saw.
It's like we didn't have a reference.
It's like we're trying to, let me see if I can
articulate this, we're trying to find reference points
for something that really doesn't have one, I
guess.
Like you kind of estimate the size, but it just it had it was it was unlike anything
I'd ever seen before.
Have you ever heard people describe what the Native Americans must have seen when those
boats started showing up?
No.
They'd never seen anything that large,
that it probably blew them away.
You see the Pinta and the Santa Maria
and these massive boats from Europe.
That they were like, what the fuck is that?
Well, let's hope that the beings aboard the craft,
as that's what they are, have better intentions
than the people aboard those boats.
Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy that you actually saw it. Yeah.
Wow, and you said it just disappeared? Yes. It wasn't like whoop or anything. There was no noise.
It was just it was there and there were some lights, like you said, I remember there was there were some lights that were not stars that were
part of this craft.
Could you describe what those lights looked like?
No, they were not colored.
They were white or off white.
Because I remember thinking, are those stars?
I was trying to actually see what is the shape
and what is stars.
That's how I was gauging how big it was.
And I was like, no, those are attached to this thing.
And then it was just, I just couldn't see anymore.
It was like the northern lights.
So I'm from Alaska, right?
So it was like the northern lights, they're there,
and then they're not there.
It was just like this ghostly thing,
and then they're gone.
And it was like that.
It was there, it was moving at a slow speed,
from my left to right,
and then it was just, I couldn't see it anymore.
But it was like 20 seconds, at least.
It wasn't like a glimpse of this
Thing yeah, and how many lights?
Mmm half a dozen
Yeah, come on around there
Yeah
Yeah, I know people said that they that they that they saw triangle so then for a while they were saying
That's why he was probably talking about the you know the b2 bomber the stealth bomber because they're kind of triangular
It was way bigger than one of those and it was not it was it was not that shape at all
You know, I struggle to come up with what shape it was because it's a shape that I've seen before
Yeah, so Wow and what was your initial thought?
That that's an alien spacecraft. No, my initial thought was not an alien spacecraft
It was basically initial thought was just like what the fuck is that and then once I talked about it
It's that same sort of like want to believe actually believe thing. We talked about several times today
I want to believe it was an alien spacecraft. I believe it was probably you know, US military technology gonna ride
Real so yeah
Do you think they have the capability to do that in the 1990s?
Because what was loans of Phoenix lights?
That was 19. It was mid mid 1990s. I think it was 96 might have been 97. Not sure
As more time has gone on though, you're asking me what I thought in the moment
Yeah, as more time has gone on I've like the needles moved towards maybe that was
Was actually an extraterrestrial craft. Yeah
Because there's so much has come out like especially in the last five years, as you know, as you've
talked about here.
Yeah.
So.
It's just so strange that it all occurred in this one area in this one night.
Right.
That has to be a real paradigm shifting moment for you.
It wasn't.
Well, yeah. paradigm shifting moment for you. Well yeah, well, I think I was, I got so caught up in the like, the government's trying to
cover up its own fuck up.
You know, like they're putting up, and then there was the like, there was the smaller
lights thing and the weather balloon, you know, but I did, I went on the record with
the Phoenix New Times, there's a guy named Tony Ortega there that wrote a piece about
it right away, and I went on the record because I was like maybe one of the last you know I wasn't that UFO
enthusiast type right in the community I was a fairly well-known writer in the
greater Phoenix Metro at that time and not someone that would be normally
associated with like being a quote-unquote UFO crazy so I went on the
record with the article he's writing it's like yes I saw this no fucking way
it was a weather balloon or a flare or whatever. They're saying it was massive. So
hmm
man
What I would give to see something like that
But you know to your point about like look at how people about the technology and maybe it's being kept quiet because the military
applications like look at how
kept quiet because of the military applications. Look at how people freaked out when
it leaked about this new Russian space weapon a couple of weeks
back, or three weeks back.
Whatever.
It's like an ability to disrupt satellite communications
in space.
Somehow it leaked maybe deliberately out of Russia
that they've got this far more advanced technology than we
thought they had to a weapon that
would be in space that could disrupt communications
and satellites and really fuck us up.
And it leaked and then there was this one congressman that went public with it and was
like, we have a real problem.
This was in Ukraine, so it was maybe three weeks ago.
But imagine if it was something on the scale scale of like a ship, a weaponized
ship that could be cloaked like that, or some of the technology, or if we did have, as you
said, this donated technology that's from an extraterrestrial intelligence that the
U.S. has been figuring out applications for, you'd have to keep that on lock. Because what
if that leaked right now? What do you think Putin would do? Who the fuck knows what he
would do if all of a sudden it leaked that we had
these, you know, military capabilities that are far beyond what he thinks we have?
That's my thought about these things that they keep seeing, because they always see
them in areas where they do military tests, right?
The Tic Tac was off the coast of San Diego, which is where all
the military bases are, and the things that Ryan Long had seen were all off
the east coast, in restricted airspace, in space where they run, you
know, fighter jet training, and he said when they upgraded their
technology in 2014, they upgraded their sensors. He said that's when we started seeing these things constantly, all the time.
And then they were getting visuals. They were seeing visual versions of these things.
And that was a square with a... it was a sphere in a square or a square in a sphere?
Do you remember? Square in a sphere.
So there was like this circular sphere and this black square that exists in this thing and it's hovering and it's hovering in very high speed winds.
And it's just stationary, motionless. And that these things are able to move at just bizarre rates of speed with no indication of a traditional propulsion system. No heat signature that shows that rocket propulsion,
nothing, nothing that we can explain.
And if they had a drone that could do that,
that's where they would test those things.
And what better way to test whether or not
people could see them than to run them out there
when people are using new jets with new capabilities.
Can you see them?
Okay, they see them.
And the fact that, you know, the Tic Tac,
when Commander David Fravor brought this information
and reported it, and they showed the videos
to these admirals, and they were nonplussed.
They were like, mm-hmm, okay.
They just left the room.
Like, do they fucking know?
How are they not, are they just like stone cold dudes
who can just keep it together in the face
of some alien technology?
They know that we were being visited?
Or is this, and the other thing is that
when he, when Fravor communicated this stuff,
these guys who are running these sensors, they were
running the detection systems, they were saying, we're seeing these things all the time, every
couple of weeks.
We're seeing them all over the place.
Well, what the fuck is that?
And this is also 2004.
Did they have the ability of 2004 or something to go from above 50,000 feet above sea level
to 50 feet in less than a second?
What is that?
Like what the fuck is that?
And people try to, you know, argue it away
or explain it away by saying, oh, it's a failure
of the detection systems and it's a glitch and the,
yeah, but the visuals, they have,
more than one fighter jet has seen it.
They have video of this thing moving at a speed that would turn human beings into jelly.
Like if there's a biological entity inside that thing and experiences that g-force, you're
talking about some fucking insane g-force, like 1,300 times what a human being can tolerate
and just gone, silent.
No visual means of propulsion.
No windows, what is that?
Is that a drone?
What is that?
And the witnesses have been reliable too.
Like I've often suspected that like the last 20 years,
especially in the last five,
it feels like the witnesses,
the guys coming forward saying,
look, I know what I saw,
are more the ones that are associated with the government,
even commercial airline pilots will be on the FAA,
but especially military pilots,
they're being allowed to speak,
that it feels like the waters are being tested
by the government for some reason.
Like, we're gonna let this out a little bit,
we're gonna let the people that actually,
people may actually believe,
like attest to what they saw,
and see how the public reacts.
That's where I think it's going on.
Well, that would be what I would do if I was running the government. If I wanted to hide the fact that we have
these things, I would say that these are off world crafts. That's what I would say. I would
say, look, these things are behaving in a way that we can't explain. Well, I guess we're
being visited. And then go right back to whatever black ops thing that you guys are doing, some Raytheon project.
I mean, I don't know what it is,
but I go back and forth all the time,
whether I think it's from another planet,
another galaxy, another dimension,
or whether or not I think it's us.
Or many people think that they've always been here.
You know, when you talked about the Vedas,
in the Vedas they talk about these things. They talk about that, I mean, it's in the
Bhagavad Gita, it's in the ancient Hindu text. They talk about
these Vimanas, these crafts, that whatever these beings operate. So in
that case, are we just getting better at detecting them or are they showing
themselves more often for some reason? Well, in unique circumstances, are we just getting better at detecting them or are they showing themselves more often for some reason?
Well, in unique circumstances, if someone sees something like this, like you, so you see this in 1990, whatever it is in Phoenix,
if you lived 5,000 years ago and you see this, like what does that sound like? What does that sound like to everybody?
Sounds like you're out of your fucking mind. A small handful of people say it, they tell stories, people write it down, it just goes away. Unique experiences
are very difficult to classify. You know, if you have an experience with a ghost, if
a ghost shows up in this room and we all see it and it doesn't show up on camera and we
swear we saw an apparition of fucking Forrest Gump standing there, you're like, what the
fuck is that? Well, you're just left with a story
You know if you can't measure it you can't write it down
You can't even a video of it. Like what are you seeing? You're seeing grainy footage of something, you know
You see I'm sure you've seen these supposedly leaked images that fighter pilots have taken with cell phones from their aircrafts
Like what are they saying? What is that thing? What is that weird, blurry looking, metallic looking thing? Is that a
Mylar balloon that they're mistaking for a spacecraft? That doesn't seem likely. It seems
like they're a lot fucking smarter than that. They're not going to think a child's birthday
balloon that's floating around at 20,000 feet is an aircraft they're probably gonna realize it's a balloon they've probably seen
balloons you know yeah I don't know in those videos too it's the commentary that
kind of sells it like look at that thing move or what yeah like the go fast
video yeah look at it go Jesus Christ and these guys are trained pilots they're
used to seeing things and they're seeing something that rotates.
This is the other thing about the craft that coincides with what Bob Lazar said.
It's moving like this and it turns sideways.
And Lazar said that's what it did, that it would direct its generator,
whatever that gravity generator is, it would direct that towards the way that it wanted to go.
So it would literally turn sideways to move forward. I mean Kenneth Arnold was talking about these things in the
1950s, right? So for sure in the 1950s we didn't have the capability to make
something like that. Something with no visible means of propulsion that's
shaped like a saucer that flies silently through the air and you know moves at a
speed and has capabilities in terms of maneuverability that far exceeds a jet that we had back then
What does that mean? What is that? I mean they were seeing these things when they had we had propeller planes
You know what is that? I don't know but part of me feels stupid for even talking about it
You know to me, and it's like why are you wasting all your energy?
You have so many things you have to do today. Because it's fascinating. It is fascinating. But it's also, it makes you feel like a fool.
And I think that's part of the strategy of all this stuff.
Well ridiculing people that have talked about UFOs has been part of the government strategy
from the jump. For sure. That's the Project Blue Book. That's
been documented. Yeah, Project Blue Book. Right. So, but the
thing on the military installations, of course the two theories are, one is that there's
some sort of extraterrestrial intelligence that's drawn to our military activity
But what seems like the more rational explanation is as you said, that's where they test this sure
Or you know if I was an intelligent species that's willing to donate
These crafts like they claim
That they kind of let these things land or crash and then they'll do it in a very
strategic way where they know that the military will be able to cordon off the area and, you know,
isolate and, you know, stop people from talking about it. And the idea that people in the military
aren't able to keep secrets, so that's nonsense. They're really good at keeping secrets, you know,
and they're they can keep secrets, especially high level people.
Look, if I had access, like if if not, Joe Biden, he's too far gone. But if Obama called me in like during his administration, you want to see some shit?
I'd be like, I want to see some shit.
And he said, don't tell anybody.
I'm like, I won't tell anybody.
Maybe I tell my wife.
Maybe I tell one of my friends.
But I wouldn't fucking go public and tell everybody if they're willing to show me this shit. Like that, look, no one's going to believe me anyway.
Right. And so I'm like, what good does it do if I make myself look like a moron? A B, I now I can't
have access to it anymore because I told them because I told people about it because now they
can't trust me. I'd shut the fuck up. Especially because now they can't trust me I'd shut the fuck up especially if I was in the military I would shut the fuck up show me you know
you ever heard the story it's a it's a widely disputed story but that Jackie Gleason and Nixon
were drinking one day and Nixon was like you want to see some shit and Nixon took Jackie Gleason
to one of the Air Force bases and showed him this UFO.
And Jackie Gleason was a UFO fanatic.
I don't know if you know this, but Jackie Gleason actually had a home built in upstate New York that looked like a UFO.
And he had this home built after this supposed experience.
No shit.
Yeah, show the images of the home. This is the home that Jackie Gleason had built.
Show the images of the home. This is the home that Jackie Gleason had built.
I mean, what the fuck?
Look at the outside of it though. Not that one. That one's kind of just a cool circular one. But that image. Like what?
What the fuck are you doing Jackie?
Why you making a UFO house in upstate New York? It seems a little odd. Take that image.
Look at that.
I mean, come on, man.
What the fuck is that?
It looks kind of like a sci-fi movie prop, though, you know?
Yes.
It looks like a cliche of a UFO.
Right.
But that's, apparently, this is the folklore.
Yeah.
Is that that's what he saw.
And so he's like, I wanna build a fucking house
that looks like that.
You know?
It's fun.
It's fun.
But it also has this feeling of futility.
It's like futile thing.
Like why are we even talking about it?
It's nonsense.
It's fascinating.
But it just seems like, it almost seems like you're never going to know.
You know?
I think we talk about it because it gives us hope, frankly.
Yeah.
We want to believe it's true.
Well, we certainly want to believe the stories that they hover over military bases and shut down nuclear weapons.
And you know, my comedy club is called The Comedy Mothership.
And you walk into the comedy club, there's a gigantic artificial UFO that we had
built so when you walk into it like as you walk in the front door there's this
big construction of a UFO that has a beam that comes down and we use it as a
projector to show who's coming soon on the big screen but I named the the rooms
fat man and little boy because those are the bombs that we dropped.
And right after we dropped those bombs,
that's when all the UFO activity happened.
That's like, there's a giant uptick
in UFO activity after 1945.
And in the UFO folklore, it's like they realized
that we have the ability to drop nukes.
And so then they started visiting.
And then they started shutting down nuclear weapons at bases
and making their presence known at these military bases.
So hey, keep it together, bitches.
Like, we're watching.
We don't want you to nuke this whole planet
and ruin our little program.
And then our program is an accelerated engineering
program, that we've accelerated the evolution of human beings
through some sort of intervention, and that this is why we're so different. This isn't, it's
not the stoned ape theory, it's the humans are engineered by some superior
life form to try to accelerate our evolution and bring us to this place, and
that they've helped us along the way. But we're autonomous and we're allowed to do
what we want to do. And so we do
disgusting crazy shit like drop nuclear bombs from propeller planes by the way, right propeller planes on
Cities and that once they did that they're like, okay
Slow the fuck down We're here
Now whether they've always been here, like in, you know, the Vedic texts or even
in the Bible, Ezekiel's description of the wheel within a wheel, and have you read that
description? Pull up Ezekiel's description of what he saw. This is one of the favorite
descriptions from the Bible, from the Old Testament, about UFOs that people love to bring up because Ezekiel has this
thing that he describes and
It's all it's the most bizarre
depiction I
Looked I saw an immense dust storm come from the north an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it a huge ball of fire
storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze. Within the fire were what looked like four creatures vibrant
with life. Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings.
Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hoov'd like those
of a calf and sparkled with the fire like burnished bronze. On all four sides, under
their wings, they had human hands.
All four had faces and wings and the wings touching one another.
They turned neither one way nor the other.
They went straight forward.
Their faces looked like this.
In front of a human face on the right side the face of a lion, on the left the face of
an ox, and in the back the face of an eagle.
So much for the faces.
The wings were spread out with the tips of one pair touching the creature on either side. The other pair of wings covered its body. Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit
went, they went. They didn't turn as they want. The four creatures looked like blazing fire,
or fiery torches. Tongues of fire shot back and forth between the creatures, and out of the
fire, bolts of lightning. The creatures flashed back and forth like strikes of lightning. As I
watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of
the four face creatures. This is what the wheels looked like. They were identical wheels, sparkling
like diamonds in the sun. They looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope. They went in any of the four directions they faced,
but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living
creatures went, the wheels went. When the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted
off. Wherever the spirit went, they went, the wheels sticking right with them. For the
spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels sticking right with them, for the spirit of the living creatures
was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went. When the creatures stopped,
the wheels stopped. When the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off, because the spirit
of the living creatures was in the wheels. Over the heads of the living creatures was
something like a dome, shimmering like the light, like a sky full of cut glass, vaulted over their heads. Under the dome, one set of wings was extended towards the
other with another set of wings covering their bodies. When they moved, I heard their wings. It
was like the roar of a great waterfall, like the voice of the strong God, like the noise of a
battlefield. When they stopped, they folded their wings. And then,
as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice above the dome over their heads. Above the dome,
there was something that looked like a throne. Sky blue like a sapphire, with a human-like figure
towering above the throne. From what I could see, from the waist up, he looked like burnished bronze,
and from the waist down, like a blazing fire,
brightness everywhere. The way a rainbow springs out of a sky on a rainy day,
that's what it was like. It turned out to be the glory of God."
Like, what the fuck, man?
I mean, to anybody that's done DMT or ayahuasca or really tripped on psychedelics, though,
you read that
and it feels sort of familiar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The glory of God.
Yeah, the glory of God.
And these visions of these beings.
Yeah.
And the fact that these things are constantly changing their appearance.
Yeah.
Like, that's the thing about the DMT experience is like, it's not a stationary static experience.
It's like constantly changing and moving in front of you and to see something like that in the sky
And the fact that it's so noteworthy that they wrote it down in the fucking Bible
Maybe he found some of those mushrooms. Yeah, maybe the cow shit. Well, you know, that's there's a
University in Israel I think is the University Jerusalem, that theorized that the Moses
experience of the burning bush was a DMT experience. And that what this is, like when you say Moses
saw the burning bush, well, what kind of bush would burn that would give you a psychedelic
experience? Well, the acacia tree, the acacia tree, which is very common to that area, is rich with
DMT.
And how do you psychoactively acquire DMT?
You smoke it.
So you're smoking this tree, this burning bush, and you're seeing God, and God has brought
you ten commandments of how to live life, which sounds like a lot of what you experience
in the DMT experience.
When you have that and you have these contact with the entities, they kind of give you guidelines of how to live.
Yeah. It felt to me like a massive amount of information being downloaded, but that it was guiding in nature.
Yeah. But very difficult to hold on to. Like, you're like, what is it? So like, it's probably something you'd want to write down.
Yeah.
Like the Ten Commandments. Yeah. Well, again, back to the Christians and Prabhupada, that
was his thing. It was like, you can't hold on to it with psychedelics alone, and you
don't need psychedelics to get a hold of it in the first place, was what he was preaching.
And he probably recognized that the thing, the problem with taking psychedelics is that
it's so accessible.
You just take it, I mean, it's the beautiful thing about it.
But you also could say, that could be a problem
because then a bunch of people with no discipline
would just start popping these things
and having these experiences and having no sort of framework,
no moral framework, no ethical framework,
no understanding of what are you experiencing and what to do with this stuff?
No discipline, right? Yeah, but if you acquire it
Biologically if you acquire it endogenously through discipline
Then you you are on a path and through that path you can achieve this thing
And you realize this is a very difficult thing to achieve and that you have to stay on this path
In order to get this enlightenment. I could see how someone would say, no listen,
that's not the way. This is the way. That you can do it with your own mind.
You don't need these things. You know Terence McKenna's thought on that, though?
Very funny thought. He said it reminds me of an ancient story of this monk had acquired a city of levitation and
practiced this and it said to the Buddha when the Buddha came to town you know
I've spent 20 years acquiring the city of levitation and I can I could walk
across the water and the Buddha said yeah but the fairy's only a nickel.
So that was McKenna's take on it. It's like, why would you do all that stuff when you could just
take the mushrooms?
But McKenna was a brilliant man.
He wasn't some stoned hippie in the middle of upstate New York
just tripping balls on mushrooms.
I think it's helpful to have some sort of like processing after
the experience, right?
Sure.
Not just keep like repeating it, trying to like get back to that space.
Yeah.
Also, McKenna was, you know, he was a proponent of taking psychedelic drugs, so he probably
would want people to think that his way is the way.
You know, he's only human.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't know, he's only human. Right. Yeah. I don't know, man.
But it's all, look, just the fact that the psychedelic experience is a real thing.
And when you do take that and you do have those experiences and you realize that it's
a real thing, and like, how did I not know about this?
How is the most profound thing that's ever happened to me?
Something that is a schedule one drug that's illegal,
for whatever reason that no one's explained to me accurately. No one's ever explained
it in a way that makes sense. Why is a thing that doesn't kill anybody that exists in the
human mind? That was the other thing that McKenna said about DMT. It's illegal, but
everybody's holding.
Right.
Because everybody has it. You know, if you want to test people for DMT, well but everybody's holding. Right. Because everybody has it.
You know, if you want to test people for DMT, well, everybody's guilty.
Everybody.
The most staunch conservative anti-drug person is right now has DMT in their body.
All of them do.
Everybody does.
It's literally like testing people for blood.
Yeah, you have blood.
Of course you're alive.
Yeah, you have DMT.
You're alive.
Yeah, but it's illegal.
What? It doesn't make
any sense. It sounds so insane. And also the fact that it's naturally occurring, not naturally
just naturally occurring in the human mind, but naturally occurring in nature, and that
there seems to be some sort of mitigation strategy by the human body in order to keep
you from tripping balls by consuming all the different plants that have DMT in it.
And that's monoamine oxidase. So monoamine oxidase breaks it down in the gut.
So if you consume like grasses, like Filaris grass, it's very rich in DMT.
If a human being consumed that, you're not going to trip because the monoamine oxidase in the gut breaks it down. So the strategy that they came up with with ayahuasca was to combine these psychedelic
plants, these plants that contain dimethyltryptamine with other plants that contain harmin, which
is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and that the two of these together will allow an orally
active version of dimethyltryptamine, which is what it is
You know with me I really felt like once was enough I know you have a different approach
but
Maybe everybody's different. I mean once is enough because it's so fucking scary. You don't want to do it again. I get it
But every time I've ever been troubled and I've done it I feel way better.
I'm like DMT specifically. Yeah. I'm talking about DMT specifically.
Yeah, every time I've ever done it I'm like, God, the things I concentrate on are so stupid.
The things that worry me are so foolish.
I find that with MDMA. I find MDMA to be very useful as a reset button.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it also makes you realize how insecure you are
and how insecure most people are with interactions
with each other.
And when those barriers are down,
how wild the experience is of just not having
any fear of human interaction.
That's something I only did once.
And the problem that I had with it was after it was over,
I felt did once. And the problem that I had with it was after it was over, I felt so drained.
But I didn't have any strategy for taking
some sort of a serotonin booster, like 5-HTP, which
is what people take that really know what they're
doing with that stuff.
They take 5-HTP to boost up their serotonin
while they're doing it so that after it's over,
they're not just crashed. Because the next day, day I was useless I remember I was in a coffee
shop the next day I was trying to read a magazine and I couldn't read I couldn't
concentrate I literally couldn't read this magazine I was like oh my god I'm
so dumb my brain feels like a I felt the way I described it was like I had a dry
sponge for a brain and normally it's wet and filled with water.
Now it's just like this, ugh, this dopey dry sponge.
And was it worth it?
Maybe, but I had stuff to do that day.
Right.
I had a show that night.
And this was after doing what?
MDMA.
Yeah, you were an etard, right?
Etard.
So you used to call it that.
You're an etard.
That's what the experience after.
Yeah, you do need to do the serotonin booster.
That is the key move.
But I just think it's bordering.
You know, it's not bordering on criminals.
It is fucking criminal that the government has kept MDMA
therapy from, like, especially guys coming back
from these fucking wars in the Middle East, you know?
They're all fucked up with PTSD.
Because as somebody who has PTSD, not from combat,
but from childhood trauma, MDMA is just it's just like a god
send literally yeah from the gods yeah God sent and that it's that that shit
has been kept from I mean in maps that organization maps has been doing
fantastic research with it and it seems like that you know it's it's it's on the
path to legalization now finally you know yeah but there are so many guys that
needed that so badly and including the people that are making it illegal,
unfortunately.
That's the problem.
It is an experience that's being kept from us
by people that haven't done it.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
That was another quote that was attributed to McKenna.
McKenna tried to attribute it to somebody else,
but they said he didn't say it.
But it was that LSD is something that causes
severe psychotic experiences
in people who haven't taken it.
I might have paraphrased that, I think I did.
But it's something along those lines.
And we know for a fact that all that stuff was made illegal
during the sweeping psychedelics act of 1970 that was designed to subvert the war movement and
to subvert the civil rights movement and to go after the Black Panthers and all
these different people that were disrupting the government's control over
society and that the best way to do that is to make all drugs illegal and then go
after those people and just throw water on the whole party.
It worked.
It worked for decades.
And it severely impacted art, specifically music.
If you look at the music from the 60s all the way up to 1970 and then there's this confusion
period of 1970 and then you look at the music of the 80s, like what the fuck happened everybody?
What happened?
How do you go from Hendrix yeah you
know to fucking whatever you know I don't want to make fun of any 80s bands but hair bands you know
like what happened there what the fuck happened how did it get so dumb everybody stopped tripping
started doing coke yeah exactly that's exactly. Yeah, and they just lost the plot for a little while.
It seems like the plot's come back.
I think the plot has come back,
and I think you could kind of credit Lorenzo
from Psychedelic Salon with the distribution
of all those old recordings of Alan Watts and McKenna
and all those different psychedelic bards
that were talking about these things.
It got people more curious and interested in them and then you know
People realizing that we needed to do something for these soldiers that are coming back with PTSD and psilocybin
Ceremonies and ayahuasca and MDMA which is being used by maps maps has done an amazing job
They really they really have and they they've done it the right way, where they're
really promoting legalization in a very structured way.
Yeah, it just feels like it's taken so long. But that's the only way that the government
is going to accept. It was like multiple research trials.
And even then, it really takes people leaving office and dying off. It takes the old people going away, the corrupt politicians that are in charge of deciding
what is and is not legal.
They have to vanish and they slowly get phased out generation after generation.
And then the new people coming into play, some of them have military experience.
Some of them know people that have been really helped by MDMA therapy or ayahuasca or many of the Ibogaine,
people that have severe addictions to pills
and all sorts of different opiates.
Ibogaine is one of the greatest things
that's ever been discovered to help heal people
from these problems.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're in a, so many weird competing factors are all happening altogether. And
they're all in this wild chaos that is the age of information, the age of information
and technology that's allowing people to have access to these things, but also realize how
crazy the world we live in is. And then, you know, you have TikTok where people are just being distracted
all day long and being confused.
That is terrifying. It's crack. I feel more hopeful now, Joe, once we started talking
about psychedelics again than it was when we were talking about war.
Yeah. Well, psychedelics might be the only thing that prevents war. It might be the only
thing that helps people. I mean, you you can get large-scale use of psychedelics sanctioned, and not just in America, but worldwide, I think it will have a
tremendous impact on the way people view this experience, because this is a small, tiny,
finite experience that we're going through. It seems like it takes forever, but I mean,
you're 53, I'm 56. It's like, Jesus,
man, we're more than halfway to the finish line. And it's like it just happened. It's
like a blip. And you're still, we're all, everyone, me included, we're all just trying
to figure it out as we go along. And hopefully you're better than you were yesterday at it.
And sometimes you're not. Sometimes you fall down, sometimes you get back up and you climb
a little higher this time. And now you're better than you were a year ago
But boy, it's fucking confusing. You know, I went to I went to college in University, California, Santa Cruz
It's no secret that Santa Cruz for a long time has been a center for psychedelics
And there's a guy there even I think even if I could remember his name
I'm not gonna drop it, but he got busted for making acid and I think it was around 9-eleven
He had this massive underground LSD lab
out in the middle of the country.
And it was a story that never really got picked up
because everyone was distracted by it.
That was the missile silo guy?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
And his whole thing was like he was trying to make
what he called a planetary dose.
That was his thing.
I have to make enough acid for everyone on earth
to take acid.
It's the only thing that's gonna save
humanity. And I kind of get it. At least I get the thinking. I get the
thinking too, especially if you're really tripping. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Just get
everybody fucked up. Yeah. There was people that had this theory that if you
just dose the water supply in major cities that people would be
forced to trip but you know what dose I don't think that's probably a good idea
terrible idea no the correct idea is legalization and centers that are set
up by ethical experts who really have experience in these things that can provide both counseling and medical services and
allow people to do the correct dose safely under supervision and then
Counseling that gives them some sort of a framework as to what to do with this
What what has happened what this means and and how you can apply this to your life
Yeah, and if we could figure out how to do
that in a structured way, we probably could help an enormous amount of people.
Absolutely. The integration after the trip, right?
Yeah.
And that's, taking it back to Krishna's, right? Because that's the series I have out.
But legitimately, there's a legitimate comment, which is that that's what Prabhupada, and
that's what Krishna consciousness in a sense was offering was integration of the psychedelic
experience. Here's a framework for integrating everything you've been
experiencing on acid and mescaline. Right. You know, whatever the hippie kids were into.
Yeah and they were, I mean I think Prabhupada and the people that were
legit were really trying to do that and they were really trying to spread this
message and if you think about what they were able to do
during the 60s, with the help of George Harrison,
I mean, they opened up a lot of people's minds
to these ideas and probably changed a lot of lives
and the directions of a lot of people's lives.
Yeah, for the better.
For the better, yeah.
Listen, man, I really appreciate your work. You know, Sasquatch
is incredible and this Krishna documentary is incredible too. You're really awesome.
Thanks, brother. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. And if you do this Ukraine thing or if
you ever do a UFO thing, whatever you do, come back. Okay. I'd love to have you again.
Thank you very much. All right. Oh, so tell everybody it's available. It's on Peacock.
Krishna's. Krishna's. Yeah. On Peacock. It's awesome.
Thank you brother.
Appreciate it.
Bye everybody.