Episode 1432 - Shane Mauss
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Nick?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it if you're new.
Marc:I imagine most of you have been hanging around before.
Marc:I hope you all processed and integrated that Titus Burgess interview.
Marc:That was a life changer, that one, talking to that guy.
Marc:Today, I'm going to have back another guy who's on a different journey.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Today, I talked to Shane Moss again.
Marc:I mean, he's he's been on a few times, a few live shows back in the day.
Marc:And then he came on, I think, in 2016 was episode 766, where he talked about the new trajectory in his life.
Marc:That involved psychedelics.
Marc:And I believe he was sucking occasionally on a DMT vape.
Marc:So he was going in and out of the other world, sort of within conversation, you know, elves on the periphery.
Marc:Yeah, that's what that's what we started to joke about.
Marc:I got that from a Daniel Pinchbeck.
Marc:Or maybe it was Lipsight making fun of Pinchback.
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:But elves on the periphery became a thing.
Marc:But I hadn't heard from him in a while.
Marc:But I was seeing him tweet stuff about, you know, science and fact and kind of pushing back on the Rogan camp of speculative bullshit.
Yeah.
Marc:with professional speculators and grifters.
Marc:And I had a certain amount of respect for that.
Marc:I don't know if anybody saw it or anyone cared, but I did.
Marc:And I was wondering what Shane was up to on his psychedelic quest.
Marc:So it kind of hit a wall, which you'll hear in the conversation.
Marc:But he's now doing a podcast and a YouTube show called Here We Are, where he interviews scientists.
Marc:And he just started a Vegas residency at Area 15, a kind of psychedelic spoken word residency.
Marc:I don't know what it is, but he's out there, all right?
Marc:He's out there at Area 15 in Vegas, but he's also a bit out there, but not as much as you'd think.
Marc:He's grounded in the science, people.
Marc:Grounded in the science.
Marc:But if you want to check out the show, you can go to area15.com for tickets, and it's called A Better Trip with Shane Moss.
Marc:So I don't know, man, I just I just need to check back in with Shane.
Marc:Like he's a sweet guy.
Marc:He's an engaged guy.
Marc:And, you know, not unlike the rest of us, he was sort of untethered during lockdown.
Marc:But he added a layer of untetheredness by doing hardcore psychoactive drugs.
Marc:But now he's landed and it was good to talk to him again.
Marc:Also want to state that I stand in solidarity with my union, one of my unions.
Marc:The Writers Guild is on strike.
Marc:I imagine, you know, I'm doing this a couple of days before, but I imagine that they will still be on strike.
Marc:I have to go see my mommy.
Marc:But look, you know, this is reasonable requests and demands.
Marc:People who get in the writing racket and make a living at it kind of rely on residuals just to maintain a living.
Marc:And because of streaming kind of fucking them, you know, they get denied that because it's sort of a devil's deal.
Marc:You get paid up front and the back end on streaming, if it exists at all, is far away.
Marc:And I think they're also going to be discussing how to define partnerships with robots, right?
Marc:I think there's something in there to discuss the future of AI and that somehow there has to be a human component to the script or the package or to the pitch or whatever that we can't just have these robots running around.
Marc:Taking our jobs.
Marc:But I do stand in solidarity.
Marc:I am an active member of the WGA, and I hope some resolution is on the horizon in a fairly short way, I think, because you can't stop the business.
Marc:This is our business.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Also, look at this.
Marc:Bobcat Goldthwait, who's been on the show a lot of times, five.
Marc:He's directed a special of mine.
Marc:He's directed episodes of my TV show.
Marc:I've known him since I was a young comic.
Marc:But he's always been a comic, and he's just released a new comedy album, Bobcat Goldthwait, Soldier for Christ.
Marc:It was recorded live in Chicago, but it also includes some bonus tracks of songs by Bob and Tom Kenny, Bobcat and Tomcat, that they made in high school.
Marc:Yeah, you can get it on vinyl, digital and a limited edition 80s party pack, which includes the album on CD, a trapper keeper and a CD player and more.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Get it at prettygoodfriends.com.
Marc:Now, listen to me.
Marc:Listen.
Marc:Exciting.
Marc:I got I got into the Willie show.
Marc:Me and Kit.
Marc:Kit wanted to go.
Marc:I tried to make it happen.
Marc:I reached out to the one connection I have that might have been able to pull it off.
Marc:And he was in Morocco.
Marc:I'm assuming on vacation.
Marc:But he had to reach out to the guy who was actually putting the show together.
Marc:The Hollywood Bowl show for Willie's 90th birthday party.
Marc:It was two nights.
Marc:And I went on the second night.
Marc:And we had beautiful seats in a box at the bowl.
Marc:We brought blankets and a thermos that they made me empty when I got there.
Marc:Misleading.
Marc:You can't really bring, you know, I could bring the thermos in, but empty.
Marc:No point in that.
Marc:So I was the guy walking around with a Stanley thermos.
Marc:But the show started right at 630 and they were taping it.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:This show.
Marc:Right out of the gate.
Marc:Still light out.
Marc:630.
Marc:Billy Strings comes out and plays Whiskey River.
Marc:And then he plays Stay All Night.
Marc:Now, this guy, I've grown to love this guy.
Marc:He's like the real deal, kind of a legacy of country music history, but something hipster about him, too.
Marc:I mean, he's insanely talented in a very specific way of playing.
Marc:I'm sure he can play anything.
Marc:But to hear bluegrass played well and inspired and taken to another place is something else.
Marc:The kids got it.
Marc:And Willie knows it because he comes out and plays with Willie later in the evening.
Marc:He could just tell Willie was like, you're the guy.
Marc:You know, I knew the old guys and you're the guy.
Marc:You're the new guy.
Marc:So then Orville Peck comes out with his mask, plays Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.
Marc:That was...
Marc:That was very good.
Marc:Charlie Crockett comes out, plays yesterday's wine.
Marc:That was good.
Marc:Dwight Yoakam comes out.
Marc:Hadn't seen him in a while.
Marc:He plays me and Paul.
Marc:Very good.
Marc:Margo Price and Waylon Payne come out and play.
Marc:I've been to Georgia on a fast train.
Marc:Very good.
Marc:Enjoyed it.
Marc:The particle kid, which is Micah Nilsson.
Marc:That's one of Willie's kids.
Marc:And Daniel Lemoyne.
Marc:come out and do a song that the Particle Kid wrote, Die When I'm High, Halfway to Heaven, that he wrote from the point of view of his old man.
Marc:That was touching in a way.
Marc:It was kind of funny.
Marc:Now, I'll tell you, one of the evening stealers,
Marc:One of the guys who just did something amazing was Rodney Crowell.
Marc:He's a songwriter.
Marc:He was part of the, I think, he might have been part of that Laurel Canyon crew, but he wrote songs for Willie.
Marc:He wrote It Ain't Over Yet for Willie, and he played it, and he was the first to come out with just a guitar, and he fucking quieted that entire Hollywood Bowl down, and I got teared up
Marc:when he was singing.
Marc:It was powerful.
Marc:And then Emmylou Harris comes out and they do Till I Gained Control Again, which was beautiful.
Marc:Roseanne Cash comes out and does Poncho and Lefty.
Marc:Now, you know, these are legacy people.
Marc:I mean, Roseanne, Johnny Cash's daughter, and Waylon Jennings' kid was there, Shooter, who I've talked to,
Marc:Warren Haynes came out and played Nightlife.
Marc:What a searing fucking guitar solo on that.
Marc:Lyle Lovett came out.
Marc:My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.
Marc:Hadn't seen him in a while.
Marc:Beck came out and did Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.
Marc:Lucas Nilsen and Shooter Jennings come out and do Good-Hearted Woman, which Willie and Waylon did, and that was kind of beautiful.
Marc:Lucas is the real deal as well.
Marc:I would say Lucas, Nelson, and Billy Strings,
Marc:Real fucking deal.
Marc:And Lucas sounds a lot like his dad.
Marc:The Luminaires came out and did pretty paper.
Marc:That was pretty good.
Marc:Then Nora Jones comes out and does Down Yonder on her own.
Marc:And then she goes and gets Kris Kristofferson.
Marc:It was like kind of wild to see him and they stood there and did help me make it through the night.
Marc:And he, he did it.
Marc:And it was kind of astounding.
Marc:Got teared up on that one too.
Marc:It was great to see some of these guys, you know, he, he was present.
Marc:He sang the song and he still was the charm of,
Marc:The charm stays intact with some of these guys.
Marc:It's kind of amazing, these old guys.
Marc:Sheryl Crow pulled off crazy pretty well.
Marc:Now, here's a stunner, folks.
Marc:And I hate to admit it, you know, because I've made jokes about him and I never gave him a fair shake.
Marc:And I don't know if I will ever give him a fair shake.
Marc:But Dave Matthews came out with just a guitar.
Marc:His guitar, his acoustic guitar just sounded better than anyone's acoustic guitar.
Marc:I don't know if it was the mix or the guitar or what.
Marc:But he did Funny How Time Slips Away, and he owned it.
Marc:He made that song his own.
Marc:And again, I got choked up, and he played the fuck out of it, and he sang the fuck out of it, and I was impressed.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I'll say that.
Marc:I'll say, okay?
Marc:You hearing me?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Emmy Harris came out with Daniel Lamois and did The Maker, which is a later Willie song, which I think is off an album that Lamois produced.
Marc:He was a guest on the show.
Marc:And then Willie came out and sat down and people just came up and played with Willie.
Marc:It was kind of beautiful.
Marc:At 90, he did a tune with Booker T, did Stardust with Booker T, did Far Away Places with Sheryl Crow.
Marc:He did Will You Remember Mine with Lily Miola, who was great.
Marc:He did Something You Get Through with Buddy Cannon, his producer.
Marc:Then Billy Strings came out and did California Sober with him.
Marc:And that was spectacular because there was just such a weird sense of respect that Billy Strings is like the history of country music.
Marc:And it's all coming through him in a way that's very specific, that bluegrass guitar playing.
Marc:And I could tell Willie...
Marc:could feel that I'm not projecting either.
Marc:So then after that fucking Keith Richards comes out and they played, we had it all and they played, uh, live forever as well.
Marc:And Keith was sober and,
Marc:He was gracious.
Marc:He sounded great.
Marc:And he was not wearing the beanie.
Marc:He was wearing a headband.
Marc:But I was wearing my Keith beanie.
Marc:So I don't know how that all works out.
Marc:And it was so great to see Keith and Willie together.
Marc:It was just, and Lucas was playing on those as well.
Marc:Don Wells was the musical director on bass there, and Ben Montench was on keys all night.
Marc:There's a great band.
Marc:I can't name them all.
Marc:But after that, Willie did On the Road again with the band, with this harmonica player that's been playing with him forever.
Marc:All of them came out, and they did Will the Circle Be Unbroken and I'll Fly Away, which is one of my favorite songs ever, I'll Fly Away.
Marc:And then Ethan Hawke.
Marc:got everyone to sing Happy Birthday.
Marc:There was a parade of celebrities introducing the musical acts who were all getting progressively more wasted as the evening went on.
Marc:Helen Mirren was there.
Marc:Chelsea Handler was introducing people.
Marc:Woody Harrelson came out three times.
Marc:By the third time, he was clearly fucking wasted.
Marc:And yeah, it was quite a night and I was glad to have fucking witnessed it.
Marc:It was really, really special, man.
Marc:And I'm so grateful that I got in.
Marc:Okay, look, I hear you.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I told this story the other day about flushing drugs down the toilet.
Marc:And I was schooled by many of you who said, do not flush drugs.
Marc:Drugs down the toilet.
Marc:It goes into the drinking water supply because it doesn't break down.
Marc:There's other ways to dispose of drugs.
Marc:Apparently, you can bring them to some pharmacies, maybe to a police station, or you could, you know, grind them up and, you know, put them in the in the ground or something.
Marc:Just don't flush it down the toilet.
Marc:I didn't even think about this.
Marc:I guess it was an oversight.
Marc:I kind of knew that there were drugs in the drinking water.
Marc:I did not assume it was from flushing drugs.
Marc:I just thought it was from people taking drugs and peeing them out.
Marc:But I stand corrected.
Marc:And I think it's like I think it's an old drug muscle.
Marc:I think, you know, when you have a drug passed.
Marc:When you want to get rid of drugs, the first thing you think is flush them down the toilet, either because the cops are at the door or there's something inside of you that's going to take them.
Marc:You're either running from the cops at the door to the toilet to flush your drugs or you're trying to hold down that thing inside of you that wants those drugs, but you know it shouldn't have them.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I stand corrected.
Marc:There's nothing I can do now.
Marc:Enjoy the mild, mild, mild, mild infinitesimal buzz you get from the Vicodin I flushed down the toilet.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:And also from the Valtrex.
Marc:Hopefully, it'll provide some protection against an outbreak of herpes on your lip.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:I apologize for that.
Marc:I stand schooled.
Marc:Okay, look, Shane Moss, he's doing a residency at Area 15 in Las Vegas.
Marc:It's happening throughout May.
Marc:The show is called A Better Trip with Shane Moss.
Marc:Go to area15.com for tickets.
Marc:You can also go to shanemoss.com.
Marc:That's S-H-A-N-E-M-A-U-S-S.com.
Marc:Also, get his show, Here We Are, wherever you get podcasts.
Marc:And watch it on YouTube.
Marc:And now you can listen to me talk to Shane about drugs and the future and science and a concert that tipped him over the edge.
Marc:So you haven't been doing really stand-up?
Marc:You wouldn't call it stand-up?
Guest:I just haven't been touring at all.
Guest:But you're not going up anywhere?
Guest:Now I just started because I have a Vegas residency coming up.
Guest:Get an act together?
Guest:It's a whole immersive psychedelic comedy show with visuals and all sorts of everything.
Guest:So where have you been going up?
Guest:And so I just started, I just strung together a whole bunch of warm up shows last minute.
Guest:I was in Raleigh and then I just put like with two weeks notice, I just booked a whole bunch of.
Guest:Where?
Guest:Like I did good nights in Raleigh.
Marc:So that place moved, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just moved.
Guest:How's that new space?
Guest:Fantastic.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, really good.
Guest:Better than that old weird place?
Guest:Better than the old weird place.
Guest:More professional.
Guest:And yeah, it's really strong.
Guest:And then stopped and just like, I didn't know if I would, I didn't know if I would sell tickets.
Guest:I haven't toured in three years.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:So I was like, yeah.
Guest:I went through like Bentonville, Arkansas.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:Bentonville, Arkansas.
Guest:I don't know where that is.
Marc:I don't know if I've ever done a show in Arkansas.
Guest:Well, there's some good stuff.
Guest:I guess it's where Walmart originated from.
Guest:So that's their claim to fame.
Marc:So where are you drawing from?
Marc:Your psychedelic following?
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:And I have a system for kind of targeting the psychedelic audiences.
Marc:Is it a psychic outreach or is it an action?
Marc:Do you do it with your mind?
Guest:There's a lot of, like, I do cross-promotional stuff with the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:The big, like, legitimized.
Guest:They are the ones that kind of brought psychedelics back in a legitimate scientific way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is this guy, Rick Doblin, is the founder of it.
Guest:So he started.
Guest:Doblin?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a therapist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who started, he used MDMA for couples therapy back in the 80s.
Guest:That was illegal.
Guest:That's how MDMA started before it became ecstasy, before it hit the street.
Guest:Couples therapy, like, was it hands on?
Guest:How did that work?
Guest:They actually have protocols within the studies and within the treatments where you need to have a male and female therapist there just to make sure that like nothing gets to.
Guest:So he found success in this?
Guest:That a lot of people did.
Guest:That's what brought MDMA into that.
Marc:Because it breaks down the boundaries?
Marc:Yeah, MDMA in particular.
Marc:That's the one that makes you love everything.
Guest:Yeah, so it inhibits the amygdala, which is your flight or fight response.
Guest:So it's especially good for people with PTSD.
Guest:So they're able to experience those same memories that they'd normally experience without it triggering the same symptoms.
Guest:People with PTSD have an overactive amygdala.
Guest:So they re-traumatize themselves all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Someone bumps into them with a grocery cart at the grocery store and it fires and it's, you know, they're just hypersensitive.
Guest:And so it inhibits that ability to be triggered.
Guest:And then it increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, which is where all of this, it's what makes us most human.
Guest:It's the frontal lobe where all this fancy language stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:having these big ideas and everything comes.
Guest:So you're able to kind of process these ideas with less fear and more thoughtfulness than normal, theoretically.
Marc:So that in couples counseling would lead to a more evolved intimacy or expressive.
Guest:So I actually never liked MDMA because I'd only done it at some parties and stuff and I don't like things that make me feel good.
Guest:Like I don't, well, it's not that I don't, I mean, I don't trust things that make me feel good.
Guest:Like anything that makes me feel good, I'm like, ah,
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's a slippery slope.
Marc:But you prefer what, hallucinogens?
Marc:Yeah, like psychedelics are... Yeah, what's the difference between an MMDA and a psychedelic for you?
Marc:You don't want to feel still?
Marc:You just want your brain to jam?
Guest:Oh, no, I want to feel.
Guest:With something like, say, mushrooms, it's a more intense experience of like, I don't expect to have a good time.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, it could go either way with humans and mushrooms.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Whereas MMDA, you're sort of guaranteed to have a mushy human experience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that bothers you.
Marc:No challenge to it.
Guest:Yeah, no challenge to it.
Guest:And it was just like too easy.
Guest:And then years ago, I was in a relationship and it was like, we are going through some stuff and we both had MDMA together as we are going through some relationship things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, this is why it's a relationship.
Guest:Like, we were able to share, honestly, like, issues that were coming up that we shared it in this, like, kind and loving and patient way.
Guest:And did that stick?
Guest:Uh, no.
Guest:I mean, does anything stick, Mark?
Marc:Well, no, but that's a big question.
Marc:Like, you know, in terms of, you know, psychedelic treatment and even, like, I have done some of the EMDR treatment, which is, you know, non-drug oriented.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Sort of rerouting of trauma neural pathways.
Marc:So, like, you know, my question is, especially someone who doesn't do drugs anymore and seeing a lot of guys who are sober, you know, engaging in sort of, you know, renegade psychedelic treatment.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Whereas like, you know, you get these guys who've been sober forever and they're like, yeah, I'm doing microdosing mushrooms.
Marc:I'm like, with a doctor?
Marc:No, with this guy, Harry, you know, he's got them.
Guest:It's so wild.
Guest:For someone that has a psychedelic comedy show, I am less evangelical about psychedelics than a lot of people.
Marc:Well, my question is really like, and I'm not judging, is that.
Marc:You can judge.
Marc:Well, no, I don't really.
Marc:I don't, like, I can understand, you know, what I start to understand is that most of it, despite what anyone thinks is happening psychedelically, is relative to your experience.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:I mean, you can tap into whatever frequency you want and acknowledge the existence of a, you know, universal vibe.
Marc:But when you come out of it, you're still you in your head and you're sitting wherever you're sitting, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, people are using psychedelics for a lot of different, you know, historically it was, you know, the hippies opening up and free love and all that.
Guest:And then and then there's a lot of there's the spiritual side of it, which is kind of the validators, people that they do psychedelics.
Marc:These bougie people that are doing ayahuasca twice or four times a year or too much.
Marc:It's like the question I was heading towards in terms of your research or your experience, does it?
Marc:Like, you know, when you look at R. Crumb, you know, and his, like, when you talk to those guys, the artists of the era of the original acid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, he can sort of track exactly how it changed his perception.
Marc:And it became a hook for him.
Marc:You know, the extended feet and all that stuff.
Marc:Like, it was a practical thing.
Marc:Like, he changed the way he saw and was able to draw and create these characters that were, you know, uniquely his, original.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So...
Marc:On a psychological level, does the experience like in talking about MDA and your girlfriend at the time.
Marc:So does the shift in neural activity make a chronic impact?
Marc:I mean, does does it last?
Guest:So, so let's use two different case studies to answer that.
Guest:So, so both psilocybin and ketamine are both used for depression.
Guest:And in my view, they are both acting on depression in two completely different ways, which will answer your question.
Marc:I think the last time I saw you, you had a ketamine vape, didn't you?
Guest:DMT vape.
Guest:DMT vape.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How's that going?
Yeah.
Guest:Actually, DMT is the only thing that I microdose.
Guest:And I'm not into the microdosing.
Guest:There's a new facet of the psychedelic community is the optimizers, the people, the life hackers that have like...
Guest:the protocols with things and you have microdose every other day.
Guest:And then if you like, Oh, if you, you know, just kind of the, the motivational speakery that are like, you got to wake up at exactly this time and you get to a window.
Marc:And then if you do intermittent blinking and the light gets in your eyes, that's been a, you know, a sort of a supplement racket hustle for a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The supplement, the supplement stuff.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:So, so, so, so,
Guest:So ketamine – ketamine was just a thing.
Guest:It was used to sedate.
Guest:They give it to children and stuff.
Guest:Doctors love using it.
Guest:It's safer than – you put someone under and their heart can stop.
Guest:And so you don't – this is – ketamine is just a disassociative.
Guest:And so they pick up on things that, like, one, kids say the darndest thing after our ketamine experience.
Guest:But two –
Guest:people started reporting like, hey, doc, I am less depressed after that surgery.
Guest:Is that normal?
Guest:And doctors would be like, actually, no.
Guest:Usually after a surgery, people get depressed because they're recovering and things.
Guest:And so then in the early 2000s, they started studying it just for depression.
Guest:And people will speculate on what the mechanisms are.
Guest:I haven't seen anything convincing.
Guest:I don't do enough research myself.
Guest:But I...
Guest:To me, it's so confusing.
Guest:It just like sort of works as a reset and ketamine doesn't seem to have a lasting effect.
Guest:Whereas, so you need like regular treatments for it to work in that way, but it does, if you are depressed and you do ketamine, it can like, you can walk out of the office not being
Guest:depressed right whereas mushrooms are more of an experiential change so i would say ketamine is whatever's happening on a neurologic level it's having that chemical change temporarily and it's a reset mushrooms for me are more um like i'll get depressed even like you just did a special anytime i finish a special or something i'll find myself depressed afterwards because i'll be like well now what and there's there's like oh when you do a special or when you watch one no when i
Guest:Usually when I watch one.
Guest:But after I finish like a big tour or something, I'll have five different directions of where I might want to go.
Guest:And there's possibilities that depression evolved to kind of pump the brakes before investing a bunch of time going,
Marc:Well, a lot of times it's like, you know, the energy you put in creatively and, you know, into touring and generating and improvising or telling stories or jokes.
Marc:You know, when you pull that out, you know, you're left with yourself.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And all that juice is gone.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what you're saying is that psilocybin is an experiential...
Marc:It's like shower thoughts on steroids.
Marc:Yeah, I get it.
Marc:But the impact of psilocybin is a perception changer.
Marc:A perception changer, yeah.
Marc:So that can stick.
Marc:That can stick.
Marc:It's almost cognitive.
Marc:It's like cognitive therapy.
Marc:Like if you choose different options for yourself, even though you're compelled to do something else, if you make a different choice, you can eventually change your behavior.
Marc:Whereas if your perception is shifted with psilocybin and you hold on to it, you can sort of choose to at least get halfway.
Guest:there yeah to get all the way there to get jangle you're gonna have to you know re-up the shrooms a bit and and well one of the things that most people ignore is the integration aspects i've i've done enough psychedelic experiences that now if i if i do mushrooms like the trip itself is just now it's just this pain in the ass that i go through like okay if i see another fractal i'm gonna puke yeah i don't you're done with fractals i'm done with fractals it doesn't do it for me anymore well how about elves
Guest:But the elves are like, they've already said all of the things they're going to say.
Guest:It's so like, that was the thing with DMT.
Guest:DMT was always, I would get to the end of an experience.
Guest:It was like, oh, if I could have just, what was that last thing at the end?
Guest:If I could have pulled out that,
Guest:Jim, that treasure would have saved the world.
Guest:The purple guy or the blue guy?
Guest:The purple lady.
Guest:That was the purple lady.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She's about to say something.
Guest:Like, you got to go back.
Guest:But for me, something like mushrooms or for other people, LSD.
Guest:LSD doesn't work in the same way for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But those days after is just you have a little more neural flexibility.
Guest:So if it's like, hey, I was thinking about getting back into jogging again.
Guest:It's just a little easier.
Guest:I think normally they say a habit takes about six weeks to fully integrate and become a routine.
Guest:I think it can give you just a little bit of a jump start.
Marc:Right, but you don't have to do it every other day.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:So what is...
Marc:Because, you know, I was watching over the pandemic, you know, your kind of pro-science, anti-fascist tweets.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which I always enjoyed, you know, because not enough people do it.
Marc:I don't know what they're afraid of.
Marc:But, you know, in terms of your embracing science as being part of your personality.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, how's your experiment going with your mind?
Guest:Well, I mean, shortly after talking to you, I lost it.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I was making a documentary, Psychonautics, a comics exploration of psychedelics.
Guest:When was this?
Guest:It was how many years ago?
Guest:2017, I was making it.
Guest:And so this was like probably nine months after I talked to you.
Guest:This is your DMT date period?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, and we had, we had gathered a whole bunch of great interviews with all these different researchers and what do we want this documentary to be?
Guest:I'm like, I guess I'll just do all these experiences.
Guest:I've had nothing but positive psychedelic experiences for 20 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll just show people that like, you know, I can even take like way more than you should and it will be fine.
Guest:Like the supersize me for psychedelics?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I did that and I was like to show people that you don't go crazy.
Guest:And I went completely fucking insane.
Guest:Like on such an epic level, I ended up in a psych ward.
Marc:You did?
Marc:So wait, so like what was the like, how were you pacing yourself?
Marc:How were you regulating?
Marc:How were you deciding?
Marc:Did you have somebody to watch you?
Marc:Did you have a professional guide of some kind?
Marc:No.
Marc:You just did it like a fucking drug addict?
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:I had a professional ketamine treatment, and then I was actually going to... In the movie, it's set up like... Did you release this thing?
Guest:Uh-huh, yeah.
Guest:It's on Amazon Prime.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:But did you lose your mind in the dock?
No.
Guest:I was actually going to do ayahuasca to prep for doing ayahuasca on film.
Guest:And I lost my mind then.
Guest:I had been doing mushrooms.
Guest:So what happened was, like I said, I always used psilocybin for depression.
Guest:And so I felt a little depressed with not knowing the direction of this documentary.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, I'll do mushrooms.
Guest:Throw a log on the fire.
Guest:I threw a log on the fire.
Guest:And then it snapped me out of my depression.
Guest:And then I had this thought, Mark.
Guest:I go, well, what if instead of just stopping depression, what if I could feel good?
Guest:Like, wouldn't that be great?
Guest:And so I just kept on eating more mushrooms, like two times, three times a week.
Guest:And then I felt good.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:What if I could feel great?
Marc:But did you have that weird jangly, you know, vibrating clarity every day?
Marc:It's exhausting, isn't it?
Guest:Now it is for me.
Guest:At the time it was, now I like, the reason why I like ketamine now is because it's confusing.
Guest:There's nothing that I have to work on in my life afterwards.
Guest:It's just like, well, whatever the hell that just was, I'm not even going to think about it.
Guest:I don't have like a purple lady that I'm communicating with that I need to worry about.
Marc:So you're doing mushrooms three days a week?
Guest:Yeah, two, three days a week.
Guest:And then I started feeling great.
Guest:And then I was like, what's after great?
Guest:And don't ever, like if you're ever feeling great, leave that alone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I became hypomanic.
Guest:I have always known I was bipolar.
Guest:And hypomania is.
Guest:Oh, so you're a bipolar guy for real.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You were diagnosed with that and you knew that before all your hallucinations.
Guest:I was self-diagnosed and then this is when I became officially diagnosed.
Marc:When you were locked up.
Guest:Like I have scientists.
Guest:I have, you know, I interview scientists once a week for my show, Here We Are, about a variety of subjects, how the mind works and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I knew just from, I had confirmed from talking with them and taking some studies myself that I was bipolar.
Guest:But had you experienced a mania without drug inducement before?
Guest:A hypomania, regularly.
Guest:So I was bipolar 2, and I didn't know the difference.
Guest:That's bad.
Guest:So bipolar 2 is not the same.
Guest:It's good you never had a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You spent a lot of money.
Guest:So two is like is like two months out of the year.
Guest:Just completely just really insane amount of depression.
Guest:Like it's it's people with bipolar there.
Guest:Their depression doesn't it's not as chronic like some people, but it's deeper.
Guest:what happens.
Guest:And then there's two weeks out of the year where you're hypomanic and you're like, you don't need to sleep as much, you're very creative, you're inspired.
Marc:Oh no, yeah, but also you can buy things that break you, you can get involved with weird shit, you can find yourself in weird places.
Marc:It's good to be broke when you have bipolar 2.
Marc:When you go into a hypermania, it's good not to have a lot of resources.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you'll burn out your friends.
Guest:But then bipolar 1, ayahuasca launched me into a manic 1 episode.
Marc:Which is different than a hypomania?
Guest:Very much different.
Guest:Worse or better?
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Oh, much worse.
Guest:Really?
Marc:So bipolar 1 is worse than bipolar 2?
Yeah.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's the difference?
Guest:The difference is like, you know, the difference between feeling like going from being suicidal for a couple months and then being hyper excited and inspired for a couple weeks.
Guest:That is different than being like, oh, all of this world is a simulation in my mind and everything that's happening in it is a product of my own
Marc:thoughts and if i don't control my like so if that's a tricky business you know when you already have uh a psychedelic context about perception and reality you know you start playing with those mechanisms within your own brain you start eating yourself i mean at some point people have to you know just settle on the idea that like there is a reality outside their head oh yeah it's a
Marc:Yeah, it's... Okay, so what happens?
Marc:So you do the mushrooms and you're going for better than great.
Guest:And then I did ayahuasca.
Guest:Yeah, that's crazy.
Guest:And I had the most beautiful experience of my life.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So you got beyond great.
Guest:I just never... I got beyond great.
Guest:And then just weird things started happening.
Guest:After the ayahuasca.
Guest:Yeah, and it was like really...
Guest:unsettling and i couldn't make sense of it like what um so like during ayahuasca there was like this this thing where it was like it's it was like showing me this vision of like hey i was going to be called to do this dmt extended state thing this this thing that i had been asked that i had heard about yeah
Guest:where instead of smoking DMT and having like a five to 10 minute experience, they can hook you up to an IV and get you to that level and you can stay there for hours.
Guest:As long as they'll let you.
Guest:As long as they'll let you, as long as you can take, whatever.
Guest:And, um, and then, and it was like this whole thing about how I was, and afterwards I was like, whatever, ayahuasca, that's just psychedelics for you.
Guest:Of course you'll have like weird visions and stuff.
Guest:And I, I didn't have phone reception.
Guest:This is just one thing that happened.
Guest:And then I got off of this mountain.
Guest:Where you were doing Iowa.
Guest:Where I was doing Iowa.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:It was like in Golden, Colorado.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I had phone reception again.
Guest:And then the first text that I received was this person.
Guest:Was from you?
Guest:Was from this guy running this DMT extended state thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's like, hey, Shane, I see you're in Colorado.
Guest:We actually are doing this big announcement tomorrow about this DMT extended state thing where we're holding this like meeting and there's going to be like some journalists there and stuff.
Guest:And we have the like main like neuroscientist that came up with this idea there.
Guest:And we want to announce you as the first participant in this study.
Guest:Congratulations.
I was.
Marc:You win insanity.
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, but I just had the thing that I was going to.
Guest:And then I went to this thing.
Guest:Couldn't resist, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hear this guy give this lecture about how he thinks, this isn't my perception, but he thinks the reason why people are seeing these entities is because time works different and we're only tapping into certain dimensions.
Marc:Which entity is the purple lady?
Guest:Yeah, that sort of thing.
Marc:Oh, the elves.
Guest:Yeah, the elves.
Marc:The elves on the periphery.
Guest:I mean, as crazy as elves sound, and I think it's just a product of our own minds, that's my take on it, which most people that smoke DMT don't have that take.
Guest:They think you're tapping into a different thing altogether.
Guest:But my take is it's in your head, but you're going to see something.
Marc:What's going on with that guy who tried to make the big psychedelic cultural movement?
Marc:Was this Fishback or what's that guy's name?
Marc:Daniel Pinchback.
Marc:Pinchback.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's up with that guy?
Guest:Um, he's still writing a lot.
Guest:Uh, he made a lot of claims about like the world ending in 2012 or something.
Guest:Well, is he making an argument that it did end?
Guest:It's one of those things that did end and this is a different thing.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Well, well, what you need, what you need, if you want to be in the space is like, you want a good, we saw this a lot during the pandemic is, is, uh, you, you want a good unfalsifiable, like with any religion or whatever you want, you want a thing that like, it's just impossible to falsify.
Guest:You want something that's like, Hey, if, if,
Guest:Like scientists go, if I'm wrong, this is what that would look like.
Guest:This is how I would lose that bet.
Marc:And then religion goes, I'm not wrong.
Marc:Just wait.
Guest:Just just keep waiting forever.
Guest:There's nothing you can ever do to prove me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And if you play by the rules, you'll see the big lights when you go.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So so you so you get yourself hooked up to the drip.
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:I just saw this talk about this thing.
Guest:And then I was like, why was I selected for this thing?
Guest:I started.
Marc:I saw you as a guy was willing to do anything.
Guest:Oh, there's logical reasons for sure.
Guest:But the timing of it mixed with having just done Iowa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I started thinking like, well, why is this happening?
Guest:And I started thinking about time travel a lot.
Guest:And once I started thinking about time travel and how time works and how maybe our subconscious is picking up on time running in a certain way, and it's coming through us in this, you know how like kids say the darn, like kids will say something with all sorts of wisdom, but they don't even know what it means.
Guest:I started thinking like, that's what people are doing.
Guest:doing all of the time without realizing it.
Guest:Like their subconscious is saying these messages about how time works that they aren't aware of.
Guest:So I start reading way too far into anything.
Marc:Isn't time sort of like, isn't the idea of measurable time
Marc:Kind of a, you know, an imposition.
Marc:I mean, like, it was manufactured.
Marc:I mean, you know, the sun comes up and the sun goes down is one thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the idea of a clock and all this other business is that was, you know, a human construction, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:You know, the lockdowns that, you know, time is operating differently for me personally.
Marc:I don't quite have a sense of it anymore.
Marc:But that's also because of the lifestyle we choose.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There's nothing like really I'm not I don't have to do much.
Guest:It's all.
Guest:I mean, 100 years sounds like a long time to us because that's like our lifespan.
Guest:If you're a mayfly.
Guest:And, you know, they, they live for like four days.
Guest:If you said to that mayfly, like, Hey, we'll give you another 20 days to live.
Guest:They'd be like, what in the world would I, that sounds like a nightmare.
Guest:What would I do with all of that?
Guest:It'd be like, Hey, Mark, do you want to live for 2000 more years?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Be so tired.
Marc:I can't, well, my brain would eventually just wear out.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So, so, okay.
Marc:So you start thinking about time travel and then.
Guest:And then my girlfriend becomes concerned about me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was it that you said that, you know, gave her concern?
Guest:Well, one that I was going to go on a DMT.
Guest:That was, like, cause for concern.
Marc:On the IV drip trip?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And just that I, like, suddenly was a very different, you know, previously hadn't spent a lot of time talking about time travel and was now obsessively, like, coming up with new forms of math to solve time travel.
Guest:Did some mathematics?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's funny the stories that you can tell yourself because I was always really good at math as a kid, which equates to like, hey, I got through like geometry.
Guest:I'm not some advanced level.
Guest:I just had some good class.
Marc:High school geometry to work your time travel problem?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You're doing a proof.
Guest:Well, you're in such a suggestible state and then confirmation.
Guest:So when you become manic, it's all of the stuff that's already inside of us.
Guest:It's like just exaggerating.
Guest:All the stuff that you saw people doing during a pandemic of confirmation bias, of like things were a simulation and...
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:The pattern making and the correlation and causation stuff and getting mixed up with that.
Guest:And 5G towers have something to do with.
Guest:That's what you got to see kind of on a global level.
Guest:You got to see almost a global manic episode.
Guest:Seeing some of the more extreme beliefs that happen are just a product of... Panic.
Guest:And we evolve...
Guest:We evolved to, so you have a smoke alarm there.
Guest:That smoke alarm is engineered to be overly sensitive.
Guest:You can't make a perfect smoke alarm.
Guest:And the cost involved of it going off when a toast burns or something like that is annoying.
Guest:But the cost of it not going off when there's an actual fire is much, much higher.
Guest:They intentionally bias.
Guest:smoke alarms to be overly sensitive our brains have evolved these same biases and one is that we over perceive patterns so if you miss a valuable pattern as a hunter gatherer for where like resources might be in the future yeah and how how patterns and like herds work that you might hunt or whatever
Guest:That's a bigger cost than if you perceive a pattern that doesn't exist.
Guest:That's just making you a little superstitious and OCD.
Guest:They're not the same cost involved.
Guest:So our brains are biased in that way.
Guest:Also to assign agency to things.
Guest:To know that something that you're hunting or something that is hunting you has a mind and an agenda is really valuable.
Guest:And so we over-perceive minds.
Guest:So the cost involved of like...
Guest:of like talking to a tree, for example, is like, you know, you might be the guy that talks to trees in your tribe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and so these same, or egocentrism, for example, is something we're all born into the center of our own universes.
Guest:So when you become manic or when there's a global pandemic and the world is under so much duress, you kind of go back to some of those early biases that you're born into and they get exaggerated in this way.
Marc:And then they can be exploited.
Guest:And then they can be exploited by people.
Marc:Yeah, by the great grifters and hucksters and spiritual con men.
Guest:So many.
Marc:And political con men.
Guest:Interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And they might believe it themselves in a lot of ways.
Guest:Well, that's what you always wonder.
Guest:Motivated reasoning.
Marc:Yeah, that's what you always wonder, right?
Marc:I'd kind of feel safer if they didn't.
Marc:But I think a lot of them do believe it.
Marc:Well, certainly something as practical to them as fascism is a belief system.
Marc:And I think that the ones that are the worst kind of salesmen for it want it.
Marc:They believe it.
Marc:They don't give a fuck.
Guest:Well, if you find yourself on top, then you did it because you earned it.
Guest:That's another cognitive bias.
Guest:The good things that have come your way are something that you earned.
Guest:The bad things that have come your way is bad luck.
Guest:The good things that happen to other people, that's their luck.
Guest:Bad things that happen to them, they did something wrong.
Guest:They deserve that.
Guest:There's just world hypothesis, which is you don't need to worry about bad things happening
Guest:As long as you're doing all of the right things, like you mentioned that with religion.
Guest:And if something goes wrong for you, well, it's because you didn't follow this specific regimen.
Guest:You didn't follow my protocols.
Guest:You didn't buy my supplements or you didn't do the ice bath in the correct way.
Guest:And that's why you aren't immortal now.
Marc:Well, that's like because once you're a mark, once they make you a mark, and it's weird.
Marc:Some of the biggest sort of proponents or idiots that are free thinkers are the biggest marks.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Well, there's an expression in the psychedelic space, which is they're good for opening your mind.
Guest:Just be careful your brain doesn't fall out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, in relation to what you're saying, I had a philosophy teacher once about years ago and I never quite grasped what he was teaching and it was sort of boring.
Marc:And I remember, you know, he was getting mad at me because I was being disruptive in the class and I was smoking a lot of weed at the time.
Marc:And I was a grown up.
Marc:It was a, you know, adult studies thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was in the elevator and he was like, you know, kind of.
Marc:And snarkily asked me, like, are you getting anything out of the class?
Marc:And I said, well, my head seems to feel pretty full when I leave.
Marc:And he said, well, you can fill your head two ways.
Marc:Either you can put new things in it or you can heat up what's already in there so it expands.
Marc:And that was the last day I went.
Marc:I was like, I get it.
Marc:I'm an expander.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's, there's a lot of, so both the kind of motivational speakery and the, and the spiritual side of things are kind of doing the same thing, which is like, it's so there's the manifestors, which are like, you are at the center of the universe.
Guest:Everything will work out.
Guest:If you just keep on imagining that, like the reality that you want, it will come your way.
Guest:And then there's the, there's the other side of things, which is like,
Guest:Life has got to be tough and you got to get over these challenges.
Guest:If you're strong and you grow big muscles and you break through the things, you can get to the top.
Guest:If you don't do those things, well, screw you.
Guest:And if you don't believe the manifestation thing, well, like you're inviting negative things into your.
Marc:Yeah, but so much, it's so sad because so much of that can be harnessed and that's something so powerfully destructive on a social level.
Marc:I mean, you know, I mean, we're just, you know, we're really right at the precipice of violent othering in a big way where, you know, large groups of people can justify killing their neighbors because of this perceived difference.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I mean, I talk with, you know, I've been doing a science podcast for nearly nine years.
Guest:And before COVID, there was not once did I ever get even a comment from someone that was like, this dung beetle researcher doesn't know dung beetles and this and that.
Guest:And suddenly, like at the beginning of the pandemic, I was like...
Guest:What a fortunate position I find myself in.
Guest:I know just the person to reach out to.
Guest:This person models global pandemics, theoretically, and now they're an applied mathematician because it's getting real.
Guest:Yeah, there's a global pandemic, yeah.
Guest:oh this is i was told right away i was like this is going to be two years before things will like be anything close to normal again and i was like okay cool well this is good information to get out there hey this isn't a snow day everybody this is going to be like i don't think like these virtual stand-up shows it's like are necessarily going to cut it but like you'll need to we'll all need to like figure out ways to innovate or whatever this is going to be a couple years yeah
Guest:And and boy, like kill the messenger people like I didn't care about like people coming after me like endlessly.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But but people what would happen is like virologists and immunologists and stuff just like so.
Guest:I don't find, like, best-selling authors or anything.
Guest:I just, when I was touring, I'd be like, I'm in Tulsa.
Guest:I'll look up the university.
Guest:Oh, someone does this thing.
Guest:Sure, I'll hear about their cat research or whatever.
Guest:And just totally random all the time.
Guest:And so these random-ass, like, immunologists or whatever would be asked by the local news to be like, hey, can you explain—
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:And they had explained a thing that, like, people had already heard from other, you know, their podcasts or whatever that they listen to is this global plot against them.
Guest:And, you know, they're going to make us wear slave muzzles.
Guest:Who's they?
Guest:You know, them.
Guest:The Democrats?
Guest:The cabal.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:The cabal that's controlling all of them.
Guest:Both sides are the same.
Yeah.
Marc:And that's some of that stuff that you were talking about earlier going awry.
Guest:Going real awry.
Guest:And so these people, like people that, like if you have a question, say you have like a pet ferret.
Guest:And you're like, I want to know more about ferrets.
Guest:You could just email a ferret researcher.
Guest:They'll be thrilled that you give a shit.
Guest:No one's ever cared before.
Guest:They haven't gotten an email of anyone caring before.
Guest:And so, like, there's no secret thing.
Guest:Like, you can email a scientist.
Guest:They'll give you answers.
Marc:Yeah, there's no organization amongst these people.
Guest:They would love for you to listen.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:They would love it.
Guest:But suddenly, someone would show up on a local news and they'd be getting death threats and everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And especially with an infectious disease, there's more females in infectious disease.
Guest:So they get threats in the way that females... And this isn't like celebrities that were getting political.
Guest:These are just people that were doing a two-minute little explanatory thing on their local news station.
Marc:But what do you think is the...
Marc:But what is the driving force of the people pushing back in those violent ways?
Marc:I mean, it's obviously an organized mindset, but they're just making a decision about their particular belief system and how it enforces what they're thinking.
Marc:Because it doesn't seem like these are individuals with any sense of autonomy.
Marc:It's a groupthink environment, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's a lot of...
Guest:There's a lot of motivated reason.
Guest:I started, I started going back through some of the, I really like learning about pandemics from stuff that was written before COVID because it's like eerie to read.
Guest:There's, there's, there's books like a pandemic century, I think is the name of one that came out in like 2019.
Marc:They all knew it was going to happen.
Marc:And it's so crazy to read it.
Guest:But if you read the history of it, it started, the first witch trials started during the, I think it was the Black Plague.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was because, so it was both males and females.
Guest:A witch was like being a doctor back then.
Guest:Witchcraft was, that was your doctor.
Guest:That's who you would go to.
Guest:A lot of it was placebo stuff, I'm sure.
Guest:But they also probably picked up on a few things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:get some rest, clean your wound, whatever.
Guest:And, um, and then, and then what happened was during a plague, uh, people look for a correlation and causation.
Guest:So, so this has happened many times since, including like AIDS and now COVID where people think, oh, it's the hospital.
Guest:It's the people, it's the doctors doing it.
Guest:So before, before the black plague, there was nothing but which, which is where like, there was just good magic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then during the plague, there was good and bad magic.
Guest:And how you determined if it was good or bad magic was whether the person got better or whether they died.
Guest:If they died, it was because of bad magic.
Guest:If they lived, it was because of good magic.
Marc:This is how like- So it's just the way the brain, the human brain fucking functions in a world that's kind of untethered.
Marc:It seems like in tribal communities that there was sort of more of a balance.
Marc:There was probably a little bit of that stuff.
Guest:No, there's, so, so there's, there's like tribal communities that exist to like, here's a great case study.
Guest:It's the exact same thing.
Guest:There's, there's witchcraft that still exists in, I'm going to forget the region.
Guest:It's, it's, um, I think it's like this place in Africa.
Guest:I talked to this guy, anyhow, wherever it is, there is a waterborne virus that they sometimes get.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they don't know anything about viruses.
Guest:And so they'll get this virus.
Guest:And what's really interesting is there's something, they're putting together some connection.
Guest:So when they get this virus, their explanation for it is that the ghost alligator came in through their sink and poisoned them.
Guest:And so now they're sick and they got to call the witch doctor.
Guest:And the witch doctor comes in.
Guest:Well, first off,
Guest:If you got sick, it's because you did something wrong and that was like your karma or whatever.
Guest:And so you need to like make some offering to the community, which also increases social support at the time when you need it most because you're like acting out in generosity.
Guest:So there's all these like weird practices that kind of evolved over time that have some usefulness that can...
Guest:be that can run amok but then um so so you do that and then you you make this offering to the community and then it's basically bed rest and like a couple like magic potions yeah or whatever but it's it's the same it's the same sort of thing where where they're close to picking up on it yeah and then someone someone gets sick and it's like well as long as you behave in this
Guest:perfect way nothing bad will happen to you so when a bad thing happens to someone they did something wrong right and then there's also just like there's also the convenience issue of like anything with like say um lab leak ideas or or anything like that is is just like and and it could very well be a lab leak it's
Guest:Definitely probably not.
Guest:But those ideas are really – there's a lot of motivation behind them because you would think the people that are forwarding these ideas would be like, oh, my God, this is like Chernobyl.
Guest:There's a lab league.
Guest:How do we make things safer?
Guest:Let's all get in biohazard suits.
Guest:Instead, it's like, no, this is – we don't need to do anything.
Guest:This is someone else's fault.
Marc:Let's blame someone else.
Marc:Yeah, let's bomb China.
Guest:Or bomb China or whatever else.
Guest:So it's – and there's all these conflicting like –
Guest:they invented and created and leaked this, this also virus that's benign that we don't need to do anything about, but it's also the craziest, like none of it.
Guest:So, so at the end of the day, it's just like, do nothing.
Guest:Um,
Guest:um blame other people and anyone else that gets sick that was their fault they were like too weak or whatever which is like that's not it's we're in a particular time where uh where people are traveling around the globe viruses are suddenly for the first time in history going across the globe so there's invasive species like crazy yeah it's mobile they're mobile
Guest:Some bat gets a white-nosed fungus that wipes out 99% of the population, which happened because a caver from Europe came and caved in New England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it wiped out an entire species, nearly went and stick.
Guest:It wasn't because they weren't doing enough kettlebell squats.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or they were, like, eating too much fast food.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's because there was a novel pathogen that they had not evolved for.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just the situation that we're in.
Marc:It's so sad when the novel pathogens win.
Yeah.
Guest:They always will.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So back to, uh, you know, the, uh, you and your girlfriend and you're going, you're going to do the ketamine.
Marc:You're going to, you're time traveling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you get into any, did you do any time traveling?
Guest:Were you able to?
Guest:So, so then a week later after obsessing about time, I had another, so I kept on having these unfortunate coincidences happen.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Where I would like arrive at some idea that like confirmation bias would allow me to.
Marc:Connecting the dots, I think it's called in the psychedelic community.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I was connecting a lot of dots.
Guest:It's given me some sympathy for like how those processes happen because I've experienced them on such an exaggerated level.
Guest:But it's made me frustrated at the same time because I'm like, no, no, we got to we got to nip these thoughts in the butt.
Guest:I know exactly how far they can go and how wrong they can go.
Guest:So a week later, I was going to Roger Waters.
Guest:This is in 2017.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so I was already manic and talking about time travel, but I already had plans with my friends.
Marc:So what is the fundamental difference between bipolar 1 and bipolar 2 in relation to mania?
Guest:So mania is much more...
Guest:Everything becomes like either you are controlling the entire world or universe or it's controlling you.
Marc:And that's different than hypomania, which is fleeting.
Guest:Hypo mania is just like getting inspired.
Guest:It's just like hypomania is the dream.
Guest:Like if you could just stay hypomanic forever, like it would be amazing.
Marc:But mania is a total shift in perception.
Guest:Total shift, real, real delusion.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:So that's where you're at.
Guest:And like there's no way out.
Guest:You can't kill yourself, Mark, because I could jump off a building.
Guest:And fly.
Guest:No, but like it would just, if I land, then I'd realize my consciousness had just been in the sidewalk the whole time waiting for my head to crash into it.
Guest:And now I'm just a sidewalk.
Guest:There's no escape from this thing.
Guest:That's what it feels like.
Marc:It feels like a whole CGI world.
Marc:That it's suicide proof.
That's good.
Guest:there's the plus reality becomes this manipulate manipulatable cgi world and everything you know i drive by a everything's self-referential i drive by a sign that said like road work ahead or whatever and i i get a text from an agent that'd be like hey have some new road work for you
Marc:Gotta read the signs, man.
Guest:It's embarrassing.
Guest:I love sharing these things because I know a lot of people.
Guest:I get messages from people that have, they're like, I understand now.
Marc:But I had a similar thing with cocaine psychosis.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you know, you get to a delusional point.
Marc:You're hearing voices.
Marc:You think it's all about you.
Marc:You're seeing things that no one else can see.
Marc:And, you know, you've got the big wisdom.
Guest:There's something really – so there's this idea in the psychedelic research that's – psychedelic research is shaky because of the regulatory system.
Guest:It's not very robust.
Guest:But there's this idea of inhibiting the default mode network.
Guest:You do mushrooms and normally my conscious perception is feeding me priorities.
Guest:So me talking to you right now is more important than what's like details on your carpet or something like that.
Guest:You shut that down and everything is the exact same priority.
Guest:And so everything's like the exact same and just as meaningful.
Guest:And so now you're like, well, how did I walk past that carpet?
Guest:How did I not see that detail before?
Guest:And now the novelty of perceiving that for the first time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Your brain then latches onto that and makes, that must be the important thing.
Guest:That detail in the carpet is where the message is.
Guest:The tapestry.
Guest:And no one will listen to you.
Guest:Don't you look at the tapestry.
Guest:And people won't believe you.
Guest:Of course, they don't see it.
Guest:They don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's wild.
Guest:So what's the next step?
Guest:So the next step is, so a week later, so I'm going to Roger Waters.
Guest:And that day, I come up with this idea of like, well, how would I test these ideas?
Guest:Say I was going into this DMT state.
Guest:I would tell the entities that like, hey, when I come out of here,
Guest:Hand me have have someone in the lab hand me a manila envelope that has something in it that is meaningful to me that I I'm not saying it like I'm only telling you this.
Guest:And then I thought about it for a while.
Guest:I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm going crazy.
Guest:Yes, that's a dumb idea.
Guest:I had a lot of wild ideas, like a million a second.
Marc:And so you're talking to the elves?
Guest:This is my girlfriend that I'm talking to.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Um, adorable little elf.
Guest:And so then we go to Roger Waters and I was, I got free tickets because I know the guy that flies the inflatable pig for Roger Waters.
Guest:And so, and so it's also like, that doesn't help to have like special things happening to you and have like special connections when you're already like, am I being like led along on this path by this thing?
Guest:You know?
Guest:And so I go in this.
Guest:How do I know the guy who's in charge of the pig?
Guest:How is that real?
Guest:That can't happen.
Guest:So I go in this like VIP area or whatever before the show and the guy comes in and he looks at my tickets and he's like, hey, how are you?
Guest:And he looks at my tickets and he gets like this weird look on his face and he looks at me and he looks down and then.
Guest:And he's like, I'll be right back.
Guest:And he goes back and he like gets this new set of tickets and he comes back with this manila.
Guest:Oh, that's what I told her.
Guest:I was like, that's a stupid idea.
Guest:If time travel were true, why wouldn't it just happen to me today?
Guest:Why wouldn't someone hand me an envelope today?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'm there and then he comes back and he has this fucking envelope for me.
Guest:And I open it up and it's a sign, like a headshot from Roger Waters.
Guest:It's like one of my favorite, you know, Pink Floyd's my favorite band of all time.
Guest:And I'm like, what the fuck is happening right now?
Guest:Yeah, what'd you make of that?
Guest:And I had to sit down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'd like tried to explain to my friends who are with me because I had like, I knew enough at this point to like, you know, keep a lid on the time travel stuff.
Guest:You know, you've told your girlfriend that hasn't had the best response.
Guest:It seems like this is like maybe socially inappropriate.
Marc:But this time travel would be like, you know, it's just hours.
Marc:What's that?
Marc:It's not like big time travel.
Marc:You're not, you know, you're just, you're, you're like, it's, it's like the different, it's like when you have a dream state and, and it foreshadows something in your day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So it's the time travel you're talking about.
Marc:It's not like I'm going 20 years ahead.
Marc:You're like, this may happen tomorrow.
Guest:Well, this was my logic was the reason why I was handed this envelope was because months from now I will go into this DMT state and then I will tell these entities to go back to that day to hand me this envelope.
Guest:And that's why I'm receiving it.
Marc:You're playing like, you know, the...
Marc:Five dimensional chess thing.
Guest:So many dimensional chess.
Marc:Because look, there is sort of like, you know, everyone sort of had that weird moment where something in a dream state is prescient, you know, where where, you know, like you dream about somebody, then like you see them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But again, that could be confirmation bias, right?
Guest:It's not only that, but well, one, the kind of normal explanation for that is like, you think about a lot of people in a given day and it just doesn't stick with you until they call.
Guest:And then you go, I was just thinking about it.
Guest:Well, you were just thinking about 100 different people.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Or even less.
Marc:So, you know, the the the kind of the buffet of your personal reality is much smaller than you think.
Marc:So the possibility of of coincidence is higher on a on a on a proportional level.
Guest:And like a more far out there but like perfectly in my mind reasoning is like you and I each have a mental representation of each other.
Guest:Like I think about you once in a while.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I spring into your – and it's probably like about the same amount of – you know, like once every six months, once a year or something like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:oh, I wonder how Mark's doing right now.
Guest:And so there's probably some sort of calculation going on in the subconscious that's like, I have this kind of relationship with this person and I haven't checked in with them in this amount of time and it kind of pings you.
Guest:And so the idea that our subconscious would ping each other around-ish the same time, that doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.
Marc:I guess so, but the subconscious is, they're not connected.
Marc:No, no, they're not connected.
Marc:There's just a timing to it.
Guest:Yeah, there's just a timing to it.
Marc:So when do you lose your mind totally?
Guest:And then I saw the show.
Guest:And then the show started.
Guest:And I swear, it starts with basically my Here We Are podcast logo, essentially.
Guest:And I'm like, what's happening?
Guest:And then I had this whole thing about time flipping around through space in this Fibonacci thing.
Guest:I'm drawing all of these symbols and stuff and making my girlfriend watch these things.
Guest:You got symbols going?
Guest:And then I got symbols going, and then the show starts and Roger Waters goes into the show time, and it's this clock flipping around and through this Fibonacci spiral.
Guest:I'm like, God damn it, I was just showing you a picture like this three days ago.
Guest:And you said that to her?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm like, what's...
Guest:happening right now and my mind broke like it completely broke like at the show yeah like I was I mean I didn't do anything I just like lost orientation with reality completely I thought like at first I was like what's happening right now why am I because I was also in Roger Waters like friends and family section yeah and and so he would come over like probably to like you know give his friends a nod yeah
Guest:You'd be like nodding in my throat.
Guest:It's me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What does Roger Waters want from me?
Guest:He's giving me envelopes.
Guest:He's giving me nuts.
Marc:Man, I wish I knew.
Marc:I got to talk to that guy.
Guest:It's all like, am I me?
Guest:Am I him?
Guest:And he had like a real anti-Trump heavy thing at that time.
Guest:And so I'm like, oh, is this commentary?
Guest:Am I Trump?
Guest:Like things started going, like things completely dissolved.
Marc:So you weren't egoless.
Marc:Your ego shattered.
Guest:It was completely... Expanded.
Guest:There was no...
Guest:separation between me and everything else and there's no like if something happened like if I happen to know well when I see that like squirrel run across the street and like I just moved my arm and also that cloud took us particular shape like all of those things are connected and connected to either I did that with my arm or the cloud did it and moved my arm but like they're not separate events either I'm in power or I'm interpreting something
Guest:Yeah, either I'm pulling the strings or the strings are pulling me.
Marc:Yeah, but that one's harder because it's like, what does that mean?
Marc:At least if you think you're a superpower or a superhero, then it's like, watch me do this.
Marc:But you can't challenge yourself to do this because you won't be able to do it.
Marc:So you're stuck in between this idea of like, I'm being moved by, like, what does that mean?
Marc:Did I just do that?
Marc:But did you ever think to try to move things with your...
Guest:I've tried a few things, Mark.
Marc:How'd that pass out?
Marc:Oh, boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Not great.
Guest:Not great.
Guest:Not good.
Guest:I mean, I could share it with you, like, the craziest thing that I've ever done in that vein.
Guest:So I've had, like, a couple borderline big manic episodes since that time, like, not connected to psychedelics.
Guest:And my last big one was May of 2020.
Guest:COVID happened.
Guest:I'm like, you know, wiped out.
Guest:You felt it come on?
Guest:As soon as COVID happened, I became hypomanic.
Guest:And instead of like two weeks, it was like two months.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:I'm trying to connect virologists I know with different influencers and stuff, practically trying to do whatever I can.
Guest:It was actually kind of an exciting two months, even though I was losing everything.
Guest:And then I, I had this, I had had this idea in 2017.
Guest:This is another one of those awful coincidences that happened that triggered me.
Guest:So in 2000, this time travel idea and it's coming from our subconscious.
Guest:I had this idea that Christopher Nolan was communicating these ideas through his movies.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:To a couple of my friends, I'm like, you'll see his next movie is going to be about things being sent back through time to influence things and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Years later, it's May 2020.
Guest:I'm in this fragile state.
Guest:I'm hypomanic.
Guest:I'm like, oh, Christopher Nolan has a new movie.
Guest:I play the preview, and it's the movie Tenet, which is about reverse entropy.
Guest:Then I started experiencing all these synchronicities again.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:No, this isn't real.
Guest:I'm trying to talk myself out of it.
Guest:You got to reel it in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I turned 40 on May 25th, living in my parents' basement.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Having lost everything.
Guest:And that was the same day George Floyd died.
Guest:And this is in Wisconsin.
Guest:And then the protests happened in Minneapolis, which was the closest big city to where I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and i woke up one morning and i was like this isn't none of this is real none of it yeah it's all a dream like i just i just could not tell the difference right whatever tells you when you're not dreaming it wasn't there and i decided that the simulation was just like doing these things to like scare me to keep me invested in this game you know and actually these fears weren't real and i needed to confront these fears and that ended mark
Guest:With me naked confronting police officers and explaining to them that they weren't real in my idea to prove it to them.
Guest:Was that I told them that I was going to, like, this was a CGI world and I could manipulate it in any way that I wanted.
Guest:And I told them that I was going to pick one of them and I was going to jump up their urethra like...
Guest:Ant-Man and make them explode.
Guest:Because I had this idea that if you could, like, implant an insane enough idea in someone else's mind, like, it would happen.
Guest:It would work.
Guest:It would happen.
Guest:And it didn't work, Mark.
Guest:I tried.
Guest:I think I even closed my eyes and tried to summon it.
Guest:It was like if Neil was a comedian or something that told too many dick jokes.
Guest:And I guess there's a thing.
Guest:Did they arrest you?
Guest:They took me to a psych ward.
Guest:Again, this is the second time?
Guest:This is the second time, yeah.
Guest:So the first time after the Roger Waters concert, how soon after that did you end up in the psych ward?
Guest:It was a couple trips to the hospital that they would sedate me, and then I'd get rest for the first time in a very long time.
Guest:Hypomania is like shaving a couple hours off of what you need in sleep.
Guest:Full-blown mania is like I was sleeping one to two hours a day for weeks on end.
Guest:See, it's sleep deprivation.
Guest:It's kind of psychotic.
Guest:Yeah, so then they'd sedate me.
Guest:I would get a good night's sleep.
Guest:And then I'd wake up and I'd be like, you know.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Thanks for helping out.
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:And then I'd leave and then I'd ramp back up again.
Guest:And that happened three times before I finally went to a psych ward.
Guest:How long were you in the psych ward?
Guest:Seven days.
Guest:And they put me on some...
Guest:And it was the craziest thing, too, because this is like when you're in a psych ward and you're a manic person.
Guest:And I'm like, this is real, guys.
Guest:I have a deal with Universal Studios.
Guest:I actually did.
Guest:And I had a meeting in like a week and a half.
Guest:No, that I had to get to.
Guest:And I'm like, guys, you have to let me out of here.
Guest:I have a TV show that I'm going to be the host of.
Guest:universal studios were shooting this whole pilot and everything and they're like yeah yeah but you but you actually did i really i really did yeah and and that that time they put me on uh something called the lines of pine uh i'm probably not pronouncing that right and that it put the fire out like the meds actually worked did you make the meeting um the meeting um
Guest:Yeah, for Universal?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, I did.
Guest:I was still manic, though, for, like, weeks afterwards.
Guest:And I wasn't my best self, for sure.
Guest:Did you get the deal?
Guest:No, but...
Guest:That's a whole other decision.
Guest:It was hosting a show about how psychedelics have influenced people's lives.
Guest:And at the time, in 2017, this is very controversial still.
Guest:They'd present it to Showtime.
Guest:They'd be like, oh yeah, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Guest:That's what we want.
Guest:And then you'd hear a story of people using mushrooms to get better at meditating or whatever.
Guest:They're like, well, we can't tell people to do these things.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:They want like narcos where like the disclaimer is built into it.
Guest:Like, you know, hey, if someone starts a meth lab, that's not on us for making Breaking Bad.
Guest:We didn't tell people to start a meth lab.
Guest:It's a little bit of a different thing if you tell people that they should do mushrooms and then they end up trying to jump up pee holes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that, so that was, those were the two times you were put in the hospital.
Guest:Those were the two times.
Guest:And the second time I didn't take meds and I just, um, I just accepted what was happening.
Guest:And then I just watched all of the other crazy people and I just watched all of the errors that they were making.
Guest:Like, like I knew, like I know cognitive biases really well.
Guest:It's one of my favorite topics.
Guest:And so I was like, really, I was like, it was very easy to see what's wrong with them.
Guest:No, well, I wasn't, I wasn't intervening.
Guest:I was just an anthropologist.
Guest:I was like, oh, here's how they're making this mistake.
Guest:I'm like understanding how perception would get there.
Guest:And then I remembered this objectivity bias is called, which is that it's easier to, we all think of ourselves as more unbiased and more objective in our thinking than others.
Guest:It's easier to see errors in thinking and other people than yourself.
Guest:And I remembered that and I was like, oh, this is, this is what I'm doing.
Guest:I'm doing, I just needed to see someone else.
Guest:I needed to see someone else naked and threatening to jump up a pee hole before I recognized what was wrong with it.
Guest:Like we can't both have this power.
Marc:So what are you going to like?
Marc:So tell me, like, let's kind of focus on what's the big plan for this show.
Marc:How is it going to work?
Marc:What is this place?
Guest:So this is really interesting because I almost got completely away from the psychedelic space.
Guest:Not only did I have those episodes myself, but then during the pandemic, I found many of the people in the community to be grifters and like conspiracy theorists.
Guest:And it was like so discouraging and disheartening.
Guest:And I just didn't want to be a part of that.
Guest:I love talking with scientists.
Guest:I love hearing about bugs and shit.
Guest:That's what I'm interested in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And psychedelics have been like a fun way to lure people into hearing about perception and consciousness.
Guest:And so I was asked to MC this psychedelic conference at this place, Area 15.
Guest:I'm like, sure.
Guest:It was the first gig that I took back.
Guest:I was like, yeah, I'll MC this conference.
Guest:And I see the space.
Guest:It's like a four wall.
Guest:The Vegas space.
Guest:Where they do like the Da Vinci, or not Da Vinci.
Guest:The Van Gogh exhibit things.
Guest:And I'm like,
Guest:This place could benefit from an emergent psychedelic comedy show.
Guest:I'm the only one that I know that would be able to put that all together.
Marc:That's the Omega?
Guest:Omega Mart is the main thing within Area 15.
Marc:What's the show in terms of you?
Guest:So it's my stand-up with a VJ that will be adding visual.
Guest:So if I'm talking about mushrooms, it will have an aesthetic background that will be a little more mushroomy.
Guest:If I'm talking about LSD, it will have a more LSD vibe to it or something.
Guest:Same with ketamine.
Guest:And then I have some animators that are making particular things.
Guest:There's like this Comedy Central Tales from the Trip.
Guest:It's animated psychedelic stories.
Guest:And the creator of that show is adding a ton of animation.
Marc:Is that the one that did the CB?
Guest:Yeah, you saw that?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:What's that drug called?
Guest:2CB.
Marc:2CB, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:yeah so so then there's a bunch of animation looped in so it's on loops so that it doesn't need to be perfectly timed right so so i'm not going to be a robot up there so i'll be able to improvise and everything yeah yeah and they'll be able to improvise visually along with our people like but i mean it's a weird space to hold in that you know a lot of people that want to engage in that type of material just want to trip balls and now they got to listen to you talk
Guest:I hope that no one's tripping at my show, actually.
Guest:I mean, the way that I've kind of designed the show philosophically is that, you know, going to Area 15 and Omega Mart is kind of metaphorically a trip within itself.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And my show is more of the integration, the come down afterwards where you're talking about like the meaning of life and you know, these bigger ideas that are inspired by the psychedelic space.
Guest:And so that's what I, yeah, I don't recommend tripping at my show.
Guest:Like why, I mean, people do it and I've heard
Guest:good things but at the same time like why it's not how i would if i'm tripping and if i'm going to be indoors i want to watch like david attenborough documentaries or something like that and learn about nature i don't want to hear a person talk for 90 minutes about themselves about about themselves
Guest:But it's good for, it's meant to be like integrating past experiences or for people that are, and to like inspire better ones moving forward in the future.
Guest:And also just kind of what you can learn from the psychedelic experiences to hopefully make life a little bit better.
Guest:Just the same things like set and setting and setting intentions and stuff.
Guest:Like those are all things that you can apply to anything in life that's useful.
Guest:So that's what the show's about.
Guest:And it's gonna, you're gonna do it start in April?
Guest:April 23rd.
Guest:Sunday's April 23rd.
Guest:We have six shows booked, and as long as the first two sell reasonably well at all, they're just going to keep on extending it.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Guest:And you're just trying to figure out where you want to live.
Guest:Trying to figure out where, so one, I need to make sure that's going to be extended.
Guest:You don't want to be stuck in Vegas.
Guest:You might as well start here, no?
Guest:Yeah, I think it's such a short drive.
Guest:I have so many friends here, but there's also, I had started doing- We have water again here.
Guest:I should celebrate the water for a couple of years.
Guest:It's so expensive.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And I mean, I don't like Vegas necessarily, but it's cheaper.
Guest:And there's also a lot of, uh, I had started getting a lot of corporate, like, you know, doing science-y shows, um, for private events for people.
Guest:And Vegas is like the conference capital of the world.
Guest:So there's some potential there for me that I'm exploring.
Guest:So I'm feeling that out.
Guest:So I have a, I have an Airbnb for the first 40 days that I'm there.
Guest:And then I'm making a decision.
Marc:Cool, man.
Marc:So what's the website?
Marc:Shane Moss.
Guest:Shane Moss, M-A-U-S-S dot com.
Guest:Good seeing you again.
Guest:And I swear I'm like, I'm only crazy in moments.
Guest:That's the thing about being bipolar.
Guest:It's like you're normal all of the rest of the time.
Guest:But you don't want to medicate in the traditional way?
Guest:I mean, I'll tell you, I have an aversion to mushrooms now because they can lead to mania.
Guest:I pretty much only do ketamine right now because that doesn't trigger manic episodes.
Guest:What about lithium?
Guest:Lithium?
Guest:No.
Marc:You like it too much.
Guest:I'm just a cliche.
Guest:People that are like...
Guest:A lot of people with personality disorders, like borderline personality disorder, when they find out that diagnosis, often they are receptive to taking medication and getting treatment for it.
Guest:Bipolar people are famously resistant to— No, I know.
Marc:I grew up with—my dad was bipolar.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:Yeah, you'll do anything but—
Guest:Yeah, yeah, but take the lithium.
Guest:Yeah, well, I'm sorry if I'm triggering.
Guest:I'm sure it seems like, I'm sure anyone listening would be like, hey, why would you allow yourself to ever get to a state like that?
Marc:Or like, why would you want to ruin that party?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Standing in front of cops naked.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah, who knows what the next event is going to be.
Marc:Good seeing you again, man.
Guest:Good seeing you.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Okay, there you go.
Marc:That was a good story.
Marc:You can go to Area15, that's area15.com or shanemoss.com, S-H-A-N-E-M-A-U-S-S.com for tickets to his Las Vegas show, A Better Trip.
Marc:Also get his show, the podcast.
Marc:Here we are wherever you get the podcasts and watch it on YouTube.
Marc:And now, can you hang out for a minute?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, so look, Brendan and I have been doing this for a long time.
Marc:And Brendan and I talk sometimes before the interviews, sometimes after the interviews.
Marc:We usually have sort of a breakdown of things, especially if I was nervous or I was...
Marc:uh excited you know i'll i'll we'll talk after the interview so i could tell him my thoughts on what happened and what he he should look for from my point of view which moments moved me he's usually very in tune with that but you know sometimes we do a kind of um you know post-show uh breakdown on the phone but this time
Marc:We did it for you.
Marc:This week on The Full Marin, we recorded one of those kind of sessions, post-interview sessions that we did after I talked to Ice Cube.
Marc:I opened the door and there's Ice Cube.
Marc:And, you know, there's...
Marc:There's just like there's people who come over like I can kind of sense like, well, I can, you know, kind of engage with this person pretty quickly.
Marc:I can charm the moment, you know, disarm it pretty, pretty quickly.
Marc:And usually it happens kind of immediately.
Marc:But I open the door and like what I realized right away was like, that's not going to happen here.
Marc:Oh, well, you mean Ice Cube won't find your cats charming?
Marc:Yeah, it's in my house, buddy.
Marc:To hear that behind-the-scenes stuff before the Ice Cube interview airs next week, sign up for the full Marin.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:Next week, it's Rachel Weisz on Monday and then Ice Cube on Thursday.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm going to play the guitar now.
Yeah.
Guest:Homer lives.
Guest:Monkey and La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.