Welcome to Mind Escape New telos. 8 years ago I started
Mind Escape with my cousin Maurice.
At the time I was in the middle of a transformation, maybe even
an existential crisis. My mother had just been
diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
I was desperately searching for meaning, for answers about who
we are and why we are here. That search led me back into
spirituality and eventually into the world of ancient mysteries
and esoteric knowledge. I felt strongly that somewhere
in those traditions, somewhere in the fringes of human thought,
there had to be wisdom, or at least clues to the questions I
was asking. So I dove in, I read endlessly,
and I started reaching out to authors, researchers, and
thinkers to ask them directly about their work and their
experiences. That journey connected me with
incredible people, some of whom I now call friends, others I
still exchange ideas with regularly.
Many were brilliant, some had perspectives I had never even
considered, and all of them helped shape the trajectory of
mind escape. In those early years, I was
trying to find the line of where reality meets magic.
Because I approach things with an open mind and an open heart,
I sometimes fell victim to rhetoric and repeated ideas
that, looking back, I wouldn't endorse now.
But I also tried to call out inconsistencies and keep things
fair. Whether I was dealing with the
academic world or the fringe communities, case by case, I was
trying to sort truth from illusion.
About five years ago, that path led me deeper into philosophy,
specifically epistemology, ontology, and teleology.
I developed a habit of chasing origins.
Where did an idea start, and why?
Through that process, I became more aware not only of other
people's biases, but of my own. And that awareness changed
everything. Many of the so-called mysteries
I once thought were truly inexplicable turned out to be
explainable, quantifiable, or simply products of human error,
flawed memory, or in some cases, unfortunately, an outright
grift. But some questions remain,
questions that resist easy answers.
I'd call these the true mysteries.
Who or what are we communicating with in deep psychedelic states?
What are UF OS, really? Did life emerge through
abiogenesis, or was it through some sort of form of panspermia?
Do we live inside a black hole, or are we in a multiverse?
These questions belong more to metaphysics than magic, and
that's the shift I've come to embrace.
The truth is, the magic we're searching for isn't out there,
it's within us. Mind creates matter, at least to
a certain degree. We are the magic.
That realization changed my purpose, my telos, if you will.
Mind escape. New telos reflects where I am
now. Skeptical but open, critical but
imaginative. Committed to clarity without
losing wonder. To truly breakthrough in
thought, you have to shed belief.
Belief clouds observation, and observation is the foundation of
discovery. New Telos is about making that
leap, letting go of dogma so we can see more clearly and think
more freely. Philosophy is a way of life.
There was a time when I leaned on spirituality and higher
powers as a way to cope with suffering.
It was intoxicating. It lifted the weight off of life
for a while, but it ultimately left me in a cycle of why me and
poor me because I wasn't actually doing anything about
it. Philosophy changed that.
When you understand your own mind and biases and then apply
epistemology, ontology, and teleology, you gain the tools to
take ownership over your own mind, your life, and your
decisions. I am not just talking about
philosophy, I am living it. So what's next for mind Escape?
While I was on hiatus building my new series called Masters of
Rhetoric, which you should definitely go check out on
YouTube and all audio podcast platforms, I received emails,
DMS, and even texts from longtime listeners who said they
missed Mind Escape and hoped that I would continue it.
Honestly, I plan to overhaul the whole thing and just make it
unrecognizable to old Mind Escape.
But after reflection, I realized I don't need to erase the past.
The new Telos era will keep some of the familiar elements while
adding new ones. I will continue to do live
episodes with guests. There will also be pre recorded
conversations for guests that are overseas or that are being
recorded at odd hours. There will be more solo episodes
on science updates, philosophy, and personal reflections.
I will be implementing YouTube Shorts and clips which is
something I've been doing with the Master's Rhetoric channel.
Again, please go check that out. The link is down below.
There will also be a new segment and maybe even more in the
future, but currently the new segment will be called Mike's
Mind Melters where I will ask 5 philosophical questions to my
guest. I feel refreshed.
I feel revitalized. I'm ready to start this new era
of mind escape. Thank you to everyone who has
supported the show from the beginning and those who are just
joining the journey now. Please leave a comment or e-mail
me with any guest or topic suggestions.
As for tonight, I will be recording this first episode of
New Telos with Dennis Walker AKA Micropreneur, where we will be
discussing his satire, comedy, psychedelic updates, and the
fascinating world of functional and medicinal mushrooms.
Please check out Dennis's podcast Micropreneur and also
anything he does. This dude is just constantly
traveling the world and engaging with different people from all
walks of life on mushrooms and psychedelics.
So again, please check out his work.
It's super fascinating. Thank you and stay tuned for the
show. All right, Dennis, thank you so
much for coming back on. How are you doing?
It's great to be here and welcome back dude.
I'm a fan of the show. Hello to everyone and I missed
that intro music man. I remember you produced your own
intro music. I was very impressed by the
whole the visuals and the music but welcome back none none the
less. Thank you.
Yeah, it'll be added in to the episode after I actually, I'm
going to edit a little, put a little effort into it going
forward and you know what I'm saying?
But I appreciate it and I appreciate you coming back on.
And if you don't know who Dennis is, follow Micro Mycopreneur.
I have the links down below. And he does satire.
He has, you know, a whole community online of
entrepreneurs, people associated with the psychedelic community,
mushrooms, functional mushrooms, all that kind of stuff.
So check it out. But yeah, man, what's going on
with you? It's been a while since we
caught up. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier,
the major development of my life is I have a 8 month old boy
right now. So first time entering
parenthood. He's been keeping us on our
toes. It's been an amazing,
extraordinary journey so far. And if I doze off in the middle
of the interview, that's probably why, honestly, you
know? Yeah, you got to, you have to
get that sleep when you can, especially with a a little guy
there and is somebody that has an almost 4 year old now it it
doesn't get any easier unfortunately.
Charm to hear that, Yeah. I mean, I've been waking up at
like 5:00 AM because pretty much 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM are my only
uninterrupted hours until he goes to sleep.
It's 8:30 and change where I am and he he's usually winding down
at 8:00 PM. But it's been awesome.
You know, it's something I've always wanted to do.
And I guess there's no way to really prepare someone for it.
Kind of like a psychedelic trip. You can read about it, you can
talk about it, but until you go through it, whole different ball
game, brother. Oh 100%.
And I know it's cliche, but having my son was easily the
best and greatest thing I've ever done, no questions asked.
So I feel you there. I thought we'd get crack in
here. Let's start off with a little
bit of your background. I think in the past we've talked
about like how you got into all this and like psychedelics and
all that stuff. But like when you were building
Micropreneur and you were thinking about how you were
going to do it, was it initially like a brand idea or are you
trying to create like a like a cultural platform?
And did you initially try and start with the satire or was
that something that you added in later?
The satire came later. So I've always been a psycho now
from day one. I think I was 17 when I had my
first psilocybin mushroom experience, and I identified
with the psychonaut crowd before that because quite frankly, my
early cannabis experiences were pretty psychedelic, pretty
visual, close eyed visuals, geometric patterns and all that.
And so I knew there was something there.
It was clear to me and I did my research.
I went to the library. This was literally before we
regularly used the Internet like I had it, but we had a computer
lab at school. It wasn't like we all had the
Internet on our phones. So I remember going to the
library and checking out books from like Yale ethnobotanist
from Mark Plotkin, I think was really one of my first points of
entry. And then I discovered Erewid.
And over the next couple years, this was like circa 2005, 2006
around there. Then I became increasingly
infatuated with these visionary compounds, and more specifically
from indigenous cultures around the world, started reading about
ayahuasca, started reading about Maria Sabina, and found Terence
McKenna. And then so that was over many
years, and I went to school in San Francisco, which is kind of
like Ground Zero for Western psychedelia and was a stone's
throw from the hate street. So I kind of cut my teeth 2007
through 2012, living on the hate and connecting with that whole
legacy and learning about a lot more of these Western pioneers
of psychedelics, which sent me down a million different roads.
And then it was 2020 when I decided to launch Mycopreneur.
So it was very much a pandemic project.
I already had edited and produced media.
I'd done podcasts for a couple well known international brands
where I was kind of on the production side of them, like
for example, Occidental College in LA for their diplomacy and
world affairs department. So I had a sense of how to
podcast, but I had never considered hosting a podcast and
even less so, I had never considered openly talking about
psychedelics and mushrooms. But I sort of had the put two
and two together moment, that aha moment where I was like, OK,
it's more culturally acceptable now to talk about psychedelics.
And that really happened in 2018-2019 going back to like
2012 through, you know, that whole, there was nobody talking
about very, very few people talking about psychedelics
outside of like a few, you know, The Who who like Johns Hopkins
researchers and a handful of things.
But it was kind of like if career, career suicide is one
word for it, like if you were going to openly discuss that you
were a psychonaut, you know, there's a reason everybody was
using pseudonyms and code names and Internet names and all that.
And then that, for whatever reason, around 2018-2019, thanks
to a few of these kind of pop culture breakthroughs, be at the
Michael Pollan book or the Fantastic Fungi Netflix film,
etcetera, all the sudden it became a little bit more
culturally acceptable to speak about them.
And during the pandemic, I just said, you know what?
The world's kind of topsy turvy turned on its head.
There's this whole new normal thing going on.
I think it's time for me to speak openly and own my story.
And that's when I came out with Micropreneur Podcast, and I
remember sending out a cold message to like 12 people I knew
who I knew were into psychedelics and mushrooms, but
also kind of had a platform and a degree of cultural legitimacy.
There was like, my first interview was Michelle Janikian.
She was a Playboy writer and wrote a book about mushrooms she
had written for a Rolling Stone. So already it's like, OK, this
is a journalist who has professional experience and also
has written a book about mushrooms.
Of course she said yes. Another guy, Alan Lilienthal, he
has a podcast on KPBS and I know he's been very open about
psychedelics. So pretty much everyone I asked
said, yeah, I would love to talk to to you about my mushroom
experiences. And then one thing leads to the
next and it's like, next thing you know, I got a veteran who's
been on 2 tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Shut up Colin Wells and veterans walk and talk.
And then I've got a therapist friend from college and over
time it led to I've got publicly traded CEO's now I've got people
from, you know, multi $1,000,000 companies who want to come talk
about their research. And that kind of gave rise to
the satire because about a year in, so around 2021 or so, I
realized mushrooms, psychedelics, etcetera.
They're have a very funny side to them potentially.
Like how many times have people laughed and tripped or gone to a
concert and just had the time of their lives?
But to make them culturally acceptable, there has to be this
sort of scientific rigor. And I think that's good, but not
at the expense of losing this kind of funny, hilarious side of
things. So I really leaned into that and
it's worked out over the last couple years.
So that's kind of in a nutshell how I got to where I'm where I'm
at today. Awesome.
Yeah, I, I can identify with a lot of that.
Obviously for the last, I mean, since I was in high school,
we've been playing in jam bands and going to see fish and you
know, the whole jam scene and everything in shakedown and
psychedelics. That was always a huge part of
that culture. So you know, Maurice and I, my
former Co host and cousin, we've seen a ton of shows together and
I remember being 15 or 16 and reading Electric Kool-aid Acid
Test and then on the road and just like all these ideas kind
of came together and we're like, let's start touring around
seeing stuff, experiencing things and yeah, totally with
the arrow wid and all that stuff.
So I can identify with a lot of what you're saying, minus the
business side, which is why I like following you because I
learned a lot in terms of like what's happening on the
financial side of things and the legal side of things and all
that. Because I'm not really too
interested in that. I'm more looking at it from like
a phenomenological standpoint, like the whole experiential
thing. But it is interesting when you
look at the business and the culture and how it's evolved and
grown and everything like that. And I remember seeing, I forget
what it was, it was a podcast. It wasn't Joe Rogan or anything
like that, but it was in the early days of podcast, somebody
was talking about psychedelics. I'm like, oh, you know, people
are talking about this on, on here now, you know, so that was
something that we'd always, you know, kind of hush, hush talk to
amongst friends and close personal bandmates and things
like that. But yeah, it's, it's come a long
way. Same thing with cannabis.
I mean, I think it's headed all in the right direction in terms
of at least investigating to see what can be used beneficially
and what's kind of BS. So you've interviewed mushroom
entrepreneurs across tons of countries and all around the
world. What are some common themes that
keep coming up in conversations when you talk with these people,
whether it's cultural or business or whatever?
Yeah, thanks for asking. So I definitely came out all of
this from the cultural side. I played in a band in college
for five years and was heavily experimenting and investing my
time and energy with mushrooms and all kinds of other
psychedelics. And so that was kind of my point
of interest mainly is psilocybin mushrooms and quote, magic
mushrooms and the whole like cultural side, scientific
financial side that's coming out of all that has sort of been a
byproduct of my interest. And like I always say that I got
into this by listening to OK Computer on a macro dose
Radiohead album super far out. And it sent me to these
unimaginable, previously unimaginable dimensions, which
were very intelligent, it felt like, and very ancient.
Who knows? I mean, I'm preaching to the
choir here, I bet. But it was trying to figure out
like, what's going on there and how come we're not talking about
this? And how come this isn't a, this
isn't a cultural blind spot. So it's sort of been a sort of
accidental happenstance that I got into this kind of, I guess,
financial side of things, if you will.
But what comes up with talking to all these different people?
I think that there's a huge amount of ethnomycology
knowledge, ethnomycological knowledge, like little pockets
around the world of ancestral and indigenous knowledge about
mushrooms. But that's just one focal point
for a broader relationship with how to interact with the world,
how to interact with altered states, things like dreaming and
ceremonies for curing illnesses, etcetera.
And that's always been so fascinating to me.
Like if you go to a little remote corner of Northeast India
that they have all of these folk tales about mushrooms and OK,
when the Thunder hits, then it produces the mushroom.
The mushroom spirit comes and then we give it to someone when
they're sick. There's just so much that you
can unpack there. And you hear these stories from
all over the planet. Like there will be tribes in
Norway and tribes in Uruguay or Paraguay that have the same
mushroom with the same origin story.
And that stuff is just so fascinating to me.
The ethnomycological traditions basically, so those come up a
lot where people will say, Oh yeah, the ancestors or the the
elders of our tribe, they have very detailed knowledge about
these different mushrooms, the morphology of them.
They'll be able to distinguish which ones are edible versus
toxic. They'll know which ones to give
you to have visions or to cure an illness.
And also this is a, this knowledge is emerging from all
over the world. So for years, academia has only.
Substantiated that Maria Sabina and Mazitex and in Mexico and
kind of this Central American Mexican tradition around
psilocybin mushrooms. But there's been increasing
substantiation academically from other pockets of the world like
from South Africa has come out with indigenous knowledge around
mushrooms. And I've heard anecdotal reports
of healers in West Africa and including by academics who've
said, yes, they have knowledge of mushrooms, but there was just
really, it's an underfunded science.
It's a citizen science driving this.
So how many mycologists are there?
This is a new thing. Like, I spent a lot of time in
Chiapas, Mexico. I'm here right now.
We have a mushroom festival this week.
For years. There's literally like one or
two mycologists in this entire state that encompasses millions
of square miles and thousands of years of tradition.
But it's like that all over the planet, Papua New Guinea, all
all over Africa. So I think it's really a case of
just like nobody's really gone there looking.
And if they have, then there's a lot of gatekeeping for obvious
reasons, because historically a lot of indigenous tribes, they
know that if they share this knowledge, it's probably gonna
be taken from them. You know, they were many people
were burned at the stake for witchcraft for these.
So that's one thing that keeps coming up is people will say, Oh
yeah, we have knowledge around mushrooms in Borneo, we have
knowledge around mushrooms in Africa, etcetera.
In India. I got to go to the first
mushroom festival in India. There's like they just did a
survey of the mushroom landscape there and kind of counted a
bunch of species in this one area.
There's like 40 plus solosity species in India like across the
subcon, and that's just based on a few surveys and people are
finding new ones all the time. So that's one that comes up.
But I think more broadly than just like tripping on mushrooms,
there's a lot of potential uses for like bio materials for kind
of advanced technology, things like mycotexture.
People are building houses out of mushrooms, tiny houses using
mycelium and hemp composite materials and structural
insulated panelling. You've got just the biggest
companies in the world investing in fungi tech like NASA, IKEA,
Dell, the US Department of Defense, Mercedes-Benz,
Cadillac, the list goes on and on and on because there's a lot
you can do with this material and we're just starting to
scratch the surface of that. So there's off planet
applications like Astro Mycology.
Well, I was going to say because mushrooms can survive the the
vacuum of space, right? Yeah, there was just an
Australian company that grew mushrooms to feed a sub orbital
space crew that they had. And that's part of what NASA has
invested in is to do R&D about growing habitats basically.
Because let's say you want to put a base on the moon or on
Mars or whatever, thinking long term, what are you going to like
transport a bunch of heavy materials up there?
Or you could potentially grow the habitats using some kind of
byproduct, you know, and that's what translates, I think, to a
lot of different marginalized cultures.
Embracing the potential of mushrooms too, is that you can
grow habitats, food, medicine, etcetera, out of the byproducts
of waste, out of agricultural byproducts.
So I'm going to Uganda in November, super pumped about it,
and I'm going to participate in the third African Rising
Mushroom Festival. And that's a whole community of
people who have figured out how to grow mushrooms, oyster
mushrooms, lion's meat. They're completely detached or
separate from the whole, like psychedelic microdosing
movement. And I think that's something
that I wanna bring into this whole cultural phenomenon in the
West. Like, people are so interested
in tripping and psilocybin and microdosing, but to me, that's
just sort of the gateway into the much broader potential of
what you can actually do with mushrooms.
And you really can cover the whole Maslow hierarchy of need.
You can get food, medicine, shelter.
There's people making clothes and materials.
And so that's really where the whole kind of premise of
mycopreneur comes from. It's not about this like Silicon
Valley startup ethos and we're going to sell super exclusive
expensive meat to Erawan. That's like 1 angle of it, but
it's this. See right there, that was one of
your skits, basically like that whole thing that that evolution
of thought you just threw out there is kind of how I see you
come up with the stuff. Because then you'll take that
and turn that into a reality of like, that's how people are
about it too in reality. And there you go, there's your
satire. Oh dude, I get so many like Chat
GPTPR pitches for the podcast of like our founder is a expert in
psychedelics. They started micro dosing in
2024 and now they're a keynote speaker and I'm just like you
sent that to. 2000 they did mushrooms one time and became a
shaman. He.
Saw faces in the guacamole at the Super Bowl party.
No, totally. I'm all about that.
I like I said, I, I mean, part of me is jealous too.
I see you. You're, I don't, I think you
might travel more than anybody I've ever seen online.
I mean, even like people that travel as their job, you travel
a lot. So I grew up hosting exchange
students. So I think that really kind of
informed a sense of like the world was bigger than San Diego
where where I grew up. And just over time, like I've
kept in touch with a lot of people.
I've been raised in a very international environment.
I've worked my first like real job out of college was in Saudi
Arabia. And everybody works in Saudi
Arabia is there to make money and get the hell out of Saudi
Arabia. So, you know, I got to travel
all over the Middle East and Sri Lanka and Asia and West Africa
and or East Africa. So, yeah, I mean, I think you
just pick that up as time goes on and then it's a expensive
habit. You know, some people are into
cocaine and fine wine and I, I love to travel, but also those
other two are great too. Nice actually, so we were just
talking about like sacred uses and stuff.
I just read. I don't know if you're familiar
with Tom Lane, but he just wrote a new book called Sacred
Mushroom Sorcery of Ancient Mexico.
I was in contact with him. I'm trying to get him on.
I don't know if we'll end up linking up, but I did do like 5
episodes with them over the past.
Yeah, probably the span of like a year early on and, and mind
escapes evolution. And he took us through a lot of
like the metaphysics and the way that the ancient people and the
Maz attack and you know, Nawa and all those people interpret
reality versus the Western idea of reality and you know, how the
universe works and things like that.
So I actually recommend checking that out if if anybody's
interested in that kind of stuff.
I just saw that he dropped that new book and it's very
interesting to me because, you know, I grew up in the South of
San Diego, 5-10 minutes from the border.
So I've been coming down to Mexico for since like 1990.
I was born in 89, so very, very young in my life.
I would cross my church. I grew up and was very active on
both sides of the border. And then as time went on, I just
became increasingly interested in the other side of the border.
And so I, I spent a good amount of the year down in Chiapas.
And so everything Tom Lane was writing about, I've had some
experience with some of the different traditional uses of
mushrooms in the Mazatec culture, etcetera.
And like I mentioned this week, we have a big mushroom festival
that's exclusively focused on one mushroom called the Moni
mushroom. It's edible.
It's the Lactifluse chiapenensis, it's called, and
it's a very important mushroom to the Chiapenekin people in the
capital of Tutla Gutierrez and surrounding regions.
So like that's kind of I tapped into that network of people and
it's very interesting because it's ancestral knowledge, but
with a homegrown crowd of scientists who can really
understand like DNA bar coding, the morphology and the taxonomy
and the Latin names. So once I kind of linked up with
that group, I just opened the door to a lot of cool
opportunities because there are a lot of these pockets of these
homegrown people who recognize the cultural heritage and the
importance of mushrooms, not just in Mexico, but like I
mentioned in places like India, South Africa, Serbia.
And it's wild, dude. You just, if you try to Google
some of this knowledge, it's just not there.
You know, there are. It's a lot of dude.
I look at like Alan, Alan Rockefeller's posts and it's
like he just picks something up and goes, this is what it is.
Like how did you like, there's got to be, I mean, I don't even
know how many species there are, but I mean, he, you watch his
videos or like these things that he posts, he's like, how does he
know that? And then he pulls out his like
microscope and starts like analyzing these things.
It's crazy. They're finding new mushrooms
all the time, like Alan finds new mushrooms every time that we
go out with the group fungaria that I've been working with.
We find new mushrooms to science.
And that's part of what drew me to spending time in this region
is that there's an estimated 50,000 types of fungi in the
state, and only 2% have been identified and described.
But it really is that bridging of this sort of ancestral
indigenous ancient knowledge with modern scientific rigor.
And that gets so exciting because we'll be out there
foraging and there will be someone who speaks Tozo, which
is one of the Mayan demographics and languages here.
And they'll say, oh, we have this word for this mushroom.
And then the Mexicans, the Chupanekins I work with will be
like, well, here's the Latin name for it.
And then there will be like a white mycologist from the States
would be like, here's what we call it.
And to see that happen in real time and to have the traditions
and the science all merge is just extremely exciting for a
lot of reasons, I think. Oh yeah, that's awesome.
Are there any differences you've noticed in terms of like how
psychedelics are framed in the US versus internationally?
I know obviously it's illegal in a lot of places, but places
where it is part of their heritage or ceremonies and
things like that, you know, how does how does it compare?
And then how does it compare to, you know, in the US we don't
really have, I mean, maybe Native American, obviously, but
other than that in terms of like Western culture, I mean, it kind
of died with the elucity and mysteries a long time ago, so.
Yeah, it's huge, honestly, because like a lot of parts of
the world that I've been fortunate to travel to and
speaking from my experience in Mexico is like the idea of
psychedelics and traditional metheno medicines are very
different from each other. So I've heard Jonathan OTT talk
about this personally. He's someone who was a
inspiration to me and a lot of people, you know, for anyone
who's unfamiliar. Yeah, RIP.
He just passed away in August and I think, or July, he was 77.
But he devoted his life to the study of entheogens.
And he actually coined that term right as he helped coin the term
entheogen, God containing plant. And so in Mexico, there's a
tradition of mushroom use. But psychedelic is a Western
word. They're very disconnected.
Psychedelic was coined, I think, by Humphrey Osmond in the 1950s,
as most people probably know. So even like thinking about the
psychedelic 1st or the 1st wave in the West with like Tim Leary.
Tim Leary had his first psychedelic experience in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, and it was with psilocybin mushrooms and
maybe 1955 somewhere around there.
And they have a multi millennia year tradition around that.
So like the whole like hype of psychedelics and all that.
And granted, there are a lot of really interesting lab born
psychedelics in the West and I'm a proponent or you know, a
student if you will, of Shogun. So I also see the value of like
a lot of these other research chemicals, some would call them,
and things like 2 CB and MDMA and LSD, but those are very,
very different than a lot of these traditions around
mushrooms. Or like with the Taino people in
the Caribbean region, apparently there's a rich history of DMT
use of different snuffs. It's called Yopo, I believe in
parts of South America, but I've been following some of the work
of Manny Torres. I believe his name is Manny
Torres and he studies the ancient use of DMT snuffs and
it's Pan Caribbean tradition. But I think you kind of hear
these things all over the world. There's different sacraments,
different people. So how that gets squared away, I
think with the whole idea of this psychedelic renaissance is
very disconnected from a lot of the folk traditions.
Of course there's overlap with it, but like I was mentioning
earlier about the in Serbia, I was there last year and
apparently there's healers or visionaries in the hills and
remote areas of Serbia who still employ psilocybin mushrooms and
there's a silocity Cerbica. It's like, where does that
tradition come from? You know, So and then, you know,
we can get into it. But the whole idea of like
framing this in a very individualized, pathologized
way, which is very much what this kind of psychedelic
renaissance tries to do is say like psilocybin and DMT for PTSD
and depression. To me, that's just such a modern
construct and it's really pathologizing something a little
bit more broad and a lot more broad, honestly.
But that's where we are. So that's where the satire comes
in is because I also get to have a foot in that world.
You know, I, I had no idea about this whole psychedelic industry.
And then all the sudden I started getting invited to
things and I started getting invited.
Like, you know, there's been people who say, Hey, we want you
on the board of directors for this company.
And I'm like, you're probably not going to like what I have to
say, but that's what I have a podcast, you know, you guys go
ahead. And everyone's fired.
I guess my question would be to, to follow up on that is, do you
think since like the US is this big cultural melting pot and we
don't really have this like anchored history other than the
Native Americans, that the indigenous people that live in
North America, Do you think that it it, it comes off as cheesy
because there isn't those roots and it's not taken from a
historical standpoint. Like does that make sense?
Like, there's no planted roots of Western society within
psychedelia. This is kind of like the closest
we've been right now. But there's a cheese cheesiness
to it, if that makes sense. And I'm not trying to like,
disparage anybody, but it's just, do you?
Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, I get it in a big way.
And what I say is that there's a fair amount of people trying to
build a culture on top of an old culture.
Like it's something that goes back many, many years as the use
of visionary plants and tools. But I've noticed this since
getting inducted into this kind of psychedelic industry or
conference circuit or whatever, where it's natural for the first
part that people have an experience and then they want to
be outspoken about it. I get that.
Like, I mean, I, I start a fucking, I start a podcast
because I want to share about my experiences, but.
Well bro, you are allowed to swear.
Great. I've just noticed people trying
to build this culture on top of a much more ancient culture
without really having the let's say like devotion or awareness
of the through lines and a lot of the history.
So that's what I'm trying to do is kind of like keep alive these
different traditions. And it's part of why I've
travelled all over the world to connect with people.
Cuz I think people need to hear this broader context of how
these traditions actually show up in different cultures versus
this brand new thing that comes out with like where hey, I had a
mushroom experience and then I hired APR team and now I have a
six week program. I think, okay, there's value in
people sharing the experiences, but I don't know if you were to
come into music and then just completely disregard the last
10,000 years of music and have no idea how to play an
instrument and then say that you are like the peak of musical
culture. I think there's a hubris in
that. And I think it actually
potentially does more of a disservice than a good.
Is this idea of like, I don't care about the traditions or the
giants whose shoulders I stand on.
All I know is that I microdosed and now, you know, I, I pivoted
in, I have some capital and we're going to launch this
company. Like, first of all, put me on
the board, I'll take some of your money.
But second of all, like, I, I think that we really do need to
pay homage and respect the different traditions.
Doesn't mean that we have to just like borrow from them.
Because for example, I've heard this analogy, which makes sense
to me is like, and some indigenous cultures like
Nawatol, I believe there was like human sacrifice with, with
mushrooms. And so like we can evolve from
that. I don't think we need to bring
that in the 21st century. But at the same time, we don't
need to completely disregard the fact that so many different
cultures have really hard won and, and important and reverent
tones about how they approach psychedelics or ethno medicines,
if you will. So I'm very into the hybrid
approach personally. And that's part of what I've
been trying to do is like, I'm going to, you know, get
different stakeholders at the table.
I'll listen to the CEO and the guy who has the hedge fund or
whatever. That's one perspective.
But is that perspective more important than the 7th
generation shaman or Taita who's been working with these for many
generations? Like, I think there has to be
some form of hybridization or else you just have this endless
culture war. It's sort of where I'm at.
Yeah, No, thanks for your take on that.
You know, for me, I guess my real quick, my take is it's
almost just like it's an obvious lack of knowledge.
And for me, I'm trying to balance like, how do I come off
when I'm talking to people about it?
Not like a know it all or like a stuffy about it.
But at the same time, it's like there should be a reverence.
There should be, you know, if you want to do like you said,
create a course or a podcast or whatever, like you have to be
passionate about investigating the origins and the knowledge
and everything. And I think it comes off pretty
obvious to people that do put in the work and do know about these
things when somebody doesn't and not necessarily grifting per SE,
but like you said, it's just new and it's exciting and maybe
they're not really thinking clearly long term about it kind
of a thing. So I guess that's where I'm at
with it. My thing is, I've, I've checked
my own biases on these things and it's just as long as you get
there. For me, it's like, I don't how,
how long does it take or whatever.
As long as you get there, as long as you're trying.
If you're not, then what conversation are we even having
on this topic? Right.
So. Yeah, there's so many emerging
categories around psychedelia that I'm very interested in,
like DMTX. That's fascinating, right?
The fact that you can go into these extended state DMT
experiences and I've heard a few of the different people talk
about him, like I was in Hungary 2 years in a row at Ozora and
saw Carl, maybe Hayden is his name, I can't remember, but he's
really into the DMT extended states.
And so I gobbled that up and I'm like wow, that's fascinating.
So also I think. It's really important to have a
sense of humility, and that's where I try to come out this
with and that's where the satire works really well.
It's like, I'll often be like, I honestly have no idea.
I'll say that I have my experiences, I have my biases.
I think as much as people try to say that I'm I'm open minded,
like we're all culturally conditioned and programmed.
And I found that satire can be a great way of sort of taking the
piss out of yourself, you know? And that's something I saw a lot
and still see in psychedelia. Is this like, need to be right?
Like I need to be right. I'm right.
But it's like, what if there's a multiplicity of right answers?
Like how do you square with that?
What if you find out something on your next trip that just
tells you you were wrong about everything else?
And it's ironic to me that there's so much, there's a fair
amount of close mindedness, I think, and psychedelia of like,
this is the way to do it and this is how you do it.
We're going to train people to do this.
So I'm like, you should leave some room for the fact that
like, maybe you're wrong. Maybe.
I'm wrong. Yeah, that just comes across.
I mean, that's just dog dogmatism regard like so as long
as you're, I mean, my philosophy is always to have an evolving
philosophy, meaning that if I tie myself to one thing that
doesn't make any sense. We know science evolves, we know
philosophy evolves. We know the mind and
consciousness and our knowledge of what's going on is always
evolving. So if you're going to die in a
hill at this point, I guess you're not really thinking too
deeply about things. However, I will say that there's
a difference between like experiential stuff like gnosis,
like first hand knowledge of these things and like you said,
doing these compounds and experiencing these things
yourself. But then also like historical
context or scientific knowledge. And you know what I'm saying?
Like there is a difference there where I would agree with you
that each person's different. Let's keep some humility in
terms of, you know, experiences and what people are
experiencing. However, we know what this
compound is and what it does to the human mind.
And we know, you know, where it grows.
We know what people have used it over.
However, you know, roughly. We'll always learn more, but you
get what I'm saying. Yeah, and I'm pretty interested
in a lot of these lab chemicals, you know, like I have some, I
think it's called Ald 52. That's a analog of LSD and it's
fascinating. And you know, I, I used to be a
little bit more on the side of like natural versus synthetic,
but I've kind of come around that Ben, you know, like I think
DMT is a fascinating chemical. Some of it's naturally
extracted. You know, I'm not a, a
neuropsychopharmacologist here, but having tried different
things, like it's, it's a broader conversation now too.
I mean, it's ever broadening about all of these emergent
molecules and like I've been gifted some three MMC and things
like that, you know, and some of these are becoming very popular,
like 2 CB has become very popular.
I'm so old school, I2 CB is the only one I recognize that you
just said so. There's quite a few other ones
and. I'm sure there are.
Yeah. And I like I said, I am open
minded. I'm interested but have to kind
of pick my battles, if you will, because yeah, like LSD is
awesome, but I can't be doing like 12 hour, 15 hour plus trips
all the time, you know, So I'm sure somebody out there.
Yeah, dude, you're a pops now. You don't have time for that one
day when the the chickens flown the coop, you know that's the
time to. Actually, you know, I get to
travel like I mentioned. That's true.
I forgot. Yeah.
That's how it's, you know, like for example, I was like never
interested in ketamine. And I always, always have to
preface this by saying like do your own homework and be careful
and know that. And I know myself.
So like I haven't really done much ketamine, but I hit AK hole
last year and I was, I was gifted some ketamine in Europe.
It's really popular over in like England and Germany and places
like that. And it was awesome, you know, so
I get it. But also it's nice to be like,
oh man, that was awesome. I probably should probably take
a year off from doing it, you know, cuz it's really easy to
get sucked into the other side of that.
I've seen it happen too often. And at the end of the day, like
I'm just stoked on the life I have.
So you know, there's always a new thing.
People wanting to mail me. Check out this product.
Everybody has the best product. Have you ever noticed that this
is 99.7% pure MDMA? It's pharmaceutical grade.
It's like that's what the last guy said too.
But you know, I usually find a good source and stick with it
when I can. Nice.
Yeah, I, I mean, I'm out of I'm out of the the game and that
trying all the sorts of different stuff.
There's just too much going out of my life right now.
However, you know, there's always the future, you know, and
old silly will always be there. You can always rely on old silly
my. Favorite definitely my favorite
and just works the best for me personally.
Like some of the other things are just like, well,
polypharmacy and all this. I'm just like, I'm not really
tapped into the OR, I'm not really that interested in being
part of the whole like festival polypharmacy culture and all
that was like mushrooms. If I do them, I usually wake up
feeling awesome the next day and I have a sense of purpose and
motivation. That's enough for me if.
You do a real macrodose too. To your point, you said you
wanted to take a year off after the.
If you have a real experience and from my 20 years of plus,
you know, whatever doing this, if you have a real experience,
you do not want to do it anytime soon because you want to process
everything that just happened. And you know, I think if you do
it too much, you lose that. I used to get this feeling not
as much, you know, I haven't been as active lately, but like
in the past, you know, my late 20s and early 30s especially,
you took a macrodose. You're like, what did I just do
right after you do it? And then you're, you know, then
becomes great after. But there's that like initial
feeling like after you do it. I always felt, I don't know if
it was psychological or if other people feel that, but it's
always this like instant dread or regret, but then it like
fades off as you kind of come up and start having the experience.
Well, I think that's also where running a business, having a
family comes in because like those are so utterly fulfilling,
as many people can attest to. And you really don't have time
to be sleeping in. You can't be like, oh, I'm just
going to sleep in till 2:00 PM today.
It's like, no, the baby needs to wake up and he needs diapers
changed and all that. So same thing with like I put
out the podcast every Friday. I host an incubator every
Thursday for the community, which is mushroom entrepreneurs
to come together and connect and level up together.
I do the newsletter on Thursday, and now I've, I did one on
Tuesday. And sort of having that flow
causes me and forces me to be like, you know what?
I probably shouldn't do that tonight.
You know, like I need to get a good night's sleep.
I like to get up early. I like to get work done.
And then there's your pockets, You know, there's times and
places for everything. But like, I think you get to a
certain point where you're just like, yeah, I'm good on that.
Like I, I'm. Yeah, there's I've never gotten
that vibe from you either. Like, and I like, I can tell
you're very, you know, have your wits about everything and like
there's some people you're talk to, like in these spaces, you
know, like this person's degenerate.
Like. You know, like, no offense, but
like, I don't know how they're living life, you know, that way.
But it's like the people you see on TV with all these reality
shows, they're drinking, you know, they're in their 40s and
they're hammering beers and alcohol like it's going out of
style, you know, so, and actually I had to, I just read
something alcohol uses way down, which is an interesting given
cannabis and and psychedelics and everything like that.
You have to wonder how much of that's kind of interfered with
that. But I do want to touch it
because we have mentioned satire a few times since it's like so
important to kind of do what you do and it's so central.
Do you think that humor is kind of like a powerful way to to
talk about psychedelics and kind of disarm people and also bring,
you know, awareness to these topics?
Almost like making fun of something kind of takes its
power away from being this like ostracized thing.
Definitely, 100%. And I think that erring on the
side of humor or satire is always gonna be the right way to
do it because there's something about it, like what makes a good
joke, what makes good satire? And there's so many cultural
touch points that you have to have a familiarity with and
being able to communicate about those in some ways, I think is
like the what is the tribe? There's one the the weeks
Carita, sorry, I live in Mexico. I don't know them.
But the people who do the peyote pilgrimage, right, They talk
about twisted words. They use twisted language and
it's a way to communicate the ineffable, basically.
So like if you go on the peyote pilgrimage, then you, for
example, you're in the desert. They'll say the desert is now
the ocean and you'll see cars and let's say cars are now
ships. And essentially it's a way of
reprogramming your mind linguistically to think about
things paradoxically, metaphorically, kind of.
And that's kind of how a trip goes for a lot of people is
you're like, how do you explain this?
You can't explain it in normal words.
It's like, good luck with that. Good luck talking to someone
about ADMT trip and try to explain it.
As Terence McKenna said, it's unenglishable.
Well, I think that the the missing piece there is with
something like satire or humor, you know, you can find a way to
make a joke about it and people can understand it and they'll be
like, Oh yeah, I get that. And somebody mentioned that to
me recently where they were like, you know, being able to do
psychedelic comedy and do jokes about things like DMT and
psilocybin. It shows how mature the
ecosystem and the culture has gotten.
Because if you were trying to do a stand up routine 15 years ago,
20 years ago and you start talking about things like
ibogaine or whatever and research with the military and
DMT, people really aren't going to get it.
But now the culture has evolved where people are like, oh, I
know what micro dosing is. Oh, I've heard of iboga, I get
it. And so I think like in terms of
being able to communicate, the ineffable comedy and satire can
do a great job at that. And like, I've heard even with
the Boiti that there have been people saying that the role of a
Iboga initiation is to be able to tell better jokes.
You know, and you, you look at these different cultures, like
my grandfather was a Christian pastor.
He was a very devout, very on the other side of the
psychedelic or drug culture divide.
And he was someone who had a great sense of humor and an
appreciation for that. And like, so you could be from
anywhere. And if you can sit at the table
with someone like that and have a a sense of jokes about it,
like you can bridge the cultural divide.
So I think that's what's happening or the potential
exists there with something like satire and comedy to be like,
OK, you know, like, I always think about people I've met on
my travels, and some of them were just very funny and I
hardly understood a word they said.
There was a guy in northern Thailand who spoke super broken
English, but he would laugh so much and he would just just had
that way of cutting through all of the cultural familiarity or
whatever where it's like, I don't understand this culture.
Oh, I understand this guy. He's funny as hell.
I'll take a shot with you. And then, you know, I in Saudi
Arabia meeting people like that where if you can lean into humor
and, and so as far as humor and satire, I think they're a little
different, like stand up comedy versus satire.
And, and what I like about satire is it's very vitriolic.
It's very dark. And I think that's important.
So like, it's something that sort of makes subject matter
that's hard to broach. Are you really taking the piss
out of it? You got to man, I look at
someone like Anthony Bourdain like he's a satirist to me.
You know, like you, you read Anthony's prose and his writing,
It's like, oh, he's scathing. Like he's simultaneously at the
peak of the restaurant industry and, and food culture and also
just like so critical and taking the piss out of it and all this
stuff like the celebrity of the cation of, of food, etcetera.
And I think about like Hunter S Thompson, you know, like he's a
satirist, right? Someone who you're like, if
they're singular, they're able to bring this lens to the
experience that makes you relatable, but they're also
being incredibly critical of it. And I think there's a fair
amount also, we live in a hyperpolarized society in time.
So there's something about like when you're not actually pissed
off at this person, it's like South Park style or whatever.
There's a lot of value there. And I like that I've had to
navigate that and be like, oh man, how do I approach this
scenario? And especially as you kind of
get more recognition, there's a lot of times when I'm like, man,
I wanna say so much about this subject matter, but like you
really have to nail it or else is bad.
So like one of the first things that really put me on the radar
more broadly speaking, honestly in 2022 is I went to Israel and
Palestine and I was making like really far out over the top
satire on the border and both sides of those countries.
And and it was all very honest and it landed very well.
And now I'm like, I wish I could kind of do that again, but like
the there's that old saying like.
The temperature's a little too hot right now.
Well, you can't stand in the same river twice, you know, It's
either a different river. Or Heraclitus.
Yeah, you'll get Heraclitus. I mean, I think we need to use
satire to really broach these hard to talk about subjects.
And I have to a degree. And I, I have really, there was
a point where I was just like, I'm just going to push this as
far as it can go. And kind of the tagline I had
was like, I mean, they're going to get cancelled.
They're suicided by the globalists.
And then, you know, it ended up becoming popular.
So I'm like, what am I going to do now, Man?
My, my life's too cushy. I can't be just taking blind
gambles anymore. I get paid too much.
Yeah, dude, you're you do do take some risks, especially in
that Speedo of yours that that might get you in more trouble
than your words one day. Especially once I get into flags
dude I got like different flags speedos and they're just
talking. About that's like a double,
that's a double way, I mean. It, it is.
And I was thinking about having like 1 flag on the front and one
flag on the back. Like, you know, it's just like
people are animals at the end of the day.
Like there's definitely the whole spiritual component, but
it's so easy to capture attention and.
But I don't want to be pandered to the lowest common
denominator. Like honestly, that's the other
thing as a content creator, you know, it'd be so easy just to go
into the most provocative thing you can do.
But that's not my brand, dude. Like I think, yeah.
People are doing that and people hate those people that that do
do that. So and that's not even funny.
It's just like, yeah, like you said, pandering to the lowest
common or trolling to the highest, you know, degree or
whatever. So have you ever gotten pushback
from the psychedelic community for any of your satirical takes,
whether it was over the top or somebody you offended somebody
personally? You know, I, I, cuz I, I had
this other guy on, he's a comedian, Dave Yates.
And he does, he's out West, I think he's in LA and he does
like fish and jam band jokes and stuff like that.
And most of the jam band fans get it and they laugh along cuz
it's like, you know, makes fun of the like wooks in the
community and everything like that.
And people like the Goose fans and they're so touchy and you
know, stuff like that. But.
Do you ever? Experience anything like that?
Because I, I think I've seen some stuff on Twitter maybe in
the past or Axe or whatever we're calling it now, but I was
just curious if anybody ever came at you with some heat for
anything that you made. I have had that happen before
and I think it's totally natural, But I guess the
difference between me and like, let's say other people is I'll,
I'll stand on it and I'll talk to people one-on-one.
Like I that I'm a community builder.
You know, I'm not interested in beefs.
Like people always try to come to me with this person said this
and this person did that. And I just feel like, especially
with something like satire, like it should be protected speech
and I make stuff every day. That's the thing people don't
get is like it's improv. I've made a 1000 plus videos,
you know, so like if someone's gonna cherry pick and be like
William, like this one, it's be like great.
I didn't hear you say anything about the 500 that everybody
liked. You did.
You sat on the sidelines for those.
But as soon as something crossed the line, you had a lot to say
about it. And that's worked very well for
me. I'm like, I'll just text people.
I'll be like, here's my number, dude.
Like so I ran into some stuff with symposia.
You know who hasn't with their organization?
And I'm like, I'm good. Friends, they still around?
I feel like they've disappeared. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not
going to comment on it too broadly, but I will say that
I'll stand on it whenever, you know, because at the end of the
day, it's your intent and what you're doing.
And if we're going to start like picking out microaggressions
over something or interpretations, it's like,
great. You know, like I, I host a
incubator every Thursday. I've been doing it for over a
year at this point, and we've built a community in the
thousands. And like, it's shocking.
That's people, you know, who have these fake screen names.
And I'm not addressing symposia specifically here, but like some
of the other organizations, like there were all of these faceless
accounts. And I'm like, you're gonna hide
behind a keyboard and like, parrot things that I said six
months ago or whatever. Be my guest.
Let me ask you this though with the symposia stuff.
So without getting too weird, it seemed like they were around
until they accomplished this mission of tanking those trials
and then it just disappeared. I mean, what do you think or do?
You there's a lot, there's a lot to be said for all of that.
But like I mentioned, like someone like Mache, you know,
she's probably the focal point, a big voice there.
And like, I know her personally and I've spent time with her in
at least three countries. And I will communicate directly
with anybody. Somebody has a criticism like
bring it publicly A and then be ready to stand on it.
And then also I'll text you and we'll, we'll call, we'll figure
this out, dude, because I think, you know, people have these high
gloss sense of exactly who they are and where they stand and all
that. And it's like, great, Well, why
don't we talk about this one-on-one diplomatically?
And I think that's what's been lost with a lot of the public
sphere as diplomacy. And I've always said like,
great, like, why don't we just talk about this one-on-one,
whoever it is and, and then we handle it and we move on.
And sometimes am I perfect? No, sometimes, dude, I had so
much going on. Like I said, I just had a kid,
you know, I'm running my own business, dude.
I don't have a cushy academic salary.
I don't have a funder, you know, I I run all my deals one-on-one
with people like yourself and people like.
So if somebody it just to me, there's there's a sense of
hubris of like that the ideology.
It's like this is how things should be.
There's sort of like idealism and then a pragmatism.
And I live in a pragmatic world, dude.
I live in a world like, you know, I mentioned this earlier,
like I've worked all over the world.
I've traveled all over the world and I do that constantly.
Like I this year I've got, you know, I'm headed out to
Switzerland and then I've got Tunisia, I've got Uganda.
I spend most of my time in Mexico.
I'm producing a huge event here. It's like somebody wants to be
critical about some take I had. It's like, well, great, you
didn't say anything about the event.
I financed and worked from the ground roots at their request
here in Chiapas, Mexico, which is the most abjectly
impoverished state of Mexico. So, you know, I'm willing, I'm
willing to take that on wherever and I'm not seeking any
altercation. And I actually have grown and
learned a lot from those experiences because what I
learned. Is that the more public you are,
the more your work is received? Whatever you're doing, you're
going to have criticism, you're going to have haters, you're
going to have push back. And that's actually natural.
So like, I just did a whole video ripping burners.
You know, I think Burning Man personally, I've never been,
I've been invited. It just seems very pretentious
to me and I've you know when. Somebody died this year, right?
Or was found. I, I, OK, great.
I would love to go if somebody wants to pay for me to go out
there. And but even then it's just, to
me, it seems like the spirit of what it was formed as and this
whole idea of like a social experiment and we don't have
capital and all that. It's completely mutated away
from that. And I, I think Silicon Valley,
the same thing happened. Like the origins of a lot of
Silicon Valley was about innovation, connecting people,
helping people. It's turned into like SAS
platform Bros trying to cash out and like here, you know, it's
not about innovation anymore. It's about trying to get
acquired and trying to build for money.
And a lot of the architects of Web 2.0 or earlier and the whole
electronic link, it's the same thing.
Going back to what I said about psychedelics, it's like people
are uninterested in the broader potential social agendas and the
decentralization and the the, the personable connections with
your community and more interested in like, how can I
make a trillion dollars right now?
So point being that I just like, I love to satirize Burning Man.
I would go. I'm not like I don't have a
vendetta against Burning Man dude, it looks it.
Looks terrible bro. It looks.
It's such low hanging fruit to make fun of and then a bunch of
burners get super butt hurt over this thing that I don't even
script them is the other thing. It's like I literally do improv.
I'll I'll get up. I'll be like I'm gonna make a
one. It looks like psychedelic health
to me if I had to like I'm. Not personally interested in it
at all. If I had to think about like
what, like like Mad Max psychedelic hell, that's kind of
like beyond the Thunderdome or people are just riding these
spiked mobiles in in the desert, you know, on psychedelics.
And I don't know, man. I'm not trying to.
I'm not trying to touch it. Like.
Do whatever makes you happy, but to me, yeah, to me it looks
terrible. So.
Well, that's, that's it. It's like, I don't actually
think about Burning Man ever. But when it's Burning Man, it's
like, oh, this is such easy material to satirize right now
And, and I do and it, it always lands and people like it.
But then inevitably you get the pushback would be like, you, you
don't understand Burning Man. We have 10 principles.
I'm like, it sounds culty, bro, but all right, I'm gonna, I'm
gonna not stop making fun of. You, I don't know anything about
that. I'm just saying specifically
aesthetics and what I like to experience when I'm trying, you
know, whatever. I like to meditate, I like to
learn things, I like to dig deep within myself.
I don't know how any of that's happening there, but whatever.
To each their own. If that works for somebody,
kudos. Let's pivot here.
Moving. So like, what do you think is
the most misunderstood idea about psychedelics and in like
the mainstream culture and purview right now?
A lot of. New culture building on top of
these kind of ancient cultures, if you will.
And so like, I see it all the time and I love to satirize.
And again, I'm friends with a lot of these people and I also
benefit a lot from this emergent psychedelic industry.
Like I get tons of sponsorships and stuff and I'm thankful for
those. That's great.
But like, I'm gonna also speak my mind, I think, which is why
ironically, it's like people people say like man, can you do
a satirical video roasting my company and I'll pay for you.
I'm like, well, that's not the spirit, but yes, of course, yes.
So I think there's a lot happening right now with the
globalization of psychedelics and it it becomes again, a
diplomacy initiative for me because there's definitely
people invested in trying to gatekeep and patent.
And there's an argument to be made for that for sure.
Like about do you just want like rampant psychedelic use among
everyone? Like I think in most cultures,
it's not something that's normalized.
Like it's not a normal thing to be promoting.
Like you should just be doing all these psychedelic drugs all
the time. At the same time, I'm a
cognitive libertarian. So I think like people should be
open to that. If if you want to do that,
that's great. But I'm kind of over this
endless spiritualization and searching.
You know, like I mentioned, I came around full circle.
I was fortunate to be from a very middle class family to go
to school and all that. And I got to a point where I was
like, do I really need to go to Peru and do another 5 ayahuasca
ceremonies? I went three years in a row and
I just saw like this. It's like a revolt.
Yes I do. No, that's.
You great. That's but like I.
Got to a point where I'm like, you know, I have just so many
substances I mentioned that people want to share with me and
like there's a time and a place. So I'd be like, this is fun.
We're at The Flaming Lips concert.
Like I'll definitely do. That's really good MDMA and I
know you awesome, but like there's this, it's sort of a
I've heard it compared to which is an analogy that makes sense
to me. That's like a video game where
the more you go out, it's just like self generating.
So it's like, are you like on an infinite side quest right now or
are you like accomplishing what you set out to do and you're and
if you're enjoying, yeah, what is that?
Is that no man's land or what's that called?
There's a, there is a video game, but there is a video game
where it's like supposedly like infinite where you can like
there's infinite worlds you can discover or whatever.
I literally think I mean I there was a.
He called himself a shaman. He probably wasn't a shaman, but
maybe he was. But a guy in South America that
I had been to the the retreat center he owned back in like
2010. And this was prior to any
knowledge I had whatsoever about like that.
There was potentially a dark side to some of this stuff and I
just saw this individual and his circle get just like
progressively more unhinged. And then he ended up dying in
2012 under very mysterious circumstances.
But then all these allegations came out.
So there is very much like a, you know, the cult potential of
these things, which is obvious in hindsight, but I goody 2
shoes over here approach. This is like everybody's happy
and I want to make everybody happy and this is so good.
And I think, you know, it's all about your disposition and your
complexion. But we can't be naive that there
are the potential for like abuse and cult like God like figures
and all that to emerge well and it amplifies.
So if you're already into the. Occult stuff or cult or
whatever, it's just going to amplify that even further.
So maybe that even pushes somebody to take it to the next
level, you know, or gives them some sort of God complex sort of
a thing. I could totally see that
happening and obviously it has happened.
So yeah, I mean, that makes total sense.
Micro preneur ship suggests blending mushrooms in business.
Do you think psychedelics are changing the way people think
about business models and ethics and innovation?
Obviously you mentioned tech, CE, OS and obviously people have
been experimenting and stuff like that, but as it becomes
more mainstream, do you think it affects things in a positive
way? Let's say people are starting to
microdose, whatever. Where do you see?
What do you what do you see from that standpoint?
Of things. Yeah.
So I think. Mycopreneur is a portmanteau,
which is like Myco for mushrooms and preneur for building and
making things. And like, you know, I went to
school, as I mentioned, in San Francisco and was very connected
to the whole startup culture, Silicon Valley.
This was like 2007 to 2012. So I saw both sides of this
coin. I saw the side of like people
making really interesting valuable contributions to
society. And then I saw the other side of
like people just trying to capitalize and rent seek, I
guess is one word for things like that.
But I think in a lot of the world, entrepreneurship is the
only way. You literally don't have an
option. Like if you are born in certain
parts of the world and societies, like you kind of have
to be very entrepreneurial and hustle.
So I think the idea of a mycopreneur to me is it can be a
lot of things, but I'm really interested in how abjectly
impoverished, like marginalized communities can embrace mushroom
entrepreneurship to significantly and tangibly up
level their own lives individually and as a community.
So I mentioned I'm going out to Uganda and Hoima HOIMA, Uganda,
there's a community that has leaned into growing mushrooms.
It has nothing to do with psychedelic mushrooms.
You know, there are hundreds, I think thousands of medicinal and
edible mushrooms beyond, above and beyond psychedelics.
So if you learn how to grow oyster mushrooms, all the sudden
you have an affordable, clean and bankable source of protein
that you can share. It's almost like mana.
And there have been some speculations of that like mana
in the Bible. MANNA actually has the desert
truffle because there's a lot of both the Kalahari truffle and
sub-Saharan Africa. And then also there's a
Turfisiachi and North Africa and it goes all across the Arabian
Peninsula. And I believe even over in the
kind of Levant area that there are these truffles that people
can, yeah, they just grow and you eat them and the rains come
and all of a sudden you're in the middle of the desert and you
have a viable food source. And it's the same with mushrooms
Everywhere there's it's a sustainable micro economy.
So like if you're on the roadside in India and Kerala or
rural India, Goa, you'll see people selling mushrooms that
grew like the termiticitis mushrooms that grow over the
termite hills, they're edible. And you go to parts of Africa,
the same thing. You go to Mexico, the same
thing. I go to the open air markets
here and people are selling wild mushrooms.
So all the sudden it's like you have a sustainable micro
economy. What you don't sell, you can
eat, you can trade. And that's really to me the
whole object of mycopreneurship. And then you can level that up
and you'd be like, wait a minute, you can build a moon
habitat, something in 0 gravity out of mushrooms.
You can you can build the you can clean up plastic and
cigarette butts with mushrooms. There's 400 species of mushrooms
that eat plastic like hero diapers.
Hiro, that's a diaper that for sigmatic founder ESO the finish
guy. He is one of the Co founders of
this. And after the baby uses the
diaper, you throw this mushroom packet on it, a packet and it
will decompose right there. So something like mushroom or
sorry, diapers, 300,000 diapers per minute get put into
landfills. And these people have figured
out how to erase that trend essentially.
So like the Sky's the limit as far as I could, not even the
limit. And then we're just scratching
the surface on a lot of other things that can be done with
these. Can you see the screen right
now? Yeah, dude.
And I've spent time. In Egypt, and I've seen those
out there. What?
Do you, what do you think about that?
Doesn't that look like? Away and I, I think actually
I've mentioned this many times in Mind escape over the years,
we've done episodes on this like ancient psychedelic use and
speculation and things like that.
But I, I think Paul Stamets, the last time he was on Joe Rogan
actually had him pick pull up this picture.
What do you think? They're the one on the right.
That definitely looks like some sort of cultivation there.
Yeah, I'm a fan of Kalindi Iggy. And he talked a lot.
About like Kemet and the ancient civilizations of Africa, There's
no question that selosity mushrooms grow all over the
planet. And I think we've really just
started to scratch the surface of that.
So have they been used by different cultures throughout
time? There's a lot of anecdotal and
some hard science emerging about that.
Anecdotal evidence and hard science.
And I think what Paul actually said on that podcast, if I'm not
mistaken, is we really can't know currently about a lot of
these hypotheses. But we do have the hard science
now where we can substantiate things like there was a Johns
Hopkins religious study recently, right, 2016 or so,
where like imams, rabbis and priests were all given
mushrooms. And that something like 22 out
of 25 said that it amplified their ability to connect with
God. So like when you start putting
those things together, you're like, wait a minute, these
things are found and all over Africa, all over Australia, all
over Mexico, South America, pretty much the whole planet
except for Antarctica. Well, the early, yeah, the
earliest and kind of in that region.
Would be the Algerian to seal glyphs.
That's that's where you get that that mushroom bee looking shaman
guy that Terence McKenna or Terence McKenna use where you
know, do you get, you know what I'm saying?
I think I might have an image of that.
Yeah. Yeah, I know the exact figure.
Yeah. I actually will be adjacent to
Algeria, so I might. Try to go, I don't even know if
you can go to see this figure, but like I mentioned, I'll be in
Tunisia in December and I've already looked at me like how
hard would it be to go see this thing?
I think it'd be really cool, yeah.
There's also a cave. In Spain called Salva Pasquala,
I've pulled it up many times before too.
And there's clearly an image of a cave painting of a bowl and
then what's known as Philosophy Hispanica down below.
So I mean, you know, it's like you said, it's been.
Used all over the world. Thousands and thousands of
years. I think the Algerian one's like
9000 years old and I think the Spanish one's like 6000 years
old or something like that. And so to me it's.
Ridiculous to think about like we're.
Going to ignore all of that we're not going to focus on
those things and we're just going to do patented micro doses
from a 4A CODMT. It's like OK, that has its place
for sure. I, I definitely I know people
who like research chemicals more than mushrooms.
They think they're more predictable or controllable, but
it's like I'm personally really interested in these ancient
through lines to Lord knows what they actually are.
But in my life they've been pretty beneficial honestly over
the last 20 years or so. Here's real quick, just so
people have reference, this is the other.
One I was talking about in Spain, you see the bull up there
in the left hand corner and the Salosa be down there in the
right corner. Well, and since you're bringing
up the images, I got a shout out.
Colin Clark, who's ecnomycologist in South Africa
and he's been on the podcast Mycopreneur and he's contributed
a few new species, quote UN quote, to science.
They're old to indigenous, but new to science.
But he has analyzed over 300 cave paintings across South
Africa and Lesotho, Lesotho, who and has been able to just like
the one you showed, they're very clearly mushrooms, like it's
people dancing around mushrooms. It's it's like the bee figure in
The Cave. And that's his hypothesis.
But not just that they have The Cave paintings, but that there
are these different diviners and healers who have shared in South
Africa that they have knowledge about this and that now is when
they want to share it with people.
And like this is a well documented, academically
substantiated, for whatever it's worth, emerging science because
for years people would be like, there's no record of use.
It's like, yeah, well, who's really asking?
You know, like you went down to the Mazitex and look what
happened there. Like Maria Sabina had her home
burned down and there, you know, was an influx of foreigners.
And then it wasn't even her consent that she shared to share
that whole story. And it was all done under false
pretenses to for Gordon Wasson to share that story with Life
magazine. So I do think there, there's a
fair amount of gatekeeping for probably pretty good reasons,
because people don't want their, they don't want to be have their
cultures ripped off and they don't wanna be subjected to
unnecessary harassment and random people coming in.
And this is something actually I've seen come up with some of
the ethnographic research around mushrooms is like Juliana
Furchi, who I'm a big fan of. She runs Fungi Foundation and
Chili. She goes all over the world and
documents Indigenous knowledge around mushrooms and she shared
that in some of the cultures, people don't want that knowledge
outside of their tight knit community because they say we're
not comfortable with. Next thing you know, we're gonna
be treated like these museum specimens and then the
government's gonna come in and then they're gonna do this, that
and the other. So it is that time I always
trace that back to that's where diplomacy comes in.
And I grew up in the kind of citizen diplomat community
hosting exchange students all over the world.
I found mushrooms then I found all over the world they have
traditions with mushrooms and psychedelics.
And I'm like, well, I don't have to be like a rocket scientist
explaining the academic and physiological aspects of these
things. Like, I can just make sure that
these different people feel comfortable and valued and that
I can contribute something here and connect.
Mushrooms grow everywhere. I mean like they literally grow.
Everywhere. So like to think that most
cultures haven't dabbled in what's around them for food
sources and maybe stumbled upon it or whatever, you know, is
kind of naive. There's like Gordon Wasson
actually did research all over. The world and he's primarily
known for kind of blowing the cover off Maria Sabina and the
Mazatecs and all that. But like, what I find
interesting is he has writings where he went to Borneo and
Papua New Guinea and he talks about mushroom traditions in
Borneo, but there's not a lot of elaboration on that.
And I, I've been to Borneo, I've not been to Papua New Guinea,
but it's high on my list. But there are native saucy
species that grow there. Of course, there's some
tradition. Maybe not every single tribe has
one. But if you look at the thousands
or 10s of thousands of ethnographic and indigenous
groups around the world, people have figured this out, as you
say, like they, they know literally every plant, every
animal, every fruit. How do they not know the
mushrooms? It's pretty obvious to me.
But whether or not they want to share that knowledge is a
different story. I mean, there is kind of a
balance though too I think. That apophenia and, you know,
bias and things like that kind of come into play.
Pareidolia, when you're looking at these things is I, while I
think that there's something with these older ones, there's
this like push for like Christian and sacred mushroom in
the cross and Amanita muscaria. I personally have read that
book. I've looked into all that stuff.
I know Joe Rogan repeats it like all the time.
I'm, I don't think that those are mushrooms and those
Christian reliefs that's they look like trees that were, you
know, and I think that who's, is it Tom Hatsis or somebody's
written about that kind of stuff too and actually doing the
research into it. So I think that while there is
roots in a lot of these ancient traditions and cave art and
things like that, I think that people are trying to now fit it
into other places where it's maybe not really there.
So I don't know if that makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense and I don't really have a strong
opinion. On all that, you know, I've not
even read John Allen or the Allegro book about sacred
mushroom in the cross. Like I grew up very Christian.
I think there's certainly some potential that there were
different plants used throughout history, but like I that's not
where I like hang my hat up. You know, I think if more
evidence or compelling stories emerges, great.
But again, I just well, it all hinges too.
I like not to cut you off, sorry, but it all kind.
Of hinges on this idea that like there's some lost amanita that
does something special that it doesn't do anymore.
Almost like this idea that Jesus was a special person and nobody
else has lived that same way since.
You get what I'm saying? It's like it's all dependent on
something that has happened but it will never happen again for
us to experience it kind of a thing, you know what I'm saying?
Like I've tried amanita, it definitely does something, but
not nearly what Solocity does in my opinion.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Yeah, that's a really interesting one.
And for me I've. Just kind of embraced Amanita
over the last year and part of it was a a sponsor shout out
Minnesota nice ethno botanicals and they have a bunch of Amanita
and they're like, we want you to try this.
Let us know what you think. And I had specifically for
dreams. I had some really enchanting
intense dreams. So but I've never like taken
Amanita in the daytime and even like philosophies.
When I take them, it's usually a night time thing.
I've definitely done them in the day before, but like, I think
there's a reason why philosophies have caught on in a
big way. I do think that there's some
value, of course, with Amanita and that people should learn
about them and check them out. But I've become wary of anything
where you try to like promise the moon to people, you know, I
think that, OK, you should learn about these, have an experience,
and as many probably spiritual people or traditions will tell
you, there's lots of ways to get to this point.
I haven't personally found something that can really get to
you to like a macrodose of possibly yet.
And to be fair, I haven't even taken a macro dose of Amanita.
I've heard people talk about taking like 20 grams.
That's pretty crazy to me. And like maybe there's that in
my future. I don't know.
I've taken up to like 2 1/2 grams or so and again for sleep.
And I think, what's Stamitz? Described.
His. Amanita Panthera or is it
Panthera pantherina? I don't know.
And that didn't sound pleasant to me.
I mean, I don't know, you know, this repeating, you know, kind
of a weird thing happening just didn't sound like my cup of tea.
But what I'll say is it just psychedelics in general.
I think the the important thing here is I don't know of anything
else in mind. Escape.
Over the last eight years we've investigated meditation and
basically your near death experience is any way to alter
your consciousness. Psychedelics is literally the
only thing you can do that alters your consciousness in a
waking state and allows you to interact with reality in the
world around you. No, no other altered state of
consciousness can really do that.
If you're meditating, you're pretty much sitting there still
with your eyes closed or breathing or whatever.
If you're lucid dreaming, you're obviously dreaming or dreaming
you're dreaming and near death experience I, which I've had to,
you're pretty much dying at that time, you know what I'm saying?
So it's like all these things where people have these
visionary or transcended experiences all happen either
like in an incapacitated state where psychedelics allow you to
interact with the world around you, you know, in a, in a real
time way, if that makes sense. There's so many different
dimensions. As probably most people can
attest to, and there's things I'm interested in trying and
there's things that I just don't really see a need for them.
And I've sort of even come under, let's say criticism
occasionally. But I think that why do you need
to go through 55 different routes to get to the same
potential open minded state? So I think like, okay, DMT,
super interested. I've smoked DMT on three hits of
LSD before and had incredible breakthroughs.
And I've tried macro doses of this, that and the other.
I've been invited through now the work that I do and all that
to basically all kinds of retreat centers.
And I'm just like, I don't really want to do Iboga, like
maybe I will one day, I don't know.
But like again, like I found something that works for me and
my culture and like I've I heard that's intelligence.
But he nods on my bro. Same thing with five meo.
DMT it's like I don't really feel called to like go smoke the
toad. Like maybe I'm sure it's amazing
and it's great. But like, again, I love the
things that I do and I'm happy with them and I've tried a lot
of things and I'll probably try some more later.
But like, you know, you got to make sense in your own world, in
your own life. And I feel like that's the
conundrum a lot of spiritual seekers find themselves in as
they shop the spiritual supermarket.
It's like, I'm gonna be a Buddhist and then I'm gonna get
into Tantra and then I'm gonna get really into 5 meo DMT.
Well, have you? And I hear this all the time,
bro. I go, you know, I work with
these different companies where I end up at parties and shit and
I'm in LA and they're like, here's a whole lineup of sprays
and we've got the MDMA, but we personally like to do the MDMA
with the Iboga and then we feel that after that the five meo
comes in. I'm just like, I don't know
about any of that, bro. Like good.
And again, I'm a cognitive libertarian.
I will die on that hill, I guess if I had to.
Where you do you, bro? But like, what if, what if just
like, you know, taking some mushrooms gets you there and
that's cool and maybe you don't need to do it anymore.
I still like doing psychedelics, but I often will be like, you
know, I'll take like 6 months or a year off or whatever.
Literally, I'll be like, yeah, I got my thing going on.
You know, I, I think people get really infatuated with the
honeymoon phase of stuff. And I think you could live your
whole life going from one honeymoon to the next.
You can be like, oh man, like I'm really, I've connected with
the spirit of the Iboga. It's like, yeah, but I bet you
if I see you in two years, you're going to be really into
like MDMA or something. And that's cool if that's you,
but like, just be honest with yourself.
No, no, that's and I think you have a great approach like your
outlook. On it's amazing and to be honest
with you, I've been that. So pre me having OCD, which kind
of came out in my early 20s, like your OCD, like clinical,
not like oh, I clean too much or whatever people like to throw
out there like actual real OCD. Pre OCD was what you just said
like once in a while macro dose amazing time or go to a show or
whatever, having a transcendent experience and then not have to
want to do it for a while. Post OCD.
There's been times where literally that's the only thing
that would break me out of like like a psychotic funk or like
some sort of crazy psychological thing, you know, like this mind
loop that won't stop, you know. So again, I think that speaks to
the power of being able to escape your day-to-day
consciousness via these compounds.
And I think that if you have reverence for them, whether you
know you're trying to use them medicinally or you're trying to
just have a good time and chill or whatever, as long as you
respect the compound, I think that's the most important part,
right? Like, I don't, you don't have to
think that God's inside this thing or whatever, but I think
you do have to respect the fact that this is a powerful
transformative compound and you interacting with it will take
you somewhere. And I think that you have to own
that. And your life story and all that
and that there's this sense of like, again, you could really
get lost in the endless seeking. And I think a lot of people do.
And I'm speaking as someone who thought for a while, like maybe
I should get an apprenticeship as ayahuasca shaman.
You know, like I was invited to invest in opening a center in
like 2012. And I've been working in Saudi
Arabia and as people I've met drinking ayahuasca and Peru and
they're like, we're going to open a center and we want you to
be one of the Co founders. And I have the pitch deck and I
would like the money and everything else.
Like, this is going to be my life, man.
I'm going to open Ayahuasca Center.
And then I pretty quickly realized I was like, just
probably sit on this idea for a while.
I probably don't need to be going down there.
And they're like, here, you're missing out, man.
We just did a bunch of blow last night.
It's great. But the center is going good.
And I'm like, all right, cool. Those are those, you know.
Again, not your typical Iowa scarrows there.
Yeah, but you know what? Like we're all figuring it out
so. I think that empathy is really
important, like, and that's again bringing it back to the
satire, Like satire, you can create this fantasy mock world
where it's sort of like the rules are intentionally bent and
people are intentionally cartoonishly distorted.
And then you can, and I think that you can create that and
then send it off on its way and you can create another world
tomorrow. You don't have to be stuck in
it. And you can hopefully learn
something from it because, man, yeah.
I have seen like one of the first characters I did that
became popular was this Don Chad.
And Chad is like the idea of the Chad and the cannabis industry.
But it's like the same character who discovers ayahuasca and then
he gets a big ayahuasca tattoo and then he wears it.
And I have like a hat from Nepal, a rogue from Japan, a
belt from Tanzania. And it's sort of, I've seen the
robe, you do the. Speedo with the robe.
I've got a whole robe collection.
Dude. I got them from China.
Japan and the Orient all over the world.
But I would run into these characters, and I probably had
them and me to some degree where it's like, I figured this out
and now I'm gonna move down to Peru and I'm going to change my
name. And so that's like one of the
characters I have too, is like an Amethyst Jaguar, which
apparently was like a real name. Somebody they named themselves
Amethyst, and then they took on Jaguar.
But it's like Amethyst Jaguar runs a retreat in Costa Rica,
and he's an expert on ayahuasca, but he's actually from Michigan,
and his family makes fudge on Mackinac Island.
And like, he thinks that by changing his name and having
this cool story around him that it gives him power.
But it's like, what? What if Todd, his name is Todd
Baker from Michigan? What if he's also a cool,
important dude and we don't have to dress up and have the Jaguar
claws and the tattoo and all that?
I think Westerners, myself included, really have gone
through this growing pain of like, we kind of rejected our
culture. We found out these, these cool
ancient stories and then we wanted to play dress up, you
know, and we shop the spiritual supermarket.
It's like, oh, wait, there's like an ancient Indian secret in
the Amazon. And I'm going to go down there
and I'm going to figure it out. But it's like I, I went down to
the Amazon. Like I mentioned three times,
I've been to Peru five times and I was in the Amazon.
I did like 21 ayahuasca ceremony spread out over three years.
And like I would meet these shaman or indigenous people in
Shipibo who were wearing Nikes listening to Michael Jackson and
they wanted to come to LA. And I was like, isn't that
funny? Like all the people from LA are
trying to go down and like go deep into the ayahuasca trance
and the shaman's like, bro, why don't you stay here?
I'll go stay at your house in Silver Lake.
I really like. I want my kids to get an
exchange for an exchange program that's a 90.
Day the other way. Well, that, that's.
A satire bit I've done that's like endlessly gift.
That keeps on giving. It's like, what would it be
like, you know, all of our American and Western European
people went down to go find God in the Amazon or they went to
India to do yoga. It's like, what if we reversed
that? What would they?
They'd go to Waffle House, like have the Shipibos go to Waffle,
go to the sphere and see the dead play at the sphere.
They'd get good at and Jerry's like, you know, we should have a
shamanic exchange program. Yeah, I love that.
Shit, keep making that. When you're so like, obviously
we both make content, different styles, different things.
Now I'm doing the master's of rhetoric, which is more purely
academic and focused on the origins of Western philosophy
and thought and everything. But as I do that, you know, I do
think about what you're doing and I've definitely learn some
things from you and what you're doing, which you know, is a, is
a high compliment because I consider you to be kind of like,
I don't know anybody that's as good of a networker as you in
terms of these topics and things like that.
But do you feel like platforms like YouTube or Tiktok or
Instagram are helping shape the psychedelic conversation?
And I know you've had like certain pages taken down or
whatever. Do you also feel like certain
narratives are being silenced or certain algorithms are kind of
being shadow banned or whatever, Something along those lines?
100 and I think that. That's part of where your
strategy comes in of like just build one-on-one.
I think people get really preoccupied with the idea of
like, I'm going to have all these metrics and you get lucky.
It's almost like gambling. Like it is like gambling where
it's like, and I think the algorithms are often built that
way where like you'll get a hit of a viral video on TikTok.
You're like, oh, I got a million views.
And then you spend the next five years chasing trying to get a
million and you spend all your time there.
So I think that they are shaping not just the conversation around
psychedelics, but like a lot of the conversation globally.
And like you'll see different political and social topics,
etcetera. Just get shut out.
So before you would burn books or you would like censor or ban.
And now it's just the algorithm will tell you what you can see
and what you can say. And it's tough for real because
like I mentioned, I mean, I'm often confronted with like, do I
really want to like make this stand on this particular subject
matter? And once you get an account
taken down and all that, like it's, it's dispiriting.
It's demoralizing because you know how much work it takes to
like be heard and be seen into network and things like that.
And I think everybody who says they don't care about it is
probably lying. If you didn't care about it, you
wouldn't be on the platforms in the 1st place.
So, you know, I've had to try to figure out how to be diplomatic
about it and it's changed my approach.
And that's part of why double down on the thing like a
newsletter and building the incubator.
Cuz, you know, I also think that there's a false sense of
confidence that comes with virality where it's just like
when and certain content will go viral.
So then people are incentivized to do that.
So it'd be like if I were to go dump on one like ethnic group
right now on Twitter, like it would probably catch on.
Like I think there's a lot of that going on.
Look at Twitter because X is insane right now, but I'm not
going to do that. It's like not that, but I think
that people do, they want to get seen and they want to get heard.
And if they're like, oh, this content like this same thing on
TikTok, it's a little bit different, but it's like, oh,
this dumb content, it gets amplified and I think there's a
social design there. Honestly, it's like if you were
trying to trying to social engineer people, I've you would
have them one last TikTok challenges and not be sharing
about macro doses and doing your own mushrooms.
I've taken breaks over that shit honestly, like.
When I see somebody's like, yeah, dude, like I wasn't even
trying. I just made some videos and then
it like took off and now I'm the most popular podcast, bro.
Like it's like a dagger to my heart.
It's like, oh, this person's such an idiot.
But I have to then you know, like you said it, it is kind of
luck. It is kind of, you could put
everything into it and still not make it because there's a so
many people B, let's say you're very well read on a certain
topic and maybe it's niche. There's not a lot of people that
will even understand half the shit that you're saying.
So like you had kind of have the, you know, you start riffing
on mushrooms, you know, a shit load more about mushrooms than
the average person. While I would find that
interesting, I could see where a lot of people be like, what is
he talking about kind of a thing?
And unfortunately, we live in a society, as you pointed out,
that like low bearing fruit or easy takes or fast food
knowledge is kind of where it's at right now, unfortunately.
And that's why I do that masters of rhetoric thing or started
doing it to try and change the the topic like epistemology,
theory of knowledge. How do we know what we know
about something? Where did you get that
information? What was the origin of it?
Teleology? What is our purpose?
What is the purpose and ontology?
What does it mean to be or to be a person?
You know, those kinds of things. So I think that it's important
to recognize that no matter how hard you put into something,
sometimes they're always just be people that get selected or
resonate more or whatever the case may be.
And it's unfortunate, but you know, it's a lonely, it's a
lonely path, that path of knowledge.
Well, dude, I think a couple of things there as one.
Is that the whole idea of like virality and like quick friends
and fast success? Like where has that ever been
true? You know, like, certainly some
people can have a 10 year overnight sensation.
You hear about that in the music industry where they're like,
this person took off. It's like, yeah, but they've
been doing shows for 10 years that no one was out.
So it's not like, you know, Kenny Loggins personally,
one-on-one told me luck smells like sweat.
And I've always taken that. It's like, oh, that makes sense,
you know, But again, people get really swindled by this sense of
like fast growth, growth hacking.
There's always something going on there.
It's like there's so many people truthfully, like in psychedelics
and other industries that are paying for followers, paying for
likes, paying for AI development.
It's like, OK, but we see you, bro.
We see you. And so from the approach I want
to take is just like slow, steady, long game building
one-on-one, like these conversations, you know, we did
this. I think tonight I'll talk to you
again in another year or two or whenever and just keep building.
We're gonna have Gray beards. But by the time we finally hit.
The algorithm, dude. That's dude.
It's just like if it looks too good to be.
I should say me you've entered at different points.
I've yet to launch off. I make that clear to people
though that like. I, I got really in as many
people did to psychedelics, but at a young age and it was very
niche. Like it wasn't a big community,
as most people can attest to. And so at least that I was
connected to. And then I studied media.
So it's like the whole, to me, the idea that like I have a
successful media property around psychedelics, like I started
this in like 2007, you know what I mean?
And then people will hit me up and they'll be like, I just got
into this. I started a podcast in 2024 and
I haven't made any money. And I'm just like, bro, just
chill out man. Just take some time.
Don't with social media makes you keep up with the Joneses.
It's like I need to be. And you have to think too if you
started a podcast. I mean, I've been.
Doing mind escape for over 8 years when I started there.
Really. I mean there was definitely a
few 100,000, but there definitely wasn't a million and
I remember when it hit a million and then now way over and
everybody has a podcast, which is totally cool.
I I'm not like one of these people that's like, Oh, you so
many podcasts out there these days, you know, like I'm not
like that at all. I I think that I like listening
to a lot of different podcasts. So when I see something cool
that's like new and righteous, you know, I'll check it out for
sure. But I do think that you can get
lost like anybody else, like anybody can make music now if
you have a MacBook and an interface, you know what I'm
saying? Or or a MIDI controller.
So there's like a lot of things now that you kind of have access
to that anybody can do that. So it's, I don't want to say
competitive, but that's kind of what it is because you're
competing for people to see you. Let's be honest about what all
this is, you know, and we might have the integrity of like,
we're not doing it just for that.
And I'm not saying that that's the case, but at the end of the
day, you do want people to see your philosophies or your work
or your thoughts or what you have to offer on a certain
topic. I I mean, that's just what it
is. I'm a firm believer and if you
build. It they will come.
And that there's the whole like equal and opposite reaction or
whatever where if you put something out, you're going to
get something back. I think that's the laws of the
universe. But when you feel entitled to
things like I have tons of episodes I've done that.
I get like 200 downloads, you know, and like, but I'm not
willing to go on the other side and be like, I want to pay for
this and that and the other and I'm going to have a million
metrics. It's like to me, I do a lot of
what I'm doing because it's one-on-one network building.
And then that's literally no matter what you do, if it's in
psychedelics, if it's you're owning a restaurant, if it's,
you're an athlete, like it's that network man that overtime
and like people don't want to be a node that's just part of your
network that you don't that you don't care about.
Like people want to feel like you know their names, you know,
about their families. And I always hear that too,
about like different successful people.
Like there was a politician whose name's escaping me at the
moment, but he's someone everybody would have heard of.
And I, I heard an interview with someone from The Tonight Show
who was like, this guy came on seven years ago and he came back
and like, he kind of knew everybody's name who was there
and it was cool. And like, maybe he had a
briefing, but like you, you make people feel like they account.
And I feel like we've lost that now.
People they supposedly Tom Cruise remembers everybody's
names on movies. And shit, people talk all sorts
of shit about Tom Cruise, but apparently this dude remembers
everything. And I think that's a special
skill. And it just shows that like.
You actually care about people. So that's kind of where I'd
stack my chips. And it's also I I see a lot of
like elitism for sure. There's elitism and business
world and psychedelics and it's like I lived in Malibu for a
while and that's like peak of the Creme de la Creme of the
there's a row and I've been to these garden parties where it's
like nobody. I remember one specific example,
like I'm an includer. You know, I'll see people in a
group or whatever, be like I'll go talk to them or whatever.
And I was at this super nice garden party and point doom.
You know, it's like tons of billionaires and business people
there and all that. And this woman was by herself.
And I just like, I'm going to go talk to her.
And I went and talked, and then people heard, overheard us talk
and they're like, she's like, oh, I live in Carbon Beach,
which is like billionaire's row. And then everybody took an
interest in her. And that's to me, like what a
lot of these things are be like, they didn't actually care about
this person. That story encapsulates what I
think about California. In general, unfortunately, and
I'm not saying that to like talk shit or, but like when people
from like the Midwest or somewhere more down to earth,
usually when we think about like LA or California, I know there's
real people there. Obviously people like you and
other people I've met definitely and I have friends that have
moved out there. But there is definitely like a
social climbing aspect to the culture there in in general.
In general, Yeah. And I think, just as I've always
tried. To approach things is like.
I was at South by Southwest. I've got to do it a few years,
which is super fun. But like, again, I've never even
like heard of half of these things until I, you know, over
many years got invited to do them.
And there was a woman who was speaking there the first year I
was there. And I saw her walk up to the
janitor and like talk to the janitor.
And literally like all of these people have just walked by and
not paid attention to this person.
And it just moved me so deeply that that's like the main thing
I remember from that whole South by Southwest is that this this
person went and talked to the janitor and like made them feel
seen when everybody else was just like walking by on their
phone throwing trash in. And but that's how I tried to
like approach everything is to be like, you don't need to
social climb like and honestly, like that usually works out in
your favor where you're like, Oh man, I got this cool
opportunity. It's like I heard a saying that
I I like a lot and Edward Crowe shout out.
He's one of my colleagues and friends, a great artist and
music industry professional. And first time he came on the
podcast, he's a big mushroom guy.
He, he shared this saying with me, it's like, sweep the parking
lot until you own the building. And I really think that's an
important way, like with whatever you're doing, there's
so many people who think that they deserve to be the CEO or
they deserve to be the rock star or whatever, but it's like, bro,
you gotta go sweep that parking lot.
You gotta like wake up and take care of your people and all
that. You don't, you don't put the
cart before the horse. Like you do your thing, you
focus and, and again, you know, like I said, like I know with my
family, my circle of friends and all that, like that's hard won
and over time. And that's something that's
like, regardless of if I'm successful or not, there's going
to be hangers on, bro. I see it all the time.
You see the people kissing your ass and wanting something from
you. And I'm just like, that's not
what got me here A&B. That's not why I'm here.
Like it's cool. I'll hang out.
I like to fraternize and have fun, but like, you know, you
hear this from people who have been successful and it inspires
me a lot. Like Dave Portnoy, regardless of
what you feel about him, the Barstool Sports guy, he's talked
about like his ex-wife still has access to his bank account even
though he has a $500 million business now.
Plus, yeah, I see. She was, she was there when
nobody else was. And I think like loyalty is in
such short supply because when you're hot, everybody wants a
piece. I think that's a Jerry Maguire
bit too. Everybody wants a piece.
But like when you're on the come up or when you're, and so why
can't you do that for other people?
You know, like you don't need to.
And I just see that so much in psychedelics too, to be like,
oh, I'm going to go to the conference.
I'm going to get Andrew Huberman's ball sweat on my
fingers or whatever. Like, dude, it's got some dude,
it's got nootropics in it, bro. No, I mean look.
As as. The old schools used to say real
recognize real, you know, like you're right.
And like, you know, even for this podcast, like I could have
sent you like some weird social media DM, but I text, I had your
number. I'm like, I'm going to text this
dude. Let's let's get this set up, you
know, and we've had cool conversations in the past, so I
didn't feel like weird about it or whatever.
But like, you're right, like, you know, and that's something
I've always tried to cultivate is like kind of make friends
with people on the that you have on, not necessarily like every
guest that comes on. But if there's some sort of
common thread there, why not, You know, if you have a lot of
commonalities or, you know, you share some sort of kinship
there. Let's let's let's make it happen
kind of a thing. And, you know, there's what I
call friends of the show or people that I talk to regularly
or will bounce ideas off me. I'll bounce ideas off them, you
know, say what's up, you know, see how you doing.
And I, and I think that that's, that is important.
And whether you're doing a podcast or running a TikTok
account or whatever, I think that creating those bonds are
important. And I do think that I've been
lucky enough for 90% of the people, maybe 85, it's been
reciprocal. And then you'll get somebody, as
I mentioned, off air, they'll come on and be like, I'm trying
to sell my book and they'll just repeat the same talking points
that they repeated on five other previous podcasts.
It's like, I'm not interested in that.
If that's what you're going to do.
I can't really control that. But I would rather have a real
conversation and, and have a little bit of a back and forth
and, and build some rapport then have some sort of like, you
know, stale talking point podcast or whatever.
Yeah. And I do my best to be as
authentic as. Possible, you know.
Like I'm just kind of sharing, like even this week I do the
incubator I mentioned and there's somebody who's been
coming on and they're like, look, I have a very similar
business to yours that I'm launching.
And what do you think about this?
And I'm like, great, here's three leads.
I don't have time for this, you know, so like you could take.
But that's how I feel that about life in general is like, I'm not
too focused on the critics. Like it's certainly it's hurt in
the past. And there's time when I'm like,
oh, that's stung. But like, you get to a point
where like, I just got bigger fish to fry, dude.
Like I'm not out there trying to take anyone down.
Like I got way more going on and I'll deal with the things as
they come. You know, life comes at you.
And, and that's something I've learned from life in general
now, is that like that shit hits you when you are not ready for
it, Bro, Dude, I got this gnarly satirical hit piece, bro, it's
ready. To roll.
I'm ready. I've been kind of like
disheartened that nobody's. Taken like that public swipe in
a like a hit piece in a major publication for me.
Yeah, you know, hopefully one day.
Well, you're authentic and you're like it.
You're a likable dude. I mean, it would take a real.
Piece of shit to do that in my opinion, because it would take
somebody that doesn't even know what they're doing to do that,
which is I guess what a lot of hit pieces are, right?
It's surface, you know, gossip or whatever that they have to
sell clicks or whatever. But I mean, it would be very
hard. That's why when you're authentic
and you put your real self out there and you do build true,
real community and you do things like you said, you put, you put
good vibes out there, you, you know, invest in your community
and share and everything like that.
I think it's hard to critique and criticize.
I mean, cause what are they going to say?
You know, you're, you're, you're a real 1.
And I mean, that's it's a tough, it's a tough thing.
It's a long road I think is important.
And like I wake. Up just super grateful to be on
the road. I think there's also there's AI
love, like anecdotes and stories and there's a great Jerry
Seinfeld story and that's someone actually I've never
really even like watched his stuff.
Like of course I'm aware of Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld, but
it's a story I heard about him that I really like where he was
already super successful with Seinfeld doing stand up comedy
all over the world and he was backstage in New York and there
was a comic going up. He's like Jerry, He's like, man,
I've been doing comedy for 12 years and I haven't made it yet.
And I need to know, like, how do I make it?
Like, when do I give up? And then Jerry goes, you missed
the whole point. You're doing comedy tonight.
You made it. You know, there's this.
And I think there's this sense again of entitlement of like, I
need to get to the next thing. But like, if you can walk that
back and be like, dude, I'm just in the game.
As you know, as cliche as it sounds, I'm in the arena.
That's where you got to be, bro. Like this sense of the external
motivation of like the award or the money or the fame, That's
what validated me. I think you missed the whole
boat. And most people are looking for
that. It's like, no, no, no.
The whole point is like, you get to do this.
You get to learn from your craft and you get to do it again
tomorrow. And again, just bring it back to
that Kenny Loggins. But it's like, look, smells like
sweat, dude. Like you're, you know, 10 years,
20 years, whenever it is. And maybe you never get that
like Joe Rogan level fame. That's an anomaly for sure.
Or that Huberman ball sweat. Yeah dude.
And shout out. I would love to go on, you know,
their podcast. I don't think they'll ever.
Invite me because I don't have a canned political talking point,
you know, so it would be cool to do it.
I'm I'm on board. I mean, I've seen some pretty
big grifters on both, so I. Wouldn't rule it out if you
really are interested. So this is.
You're the second person to do. This this is a Nuke segment.
And here we go. Are you ready?
Are you ready for Mike's mind melters?
Help me bro, All right? And just so, everybody.
Knows I initially had it at 4 questions.
I've changed it. It's 5 pretty, you know, out
there philosophical questions, except for the last one, which
will hopefully brighten up at the end.
But here we go. Number one, What is something
you believe in that you? Know is probably.
Wrong or illogical, but you are just not being honest with
yourself. Something that I.
Believe in that. Is wrong.
Or illogical. I believe in the benevolence and
the goodness of the human spirit and race, and that's being
challenged every day right now. And I fundamentally have always
believed that people are good and that humanity has a moral
center. And I hope that's true because
it's looking pretty hairy these days in a lot of different ways.
OK. #2. Do you think there is an
objective purpose for humanity, and if So, what?
So I had a. Vision, once that.
Said that humanity is the medium between like biology and
technology. So maybe there's something to
one of these visions I had with ayahuasca years ago, which was
Michelin Man like Homer Simpson looking white Michelin Man being
poked by Bender from Futurama and kind of like prodded.
And so I think what is our objective as a species?
Maybe it's to usherin our own extinction.
Honestly, Bender's unbelievable. #3 Do you think humans are
special or separate from the rest of nature?
If your answer is yes, please give me your best example or
explanation of why humans are special.
I think that we have. A form that.
Is really important, but are we separate from nature?
I don't think so. I don't think we're particularly
special. I think there's a lot of overlap
between something like a mushroom and a person, and I
think that we are not that separate at the end of the day
from the rest of nature. I like that answer. #4.
What do you think happens when we die?
Wow, so my. Christian programming and.
Growing up would tell me that there's a heaven, and also my
life experience would tell me that maybe that's a way of
framing and oversimplifying something that's ineffable that
we can't understand. And I would like to think that
maybe we never die. I think that I've often thought
this, like, what if I am in the hereafter right now?
How would that change things? Because how would we even know
so? And there's been lots of
experiences in my life and other people's lives that they've
shared with me that defy logic. So I like to suspend my
disbelief a little bit. And what happens when we die?
I don't really have a clear frame of that.
But I also want to introduce the possibility of like, what if we
don't? And what if we already have?
And who would be the one to tell us that we have to piggyback on
that? This is the.
Last question this. Is more of like a speculation or
a hopeful speculation. What do you hope it happens when
we die? Like, you know, we talked about
what do you think happens, but what do you hope happens when we
die? I hope that my life.
And the people. That I've touched, can live on
and echo into eternity. And I really appreciate the here
and now and again, I don't spend too much time thinking about
that. I did have, and I have had some
ego death. Seems cheap to call it that
because it's such a widely used term.
But like points where I like feel like I had died for sure.
And then just being able to come back here, my real sense of
purpose. And the last one I had was that
my son is here now and that it's really just my job to be of
service to him and to other people.
So I, there's a woman here where I live that I used to buy
vegetables from and she's like 90 years old.
She's very old small woman. And she said to me randomly one
day I came and like bought 2 potatoes from her.
And she's like, just so you know, one day you'll come and I
won't be here, but I will be in the trees and in the birdsong
and you will be able to connect with me and you'll ask where I
am and I will be there. And I was like, wow, that was
the coolest potato purchase I've ever made right now.
And I think there's some value to that too as well.
Recognize yourself. I was like, I'm here to serve,
I'm here to enjoy and to connect with you.
And when I'm gone, hopefully that's what lives on is that
memory of me being of service and being upbeat and happy and,
and, and wherever I am, there I am as well.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dennis.
For answering the questions. wrap it up here.
I want to ask you one last question and then we can talk
about anything else or not and we can just wrap it up.
But what is next for Micropreneur and for what you
think is psychedelic culture in general and what shifts do you
see coming in the next five years or so?
So big one I'm working on right now which?
So Mycopreneur will always, as far as I can tell, be going on
and is in a pocket right now. So every Thursday we do the
incubator. Anyone's welcome to join.
Just drop in for 10 minutes if you want.
And that's all through the newsletter.
I put the link in there so I'll keep covering that because
there's so much happening in the mushroom entrepreneurial space
globally. I've got stories from like
sub-Saharan Africa and China and Chile all this week, every week
I have them. So that'll keep going.
But the big kind of next project is Global Psychedelic Week,
which I've been looped into. I'm a Co founder of it.
It was an invitation last year that came and it's to connect
all these pockets and siloed off communities all over the world.
There's people and I mentioned in Serbia, South Africa,
Australia, Russia, you name it, there's a psychedelic community
there and they're all pretty much operating underground or
independently. So we're really working to
connect people who are open to that and that's November 3rd
through 9th. We've got some of the big names
and psychedelic industry renaissance.
We've got Rick Doblin speaking, Robin Carhartt Harris, but then
also a ton of other people many folks will have never heard of.
We've got people from Zimbabwe and Argentina and United Arab
Emirates because again, if you build it, they will come.
And we, we put it out there and then people started hitting us
up and they told, hey, my friend posted about this and we want
our community to be a part of it.
So it's online. And we also have in person
satellite events all over the planet.
So we've got like 50 plus confirmed in places like Goa,
India, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and we're
really getting cooking with it right now.
And we do have a very professional event production
team behind it as well. So I feel like my role is really
as an ambassador and a evangelist and a community
builder, if you will. The logistics are not my my bag,
but I'm learning how to do an event.
So that's November 3rd to 9th Global Psychedelic week.
You can find that anywhere if you Google that or just follow
my work. And then what else?
Yeah, dude, I'm pumped. I'm, I'm headed out to
Switzerland. Well, first I'm going to be in
Turkey in October. So October 8th, I think I take
off for Turkey, going to spend a week and 1/2 or two weeks in
Greece with a very good friend of mine.
And then Switzerland, Italy, Uganda, Tunisia, France.
So like quite a run. And all of those are kind of
like separate mini chapters. And I'll be doing mushroom stuff
the whole way through, keeping the platform running.
So I guess those are some of the big immediate things.
And then as far as like what's coming up in the by the way,
2026 is already like stacked. Like I've got cool invites all
over the place. And at this point I just say,
yeah, you know, I'm a big like, yes, am like, you got a thing
going on. I'll do my best to be there.
And then we'll figure it out. And then we'll see what happens
after that. So it's looking to be
interesting. And then next five years.
Dude, it's gonna be a a struggle in some ways.
There's gonna be like, let's say Babylon gonna do what Babylon
does. It's one one of my friends shout
out Travis who grows mushrooms there in Colorado.
People probably know Travis Who? Who?
Yeah, he grows awesome. Travis Birkenstock.
Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, it's.
From the movie From the movie Clueless if nobody got the oh.
Yeah, no Travis the man, but anyways.
He, he says like Babylon going to do what Babylon's going to
do. So anybody who thinks that like
they're going to, we're going to override Babylon.
It's like, bro, just figure out how to contend with it if you
can and keep 1 foot in each world if you can.
Because I, I maintain that like that's part of the whole
business. Entrepreneurship stuff is like,
they're not going to take you seriously.
Like you think that you're going to have your worldview overcome
another worldview that has billions of dollars and
connections behind it. Like so you either have the Tim
Leary approach is like TuneIn turn on drop out, or you can try
to be diplomatic. So that's where I see things
heading. It's like, am I under any false
pretenses that like, we're gonna defeat the corporate psychedelic
overlords? Not really.
Is that even a fair framing of it?
I don't know. But you know, I'm going to do my
damnedest to be there and and use satire to kind of critique
and challenge some of the. Dominant.
Hierarchical narrative, because just to wrap that thought up, I
think the main thing that's happening right now is
hierarchy. Hierarchy versus
decentralization. I think psychedelics are very
inherently decentralized. How do people get into
psychedelics? They've been prohibited forever.
It's your friend tells you about it.
I learned about it on this website.
And then my friend grows mushrooms.
And now there's a push to be like, well, you have to get it
from your friend, the government, you know, it has to
be patented and you got to make sure that you get it from this
license supply. And that's going to happen, bro.
That's like, so how do we push back against that?
I think that lawful disobedient, sorry, yeah, civil disobedience
is one way, Serving your community is one way.
And then just having a sense of humor about it and being like,
all right, dude, I don't need to be part of the psychedelic
imperial overlord hierarchy. But also, if they want to invite
me to their dinner party, they usually have pretty good hors
d'oeuvres. So I'll show up for sure.
But I'll be showing up with the mushrooms that my homie grew or
that I grew, dude. Maybe it'll go the way of the
dank and the heady nugs bro. I mean, look at the whole
cannabis industry like it's. A It's a mess, so.
Again, I just everything here in Michigan is so much better and.
Cheaper than Chicago. Dude, the Chicago cannabis, you
know, dispensary scene is ridiculous price wise.
Like what? Like I would have to imagine,
Yeah, I would have to imagine. Most people in Chicago are still
doing black market stuff big time.
Shout out Wolfpack, Great Michigan band.
You know, there's there's plenty of Oh, I love Wolfpack, dude.
Yeah, I figured you would. I've I've seen.
Theo Katzman, I don't think. I've actually seen Wolfpack, but
I've seen Theo a few times, but I've been listening to them for
a minute. Yeah, dude, like the world is
awesome. People are awesome.
And there's a saying I also like, there's always rabbit shit
mixed in with the Jelly beans. So like, just be aware of that.
And I think regardless of if you're into psychedelics or
whatever you're into, bro, now is the perfect time to cultivate
a healthy sense of humor. Because I think that is like the
Achilles heel of inhumanity is humor.
Like, you think about the way that there's a lot of what seems
to me like social programming and conditioning going on.
It's trying to rob people of their sense of humor and
humility. It's US versus them, this
person, this, that and the other is wrong.
And you see this all over the place and it's awash on our
social media timelines. If you can cultivate that sense
of humor, have a sense of humor about it, like it's going to be
very hard to fuck with those types of people.
Because I also think, man, look at where everything's heading
with AI and the post truth world facts that are up for debate.
Like we, we have just an absolute circus that's
unfolding. So why, if you're going to take
everything super serious, bro, that is going to be a real
tough, tough cookie to to to tangle with.
But like, if you have a sense of humor about it, then hopefully
we can we can at least have a good time while we're here.
So that's where I see the next five years going.
Nice. Yeah.
That actually kind of plays into this.
Philosophical thought experiment kind of thing I've been doing
deep in meditation called the I'm, I'm calling it the humanity
paradox. Like how are we here?
Because literally we would stab each other in the back for no
reason if it meant whatever we needed.
Yet we'd like to think of the When we think of the word
humanity, we think of it as, you know, like goodwill or whatever,
but in reality, like the history of us has been so bloody and so
disgusting, it's a shock to me that we are here in the capacity
that we are right now. Well, I want to close with one
bit. I heard from Paul Stamets.
Recently, which you know, he's a fascinating character and I was
in Telluride, Co for the Mushroom Festival a couple weeks
ago. I think I know where you're
going, but not but I like it. I think it's really important to
amplify this. Because his whole talk was about
what separates humanity from AI and machines.
And it's random acts of kindness.
And most people are only here and you're you're only doing as
well as you are because someone was kind to you in a way that
wasn't transactional. And that's how I try to approach
everything to be like, if it's cold clinical transactionality,
which a lot of people are pushing for, then we've lost our
humanity there because that's inefficient.
And if you were to ask a machine, as Paul Stammons had
said in this talk, be like, what if I was just like randomly nice
to this person to be like, well, what do you get out of that?
Where's the, you know, where's the efficiency, the clinical
precision there? But can we take that spirit and
and move it to the next chapter of humanity?
It remains to be seen. But if you can just be kind for
no reason, especially the people who can't pay you back, like
you're going to be fine. And I see that with ironically,
like some of the most successful companies.
I see the coolest people. They're just like, oh, yeah,
we're not worried about it here. How can we help you out?
And obviously you can't always do that without a sense of
business acumen. But I think that if you approach
life that way where it's not all about transactionality, it's
it's more be like, hey, can I just do a cool thing for you for
no reason? You're going to actually
ironically get way further ahead than if you take like the, you
know, quickest route from A to B clinical efficiency.
So don't do that, bro. Don't be a machine.
Be a random act of kindness person, human.
Yeah, I I heard that on Rogan and I would, I would love to
pick. His braid on that because you
know part of kind of what I just mentioned this humanity paradox
does does he think you know he. Might I'd have to go?
Back and watch, but does he think that he said that's the
only reason why we here so is it the snowball effect and they
like the like we're here because there's the this accumulation of
all these random acts of kindness throughout history.
But if that's the case, you know there's been like bottlenecks
from like super volcanoes and diseases and different things
and obviously that brings people together.
So is there like periods where these things come and go or is
it really just random as in like there's no algorithm set to pick
this thing up kind of a thing? I would be curious to speak more
about that. With him.
But you know, I think that's just one way of framing it and I
that's it's not rocket science. They there's the old trope or a
joke about like white guys will do mushrooms and then discover a
basic sense of empathy and think it's like a breakthrough or
whatever. But it's true.
I mean, that was kind of like what got me into and fascinated
and all this stuff. It wasn't about never, never,
never, never was about like healing mental health or total
addressable market. You know, now it's framed again
pathologically to be like, there's this patented O52H
receptor thing that's gonna, it's gonna potentially be worth
$2 billion. It's a blockbuster drug.
It's like, OK, well, that's a very separate conversation then
like, oh dude, I had a mushroom experience and then I wanted to
call my friend I haven't talked to in three years.
We're like, I wanted to go give a bunch of money to a charity.
I'm not even sure why I just wanted to do it.
I think that that's where I want to live, man.
And and again, like I love having resources and having
opportunities, but like, I hope that years from now I'll still
be that dude that will just say yes for no reason.
Like somebody hits me up, they want to work on a project.
I'll try to find a way to do it and to accommodate it.
And if I can't, I'll try to add some value and amplify in some
way rather than just that cold clinical precision
transactionality. Because also there's a sense
since we're getting into it about like seeing the end goal
of capitalism and kind of rejecting it.
And I feel like I got to see that living in San Francisco and
Silicon Valley and Malibu. I see and have seen people who
are like crazy wealthy who have these like, kind of like self
degenerative conditions and issues.
Like, you know, I've been exposed to people who live in
mansions by themselves who have just like boxes of stuff they
order from Amazon because they're trying to replace the
sense of community and connection.
It's like they, they, I saw a video recently which resonated
with me and I've seen this in Malibu about like people in the
Hamptons have everything. They've won capitalism.
And then they put up these big hedges and walls and they don't
want anyone to see them. And then they, you know, then
you end up having kids who like get into opiates and, you know,
they're trying to fill this spiritual vacuum.
And so there's obviously rabbit holes we could tug out there.
It's probably for a different. Well, I mean you that's a
dichotomy too, because you have one of the.
Richest real estate markets in the country and people are
taking dumps on the street everywhere.
So like, it's kind of, it's wild, but I mean, hopefully
$1,000,000 apartments with like homeless employments around
them. And then, yeah, people need to
find a way to kind of keep up with the illusion that they're
they're healthy and happy. And that's what we've been
programmed to do is like buy more do.
And and I think a lot of people have kind of seen that end goal
be like, oh, man, like having billions of dollars is almost
kind of like a mental illness in some way.
Like what I love plenty of resources for sure.
But like, once it gets to this point where it's like I have to
have a bigger yacht, you know, I have to have a bigger plane, to
me that's like such a misguided use of our time and resources
and all that. Like, am I saying I want to eat
out of a dumpster? No, bro.
Like I like caviar. I like boats and shit like that.
But like, that's not the end all be all for me.
Is that I need to have more, bigger, better.
It's not really. And that's yeah, it doesn't
really care about where the podcast goes.
I'm just going to keep doing it. I mean, I grew up in one of the,
you know, nicer. Suburbs of Detroit, Grosse
Pointe and you know, I know people that had their whole life
handed on a silver platter. They take over the parents
business. They've got the mansion, blah,
blah, blah. Oh, then they overdose because
they have too much time, you know, or they're, they squander
the business or they're gambling addicts or whatever the case may
be. I've grown up with tons of
fortunate people that you know, are no longer with us or
squandered everything or unfortunate and it's it is
unfortunate, but it I think that there is there is a lesson
there, which is no matter what you do, you have to put you have
to put some sort of energy out there.
You know, you can't just be content if you will, if that
makes sense. Dude my last bit y'all say is I
I've often. Being like why me God or why me
universe like my roommate had a trust fund and then this person
has this and now I feel like I'm like rushing it.
And part of that is because I wasn't entitled and because I
had to work shitty jobs and I had to take out people's trash.
And like there's something about just being like, you earned it
and when you earn it, no one can take it away from you.
And that's also why I'm like, dude, don't buy your followers,
don't flatter, don't make fake friends.
Like one good friend, 1 long term relationship, etcetera.
It's worth 100 of the other variety because the other ones
are going to come and go. And especially in this era,
people are just like, they want the fast, quick success.
It's like that's not success, bro.
That is the illusion of success. Success again, is when you sweep
the parking lot and then you own the building and they're like,
wait, why is this person still waking up at 6:00 AM?
And they're still devoted to, it's like, cuz that's who they
are, bro. Why do you think like some of
the wealthiest people I know are still doing all their, they're
trimming the trees themselves and all that, while the other
people are like, I need to outsource my whole life for a
million reasons. And so, you know, it gets long
winded and philosophical, but hey, we're on the mind Escape
podcast is the place for that, you know?
Yeah, man, New Telos, this is this is what it's.
For and. I really appreciate what you're
doing. And yeah, man, I mean, next time
you're in the Michigan area, I mean, I, I can't be traveling
too much these days, but if you're ever in the the zone here
and give me a, a ring of damn about once a year, bro, we'll do
that. Because my wife went to Hope
college. In Holland, MI, OK, yeah, we've
got laws in Chicago, so we usually will.
Drive up I'd go. To the lakes we have a friend
with a lake house so stay tuned bro but let's do a podcast in
person next time I'm out yeah man I I have all the gear
actually no let's. Let's do it.
Well, yeah, man, I really love what you're doing.
I love the satire. I love the community building.
You know, you are definitely a real one.
Where can people find your stuff if they're interested in the
podcast or what you're doing with these incubators and all
that stuff? Yeah, Michael Preneur MYCOPR.
ENEUR, any, anywhere. I've got the podcast, the
newsletter, the social media. Is this, that and the other.
Just hit me up michaelpreneur@gmail.com.
If you see me out and about, you know, I get around say what's up
to me. I'd love to connect with people
and hear your story and all that.
So yeah, thanks for having me on, dude.
Really appreciate if you see him in Antarctica growing mushrooms.
Just say what's up bro. No, but seriously, dude, keep
doing what you're doing. You know, I've been following
you and you know, I get more active and less active on social
media. But whenever I see something, I
try and, you know, retweet it or repost it or whatever.
And I do think a lot of what you do is hilarious because it is
just, you know, taking the piss out of stuff.
So keep doing that. And yeah, we'll link back up
sometime here in the near future.
But I really appreciate you doing this.
This was a a great conversation and a great way to kick off this
new Telos, this this mind escape new Telos.
So thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me.
I hope everyone has a a great day.
Afternoon, evening, wherever you are in the in the world, don't
be a stranger and random acts of kindness.
Pay it forward. Just do it.
Come on, guys. All right, well, we love
everybody. Stay safe out.
There, and we'll catch you next time.
Peace.