Michael Pollan

[0] We are supported by welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] Was that confusing?

[2] I tried.

[3] Yeah, that was a good twist.

[4] Pop out.

[5] Thank you.

[6] I'm Dak Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Lily Padman.

[7] Hi there.

[8] Emmy nominated.

[9] You know, sometimes now, and I feel guilty about this, sometimes now we're doing, like, press and stuff.

[10] And they introduce you as Emmy nominated.

[11] Yeah, because they don't know, they just heard you say it, and now they think it's real.

[12] It is real.

[13] It is real, but it's not real in the way that they should be introducing me like that.

[14] I love it.

[15] I love it and I disagree.

[16] You know who else is real as hell?

[17] Michael Pollan.

[18] He's the realist.

[19] He's the realist.

[20] He'll tell you the truth.

[21] Michael Pollan is an author and a journalist who is currently the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

[22] He wrote the wildly popular book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Cooked, and How to Change Your Mind?

[23] He has a new book called This Is Your Mind on Plants where he explores the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants and challenges the way we think about all drugs from psychedelics to tea and coffee.

[24] This was thrilling.

[25] It's so thrilling.

[26] And Michael Pollan is like the leading current expert on psilocybin basically.

[27] Yes.

[28] So it was a big deal to get to talk to him.

[29] Yeah, we've been just hoping and praying and we've been inviting and inviting and it finally happened.

[30] He's been on our list.

[31] We adore him.

[32] him.

[33] You will too.

[34] Please enjoy Michael Pollan.

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[38] He's an armchair expert.

[39] Hello.

[40] Hey there, Dax.

[41] How are you?

[42] I'm so good.

[43] I'm really, really, really excited to meet you from the bottom of my heart.

[44] We talked to a lot of people, but you're in my laundry list of a handful of folks I'm really intrigued by.

[45] And I feel flattered.

[46] You're here.

[47] Oh, I'm happy to be here.

[48] And we had a guest on that we spoke a lot about you, Samin.

[49] Oh, yeah.

[50] Samin, no, crap.

[51] Yeah.

[52] She's a great friend.

[53] We fell so in love with her.

[54] She's pretty magnetic, isn't she?

[55] She is incredibly magnetic.

[56] And watching salt, fat, acid, heat, when she would cry, when she would try things, We were both like, oh, we want to feel that way about anything.

[57] Well, she taught me how to cook when I was writing my book cooked, and I hope I taught her a few things about writing.

[58] She gave you a ton of credit.

[59] That's nice.

[60] Maybe it wasn't entirely deserved, but yeah, she's a big...

[61] I'll take it.

[62] How long have you been at Berkeley?

[63] First, let me tell you I'm a product of the UC system.

[64] Oh, you are?

[65] Which campus did you go to?

[66] Los Angeles.

[67] Uh -huh.

[68] Great.

[69] I moved out here from the East Coast and started.

[70] of teaching at Berkeley in 2003.

[71] So quite a long time ago.

[72] And I've been teaching in the graduate school of journalism.

[73] And was it a career opportunity or is it a place you felt like you would be at home?

[74] Because definitely there's a perceived stereotype about the mindset up there.

[75] I'm certainly drawn to it.

[76] I wondered if it felt like a place you would be at home.

[77] Yeah, it was an experiment.

[78] We were living in rural Connecticut.

[79] We had one child.

[80] He was about 10 at the time, and it was a really small insular world, town of 1 ,400 people, a school where he was one of six boys in his class.

[81] Oh, wow.

[82] And so when the opportunity to teach there came up, we thought it'd be a really kind of mind -expanding episode for him.

[83] And I was working on food.

[84] I was doing the reporting for Omnivor's Dilemma.

[85] So I was very interested in the food scene in Northern California, what I could learn from it.

[86] And my wife was a landscape painter and she was open to this idea of dealing with a new landscape.

[87] So we went out just thinking we would come for two years as an experiment.

[88] But here we still are.

[89] We got stuck as many people do in California.

[90] I was going to say California is a virus that is definitely hard to rid the body of.

[91] When you say, though, that you wanted to bring your son from this idealic pastoral setting to a metropolitan area to expand, it just, I immediately imagine all the parents of children in New York City and Los Angeles going like, we've got to get our kids out to Connecticut.

[92] And I wonder if it was just the human condition to think like, fuck, I got to switch this up.

[93] Well, we had this particularly rigid kid.

[94] I mean, he was, you couldn't move a rug in the house without him throwing a fit.

[95] Everything always had to be the same.

[96] He wore black clothes every day.

[97] He only ate white food.

[98] I mean, he was just in a box.

[99] Yeah.

[100] So we felt he needed to be shaken up a little bit.

[101] And it worked.

[102] I mean, he fell in love with, California instantly and started eating real food.

[103] That was a major improvement.

[104] Yeah.

[105] And within two days, he was like, I never want to go back.

[106] And he said, I realized, dad, I'm an urban kid.

[107] I don't know he had never lived in a city.

[108] So anyway, it worked out for him.

[109] And he's now in L .A., in fact.

[110] Oh, he is?

[111] What does he do now?

[112] He's training to be an architect.

[113] He's in architecture school, and he's working for an architect named Mark Lee in L .A. Are you in L .A.?

[114] Yes.

[115] Does he want to stay with us?

[116] I don't know.

[117] It's his first visit.

[118] We have a pretty nice house.

[119] And soon there will be a swimming pool here.

[120] He did find a place in Santa Monica where he's living, which is pretty close to his office.

[121] But thank you for the offer.

[122] Yeah, yeah.

[123] Does he idolize Howard Rourke?

[124] No, thank God.

[125] I did for a while.

[126] Yeah, everybody did for a while.

[127] But he's much more interested in social justice and coming up with design solutions that aren't just about heroism and building and And so we'll see how he comes out.

[128] He's got another year of architecture school still.

[129] Oh, okay.

[130] Is he going to UCLA for that?

[131] No, he's going to Harvard.

[132] The Graduate School of Designed, and he's nearly done.

[133] And he can be in Santa Monica.

[134] Just for this summer internship, it's a job working for his, actually one of his professors.

[135] But, you know, everything is global now.

[136] I mean, he can have a L .A. professor while he's in Cambridge and vice versa.

[137] Yeah, were you continuing to teach during the pandemic?

[138] I did at the beginning.

[139] I taught a class at Berkeley on long -form narrative.

[140] And about halfway through is when the pandemic hit.

[141] And so I did teach by Zoom.

[142] The following semester, I decided it was a good time to take a leave of absence and work on my book.

[143] So I finished this newest book during that semester.

[144] But I'm going back to teaching in the fall when hopefully we'll be in person and we won't have to wear masks.

[145] But we'll see.

[146] You know, we should line up a college tour because we just got an invitation.

[147] Where are we going?

[148] What was the last?

[149] Well, Stanford has been offered to us.

[150] But Cornell, the great short story writer.

[151] Oh, oh, George Saunders.

[152] George Saunders says we can sit in.

[153] So if we could get a commitment from you, we could make a real summer of this or winter.

[154] Yeah, well, summer, we're not in session over the summer, but in the fall.

[155] Sure.

[156] I teach at Harvard in the fall, Berkeley in the Springs.

[157] Did you have a fantasy of your life?

[158] Because just for me, if you're going to go under the professorial racket, Berkeley and Harvard got to be in the fantasy a little bit.

[159] Yeah, they're both amazing institutions.

[160] I mean, one the greatest public university in the world and the other, arguably, the greatest private university.

[161] But Stanford has a claim to that too.

[162] And maybe Yale.

[163] Oppenheimer was a big presence, yeah, Berkeley?

[164] Yeah, I guess so.

[165] I guess so.

[166] Before my time.

[167] I was not insinuated.

[168] He was before mine as well, but I just read that biography on him.

[169] That was great.

[170] Again, he was made for Berkeley.

[171] You wouldn't associate the guy who involved in the Manhattan Project, but he was a very Berkeley type of individual.

[172] He was eclectic.

[173] And, of course, we have an amazing physics department.

[174] In Berkeley, you get a parking spot if you have a Nobel Prize.

[175] And it's a really great perk because it's the one thing that no one else has.

[176] Yeah, so there are a great number of physics parking spots for a Nobel Prize owner's over the years.

[177] I imagine if you're the dean of that school, if that title even exists, that you walk by all these empty, Nobel assigned parking spots.

[178] We've been like, we've got to get on our game.

[179] We got like nine parking spots reserved and no one's in them.

[180] I know, I know.

[181] Yeah.

[182] What are we going to do?

[183] We've got to build them a garage.

[184] You know, when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize, somebody created a parking spot for him in the Berkeley Hills just in front of their house.

[185] And he made it look just like the ones on campus.

[186] Now, as I sit here and talk to you, and I'm sure Monica's having a similar cognitive dissonance.

[187] Are you Monica?

[188] Because we haven't been interested.

[189] Oh, I'm so sorry.

[190] Monica Padman.

[191] Nice to be here.

[192] Hey, Monica, nice to meet you.

[193] She's the brains of the operation.

[194] He's the mouth.

[195] Yeah.

[196] No, I'm just eye candy.

[197] Does this gentleman in front of us look like a drug user?

[198] When you conjure up...

[199] Stereotypically, I would say no. Like how we were raised.

[200] Exactly.

[201] You were not the person in the commercial that was strung out.

[202] Yeah, Harvard professor is not really what I would associate.

[203] You know, I'm trying to change the image.

[204] I know.

[205] it.

[206] Yeah, so you have a new book.

[207] This is your mind on plants, which it can only assume is a take on this is your mind on drugs, the famous egg in the frying pan commercial.

[208] Exactly, which scared the hell out of me once upon a time.

[209] Yeah, that's a scary one.

[210] I picked that title, partly to remind people that it is plants.

[211] Most drug can be traced to plants.

[212] A couple to animals, you have five MEODMT, which is a toad toxin.

[213] But in general, it's plants that intoxicate us.

[214] and I've always been curious about why are they doing that?

[215] And what's in it for them?

[216] And why do we like to change consciousness?

[217] And I explored this to some extent in my last book, How to Change Your Mind, which was very much more focused on psychedelics and psychedelic therapy, but got me interested in this broader question of consciousness changing and how routine it is for our species.

[218] Of course, we don't think of something like caffeine as changing our consciousness.

[219] but just get off it and you'll realize how much it does change your consciousness.

[220] Oh, I've carved out a good 20 -minute section for you and I to go into that, because I think I did something similar to you and had a similar conclusion, I believe.

[221] Caffeine's a really interesting drug.

[222] I'm on like six -a -trillion milligrams of it currently, and then augmenting with nicotine, as you'll notice.

[223] Right.

[224] So you're a plant guy, very much a plant guy.

[225] Yeah, yeah, and then run through some synthesizing processes.

[226] But, yes, I guess I would be curious, I think a lot of people would be curious, like, What is your baseline interest prior to going into it with this a bit of an academic flare to it?

[227] Like, just could you tell us in general, did you like drinking growing up?

[228] Did you experiment with drugs when you were younger?

[229] Where are you departing from when you take this on?

[230] Yeah.

[231] So my interest in drugs or plant medicines or entheogens or we have a lot of names from them and each name has a different set of values and assumptions stems from a longstanding interest in plants.

[232] All my writing began as a gardener, and I just got very absorbed as a pretty young guy in our relationship to these incredible beings that we depend on to nourish us, to entertain us, to heal us, and that symbiotic relationship between people and plants, which goes back to time I spent in the garden.

[233] I was a passionate gardener.

[234] First, when I was like eight years old, I had a little garden outside my parents' tract house on Long Island.

[235] Every time I could grow six or seven strawberries, I put them in a dixie cup and sell them to my mother.

[236] So it was a profit -making venture.

[237] But then I started gardening much more seriously in my late 20s, early 30s, and was very taken with exploring this relationship.

[238] And I grew pot, too, at that point, before it was legal.

[239] And were you an experimenter by nature?

[240] Yeah.

[241] Like, if someone told you this is dangerous, you said I'll be the judge of that?

[242] I don't think I was such a big risk taker.

[243] I was too afraid to take psychedelics in my teens or 20s.

[244] I waited until I was nearly 60 before I tried a psychedelic.

[245] Okay, so that was new for you.

[246] That was new.

[247] It was very new.

[248] Well, just to give you a time frame, in 1968, I was 13.

[249] By then, we were hearing a lot of propaganda about psychedelics.

[250] They scrambled your chromosomes.

[251] They caused you to jump out of windows thinking you could fly.

[252] They caused you to stare at the sun until you went blind.

[253] I read all those stories in, like, Time magazine, and believe them all.

[254] And I remember writing a short story when I was in 10th grade about a kid my age who took LSD and promptly like slid his wrists with a broken bottle.

[255] Not a very good story.

[256] So that's kind of where I thought of it.

[257] I was interested in pot, but not in a big way.

[258] It was never my drug of choice.

[259] And there was a period in my 20s, early 30s when I was living in Manhattan where cocaine was part of my life.

[260] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[261] I was always, though, one of these highly controlled people who could stop at one line.

[262] Oh, wow.

[263] Much to the consternation of other people around me. Yeah, this would be a great time for me to tell you I'm a recovering addict.

[264] I know that, yeah.

[265] Oh, you know this.

[266] Okay, great.

[267] So I've experimented with everything.

[268] I couldn't wait to experiment.

[269] I saw that fry an egg pan.

[270] I was like, a challenge accepted.

[271] I was of the age where I could, it smelled like old people propaganda, and I was suspicious of it.

[272] And I couldn't wait.

[273] Well, you were smarter than I was, at least on the time.

[274] propaganda, but I don't know about that.

[275] I was credulous.

[276] But yeah, so I thought that was pertinent information as we go down this path, because I've done them all, I love them all, I do not regret any of them, and I'm saddened that I am of the type that can't casually enjoy them.

[277] And to do a line of cocaine would be like watching two people have sex and not getting invited to join.

[278] It's just, you're almost there, but you're just not there.

[279] Yeah.

[280] So I was very respectful for the power of these drugs and could see how you could get into trouble with them.

[281] But I also think they're all interesting tools.

[282] They're tools that nature makes available to us, nature and human ingenuity.

[283] And they're definitely not for everybody.

[284] It's very hard to generalize about drugs, as you know, because some people can really get into trouble.

[285] But I've also had this intellectual curiosity in them, which is like taking drugs, why would this practice not be kind of eliminated from ever?

[286] if it is so risky, if people are poisoned, addicted, more likely to have accidents, as we know, less likely to defend themselves against threats.

[287] Drugs discombobulate us, yet we are drug takers.

[288] I mean, it is virtually a human universal.

[289] I remember reading in Andrew Weil's wonderful book, The Natural Mind, that all cultures except the Inuit had some plant they used.

[290] used to get high.

[291] Or change consciousness.

[292] It goes deep, this desire to change consciousness.

[293] Now, drugs are not the only way to do it.

[294] Breathing exercises can do it.

[295] Yokeic exercises, holotropic breath work.

[296] Aw can change consciousness, putting ourselves in an incredible natural environment, taking risk, sex.

[297] We have a lot of tools for changing consciousness, but it seems to be a very deep human and possibly all mammal desire.

[298] Because we know animals, some animals, like to change consciousness as well.

[299] I'm going to add now another piece of the puzzle for you, because you are interviewing me. So I was an anthropology major at UCLA, and my greatest interest was what everyone took.

[300] So here the Chumash Indian dug up man route.

[301] And on an archaeological dig, I was only looking for man root, not any artifacts.

[302] And they could use it to stupefy fish if they put it in the water and they'd rise to the tide.

[303] I've read about that.

[304] Yeah.

[305] Yeah.

[306] So in the Yanamamo blowing that amazing blue hallucinogen.

[307] I'm sorry, green hallucinogenic up each other's nose and they're spending hours a day in this state.

[308] So, yes, I just want to jump on your train and say, like, to pretend that this hasn't been an integral part of our entire time on this planet would just be false.

[309] Yeah, and I think the drug war has kind of shortened our perspective and made us think of it strictly as public health problem and not see it for what it is, which is this universal human design.

[310] and this set of tools that actually has served our species well at various times.

[311] I mean, opiates we now think of as evil and addictive, but of course, without them, surgery would be virtually unbearable, and the passage out of this life would be harder than it is.

[312] So I think that we need a little more negative capability when we're talking about drugs or an ability to hold some conflicting ideas in our head.

[313] One is that these are both blessings and curses, depending on how we use them.

[314] And, of course, the drug war has encouraged us to take a very simplistic view of what is a pretty complicated phenomenon.

[315] Well, it funnels nicely into every other debate we have, basically, which is like you're creating a speed limit.

[316] Well, some people are quite skilled at driving 105.

[317] Some shouldn't go over 30.

[318] We've got to figure out what the thing is for everyone.

[319] Or food.

[320] I can eat Oreos once a month.

[321] Some people got to eat them every day.

[322] Yeah.

[323] So policy or just even any philosophy we're going to adopt is going to be difficult because there's such variety among us.

[324] But I think we're reaching this very interesting moment because there are many signs that the drug war is ending.

[325] The California State Senate passed a bill that would decriminalize psychedelics.

[326] It's remarkable.

[327] If it gets through the house and gets signed, psychedelics will be decriminalized in this state.

[328] Oregon has legalized psilocybin therapy starting in two years.

[329] They've also decriminalized possession of all drugs in small amounts.

[330] So if the key decisions about drugs are no longer going to be made by the government, we're going to have to make them ourselves.

[331] Each of us is going to have to figure out what is a healthy relationship with these substances.

[332] And that goes for nicotine and caffeine and heroin and psychedelics.

[333] And I think it's going to be a really important cultural conversation over that.

[334] the next couple decades.

[335] Basically figuring out what are the terms of peace.

[336] We know what the drug war looks like.

[337] Once the war ends, what does the peace look like?

[338] And I think that's the moment we're coming to.

[339] Yeah.

[340] And as you point out, like it's really important to call them plants as they are.

[341] Like it definitely frames it differently.

[342] It's a different paradigm.

[343] Similarly, I like to point out that alcohol is a fucking drug as much as any other substance can be called a drug alcohol is one and it could be argued with pretty good metrics that it's among the most dangerous drug being used the two most dangerous drugs i think there's a general agreement on this even among drug warriors are the two that are legal alcohol and nicotine that kills the largest number of people does the most damage socially and they're legal now i don't think that they should be banned but i think we can learn from the examples indeed we learn a lot from the example of prohibition that it's very hard to prohibit the use of a drug when people are going to want to do it.

[344] So what do we do instead?

[345] Well, we try to create a kind of cultural social container around alcohol that it's used socially, that people don't drink before six o 'clock or whatever it is.

[346] We have all these rules to govern our use of it.

[347] And now some people break through those rules and become alcoholics.

[348] But for a great number of people, those rules help them manage their relationship to alcohol, and they have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

[349] Nicotine's a really interesting example, because we've kind of desocialized it in the last couple decades, right?

[350] It used to be something you could do anywhere.

[351] Now, you can only do it in designated places.

[352] We put smokers in those cages in the airports, those glass cages.

[353] The saddest zoo exhibit of all time.

[354] It really is.

[355] It's so sad.

[356] It's so pathetic.

[357] So we're trying to figure out the proper box for smoking.

[358] And then there's vaping and other ways that may have a harm reduction benefit.

[359] So, TBD.

[360] Yeah, TBD, it's true.

[361] And we're going to have to do the same thing with psychedelics.

[362] Like, what's the box we build around that?

[363] Because I don't think that they should simply be legalized.

[364] I think that they're too powerful an experience that they need to be approached with some deliberateness, some intent with an elder.

[365] I mean, I think actually we can learn a lot about how to manage that relationship from indigenous peoples that have been using psychedelics for a long time.

[366] In this new book, this is your mind on plants in the mescaline chapter, I spent a lot of time looking at the Native American church.

[367] This is basically the religious and healing use of peyote, which active ingredient is mescaline, that has been so important to Native Americans in this country since the 1880s.

[368] I mean, there is not a more traumatized people.

[369] They've just been through hell.

[370] And of course, alcoholism has been a huge problem since this trauma, probably as a result of it.

[371] And they have found that peyote used in a ceremonial context with a lot of ritual is a great healing agent.

[372] So how do they use it?

[373] Well, they never use it alone.

[374] There is always an elder involved, somebody to kind of lead who knows the territory.

[375] It's always done with a sense of intention.

[376] We're going to heal this person or heal this trauma or this problem.

[377] And it's only done when necessary.

[378] So it's a kind of moral, conservative model of drug use.

[379] I think that makes a lot of sense for psychedelics.

[380] I think they do have a role to be used alone.

[381] Some of them, but others, I'm not so sure.

[382] That's what we have to figure out.

[383] And with psychedelics, we have this medical container, right, that is now going through the system approved by the FDA, and so a psychiatrist will be able to administer it with a set of regulations, i .e. rituals.

[384] But there's going to have to be other containers as well, because I think they offer something to people who aren't clinically mentally ill. Oh, yeah.

[385] You probably referenced it in how to change your mind, but yeah, there's a pretty good amount of data and the long -term effects of having used mushroom psilocybin on creativity, a lot of different things.

[386] And mental health generally.

[387] I mean, they've done these large surveys, and people who have used psilocybin generally have less suicidality and better mental health outcomes.

[388] And those are correlational studies, but they're telling that it isn't the opposite.

[389] So how do we make them available to people who are not ill in a safe way?

[390] I think that's going to be a very interesting question.

[391] What's happening in Oregon may point the way.

[392] I mean, they're trying to design a regime.

[393] Basically, the voters of Oregon, incredibly in 2020, voted to order the Department of Health, the State Department of Health, to devise a regulatory regime for psilocybin therapy, not just for people who are ill, for anyone who wants it.

[394] They're going to license the guides, and they're going to license the growers of the mushrooms.

[395] And so they're now in this two -year process of designing who should get it, who should be excluded, how should it work, how much can you charge, and they're going to come out with a proposal.

[396] I mean, the government could blow the whole thing, the federal government could blow it up, and they might.

[397] But if they leave it alone, the way they've left alone cannabis legalization, we're going to have this very interesting experiment taking place.

[398] I was going to say they're going to go get the data for us.

[399] I mean, it's hard because we look at Spain and how they might deal with heroin addiction.

[400] And it seems pretty effective there, but you wonder when you map it on here, will it work?

[401] Well, this is exactly what we need, whether your long -term goal is for it or against it.

[402] I want to tell you a quick personal story about Monica.

[403] And this is really you.

[404] Literally, you're the reason.

[405] So my wife read how to change your mind.

[406] I was already pro psilocybin, of course.

[407] He was not just pro.

[408] He was like push.

[409] He was a push.

[410] Some of our early fights, Monica and I six years ago as friends, I was like, you cannot leave this planet without doing mushrooms.

[411] She was so against it.

[412] You write your book.

[413] My wife became obsessed with it.

[414] She decided she wants to do it.

[415] And then we peer pressure Monica into it.

[416] But largely because you said it was okay, that there was like some.

[417] Yeah, there was some science, a reputable person.

[418] And perhaps like you also needed a motivation that wasn't just perhaps indulgence.

[419] You know, like you needed.

[420] Yeah, that's true.

[421] Yeah.

[422] So once those things to your point, the social construct that surrounds, it like you move that ball to a point and then Monica did it and I was there sober and everyone was on shrooms and I had done it a million times so I knew vaguely what to give everyone and you're right she had a moment where the beginning was rough for me in what way I did not know what to expect well first also to be fair I think expectation is a huge element oh absolutely We went there with the intention to microdose, and then it was like, oh, the colors are just going to get kind of shinier or something.

[423] And then we, of course, did what every stupid person doing drugs does, or we took some, and we were like, we don't feel it.

[424] Let's take some more.

[425] Double down.

[426] Yeah.

[427] And then we did that.

[428] And then even after that, we were like, well, I guess we should just really do it now.

[429] And so then Dax gave us, he portioned it out for us.

[430] I want the record to reflect that I was anti.

[431] you are small dosing microdosing I'm like that's not what you're after so they were going to microdose and once that went sideways as of course it did everyone was bored I was like now do you guys just want to do the real experience okay yes so quickly evolving expectations my brain had not caught up to that like oh actually this is going to be much different than I than sparkly colors so then we're sitting there we're sitting there and everything's pretty normal and then all of a sudden When my hands turned to the grand, I keep, I always use this phrase, they turn into grandma hands.

[432] And then I was like, oh, my God, what's happened?

[433] And Dax was in the other room at this point, big mistake.

[434] Neglecting my responsibilities as a shaman.

[435] And so we're all here.

[436] None of us have done it.

[437] And we're like, oh, and some people are like loving it and others are a little more skeptical.

[438] And I was very panicked that everything around me was changing and I didn't feel safe at all.

[439] And then he came out and kind of shepherded us for the rest of the trip.

[440] So we went on a walk.

[441] Did you pass through that, Monica, to another place?

[442] I did.

[443] But it was a real decision.

[444] Like, I was starting to have a real panic attack.

[445] And I felt like I couldn't breathe.

[446] And then Dax was like, you could, no one has ever stopped breathing on mushrooms.

[447] So I was like, okay, that's some, that's something.

[448] That's very helpful information.

[449] Yes, it was very helpful.

[450] And then he was like, let's go on a walk.

[451] So we went on a walk.

[452] he was like, look at that.

[453] And I remember I just kept being like, are you, are you also on drugs?

[454] Because how do you, how can you read my mind?

[455] I said, look at that house.

[456] Doesn't it look like a movie set?

[457] That's not a real house, right?

[458] And she goes, oh my God, is that a movie set?

[459] And then she was like, wait, Howard, do you know that's a movie set?

[460] I'm like, because I've looked at houses a thousand times on mushrooms.

[461] I know what, look at all the cars.

[462] They're sleeping because she loved that.

[463] Yeah, but then, but I would keep slipping back a little bit.

[464] Like I was like, no, but I don't like it.

[465] I'm scared.

[466] And then Dax said, look, you have the ability to choose whether this is enjoyable or not.

[467] Yeah, that's a very powerful idea.

[468] Huge.

[469] And it's powerful across the board.

[470] Like that was the main takeaway for me after the fact.

[471] It's like, oh, wow, you have the ability to see things the way you want to.

[472] Yeah.

[473] So, yeah, I was able to come out of it.

[474] The suggestibility of the psychedelic state is remarkable and can be channeled in either positive or negative directions.

[475] And I talked to a lot of people who had administered.

[476] mushrooms, either in the shamanic context or the medical context, they use that fact.

[477] And I remember they would say, because I was really terrified of having a bad trip.

[478] And I said, what happens if I see something horrible?

[479] And they were like, don't run away from it.

[480] Go toward it.

[481] You'll pass through it.

[482] If you think you're going crazy, you're melting or exploding, let it happen.

[483] The ability to surrender to the experience is the key to not getting anxious.

[484] And I don't.

[485] And I think, learned that from these guides at Johns Hopkins, actually, who were very good at giving what they called flight instructions before you take off.

[486] And that was all the flight instructions came down to that word, surrender, relax your mind and float downstream, as John Lennon put it.

[487] And when I learned to do that is when the fear went away.

[488] But, and I think that the anxiety attacks are really your effort to hold on to your ego as it's softening and then melting and exploding, whatever's happening to it.

[489] And our ego is very defensive structure, and it doesn't want to fall apart.

[490] Wow.

[491] But if you let it go, often wonderful things arise in its place.

[492] I only brought that up, because I think, I'm sure you've had this experience probably over the last three years, many, many times, but I just wanted you to see a real human being that had a certain relationship with something that was immovable, literally you move that.

[493] She's told me a million times how grateful she had been for that experience on planet Earth.

[494] and I just wanted you to hear it.

[495] I mean, I appreciate that, and I've heard that story many times before.

[496] I don't know why I was the right messenger for these mushrooms.

[497] They somehow enlisted me in their cause.

[498] But I think it had to do with the fact that I, too, was afraid, that I too had this reluctance, that I wasn't a natural risk taker or drug taker, so that I think the reader who was skeptical could identify with me, and that when I did do it, and crossed over and didn't die and nothing horrible happened to me, I think it gave people a sense of, well, maybe I could do this too.

[499] It's the exact way AA works, but in reverse.

[500] I'm like an example of someone you can live without alcohol.

[501] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[502] We've all been there.

[503] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[504] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[505] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceiling.

[506] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[507] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[508] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[509] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[510] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music.

[511] What's up, guys?

[512] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[513] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[514] And I don't mean just friends.

[515] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[516] The list goes on.

[517] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[518] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[519] Okay, I want you to tell us because I think this is really fascinating.

[520] It's a question I've had and never thought to investigate.

[521] But you dive into what the actual evolutionary gain is for a plant to even have.

[522] enzymes or molecules in them that would induce these feelings?

[523] Yeah, so plants produce these compounds.

[524] They're usually alkaloids, which are nitrogen -containing compounds, as a defense.

[525] Plants can't run away.

[526] So they have to get really good at defending themselves while staying put.

[527] And chemistry is the best way to do it.

[528] And they invent all these interesting chemicals.

[529] They do it for two reasons.

[530] They have attracting chemicals, too, beautiful scents that draw bees to them or other pollinators.

[531] But then they have this whole suite of chemistry to defend themselves.

[532] Sometimes to keep other plants from growing nearby, sometimes to damage anyone who eats a leaf or a nasty taste.

[533] The alkaloids all taste really bitter.

[534] That probably in and of itself is helpful to the plants.

[535] But at a certain point, I think, plants figured out that a straight -out poison is not the best way to take care of your pest.

[536] So if you're worried about the Colorado potato beetle and you're a potato plant and you create an absolutely lethal pesticide where the Colorado potato beetle takes one bite of a leaf and keels over and dies, that might seem like a good strategy, but what happens in nature is that poison selects for the members of the beetle population that just by genetic chance are not affected by the poison.

[537] And suddenly those individuals will proliferate and your poison will no longer work.

[538] So it's an all or nothing strategy and eventually it leads to the failure of your pesticide.

[539] Much better strategy to just merely kind of fuck with the minds of your pests, confuse them, make them forget where they saw you.

[540] Cannabis makes people forget and that may serve the cannabis plants.

[541] Now, this is not scientific exactly.

[542] It's more anecdotal, but I had a cat named Frank, and I planted a catnip plant for Frank.

[543] And Frank had a real catnip issue, a problem.

[544] Every night when I went down to the garden, which was a fenced rectangle to harvest something for dinner, this is when we lived in rural Connecticut, Frank would follow me into the garden, and then he just looked up at me. He didn't remember where.

[545] where the catnip was.

[546] Every day.

[547] And I had to actually like, there it is, Frank.

[548] And Frank would like eat it and get all completely wrecked.

[549] And then would sleep it off.

[550] And the next day, he needed to be reminded again.

[551] And this made me realize what a smart strategy that is for the plant.

[552] And how much better it is than killing Frank would be.

[553] And so a lot of these alkaloids work by messing with the minds of the pests.

[554] and sometimes getting them to act in a very reckless manner, sleeping where they shouldn't sleep, dancing where they shouldn't dance, and then some bird comes along and grabs the pest who has forgotten to hide and take any precautions.

[555] So I think over time, they've come up with these neurotoxins that at certain doses are very appealing to us, and in other doses, protect the plant.

[556] Now, the same chemical, though, can work as, and this goes back to that idea that these are both blessings and curses, Paracelsus, the great Renaissance doctor, said, the poison is in the dose.

[557] It depends how much you take.

[558] At small amounts, really interesting things happen.

[559] At high amounts, you die.

[560] And so as an example that I talk about in the book, bees, what is caffeine?

[561] Caffeine is a pesticide.

[562] And it's designed to keep other plants from growing around the coffee or tea plant.

[563] And also, it's very bitter.

[564] So it discourages bugs from eating the leaves.

[565] But the scientists recently found that there's a small group of plants, including the citrus family, that manufactures caffeine in its nectar.

[566] Now, the nectar is designed to attract insects, not repel them.

[567] So it turns out that bees, when given small doses, love caffeine.

[568] They will return to caffeinated flowers more avidly than any other flowers.

[569] and they'll keep coming back and that the plant actually uses caffeine to train its pollinators to remember them and return.

[570] I mean, this is incredible manipulation.

[571] And what the caffeine does for the bees is it improves their memory and makes them work harder and more efficiently, which is exactly what it does for us.

[572] Yeah.

[573] Also, this is your mind on plants.

[574] Don't you say in there as well, and I thought this was ingenious, I never put it together, but like coca leaves, which are chewed by the indigenous population there for energy.

[575] But it's also an appetite suppressant, right?

[576] So it could convince the bug, it's not in the mood for a snack.

[577] Yeah, it's a really good point.

[578] I neglected to mention that.

[579] But one of the things most alkaloids reliably do is ruin your appetite.

[580] I mean, isn't that ingenious?

[581] Wow.

[582] I feel like this thought process could be applied to our antibiotics.

[583] We create super bugs through our tactics.

[584] Exactly.

[585] Resistance is exactly the phenomenon I'm describing here, whereas you come at it with a heavy poison and you use it very widely as we do in the meat production.

[586] We give it to all these animals we eat.

[587] Eventually, the microbes figure out the key to destroy the defense.

[588] We got to get them drunk and horny.

[589] No, we don't want them to reproduce.

[590] Drunk in dancing and non -infecting cellular walls.

[591] That's what we need to do.

[592] So it's this dance.

[593] It's this neurochemical dance between people and plants, And it's been going on for thousands of years, but there's still the question, what good does it do us?

[594] And pain relief is an obvious case, right?

[595] The opiates have helped us, and most of medicine for thousands of years, when they couldn't cure anything or very much, was about pain relief.

[596] And opium was the most powerful and important drug in the pharmacopoeia.

[597] But I've spent a lot of time thinking, what are the other one?

[598] What are psychedelics good for?

[599] Why should our species like that kind of consciousness change or cocaine or stimulants?

[600] And some make us better workers.

[601] Caffeine certainly makes us better workers.

[602] The proof of that is that your employer will give you time off and free drugs in something called the coffee break.

[603] Why would they do that if it didn't improve productivity and efficiency?

[604] And it does.

[605] And that's been proven.

[606] So that's one case.

[607] So they make us better workers.

[608] And then in the case of the psychedelics, well, this is true of other drugs as well.

[609] I think of drugs as something that has the potential to contribute to cultural evolution.

[610] In the same way that radiation and other forces like that lead to mutations, and some of those mutations, not many of them, but every now and then a mutation comes along that changes things for that species, gives it some new advantage and advances its evolution.

[611] Something similar happens in cultural evolution, where you have a disruptive force, like a drug, think of it as a mutagen, right?

[612] A mutation -creating force that in certain brains leads to new ideas, solutions, metaphors, visions, that actually contribute to cultural evolution.

[613] The average person's insight on psychedelics probably is not going to change the world.

[614] It's usually loves the most important thing, or it's often quite banal, but also profound.

[615] But in certain minds, the exposure to a psychedelic has led to breakthroughs.

[616] And there's a whole record of scientists who figured things out on psychedelics, writers who've benefited from drugs.

[617] Will you hit us with a couple of the scientists?

[618] The best example I know is Carrie Mullis.

[619] He is the inventor of PCR, polymerous chain reaction, the technology that allows us to multiply DNA.

[620] All of us have been benefiting from it.

[621] The COVID tests are based on PCR.

[622] But also all of modern biology and genetics is based on this machine that he invented.

[623] And he tells this story of how on LSD he could, as he said, sit on the chromosome and look at what was happening and imagine it and realize how the DNA led to RNA that led to DNA, and how he might create something, a chain reaction that would multiply that.

[624] And this was on an LSD trip he had driving through Mendocino.

[625] Wow.

[626] He was driving.

[627] That's not advisable in this process.

[628] Well, we're not here to judge.

[629] We're just here to observe.

[630] Anyway, he just died a few years ago.

[631] That's one example.

[632] Another example that I talk about in How to Change Your Mind is Stuart Brand, who invented the well and had a lot to do with the reconceptualization of the computer from being this tool of corporate conformity, you know, the punch guard.

[633] You remember those old images of what computers were, IBM, to this tool of personal liberation.

[634] I mean, before Apple and Steve Jobs, he had totally, you know, imagined the personal computer.

[635] He tells a story about having an acid trip.

[636] He's on the roof of his house in North Beach.

[637] Also not advisable.

[638] Not about another, yeah, warning on the side of that, that package.

[639] package.

[640] This guy was flying a hand glider and he thought.

[641] And he's looking out south and he sees the curvature of the earth or what appears to be the curvature of the earth.

[642] And he realizes, hey, why haven't we seen a picture of Earth from space?

[643] There had been no such picture, even though we were sending people to the moon.

[644] So he came down and he realized this could change everything.

[645] If we could see a picture of the Earth from space, that would change our whole perspective.

[646] So he started this campaign.

[647] He had buttons printed up on, why haven't they shown us a picture of the Earth from space, as if there was some kind of paranoid scheme going on?

[648] And it got picked up by the media and found its way to NASA.

[649] And the cause and effect, I can't verify.

[650] But the following year on Apollo 8, they got far enough out where they could take a picture of the Earth from space.

[651] And we saw that blue marble.

[652] That became, of course, the logo of the Whole Earth Catalog, which Stuart Brand started.

[653] And that image did change everything.

[654] That image helped give rise to the modern environmental movement.

[655] Yeah.

[656] And so that was another LSD -inspired mutation.

[657] Yeah, as you're explaining it and then coinciding with having just read this book, The Molecule of More, really, really good.

[658] It's all about dopamine.

[659] But at any rate, they really explain how the brain models.

[660] And in that modeling is where ideas are and where theories are, right?

[661] And so, yeah, there's a capacity to model in this state we're currently at.

[662] And then there's a totally different ability of the brain to model in that state.

[663] Well, yeah, the brain works with predictions.

[664] And predictions are very useful.

[665] We just imagine how things are going to be.

[666] And usually they are like that based on past performance.

[667] But those predictions can get us in a whole, too, if we're telling ourselves destructive stories about ourselves.

[668] Those are predictions too, those beliefs that I'm unworthy of love or that I can't get through the day without a drink or a cigarette, whatever it is.

[669] And what psychedelics appear to do is relax those beliefs, those predictions.

[670] And that's what appears to allow us to break bad habits.

[671] Bad habits are often bad narratives, bad stories.

[672] And it's the ego that tells those stories.

[673] And getting a little rest from your ego, which psychedelics help you do.

[674] can allow new narratives to form.

[675] And you keep using the term ego, which I agree with, but I do think it's got a connotation that ego is bad, right?

[676] But you could also swap out that word for identity.

[677] Like so often what this is really going on is like, I'm the type of person that this happens to.

[678] If I'm in this situation, this, and that is ego, but it's also just like who you think you are.

[679] Yeah, and the ego is that voice, though, that's telling those stories.

[680] Right.

[681] Look, egos are very useful.

[682] They get books written, podcast mate.

[683] I mean, you know, we wouldn't do very well without an ego.

[684] But sometimes egos become overbearing, overweening, and they become impediments.

[685] And so I think we need to put our egos in their places.

[686] And that's kind of what happens in therapy, by the way.

[687] I mean, you get some perspective on your ego, your habits of thought, and hopefully some relief from an ego that is punishing, overly critical.

[688] But look, it's another example.

[689] of why we need to keep two conflicting ideas in our head.

[690] Egos are important to our success.

[691] I mean, they're very involved with dopamine, right?

[692] When the ego is getting what it wants, you get a dopamine hit.

[693] And the ego is all about survival and reproduction and success.

[694] And egos have achieved enormous benefits for the individual and often for the society.

[695] But they also are at the root of a lot of mental difficulty.

[696] Yeah, to be able to step metaphorically outside.

[697] sight of it sometimes to not be caught in it is so powerful.

[698] And yes, and to see it for what it is, essentially alienate yourself from it.

[699] And that's what happened to me on my most powerful psilocybin experience that I describe in how to change your mind.

[700] I experienced the complete detonation of my ego.

[701] Myself, what I thought of as myself, just exploded in a cloud of blue post -it notes and then settled on the ground in this coat of paint.

[702] And I was like, oh shit, that's me. But it was like, that's fine.

[703] I'm still here.

[704] My ego is gone, but I'm still here.

[705] Who's this eye?

[706] I don't know.

[707] But I had awareness without self.

[708] And that was incredibly liberating.

[709] It just felt really right.

[710] And I felt complete equanimity about it.

[711] Because I would imagine you can't even think of yourself, who is Michael, without words like parent, husband, professor, author.

[712] Yeah, like all these things that are largely mental constructs are quite often.

[713] They are, and there's a more essential self that exists in the absence of all that.

[714] Take away memory.

[715] Oh, that's so scary.

[716] Future plans.

[717] And I was still there.

[718] But with the walls down, with the ego no longer there, there was no inside outside.

[719] There was no me, not me. There was no subject object.

[720] I just merged with what was around me. And that was a powerful and wonderful, you know, literally awesome experience.

[721] And I merged with a piece of music as it happened.

[722] This was during a guided trip.

[723] And my guide put on this unaccompanied cello suite by Bach, this beautiful, very sad piece of music.

[724] And there was no difference between me and it.

[725] I was it.

[726] And it was the most professional.

[727] profound experience of music I'd ever had.

[728] And that ability to merge with something larger than yourself, that's the benefit of losing your ego.

[729] Because the ego is what is the wall.

[730] It constructs walls.

[731] Yeah.

[732] Yeah.

[733] Oh my gosh.

[734] I love listening to talk.

[735] Now, the book, this is your mind on plants, really explores three things.

[736] We've talked a lot about mescaline or psychedelics.

[737] And then we've touched on caffeine.

[738] But opium, I guess I was shocked to see that that would be one of them.

[739] And then I learned, of course, that you had grown it at one point in the 90s.

[740] In your garden, you grew poppies to procure tea.

[741] Well, this first chapter about growing opium and the trouble I got into doing it is really a parable of the drug war.

[742] Right.

[743] The late 90s was the height of the drug war.

[744] And I at the time was writing columns for the New York Times Magazine and Harper's Magazine about what was happening in my garden.

[745] Because I was using my garden as elaborator.

[746] to explore our relationship to nature.

[747] And I'd written a series of essays.

[748] And this editor came along, this friend of mine, his name is Paul Tuff, and he had gotten this underground press book called Opium for the Masses, playing on Karl Marx's line about religion, was the opiate of the masses.

[749] And it was like, yeah, you can grow your own opium.

[750] Now remember, this is pre -opioid crisis, okay?

[751] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[752] It's a different moment historically.

[753] So I started growing it, And the author of this book, a really brilliant young writer named Jim Hogshire, gave you instructions, where to find the seeds, totally legal to grow, and how to turn it into a mild narcotic, poppy tea.

[754] I said, oh, this would be cool column.

[755] I'll see if I can grow opium.

[756] And I got the seeds, and I started corresponding with him because I thought I was going to write about it, asking him horticultural advice, did he have any seeds we could swap?

[757] And then suddenly I hear that he's been arrested by the Seattle police.

[758] They have stormed his apartment.

[759] They brought like 20 members' SWAT team, threw him up against the wall, and arrested him on the charge of manufacturing narcotics.

[760] And the evidence they had was a box of dried poppyheads.

[761] He'd gotten from a florist shop.

[762] You can get them at any florist shop and a copy of his book, which proved his intent to turn those innocent poppy heads into a drug.

[763] Oh, wow.

[764] Now, my email is on his computer at this point.

[765] And I realize that, oh, shit.

[766] You're a co -conspirator now.

[767] Co -conspirator.

[768] Because the rule with poppies are, if you don't know that they are a scheduled substance, it's okay to grow them.

[769] As soon as you know that that is a narcotic.

[770] This seems very enforceable.

[771] Yeah, I know.

[772] But it is because they can prove what's in your head by the fact that I had a copy of this guy's book.

[773] Yeah.

[774] And now that I've told your listeners, sorry.

[775] All bets are up.

[776] Guilty is charged.

[777] Yeah.

[778] So anyways, it became this summer of paranoia and fear.

[779] As I tried to figure out, while my poppies are growing, if indeed I had broken the law and was at any risk.

[780] And I started doing this investigation and talking to the DEA and local sheriff's departments.

[781] And it turned out the government had this quiet crackdown going on.

[782] They were very afraid that this would be a fad and people were going to start growing a lot of opium.

[783] because it's really easy to grow all over America.

[784] Also, it's right at the height of the microbrewery movement, and people are making beer in their basement.

[785] I'm not kidding.

[786] I could see where they thought this would be a thing.

[787] DIY, DIY drugs.

[788] And so they threw the book at Hockshire.

[789] Eventually he got off.

[790] A judge thought these charges were ridiculous.

[791] And they were going around to nurseries and garden centers and telling them not to carry poppy seeds anymore.

[792] And there were a couple other busts.

[793] And I got more and more frightened.

[794] And ultimately, I harvested my...

[795] my poppies.

[796] I had a couple of nightmares that summer of being arrested.

[797] And we were living in rural Connecticut at the time.

[798] Anyway, I finished the article.

[799] It's a long piece.

[800] It's a parable of the drug war.

[801] I talk about the penalties because if you get busted, and this is still true, not only can they throw you in jail and the charges for manufacturing narcotic are five to 20 years, they can also seize your property.

[802] Because if the property is being used in the commission of a crime, the acid forfeiture laws kick in.

[803] So it could have completely wrecked our life.

[804] And I had a four -year -old kid, and I was a freelance writer at the time.

[805] So I handed it into Harper's, who had commissioned it, Harper's Magazine.

[806] I said, look, we need to lawyer this.

[807] So they hired a criminal defense lawyer to come up, to read it.

[808] And this guy drives up to my house in Cornwall with his young associate, sits us down in the living room, and tells us that you can't publish this article.

[809] It's a confession to a violation of a story.

[810] Schedule 1 laws, you're manufacturing narcotics, you've admitted to it right in this article.

[811] And I'm like, oh, shit.

[812] This payday, it was like a year's work.

[813] And I was a freelancer.

[814] I needed this check.

[815] Anyway, when the publisher of Harper's heard this, his name is Rick MacArthur, and he's a fierce defender of the First Amendment.

[816] And when he heard this, his first reaction was, because I had decided not to publish, he said, we need a new lawyer.

[817] So he hires a different kind of lawyer, instead of criminal defense, a First Amendment lawyer, a very prominent one in New York, who reads the article and says, you must publish this article for the good of the republic.

[818] This is what the First Amendment was created for, to defend comments on government policies.

[819] Yeah.

[820] So I don't know what to do.

[821] Oh, my gosh.

[822] I then asked Victor, Victor Covner, is there any way I can protect myself?

[823] And he says, well, there are two sections of that article are going to be most antagonistic to the government.

[824] One is the recipe, like how you turn poppy heads, seed heads into a drug.

[825] And the other is the trip report where I describe what it feels like.

[826] He said, if you take that out, you're much less likely to antagonize the gardener.

[827] So I self -censored.

[828] I feel really bad about it, but I censored myself.

[829] And then the other thing that made me confident enough to publish it then was that Rick MacArthur gave me the most incredible contractor writer has ever received from a publisher, guaranteeing not only to defend me as long as it took, but to pay me a salary while I was going through that process, to pay my wife a salary if I had to go to jail, and to replace my home should it be seized by the government.

[830] Good for him.

[831] Oh, I love him.

[832] What a champion.

[833] He really is.

[834] And he really put his money where his mouth is.

[835] So with those assurances, I published it.

[836] But I always felt bad about the missing sections.

[837] And I always wanted to publish them.

[838] So I recently found them.

[839] And restored them to the piece.

[840] And the other thing, though, that made me want to publish it now after all these years is that I subsequently learned that that summer of 1996, when I was having that fear and loathing around growing of poppies in my garden, Purdue Pharma was introducing oxycotton and beginning the real opiate crisis, which wasn't about growing poppies.

[841] And now, you know, 500 ,000 people have died since then, and the government was looking the wrong way.

[842] They were looking at a bunch of gardeners goofing around with Poppy Tea while this legal effort to hook Americans on opiates was getting underway.

[843] Well, they were looking, and some of them at the FDA got paid, it seems, from the most recent investigations.

[844] I haven't seen that.

[845] Have you seen the Crime of the Century on HBO?

[846] It's incredible.

[847] No, I should see that.

[848] Two -part documentary about it.

[849] It's wild.

[850] It's wild.

[851] It was very cynical.

[852] This company understood how dangerous these drugs were, pretended they were less addictive, less dangerous than other opiates.

[853] And this is the biggest public health crisis of the drug war.

[854] And it was caused by legal drugs, not illegal drugs.

[855] Yeah.

[856] And I think that's one of the reasons that drug war is running out of gas, is that we focused on the wrong thing.

[857] Yeah.

[858] And even more insidious, you know, because I have a libertarian in me that's always coming out to argue, which is like, hey, if someone can release a product that's incredibly addictive, it's on you.

[859] But if that company also changes the institutions that evaluate whether it's dangerous, if they have fake data that they funded, and then they have really recognized experts that go on a campaign to doctors and say you're a terrible doctor because these people are suffering.

[860] and you're under -medicating.

[861] Under -treating pain, yeah.

[862] Now we don't have a fair fight.

[863] Libertarianism doesn't work when the information is corrupt.

[864] Corrupt, yeah.

[865] I totally agree.

[866] Like, that changed my position on it.

[867] But when you had this opium tea, now my memory of how it works right is you scar the bud of it and it leaks a little bit of milk.

[868] Yeah, if you want to make opium itself, you slit the green head when it's after the flowers that have dropped off.

[869] and it's kind of ripened.

[870] You can do it with a fingernail or a blade, and it will bleed a latex, a white milk.

[871] And you let that dry, and you scrape it off.

[872] And you need to do a lot of it, though.

[873] And then you can roll it into balls in that's opium.

[874] It's that simple.

[875] But in even easier ways to take those heads, let them dry, put them in a spice mill or a coffee grinder, and then make a tea, soak them in water.

[876] Or even more powerful, if you're looking for that, cut up the heads fresh or dried and put them in vodka.

[877] And that's loudonym, which was a patent medicine for a lot of the 19th century.

[878] It was in all the cureoles, right?

[879] It was in all the curels.

[880] I mean, one of the ironies that I talk about in this piece is back during prohibition in the 20s and 30s, when you could get arrested for making apple jack from your apple trees, the prohibitionists would kick back with these opiate infused women's tonics.

[881] they were called.

[882] Yeah, people find a way to alter themselves.

[883] You really can't stand the way of it.

[884] Now, how would you compare?

[885] I assume you've at some point had some medical procedure where you've been prescribed Vicodin or oxycotton or codone.

[886] How does the tea in your experience, like if you had to give one a ten, you know, out of ten.

[887] Oh, the tea is like a two or three.

[888] It's very mild.

[889] It's used in the Arab world during funerals as just to kind of everyone gets a cup of poppy tea and it kind of lifts the sadness.

[890] It's pleasant.

[891] It's not overwhelming.

[892] I think the loudonym would be stronger.

[893] It's nothing compared to prescription opiates.

[894] I mean, the closer you are to the plant, and this goes for coca, too, the safer the drug is to take.

[895] It's the more we refine drugs.

[896] When we turn it into white powders, that's when you're far enough from the plant that you're entering kind of a danger zone in terms of intensity.

[897] But most of the plant alkaloids taken in that form, coca leaves or poppy tea, are fairly mild.

[898] They're definitely consciousness changers, but not in a way that you have this giant dopamine release.

[899] Right.

[900] Yeah.

[901] I don't know, it makes me think of sugar too.

[902] Like when you eat sugar with the fruit and you have all the fiber, it's one thing.

[903] Yeah, there's something protective in the plant version and that it is, one, not so intense.

[904] Two, getting it with all this other stuff.

[905] I mean, it's fiber in the case of sugar.

[906] The opiate has other things in it.

[907] It's not just one alkaloid.

[908] It's a suite of alkaloids.

[909] And some may protect you and some may not.

[910] But it's true with mushrooms too.

[911] People think that eating mushrooms is different than refined psilocybin used in research.

[912] Because there are other alkaloids.

[913] Okay, really quick, and we've already had you for so much time and I'm so appreciative of it.

[914] But caffeine, I just want to say, as opposed to your traditional method, which is you would imbibe something to research it, in this case, you abstained from caffeine.

[915] Yeah, which is much harder than anything I've imbibed.

[916] Yeah.

[917] Except maybe 5MEODMT.

[918] So, interestingly enough, the leading researcher in psilocybin, a man named Roland Griffith, who I profiled in the last book, was before he got interested in psilocybin, the leading researcher on caffeine.

[919] Oh, no kidding.

[920] So I started interviewing him about caffeine.

[921] And one of the things he told me early on is like, you can't understand your relationship to a drug that you're dependent on until you get off it.

[922] You will not see it clearly until then.

[923] So it was kind of a dare.

[924] Like, can you get off caffeine?

[925] And I spent three months off caffeine, which was one of the harder things I've done, especially to a writer.

[926] I mean, I lost that ability to focus.

[927] And I felt like I had weeks where I felt like I had attention.

[928] deficit disorder, that things would come in from the periphery, and I just couldn't do that kind of spotlight that you need to get anything written or really get much of anything done.

[929] Yeah.

[930] And that was challenging.

[931] And I also just didn't feel myself for three months.

[932] And I realized, oh, myself is caffeinated.

[933] And I had no idea that that was baseline consciousness, which it is for the majority of us.

[934] 90 % of us use caffeine daily, whether that's coffee, tea, or soda.

[935] A lot of people, their caffeine delivery system is soda.

[936] And of course, soda, they deliberately add caffeine.

[937] It adds nothing except this kick and this addictive potential.

[938] So that was an interesting experience, but I really did it to understand my relationship to caffeine, but to see what it would be like when I got back on.

[939] Yes.

[940] The day I look forward to for three months.

[941] and that first hit of caffeine after not having had it for three months was pretty psychedelic.

[942] I mean, it's almost worth getting off it to have that experience.

[943] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[944] Okay, so I doubt you're going to get interviewed by too many people that have had the identical scenario you just mapped out.

[945] I got off of it for three months.

[946] I, too, I'm a writer.

[947] I'm like, well, I can't write.

[948] that's out the window same thing i'm like just things are catching my attention and i'm realizing i've been looking at something for a while i mean like really trippy stuff ultimately going after all that wore off just like i don't enjoy being alive as much without caffeine it's really that simple it is clear to me now it is additive to my life and that's that like i know that now And my first, it was mild.

[949] I had a Diet Coke at In -N -Out, and, man, I felt it hit my body.

[950] I couldn't believe how strong I felt it.

[951] Yeah.

[952] I remember this first cup vividly and this powerful surge of euphoria.

[953] And it was a Saturday morning, and the world was just beautiful.

[954] Full of potential.

[955] I enjoyed it so much.

[956] And then it kind of transmuted into this other feeling.

[957] There was a garbage truck across the street from the cafe where I was sitting outside.

[958] And it was like shaking the garbage cans, making this noise.

[959] And it really got under my skin.

[960] And I said, I got to get home.

[961] I got to get something done.

[962] I felt this compulsion to get to work.

[963] So I walk home with my wife.

[964] She goes off to her studio.

[965] And I sit down at my computer.

[966] And I unsubscribe from 100 list serves that have been irritated.

[967] me, you know, junk email, just killed them.

[968] One, two, three.

[969] And then I went into my closet and I rearranged my sweater shell.

[970] I was compulsive, but it was wonderful.

[971] I had all this energy, all this focus.

[972] And my first thought was, how do I preserve this power?

[973] This is a really good drug.

[974] It doesn't really have any downsides.

[975] And look what it can do for you.

[976] For a few months, I did it by saying I would only do caffeine on Saturdays.

[977] And that worked for a while, and I really look forward to Saturdays, and I'd save certain tasks for Saturdays.

[978] But then I was like, oh, I got a big deadline on a Friday.

[979] I wonder if I could just let it slip a little bit.

[980] Welcome to the addict's mind.

[981] Welcome to our mind.

[982] The mine spends its whole day coming up with a story you can sign off on.

[983] Exactly.

[984] It was amazing.

[985] And even that day when it started wearing off, I was like, I was doing a little gardening, and I pulled some plants out that were not doing well.

[986] I should go to the garden center, and I just get in the car and I'm heading down the road.

[987] And I choose a garden center to go to that has coffee.

[988] They have an airstream outside, Flowerland, and they have really good espresso drinks.

[989] Oh, my God, here I am, pulled down the road to this place because I needed another hit.

[990] Waking up at a coffee shop, yeah.

[991] But it's important to say, though, that we stigmatize addiction or dependence.

[992] And one of the questions I asked Roland Griffith is, what's wrong with a caffeine addiction?

[993] And he said, if it's not wrecking your life, if you can afford it, if you have a good supply, a reliable supply, and you're not morally offended by it, there's nothing wrong with it.

[994] I've had so many people who've read this chapter say, you know, you'll be very proud at me. I gave up caffeine.

[995] No, I'm not proud of you.

[996] So anyway, it was very interesting.

[997] And it raises all these questions.

[998] about what is a drug?

[999] How should we feel about them?

[1000] Are they tools or are they temptations or what?

[1001] And caffeine, which many people don't even think of as a drug, is.

[1002] And it's an interesting model of drug use.

[1003] So that's why I included in a book with two other drugs that were not so legal.

[1004] Yeah.

[1005] Can we end on a philosophical question?

[1006] I ask myself all the time.

[1007] I wonder it often for weed in particular.

[1008] this world we live in is filled with so much stimuli it's just we are definitely not designed to have this amount of frenetic pace and stimuli is it conceivable that something like marijuana for people can actually repair their brain at night it can put it into a zone that is not so affected by stimuli that the brain can rest like we think of having to augment ourselves to keep up with this but I don't think we ever think that maybe some of these drugs are exactly what people need to deal with this bizarre reality we live in.

[1009] Well, I think caffeine is that.

[1010] I mean, caffeine allowed us to deal with the industrial revolution.

[1011] I mean, people were drunk all the time before caffeine, and caffeine was the perfect drug to allow you to do double -entry bookkeeping and manage machines.

[1012] And European history would be completely different.

[1013] Caffeine allowed us to be capitalists, workers of capitalists.

[1014] And so there may be another drug that will adapt us to the world we're in now.

[1015] I mean, in a way, caffeine is very well suited still to this world in that it allows us to focus and block out a lot, which God knows we need to block out a lot of sensory inputs.

[1016] We're overwhelmed by information.

[1017] And caffeine can narrow our focus.

[1018] But one of the really interesting questions, though, along those lines is, are the plant drugs we have, all the plant drugs that there are?

[1019] Or are there new ones waiting to be discovered or invented?

[1020] There's a whole herbarium at Harvard of psychoactive plants collected by Richard Evans Schultes, the great ethnobotanist, who taught there for many years in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

[1021] And they've never been studied for the alkaloids they may contain, things like snuffs from the Amazon and plant drugs from mostly in South America, and the rainforest has an incredible abundance of these substance.

[1022] So we sort of think it's psilocybin and DMT and ayahuasca and these things, but there may be others out there.

[1023] And at the same time, you have chemists tweaking the drugs we have and seeing if you can't improve on mescaline or eliminate bad side effects.

[1024] And I was talking to a scientist just the other day last week who said that he had a technology where he could genetically alter yeast to produce psilocybin, and that he could then tweak that molecule and come up with new psychedelics.

[1025] So we may find substances as well suited to the world we're entering as caffeine has been to the industrialized capitalistic world.

[1026] We'll have to see.

[1027] It's going to be exciting to watch.

[1028] It is.

[1029] And of course, immediately you're like, because as you pointed out, which is so fascinating, the government's stepping away.

[1030] So it's upon us.

[1031] to culturally determine what's a red flag.

[1032] If you wake up and you drink, that's probably an issue.

[1033] I think there's got to be some consensus, and this sucks for people who probably favor methamphetamine, but we must agree on some addictive scale.

[1034] Like, let me put it this way, in 15 years of hard drug abuse, I've never in my life come off of a mushroom trip and said, we need more mushrooms.

[1035] It's never happened.

[1036] I've never seen anyone do it.

[1037] It's the opposite.

[1038] It's the opposite.

[1039] stay and wanted to do it.

[1040] No. So I can say objectively, that is not an addictive substance.

[1041] And that's been proven.

[1042] If you give rats an opiate or cocaine and a lever to administer it to their bloodstream, they'll keep pressing it until they're addicted or dead.

[1043] If you do that with LSD, they'll try it once.

[1044] And then they'll never go near it again.

[1045] And no, we know that these are not drugs of abuse in that sense.

[1046] They're not addictive.

[1047] We also know that the classic psychedelics are not toxic to your body.

[1048] And you can't say that about too many drugs.

[1049] I mean, Tylenol is toxic to your liver in fairly small doses.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] There's no lethal dose known for psilocybin, LSD, or DMT.

[1052] That's quite remarkable.

[1053] Yeah, you can kill yourself on water.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] You can.

[1056] That's true.

[1057] Yeah, yeah.

[1058] Plus MDMA.

[1059] Right, right, right.

[1060] So I think that a lot of the fears around psychedelics are founded on misinformation and disinformation.

[1061] Not to say they're not without risk.

[1062] People can have horrifying experiences.

[1063] People who are not taking it in the right setting with the right expectations can hurt themselves.

[1064] And I have heard horror stories, real horror stories.

[1065] And so no one should approach it in a careless or light manner.

[1066] It's a consequential act to take a big dose of a psychedelic.

[1067] I agree with you.

[1068] And at the same time, no, if I get to pick whether my daughters are going to drink a 12 -pack for their first experiment or shrooms.

[1069] I'm on the shrooms train a thousand percent.

[1070] But I would offer the same advice, I think, to kids, but not a giant ego -dissolving dose.

[1071] Maybe somebody there, somebody there.

[1072] Yeah, and somebody there, a sitter.

[1073] I think you have to take it with intention, with a guide of some kind, and with a sense of reverence for what you're about to embark on.

[1074] I mean, this isn't just thrills.

[1075] This is exploration of your mind.

[1076] which is a scary place to go.

[1077] Yeah.

[1078] It's an exciting one, though.

[1079] I think it's a really interesting life experience that's available to us and how incredible that a mushroom can afford it.

[1080] It's so cool.

[1081] The other thing I always like to add when talking about drugs is I don't think people recognize that the pharmacy's in your head.

[1082] I think it changes it as well.

[1083] There's nothing in the chemical.

[1084] I mean, the imagery, the places you go, the fears you experience, the ecstasy you experience, none of that is in the chemical.

[1085] It's activating something.

[1086] something in you.

[1087] All the material that comes up is coming from you.

[1088] And it's important understand it.

[1089] And people who use drugs recreationally, kids especially don't get that.

[1090] And they think, oh, it's just some weird drug.

[1091] I saw God.

[1092] It was just the drugs.

[1093] It's not the drugs.

[1094] Yeah.

[1095] The drug probably inhibited the uptake of something you already have in your brain.

[1096] Yeah.

[1097] Oh, yeah.

[1098] I mean, look, we know that the conscious mind is like 1 % of what's going on there.

[1099] It's the tip of the iceberg, and we don't delve down into that.

[1100] And one of the things that psychedelics do is bring a lot of subconscious material into this observable space.

[1101] That's a big move, and you have to be prepared for it, and not everything you're going to see is going to be to your liking, but it's you.

[1102] Last question, you personally, is it something you think you should do once a year, once every two years?

[1103] We haven't reminded people that we're talking about things that are still illegal in most places.

[1104] So everyone needs to be highly aware of that fact.

[1105] If psychedelics were legalized, I imagine two uses of it.

[1106] One is every year on my birthday, I would want to have an experience.

[1107] It's a really good way to take stock of where I am in life, where I'm going.

[1108] I think it would be just a really good way to, you know, I don't want to say celebrate because it isn't necessarily going to feel celebratory, but it would be worth doing.

[1109] And the other thing I would do is once a year.

[1110] have an MDMA experience with my wife.

[1111] I think it's potentially the best couples therapy out there in that you're very present, you're very open, you're very undefensive, and you can talk about everything without getting hot under the collar.

[1112] I know people who use MDMA that way and they find it incredibly productive.

[1113] Yeah, that's my dream.

[1114] Michael Pollan, I just adore you this lived up, not unlike a mushroom experience, it lived up to my expectations.

[1115] I had expectations and they were met and then beyond.

[1116] Yeah, we need to have you back.

[1117] Yeah, tons of luck on this is your mind on plants.

[1118] I think people should read it.

[1119] Everyone who read How to Change Your Mind, which were plenty of people, it's more of that good stuff.

[1120] You'll certainly write again, and I hope we get to do this again.

[1121] I'd be happy to, Dax, Monica.

[1122] Great pleasure to meet you.

[1123] All right.

[1124] Be well.

[1125] Take care.

[1126] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Badman.

[1127] You're getting ready to go on a big old trip.

[1128] Yeah, and it's, I'm a little stressed about, I'm not ready to leave in the morning by any stretch.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] And it's occurring to me that this is going to go almost directly into the next interview.

[1131] And then we have a party tonight.

[1132] That's right.

[1133] Yeah, it's going to get tight.

[1134] Yeah, I know.

[1135] I feel that way because I'm also going camping.

[1136] Right.

[1137] And I. You feel ill prepared?

[1138] Very.

[1139] Because I don't know about camping.

[1140] You know, I went camping a lot with Cali.

[1141] Okay.

[1142] But her mom did everything.

[1143] She handled that.

[1144] I didn't have to think, like, how do I keep food cold?

[1145] Okay, maybe I could get a little stove, but how do I get the butane?

[1146] I can't get that on Amazon.

[1147] I wouldn't ship to my address.

[1148] But then I had it.

[1149] Then I haven't even, my stove hasn't even come.

[1150] So maybe it's not going to comment.

[1151] I might be a moot.

[1152] Yeah.

[1153] Did you get a Coleman stove?

[1154] It is.

[1155] Yeah, then take one.

[1156] Were you happy?

[1157] I had them?

[1158] Very, but then I got nervous.

[1159] What are you nervous about?

[1160] Explosions.

[1161] They don't explode.

[1162] How do you know?

[1163] Because I've had them my whole life all around.

[1164] That those little Coleman containers, the canisters with butane, they do not explode.

[1165] They've been engineered to not explode.

[1166] Okay.

[1167] If you threw one in a fire pit.

[1168] Then it would explode.

[1169] And then you shot it with a rifle from a couple hundred years.

[1170] yards and cracked a hole in it, it would blow up.

[1171] But the circumstances by which that thing would blow up will not happen to you in real life.

[1172] Or you'll be long dead before it gives way.

[1173] All right.

[1174] Also, you're going to be there with Charlie.

[1175] Why are you, he's going to know how to cook shit.

[1176] No, we have dinner.

[1177] Dinners are like, set.

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] Already.

[1180] But we have to bring our own breakfast and lunch.

[1181] Yeah.

[1182] What do you, what would you bring for breakfast and lunch?

[1183] I feel like I'm talking to an eight -year -old version of yourself.

[1184] That's how I feel.

[1185] I look particularly kid -like right now.

[1186] You know, we just had a guest on.

[1187] Yeah, an elegant lady.

[1188] Incredibly elegant.

[1189] And the whole time I felt like a kid.

[1190] You did?

[1191] Oh.

[1192] And I felt like that with Gwyneth, too.

[1193] And we talked about it a little bit in the interview.

[1194] But, yeah, there are some women that come in.

[1195] And you feel like a child.

[1196] I do.

[1197] But whatever.

[1198] I, I. Oh, that was extra.

[1199] It was extra.

[1200] I'm, you know, I'm quitting vaping tomorrow when we start our trip.

[1201] Thank God.

[1202] Sounds like you really need to quit.

[1203] I do need to quit.

[1204] And I've been really pounding it because I know I'm quitting.

[1205] You know, how I do.

[1206] Sure do.

[1207] Yeah.

[1208] I'm going to miss you on your trip because I won't be able to talk to you.

[1209] You probably won't have service.

[1210] That's completely unreal.

[1211] We're going to have internet.

[1212] We're going to do fact checks.

[1213] We're going to talk all the time.

[1214] None of that's going to happen.

[1215] And I won't have service out in the wilderness.

[1216] And I don't know.

[1217] And I don't know how to cook.

[1218] Three days camping?

[1219] Yeah, that's kind of a long time.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] But, I mean, you're not going to be in the wilderness for a long time.

[1222] Just three days.

[1223] I'm just an eight -year -old girl out in the world.

[1224] I know.

[1225] Trying to make it on your own.

[1226] There's all these women coming in and out of here with their elegance.

[1227] I wish she would come with me camping and make my lunch and my breakfast.

[1228] I bet she'd love to.

[1229] She seemed to like me. But what do you work?

[1230] Like breakfast, are you going to do oatmeal?

[1231] Yeah, actually, yeah.

[1232] So I bought oatmeal cups.

[1233] Great.

[1234] Then I started thinking about the hot water.

[1235] Uh -huh.

[1236] What's your plan for that?

[1237] I guess I'll put it in a pot and put it over a fire.

[1238] Oh, wow.

[1239] That somebody else will have to build the fire.

[1240] There's also electricity there.

[1241] You'd have to go up to like where the toilets are.

[1242] But you could plug in your cure egg for a minute if you wanted to put hot water in your Bob's Red Mill.

[1243] That's good to know.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Because I had brought, so my hack is I brought my generator when we did the same thing, same place, tent camping.

[1246] Oh, I'm going to have to get a generator in the next 24 hours.

[1247] No, you're going with two professional campers.

[1248] Yeah, at least.

[1249] Ryan and.

[1250] And Charlie and Kalen.

[1251] Oh, okay.

[1252] He's a pro pro.

[1253] Yeah, so just show up with shit for you to snack on, 16 bottles of wine, which will drink, and fucking a pillow, man. I, well, I got overwhelmed because I had my list, and I was like, oh, my God, this is getting out of hand.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] And then I got excited because then I got into my shopping mode.

[1256] Oh, right, and you love that.

[1257] I love a shopping mode.

[1258] So then I bought cool sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, these really, really cute mugs, camping mugs.

[1259] You have so many mugs already?

[1260] These are camping.

[1261] Oh, okay.

[1262] Are they like a tin with a spackle, a speckles?

[1263] It doesn't have speckles, but it is.

[1264] is that enamel, enamel.

[1265] Sure.

[1266] It's by Fischizetti.

[1267] I love Fiscietti.

[1268] Anyway.

[1269] It's a shame you don't.

[1270] I mean, you're doing well for yourself, but I also kind of wish you reviewed products for a living.

[1271] Because you just love finding out about new products and using them and then talking about them.

[1272] Yeah.

[1273] It would have been a fun.

[1274] Career.

[1275] You and Eric.

[1276] Eric, too.

[1277] He likes to review things.

[1278] We could have a side hustle.

[1279] You should.

[1280] Maybe we'll do something for the website.

[1281] Yeah, where you review things for us.

[1282] Yeah.

[1283] And how many bottles of wine?

[1284] I haven't purchased it yet.

[1285] I mean, you need to go big.

[1286] Three days.

[1287] You need to bring at least six bottles, eight bottles for just you.

[1288] No. You'll drink two bottles a day.

[1289] No. Two bottles?

[1290] You drink all day long camping.

[1291] You do?

[1292] Yes, you will drink two.

[1293] When we go to the dunes, you'll drink two bottles in a day.

[1294] By myself, no. Two bottles a day is a lot.

[1295] Not when you're starting at noon.

[1296] fuck i guess that's true it's true like you're you're lying to yourself you don't think you drink two bottles over the course of 12 hours it's hard to know because you're sharing with people so it really it i mean maybe that's true but that would mean we would be going through like that you would drink six glasses of wine in 12 hours more than that i don't know i get i'd be so i'd be so i'd be so So drunk.

[1297] No, because that's only a glass of wine every two hours.

[1298] Yeah, I drink more than that.

[1299] Exactly.

[1300] Oh, man. It's going to be fine.

[1301] You just don't understand.

[1302] The stress level?

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] I'm sorry, you're stressed.

[1305] It's okay.

[1306] I, on the other hand, I'm trying to get every motorized vehicle I own onto one trailer, and it's not working.

[1307] And I guess I don't understand that.

[1308] stress so I you know I I guess we all have blind spots um this is kind of a ding ding ding though because Michael Paulin yeah camping is a time to do shrooms oh sure sure sure that's a but I won't I don't think but it would be a time are people bringing them do you know I don't know oh we're also our party tonight it will have happened so we can say yeah is a surprise party for Ryan for Ryan's 40th birthday birthday Oh, fuck.

[1309] What?

[1310] We got to do it right now.

[1311] Can we do it?

[1312] It's Aaron's birthday.

[1313] Yeah, you want to call him?

[1314] Yeah.

[1315] Hi, friend.

[1316] Happy birthday to you.

[1317] Happy birthday to you.

[1318] Happy birthday, dear Aaron.

[1319] Happy birthday to you.

[1320] Oh, it's not every day a baby boy turns 46.

[1321] Oh, my God.

[1322] Most baby boys don't make it this long.

[1323] No. Are you having a fun birthday?

[1324] What are you guys doing?

[1325] We started off the day with some love making.

[1326] Oh, wow.

[1327] And iced coffees in bed.

[1328] Oh, my God.

[1329] Wow.

[1330] Wow, what a day.

[1331] Love making an ice coffee.

[1332] Sign me up.

[1333] Yes.

[1334] And then the big breakfast sandwich in bed.

[1335] Oh, my goodness.

[1336] There's a this girl right here.

[1337] Hi, Roo -Roo.

[1338] We're about to go home and shower and go out to dinner with a bunch of people at an Italian restaurant, followed by a game of botchy ball there.

[1339] Oh, my, what a day.

[1340] Get the fuck out of here.

[1341] I love your day.

[1342] Yeah.

[1343] I know.

[1344] I've never enjoyed a birthday so much, you know?

[1345] That was my goal.

[1346] Oh, rude.

[1347] I never like, I never, I used to get depressed and lock myself in a roof every day.

[1348] This has been quite a fucking birthday.

[1349] Well, you're being celebrated as you should be.

[1350] You're a beautiful baby boy.

[1351] Strong and kind Number one person Number one person of all time Winner Winner of race to 270 The most handsome father in the world I was like Getting wood When I was looking at your post The other day I was like fucking This guy is just Fucking won't stop God bless you Oh man Well I love you Happy birthday I love you so much.

[1352] Thanks for calling.

[1353] I love you both.

[1354] Love you.

[1355] Have a blast.

[1356] Bye, Ruthie.

[1357] Bye.

[1358] Bye, buddy.

[1359] Okay, that was nice.

[1360] Happy birthday.

[1361] Best friend Aaron Weekly.

[1362] Oh, 46.

[1363] You probably already told people about J2C, but I guess you should tell them again.

[1364] Okay, Aaron and I are in a very, very exclusive club.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] It's so exclusive.

[1367] J2C Club.

[1368] Yeah.

[1369] So he's July 2nd Cancer.

[1370] Yeah.

[1371] And I'm January 2nd, Capric.

[1372] corn.

[1373] J2C.

[1374] And we figured that out in junior high.

[1375] And it's just a way for us to exclude other people, I guess.

[1376] Yeah, rude.

[1377] Yeah, but it didn't feel that way.

[1378] But now I recognize that it was a little exclusive.

[1379] But we, boy, do we love that J2C.

[1380] It's okay to have some things that are exclusive.

[1381] Yeah, just us.

[1382] Yeah.

[1383] So if you're J2C out in the audience, congrats.

[1384] Oh, it's a good thing to be.

[1385] If you're a 24, if you're an A24V, you're in my club and that's probably even extra exclusive sounds a little bit like a lab specimen though a 24v i like it j2c's like what do you just say j2c uh michael paulin michael paulin what a big get what a big get and what a uh chill persona yeah i guess when we interview literary figures i go into those with a little more trepidation i'm a little more insecure like oh they're so literate and elevated and we're a couple of actors with a podcast are they going to you know i start feeling less than so then when they're fun and playful and stuff i like it yeah it's a relief yeah he's a professor author all these big things yeah big boy he's a big big boy i wonder if he's j2c i'll find out right now he had kind of a j2c vibe let me tell you what he is well i would scream at the top of my lungs like a little child he is F6 These kind of sound like Scientology distinctions G2C F6A Yeah like levels A24 V V O vagina A two by four Oh my God A two by four vagina Who wouldn't want one of those Wow A two by four vagina Okay anyway Well he's not a J2C but he's still very cool Oh my sleeping bag was delivered.

[1386] Oh my gosh.

[1387] This is so excited.

[1388] I got to go home right now.

[1389] Okay.

[1390] What is holotropic breathwork?

[1391] Holotropic breathwork?

[1392] HB.

[1393] Oh my God.

[1394] HBC.

[1395] This is all, there's so many abbreviations in this.

[1396] Yeah, very nautical.

[1397] Fact check.

[1398] Holotropic breathwork has become increasingly popular among those seeking to explore a unique process of self -healing to attain a state of wholeness.

[1399] The unconventional new age practice was developed by psychiatrist Stanislav and Christina Groff.

[1400] in the 70s to achieve altered states of consciousness without using drugs as a potential therapeutic tool.

[1401] It involves controlling and quickening breathing patterns to influence your mental, emotional, and physical states.

[1402] It's a practice that is derived from a spiritual framework, but it's also a trademarked activity.

[1403] Interesting.

[1404] I'd try that.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] If you could get high without any substances, that's appealing, yeah.

[1407] You know, I went to acting school.

[1408] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1409] And, Oh, are we going to talk about Alexander technique?

[1410] No, it's not Alexander technique, but there is a technique, an acting technique that's all about breathing and breathing in certain patterns.

[1411] And, like, you're supposed to be able to breathe in a certain pattern.

[1412] It'll make you cry.

[1413] Breathe in a certain pattern.

[1414] It'll, like, you know, cause all these different emotions.

[1415] Is the theory that there's all these very specific breathing patterns associated with emotions?

[1416] So you reverse engineer it?

[1417] Yep.

[1418] That's cool.

[1419] I know.

[1420] I like that.

[1421] Can you cry for it?

[1422] for me right now?

[1423] No, I wasn't trained in it.

[1424] It was kind of new at the time.

[1425] My professor was getting trained in it.

[1426] And then she was, you know, telling us some, she was giving us the updates, but she was still learning herself, which I appreciate it.

[1427] Forever a student.

[1428] That's right.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] They haven't asked me back, but that's fine.

[1431] Why did you give up coffee?

[1432] What made you?

[1433] I'm someone that likes to challenge myself with these things, and I was drinking too much coffee.

[1434] It wasn't like an impetus.

[1435] Was there?

[1436] No, I just thought like, oh, I drink so much of this.

[1437] I should probably see if I can not do it.

[1438] And then I did.

[1439] Great.

[1440] Yeah.

[1441] And I was so calm.

[1442] You know, when you leave yoga, how you're like in a very altered state?

[1443] I remember leaving yoga one time and standing in this very long line and it was moving so slow.

[1444] And I didn't care at all.

[1445] It was like, oh.

[1446] You were just at Pete.

[1447] You were content?

[1448] Yeah, I'll be here or I'll be somewhere else standing on planet Earth.

[1449] Who cares?

[1450] Uh -huh.

[1451] And I was just so content and I thought, wow, if I did this every day, I probably would have no. Oh, and you think that's because of the no coffee?

[1452] Well, what I'm saying is when I quit coffee, I kind of went into that state.

[1453] Really?

[1454] Yeah, like really calm, but kind of unplugged.

[1455] Like, didn't, wasn't dialed in that much.

[1456] Uh -huh.

[1457] You know, I think a big chunk of my personality is intertwined with caffeine for sure.

[1458] Well, that's interesting because, you know, I've never had coffee.

[1459] Well, no, I've had coffee plenty of times, and it doesn't sit well in my brain.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] So I go through, before matcha, I went through life.

[1462] Without caffeine.

[1463] Without caffeine.

[1464] I know.

[1465] And then you started drinking macha.

[1466] But I didn't feel at peace.

[1467] Well, I don't think the timing really cool.

[1468] You famous.

[1469] It's been a while.

[1470] Oh, my God, it is.

[1471] It has been a while.

[1472] You famous.

[1473] How did it start?

[1474] Me trying to explain to you that you're famous and you denying it.

[1475] And then me saying, you're famous.

[1476] I don't think that's how it started.

[1477] Oh, yeah, 100%.

[1478] Really?

[1479] Start on here.

[1480] Yeah, yeah.

[1481] Well, it started on here, but I don't think it was about me. It was, yeah.

[1482] As it always is.

[1483] Here's half of our day.

[1484] Me explain to you, you're attractive, and people are attracted to you, and they want to, that's why they asked for your number.

[1485] And then I try to explain, you're famous.

[1486] Okay.

[1487] All right.

[1488] Here we go.

[1489] Mike Pollan.

[1490] where is it decriminalized psychedelics Denver was the first city to decriminalize suicide and that was in 2019 then the cities of Oakland and Santa Cruz California followed suit Washington D .C. followed suit after that as did Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts as where Ben Amma or from They from there?

[1491] No, they just went to school there.

[1492] They went to Cambridge Ridge and Latin high school Oh, my God.

[1493] Oh, my God.

[1494] Some things you just don't forget.

[1495] If we ever interview one of those two, I'm going to elect to not do research.

[1496] I'm just going to ask you about them.

[1497] Oh, you don't have to do any, yeah.

[1498] Wow.

[1499] Okay, and then in 2020, voters passed Oregon ballot measure 109, making Oregon the first state to both decriminalize psilocybin and also legalize it for therapeutic use.

[1500] Mm -hmm.

[1501] It's dominoes now.

[1502] Oh, my God.

[1503] Ding, ding, ding.

[1504] Horrible ding, ding, ding.

[1505] What?

[1506] Did you see the Olympic athlete, the runner, who might get disqualified because they found pot in her system?

[1507] Get that fuck out of here.

[1508] It's horrible.

[1509] Oh, my God.

[1510] And she's like, okay, let me read this.

[1511] This is awful.

[1512] As if weed could give you any advantage whatsoever in a physical form.

[1513] If anything, it'll slow you down.

[1514] Exactly.

[1515] The American sprinter, Shikari Richardson, who was set for a star turn at the Tokyo Olympics this month, could miss the games after testing positive for marijuana.

[1516] Richardson 21 won the women's 100 -meter race at the U .S. track and field trials in Oregon last month, but her positive test automatically invalidated her result in that marquee event.

[1517] The United States anti -doping agency announced the positive test result on Friday morning and said Richardson, had accepted a suspension of one month starting on June 28th.

[1518] That could clear her in time to run in the four by a hundred meter relay that takes place later in the games if she is named to the U .S. team.

[1519] In an interview with NBC on Friday, Richardson blamed the positive test on her use of marijuana as a way to cope with the unexpected death of her biological mother while she was in Oregon for the Olympic trials.

[1520] She said she learned about the death from a reporter during an interview and called it triggering and, quote, definitely nerve -shocking.

[1521] It sent me into a state of emotional panic, she said.

[1522] Richardson apologized to her fans, her family, and her sponsors saying, I don't know how to control my emotions or deal with my emotions during that time.

[1523] I mean, why does she have to apologize?

[1524] I know, I hate this.

[1525] What are we doing?

[1526] Exactly.

[1527] Sometimes you yell at me, but this is how I look at the world.

[1528] You're finally, you're with me, which is like these rules that people take for granted, you don't ever.

[1529] There's not any new.

[1530] You have to ask yourself what the point of things are all the time.

[1531] I know, you're right.

[1532] What on earth is the point of this?

[1533] Also, she found out her mother was dead from a reporter?

[1534] Yes.

[1535] That's insane.

[1536] I know.

[1537] They need to fucking give that gal a pass.

[1538] Exactly.

[1539] I agree.

[1540] I know.

[1541] It's horrible.

[1542] Ugh.

[1543] Yeah, I was like, we're caring about that, but then, like, Bill Cosby is released.

[1544] Like, none of it is making any sense.

[1545] I read the Bill Cosby thing.

[1546] Do you know why he was released?

[1547] Yeah, because it was a mistrial.

[1548] Because the prosecutor said he was not going to prosecute.

[1549] And because he said that, then Cosby participated in a deposition.

[1550] Uh -huh.

[1551] Because he had been assured he wasn't going to be tried.

[1552] So then basically they took part of that deposition and then used it against him in this criminal case, which they wouldn't exist if he hadn't been promised they weren't going to prosecute.

[1553] So, sadly, the tenets of justice.

[1554] Yeah, it has to do.

[1555] It was a mistrial.

[1556] It was, it had nothing to do.

[1557] Mishandling of due process, I guess.

[1558] By the way, I didn't even know he had been in prison for three years.

[1559] Did you?

[1560] Yeah.

[1561] I knew he was, like, convicted.

[1562] But I guess I didn't realize Bill Cosby's been sitting in prison for three years.

[1563] Oh, yeah, I knew he was in jail.

[1564] What is he doing in there?

[1565] What are people do in there?

[1566] Are you going to, where are you going to serve the yellow breed?

[1567] Oh, my God.

[1568] I read that he.

[1569] He's like, already has book plans and show plans and, like, all of this stuff.

[1570] I don't think it's going to work.

[1571] I hope not.

[1572] I hate to be a pessimist, but I don't think it's going to work.

[1573] You don't go to prison without your yellow pudding.

[1574] Okay.

[1575] I learned in three years.

[1576] I don't think.

[1577] There's not an appetite anymore for his.

[1578] No, I don't think we can do that.

[1579] Okay.

[1580] For a lot of reasons.

[1581] Well, it's not because he's black.

[1582] The way I'm talking is not generic.

[1583] I know that.

[1584] It says he just is this.

[1585] We can do that Okay, but don't You can But you don't have to It's a good way to look at it Can I do one more Oh my God, fine I'm gonna look away You told me you weren't gonna prosecute me And now I'm being prosecuted It was a bad one It was a bad impersonation of him And it was a bad sentence Oh my God Okay He did this for so long, so many women, got away with it for most of his life.

[1586] 50 years, yeah.

[1587] Don't you think, like, what's almost more repulsive than the act?

[1588] I mean, it's not, but it's like as bad in some ways, is that he can't just be like, yeah, I did it.

[1589] I've fucked up.

[1590] I need to live out the rest of my life here.

[1591] You put out so much destruction into the universe.

[1592] universe, and you can't just accept that you did that and just stay in prison?

[1593] Well, I understand initially why he would keep up the lie, which is just to keep himself free.

[1594] I see the incentive there, like, that he would maintain his innocence so he wouldn't die in prison.

[1595] Like, that's a, I get that.

[1596] But yeah, once you're convicted and the ors has happened, you're going to die in prison.

[1597] Yeah, why not absolve yourself of that and own it and apologize?

[1598] but apparently he thought he would still get out, which he did.

[1599] Right, but I guess that's what I'm saying.

[1600] Like, yeah, you could potentially still get out, but you know you did that.

[1601] Yeah, yeah.

[1602] So I guess I've heard him, he's like, why wouldn't you just be like, yeah, I deserve this?

[1603] Like, at some point, don't you think, like, I deserve this?

[1604] Well, I would, yeah, but I also wouldn't rape 50 people, so I don't know.

[1605] Yeah.

[1606] What I assume is that he told him.

[1607] himself something.

[1608] Nobody is moving through life going, I'm a monster.

[1609] I don't think that happens.

[1610] I know.

[1611] Like, I don't think a human brain can do that.

[1612] So I'm imagining he had some elaborate justification for why what he did didn't make him a monster.

[1613] Yeah.

[1614] I think he did during that time.

[1615] Yeah.

[1616] But that's kind of what I'm saying.

[1617] Like, if I accept the notion that most people don't think they're a monster and that they justify their actions, at some point, I imagine.

[1618] I imagine.

[1619] that everyone to have some human seed left that would say like, wow, like after that amount of time, wow, I really ruined a lot of people's lives, and I deserve to pay for that.

[1620] This sounds like I'm defending him.

[1621] I'm not.

[1622] I'm just trying to understand what potential thoughts he might have.

[1623] There's also, I guess, some conceivable thing where he thinks he's trying to shield his family from the deep shame of that.

[1624] So as long as he can protest his innocence, he's sparing them.

[1625] Well, he's not innocent.

[1626] Well, no. We know it.

[1627] Over 50 women.

[1628] Yeah.

[1629] I'm trying to imagine what he tells himself.

[1630] No, I know.

[1631] And I'm just saying.

[1632] It's horse pocky.

[1633] Yeah.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] It's, it's, uh.

[1636] I'm sure he does have a narrative.

[1637] Anyway, um, that's it.

[1638] That's it for Michael Pollan.

[1639] Yeah.

[1640] That was a fun.

[1641] interview.

[1642] Yeah, it really was.

[1643] But it didn't move the needle for you with MDMA, huh?

[1644] I am personally not interested in taking synthetic drugs.

[1645] Right.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] Roger.

[1648] Even with his stamp of approval.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] I'm not saying other people shouldn't, but I, for my own body, I'm a little afraid.

[1651] Oh, because of the epilepsy?

[1652] A little bit.

[1653] Even with the shrooms, I was a little bit like, what's it going to do?

[1654] I mean, these are all chemicals.

[1655] They're all, releasing all this stuff in your brain, and my brain sometimes fires in a different way.

[1656] Yeah.

[1657] And I have to keep that in mind.

[1658] It could also be, it actually could be restorative to your brain because they do say what happens with the people they're treating with psilocybin for PTSD and stuff is that once your brain has trauma gets locked into this pattern, this like circuitry forms.

[1659] And then sometimes the only way to break out of that formed.

[1660] circuitry is to like explode your brain and have it create all these new synapses and the neurons go everywhere else so could be like if whatever area of your brain was conflicting it could actually open up like new neural pathways that would prevent that it could i don't know that i necessarily think that's the same thing as yeah your epilepsy seizure yeah which is very physical and it is it's a little electrical storm in your brain it is yeah but yeah i just get scared kind of putting anything into my chemistry that, like, could affect it, synthetic, or could counteract the medicine I'm on, like, I don't know.

[1661] You should ask your doctor what he thinks about it.

[1662] I could, but I don't think I'll feel comfortable.

[1663] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1664] I'm just curious what your doctor would say.

[1665] I think he would have an obligation to tell me I shouldn't.

[1666] Not if he was Michael Pollan.

[1667] He's not a doctor.

[1668] A doctor has an obligation to tell their patients they should.

[1669] mixed drugs, even if in his brain...

[1670] Well, no, a doctor has an obligation to tell you the truth about the interaction.

[1671] So if that doctor knows that MDMA would have no impact whatsoever on your epilepsy, he should ethically tell you that.

[1672] But he might not, there might not be like 100%.

[1673] And that's an okay answer.

[1674] Like, oh, we don't know.

[1675] We've never studied it.

[1676] But if in fact it's been studying and he goes, oh, no, you know, actually...

[1677] The truth is all they're obligated to tell you.

[1678] If he said to me, it's probably fine, I don't see why those two would interact.

[1679] There hasn't been any studies on it.

[1680] And then I did it.

[1681] And then something bad happened.

[1682] He would get sued.

[1683] Like, he, they have to protect themselves.

[1684] You know, it'd be more if he said, no, there was a study.

[1685] And we know, definitively, it doesn't interact with this medicine.

[1686] And it doesn't interact with the area of your brain that is.

[1687] I'm just saying if it's, it's probably completely unknown.

[1688] I'm just saying, I feel like you have the perfect career for you because I don't think you are a person who likes to, like, play it safe.

[1689] Oh, no, yeah.

[1690] Obviously.

[1691] Right, yeah.

[1692] Like, so doctors do.

[1693] That is built in.

[1694] They are also protecting themselves from malpractice.

[1695] Well, but really quickly, when there are studies that confirm or deny something, they can't play it safe by ignoring the reality.

[1696] reality.

[1697] So, like, a lot of pregnant women will ask, should I go off my antidepressant?

[1698] Well, no, we've actually studied it now.

[1699] And although some of it gets into the baby, we find that the raising cortisol, like, there's a study.

[1700] But it's an illegal drug.

[1701] So he cannot tell me anything other than you should not do that.

[1702] No, he could tell you if there was a paper published.

[1703] If a doctor told a patient to, it's okay to do an illegal drug.

[1704] That's not what he'd be doing.

[1705] He would just be saying whether or not your medicine interacts.

[1706] If there had been a study and it was known, he's not telling you to do MDMA, but he is obligated to tell you, if you asked, does it interact with this?

[1707] And he knows of a study that proved it didn't.

[1708] He would have to say that.

[1709] He's not telling you to do it.

[1710] He's just telling you there was a study and that there was no interaction between the medicine and that.

[1711] Yeah.

[1712] Yeah.

[1713] I just don't.

[1714] I don't see a doctor who would do it.

[1715] And I understand what you're saying, but I just, I think.

[1716] you would well i can tell you this that documentary i watched uh was a group of english doctors who had bound together to try to decriminalize mdma in england because their point was we work in the er nobody comes in here from mdma every single night we get a couple hundred people from alcohol alcohol is very dangerous it is more dangerous than mdma statistically it is you'd be better off allowing this so there was a movement of doctors there that were trying to get it legalized to mitigate how dangerous alcohol is.

[1717] Yeah.

[1718] Yeah.

[1719] And I guess, of course, I'm sitting on the other side of having done it 300 times and smoke crack and done everything.

[1720] And like physically I'm, I'm just fine, more physically fit than some of my peers that didn't do that.

[1721] So I just have, I have, of course, a perspective on it, which is like, no, I did all that stuff.

[1722] They said would kill you and I'm fine.

[1723] It's killed a lot of people, drugs.

[1724] Big time.

[1725] I'm not, I'm in no way saying drugs are not dangerous.

[1726] I'm just saying I've had a very specific life experience.

[1727] And a lot of the fearmongering I heard when I explored it on my own, it didn't turn out to be that thing I had read about or been warned about.

[1728] Yeah.

[1729] I hope you have a great road trip.

[1730] I hope you have a blast camping.

[1731] I'm going to miss you, but we are going to talk.

[1732] Okay.

[1733] Hopefully we'll do a fact check on the road so we can check in on me. Definitely well.

[1734] Yeah.

[1735] We'll do a few.

[1736] Okay, well, check in on your trip.

[1737] We'll see if I've blown up.

[1738] Yeah, blown up my camp and tent, my yurt.

[1739] Canister I gave you exploded in your hot trunk.

[1740] Exactly.

[1741] Goodbye.

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