#1565 - Gary Laderman

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, checking out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Hey, how you doing?

[4] What's up, man?

[5] Thanks for coming.

[6] Appreciate it.

[7] I'm happy to be here.

[8] Why don't you tell everybody what you do?

[9] Well, for work.

[10] Yeah, I teach at Emory University.

[11] So I'm a professor.

[12] I've been there for about 25 years.

[13] And I also write, write some books and teach a variety of classes.

[14] But you study, like, what I've read of your study is some of it is on death and some of it is on drugs.

[15] That is correct.

[16] Those are two very heavy subjects.

[17] That may be the heaviest.

[18] Well, the other course I teach is religion and sexuality.

[19] So, I mean, that's another really heavy one.

[20] Yeah.

[21] You look like a guy who would study both death and drugs.

[22] So it fits.

[23] Well, this is the pandemic hair.

[24] I mean, really, I'm usually a much more, you know, well, I'm not really.

[25] You never thought of doing this?

[26] Just doing the full buzz.

[27] One of my students told me I should do before I came in here.

[28] I'm telling you, man, once you do it, it's so freeing, not having to go to a barbershop or a hairdresser.

[29] Well, what's weird is I feel really free with all this hair.

[30] Yeah.

[31] Well, again, the hair fits the subjects that you studied.

[32] How did you get involved in?

[33] When you talk about drugs, like you studied all sorts of psychedelic drugs, but also common drugs, like caffeine, like we were talking about before.

[34] I was telling you before that I make some ridiculous French press coffee with far too much coffee in it.

[35] It's become a bit of a problem lately.

[36] Well, but it's probably keeping you healthy and keeping you going.

[37] I don't know if it is.

[38] I don't know.

[39] At the end of the day, I'm really tired, and I'm not usually really tired, and I think it's because I've been on speed all day.

[40] it can tire you out that's for sure yeah um but yeah i mean my interest in in in studying the connection between religion and drugs i'm in a department of religion at emory um really spans the spectrum so i'm interested yeah for sure in psychedelics but also as you're saying in the more um ordinary uh psychoactive drugs that bring order to our lives and um you know allow us to tap into our true identity, maintain some semblance of stability in our lives, you know, things that religion often can do.

[41] It's the subject of religion and drugs is, it's really fascinating to me, but it's something that I never even really considered until, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

[42] And I was introduced to Jack Herr, and he was, do you know who he is?

[43] The cannabis advocate recently deceased.

[44] not so recently anymore.

[45] Great guy, but wrote, was writing a book about the connection between psychedelics, particularly psilocybin and religion and Christianity.

[46] And he had this amazing collection of artwork that connected like ancient Christian artwork with a lot of these dancing naked figures that looked like they were in ecstasy, shrouded by this translucent mushroom.

[47] Yeah.

[48] Though that's not uncommon.

[49] There are a lot of theories out there that connect early Christianity especially to different kinds of hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs of some form.

[50] But I think the connections are much more widespread.

[51] People have been using psychoactive substances for religious ritual, for religious experience.

[52] for forms of transcendence and journey in all kinds of different cultural settings and through history.

[53] What got you into the subject?

[54] Well, I've been interested in the topic of drugs for a while, but I think what really led me to see this would be quite a fruitful topic to pursue in terms of research was I wrote a short little essay on LSD and religion, talked about my own experience as a young man, tripping, and talking about the ways in which, when I had that experience in the late 70s, and people more and more were, you know, enjoying psychedelics coming out of the decade of the 60s.

[55] I started to see that they would often use words like spiritual or mystical to describe their experiences and to talk about how their religious views are being reoriented.

[56] And I saw that in my own experience and wrote about that as a way to talk about what is probably the most significant shift in religion in America.

[57] and that's the rise of the nuns, those who don't affiliate with any religion, and many who claim to be spiritual but not religious.

[58] And I want to tie that back to people's experiences with psychedelics.

[59] There's a lot of people that are in the nuns that don't have any experience with psychedelic.

[60] They just, psychedelics, they just seem to want to have like a deeper meaning to life, you know, and they'll, they'll say, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.

[61] Right.

[62] And a lot of people get really annoyed when people talk like that.

[63] Yeah.

[64] Well, it can be annoying.

[65] And also, you know, I think, as you say, is very much becoming quite common for people to identify in that way.

[66] And that's also about a very strong kind of negative understanding of traditional religion, institutional religion, and so on.

[67] Yeah.

[68] I feel like for a lot of these people that don't have psychedelic experiences that are spiritual, that sort of dismiss religion, I never want to tell people to do psychedelics, but I feel like if they did it, they would relax a little with this idea that they really have an understanding of what happens when you die.

[69] I think they would really let that go.

[70] Most people would.

[71] Right.

[72] You'd go, well, I didn't know.

[73] this was real, and this is around, and this has been around for thousands of years, psychedelics, and then you have these experiences that are so profound, and you're like, okay, maybe I'm just full of shit, and I've been posing this whole time.

[74] Right.

[75] Yeah.

[76] Well, I think, again, that's, it's not just you who have these views.

[77] What we're seeing is a lot of medical research around psychedelics also.

[78] We're pointing to the same thing, a decrease in fear of death.

[79] people's sense of compassion and love, you know, really can blossom.

[80] People's lives are transformed in a lot of these more controlled medical studies, you know, with people who are taking psilocybin or MDMA.

[81] But the main focus of all that, of course, is the therapeutic benefits.

[82] But, you know, as we're saying, it's all about spirituality.

[83] and those therapeutic benefits can't be separated out from a kind of spiritual sense of that experience.

[84] It gives me a little bit of hope that in this time of great strife and struggle, and especially in terms of the way human beings are dealing with each other, you know, that this is a time where people are also rediscovering psychedelics in record numbers.

[85] And they're looking for some sort of a way to make sense of this.

[86] life because, you know, we're obviously in some strange transitional moment in history, where our confidence in systems and government and even education, certainly news and media, is eroding at an unprecedented rate, but it's also at the same time, all drugs are now legal in Oregon.

[87] You know, like these things are happening where people go, you know what, come on, Colorado's like mushrooms.

[88] Go ahead, do mushrooms.

[89] And, you know, God bless Texas, they fucking need all that shit right here.

[90] Georgia, too.

[91] Yeah, all these places, the whole world needs it.

[92] Well, they need the option.

[93] Right.

[94] You know, because the idea that human beings are somehow another preventing other human beings from having non -lethal experiences that have proven to be incredibly transcendent and change people's lives for the better, just en masse.

[95] Like if you see the John Hopkins study.

[96] The people that one psilocybin experience, the majority of them listed is the most profound experience of their life.

[97] Right, right.

[98] And non -addictive.

[99] Yes.

[100] I mean, and non -lethal.

[101] I mean, the LD50 is like what?

[102] You have to eat like two pounds of it or something crazy.

[103] Right, right.

[104] And we know that the stories of addiction and a lot of the dangers are so overblown.

[105] Yeah.

[106] But I think, again, this is just a moment, as you're saying.

[107] That's why I feel I'm on to something.

[108] I think you are too.

[109] With this book that I'm writing, which is, you know, going to make the argument that drugs are going to are really the sort of source of spiritual life in America.

[110] That's the future as well as the past.

[111] I mean, again, you know, the influence of psychoactive substances in the Americas, you know, pre -Columbus was pervasive and just a part of everyday life.

[112] And as you say, we've, for whatever historical reasons and changes that have happened in our society, have lost touch with those resources of spiritual meaning and religious life.

[113] And as you're saying, and I believe it too, we are in a moment when things are really transforming.

[114] And drugs will be, I think, quite important in terms of how we come out on the other.

[115] other side.

[116] I hate the word drugs.

[117] It's just such a blanket word.

[118] It's so unfortunate that, you know, like heroin and opiates and meth is lumped in with psilocybin all under one blanket.

[119] Well, yeah, you're not alone.

[120] I mean, I'm intentional with drugs.

[121] I like to be provocative and try to confuse a lot of the categories that we use and thinking about some of these things that are so central in our lives and so potent, especially in terms of our religious lives.

[122] So yeah, there's entheogens, psychedelics, and, you know, obviously all different kinds of other kinds of, against substances that we use that have an effect.

[123] And for me, that in some cases, in many cases, have religious meanings and connections.

[124] Have you ever experimented with holotropic breathing or any of the non -psychedelic methods of achieving these certain states of consciousness?

[125] No. I mean, no, but I think they're important as well.

[126] Yeah.

[127] People are achieving a mystical state through non -psychedelic means is another avenue in thinking about the importance of those mystical states and how people get there.

[128] But, But also I would say, as you said, it's what are the results?

[129] What kind of transformations are made in people's lives?

[130] And I think what we're seeing is whether it's a psychedelic -induced experience or non -psychedelic, there are lots of similarities.

[131] Yeah, I mean, a lot of people get there through near -death experience.

[132] There's a lot of people, well, this is another thing where the mind is capable of producing psychedelic compound.

[133] And in near -death experiences, although it's very difficult to measure, right, because you'd actually have to open up someone's brain while they're in the middle of a near -death experience, which is probably not the healthiest thing for someone who almost died.

[134] Yeah.

[135] But that's, as far as we know, that's the best way to measure it now.

[136] But these people who experience these near -death moments have these incredible, profound visions.

[137] And many people think that what's happening is some sort of endogenous dump of psychedelic chemicals.

[138] We know the brain is capable of making the most potent one psychedelics in terms of like, you know, what happens and how they do it.

[139] It's still a bit of a mystery they're trying to solve, but.

[140] Yeah.

[141] That connection is fascinating.

[142] And as I mentioned, or you may know, I teach a death and dying course as well.

[143] And so near death experiences are pretty much an important part of that class.

[144] and the kinds of research and findings that are beginning to appear in terms of looking at those connections are fascinating and tie into this question of what is our relationship to death, how do we understand, you know, the reality of death in our lives and, you know, what are our thoughts about the afterlife or if there is one that gets tied into, you know, how people respond to this research, you know, how they are engaged with it and how they're compelled by it.

[145] There's a lot of folks that apparently can reach like some pretty intense states of consciousness through yoga, through different styles of yoga and different styles of breathing.

[146] But there's a really funny quote by Terrence McKenna where the Buddha met this monk who said, I practiced a city of levitation for the last 20 years.

[147] and I've achieved the ability to walk on water.

[148] And the Buddha says, yeah, but the ferry's only a nickel.

[149] Yeah, right.

[150] You can really meditate alone in darkness forever, or you can just take mushrooms.

[151] You get there in an hour.

[152] Right, well, I think for many of us, we take the quicker route.

[153] But again, there are, like with the mongo, or people who meditate, you know, all kinds of important, well, set in setting, thinking about, you know, what is the context in which this is taking place?

[154] And that's critical.

[155] Do you ever get pushback about the connection between psychedelics and religion?

[156] Has anybody ever, like, challenged you on this or debated you on it?

[157] Oh, I mean, I teach.

[158] I mean, my students don't, sometimes they challenge, but no, I mean, I'm not directly and I don't really give a shit, you know.

[159] I mean, I'm at that stage of my career.

[160] I'm convinced about, again, the sort of great research possibilities and thinking across the board about the connection between drugs and religion.

[161] Now, when you're teaching these classes and I'm assuming that for a lot of these kids, this is the first time you're exposing them to these ideas.

[162] Absolutely.

[163] Because, yeah, many of them don't know what the study of religion is.

[164] And, well, we have a pretty nice, diverse mix of students in terms of their background, but most don't have a religion course other than something they've done.

[165] And they were in Catholic school or if they studied, you know, the Bible in some form.

[166] But, no, they've never seen anything like me. That's funny because that's, I mean, that's a heavy responsibility, I would imagine, too, because you're introducing to these kids these ideas that have a really the potential for a very profound impact on the rest of their life.

[167] Yeah, and that's been something I've worried about my entire career.

[168] You know, I actually care quite a bit about how these ideas are transmitted and received.

[169] And as we said, a lot of them are quite.

[170] sensitive the topics that I'm trying to teach.

[171] But it's an essential part, I think, of being a young adult and learning how to not just think for yourself, but to sort of reimagine the world and try to understand some of the forces that are at work in your life and what's going to be coming in terms of your future career.

[172] And I try to make religion relevant, you know, in those terms.

[173] But I also, as I like to say to them, you know, I mean, my, I wouldn't say this before I had tenure.

[174] But, you know, my goal, I tell them this straight out, is to confuse the hell out of them.

[175] You know, what they think is religion is not the only game in town.

[176] And so I'm very upfront about this sort of being an intellectual exercise, you know.

[177] You know, why are students taking my death and dying class?

[178] Well, I don't want to know.

[179] I want it just to be purely academic for them to encounter different understandings of death, different death rituals, different cultures, and shake them up, but not necessarily, you know, kind of turn them away from what they've been taught.

[180] The end result may kind of reinforce their own sort of cultural background and outlook.

[181] but but I'm I'm for myself I very gratified in the work that I do if you could call it work and you know I get a great response from students and and I'm just you know really pleased that I'm able to be a part of that educational process because not to go on that yeah I mean because my classes are often not like their other classes which are you know political science or economics or biology and you know i just want them to be able to reflect and think about some of these deep things that sooner or later you know are going to bite them in the butt yeah i like how you describe it too that it's not the only game in town the way i try to describe it to people is like i'm not not a religious person but i'm not opposed to it and i probably was when i was younger but i think i was just arrogant and i think that the best way to look at religion is it's not the whole thing.

[182] But you shouldn't throw it out.

[183] I think it's a piece.

[184] I think it's a piece of something that's a giant puzzle.

[185] And the idea of throwing it out, I don't think that's the way to do it.

[186] I think those people in the problem obviously is translations.

[187] Translations is a giant issue when you're taking something from ancient Hebrew and you're translating it to Latin and to Greek and Aramaic and all these different languages.

[188] It's like a lot is probably.

[189] probably lost in terms of the way they express.

[190] Like, if you ever read Russian to English?

[191] There's a lot of, like, Russian people I follow on Twitter, and I get a huge kick out, or excuse me, on Instagram, and I get a huge kick out of pressing the translate button.

[192] Oh, yeah.

[193] Like, to try to break down the way they communicate.

[194] Now, when you're dealing with, like, super ancient languages that we don't even use anymore, like ancient Hebrew, like, who knows how accurate and what, if, the intent is clearly expressed through an English translation.

[195] Right.

[196] Probably not.

[197] Well, a lot gets lost to where a lot gets invented.

[198] Also, it's just these ideas have been passed down through thousands and thousands of years and I feel like if you could just not be too literal with it and just listen to what these people were saying, what they were trying to get across, obviously there's some awful shit in the Bible in particular and many religions in terms of condoning slavery, treating women as second class citizens.

[199] There's a lot that's probably just some cultural artifact of the time where they've embedded their own beliefs on how human beings should act with each other and then attributed that to God.

[200] But if you can get past that and just not take it, you know, no pun intended as gospel.

[201] Right.

[202] And just these people were trying to lay down their experiences and the the lessons that they've learned in some sort of a way to live your life book.

[203] Right, right.

[204] And, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.

[205] From my point of view, too much literalism, you know, is really counterproductive, if not destructive, as societies change over time.

[206] So, you know, the act of interpretation is very much obviously a problem.

[207] part of the study of religion and looking at how religions change and transform.

[208] For me, I'll just, I'll say, I'm so not interested in Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Islam.

[209] You know, the conventional containers of what we think are the world's religions are, you know, very problematic, to say the least.

[210] But my interest is more in the sort of intersections of religion and culture where people might not recognize they're being religious even though I would try to make the argument that they are like how so well I mean I've written a book called sacred matters that looks at these different um kind of arenas where where religious life can be found in cultural forms of activity so um like celebrity worship I would call a religious culture that has systems of meaning, different kinds of rituals, possibilities for discovering your true self, a whole kind of value system that can be tied up.

[211] That's interesting.

[212] Celebrity worship as a form of religion.

[213] I've always thought of it as just hijacking the human reward system because if we lived in a tribe of people, a small tribe, and there was one great leader, you know, the battle -scarred leader who's seen it all and can give us the information and he was the one talking we would listen that that would be a person of great importance and we all gather around and listen but when you see Brad Pitt in a movie screen and his face is 30 feet high and this music playing when he talks and a team of writers have carefully constructed all of his words and this perfect sentence and you know it's just like it's so moving and inspiring and then we see you in real life oh my god it's really you but meanwhile he hasn't really done anything other than pretend right you know i mean he's been a pretend well i mean a great entertainer but he's given us some wonderful distractions but it's not that he's led us through battle right it's not that he's he's figured out how to find the food in the water you know this is not what it is but in our our hijacked human reward system we treat him as though he is the great leader yeah or or even someone like Oprah.

[214] I mean, who's more clearly, you know, in that sort of strange middle ground between celebrity and spiritual leader of some kind.

[215] So, you know, obviously it's going to vary depending on what celebrity you're talking about.

[216] But, you know, just in terms of projections, our imagination, where we invest, you know, our energies.

[217] Yeah.

[218] You know, celebrities big.

[219] But again, I'm, I'd like to talk about other things, you know, as well, that whether we're talking about politics or consumer culture or things around medicine, that there are religious qualities that don't have to do with the Bible or with Muhammad or something.

[220] Right.

[221] There's religious qualities in that there's these very rigid ideologies that are treated like religions that you have to follow.

[222] And there's also signs that people will hold up, that they're complying, and they're along with this ideology.

[223] One of them that I talk about a lot is people taking photos with masks on, on Twitter for their profile picture.

[224] Right.

[225] Like, I know what you're doing.

[226] Right.

[227] We all know what you're doing.

[228] Yeah.

[229] Well, I mean, you know, that's, again, messaging and thinking about, you know, what values, you know.

[230] Yeah.

[231] It's bizarre when you see these patterns sort of repeated over and over again.

[232] Right.

[233] Well, and social media, too, will be the future of religion in terms of how it transforms and moves forward is an important kind of site for religious activity and investments and, you know, where we're really going to see the action.

[234] What's happening on Instagram, Twitter, and so on.

[235] Yeah, so when you say, like, religion, that these things fall into sort of religious behaviors or religious ideas, you're not meaning, like, as handed down from a higher power, you're meaning as in people fall in with the same sort of compliant behavior and patterns and...

[236] Not necessarily.

[237] I mean, it's not all just sort of compliance and...

[238] Compliance one aspect.

[239] Right, or conformity or something.

[240] It's just meaning -making.

[241] It's how we try to live our lives in ways that can carry us on when we have.

[242] to confront suffering and death and as well as, you know, issues around health.

[243] And what are the sources that are available to people?

[244] And, you know, as I've said in my class many times, I think popular culture is much more of an important kind of teacher about religious ideas and values than, you know, the local preacher.

[245] How so?

[246] Because people pay more attention to it?

[247] Absolutely.

[248] And because they're more swayed by it, you know, because it has more of an impact.

[249] and resonance.

[250] But it's so, it's a dangerous way to sway things coming from someone who's involved in distributing popular culture, because there's so little thought put into the actual impact of what it is and so much thought putting into just what pops.

[251] Yeah.

[252] What gets people to pay attention.

[253] Right.

[254] Well, and money talks and money is sacred.

[255] You know, what's more, you know, sacred in our society than making some money.

[256] Yeah.

[257] And that's a drive, you know, again, so there too, we can talk about other religious qualities to capitalism.

[258] Well, you know, there have been a number of scholars who have written on that topic and made those connections.

[259] So, again, you know, the action isn't taken place in the church.

[260] It's taken place in, you know, music festivals, Burning Man. Yeah.

[261] You know, this is where, again, not making, I'm not trying to kind of overgeneralize, but I think very much for especially younger people.

[262] but baby boomers as well, you know, where, where does, where do I get my spiritual juices?

[263] You know, there are churches now that are incorporating psilocybin into their rituals.

[264] I think one particular in Oregon, see if you can find that.

[265] There's a church in Oregon that is doing, what am I, Oregon spokesperson today?

[266] Well, it's a big, you know, that's big news and big changes for sure.

[267] Yeah.

[268] We're all going to be watching that.

[269] Well, the idea is that that's what it used to be all about.

[270] You know, if you go back to, it's a very controversial book, but John Marco Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross is all about consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and that he believes that that was really what the Bible was about, was about hiding these stories from the Romans when they were captured.

[271] Yeah, lots of theories.

[272] Yeah.

[273] Even with Judaism too and Moses, you know, there's just all kinds of.

[274] of ways people have tried to make the connection.

[275] Oh, yeah, there is.

[276] Legally offering psilocybin mushroom therapy through ceremony.

[277] Oh.

[278] But look, there's meant that's...

[279] What is the name of this place?

[280] Sacredheartmedicine .org.

[281] Is that the name of the church?

[282] No. Yeah, Oregon State, nonprofit, domestic.

[283] You got to go nonprofit if you want to sell mushrooms and not get locked up.

[284] Well, that's right.

[285] Donated all charity, kids.

[286] Stay out of the pokey.

[287] Well, and there are weed churches too that are starting to crop up.

[288] So, you know, cannabis and religion also beyond, again, just the psychedelics.

[289] Yeah.

[290] And that's just sort of the surface.

[291] My sense is there's a big underground.

[292] And I know there's one here in Austin because I did some research here.

[293] Oh, you did research.

[294] I did my research.

[295] Before the pandemic, I was able to get out and do some research around and talk to people who are, you know, running these kinds of, you know, psychedelic religious communities or, you know, sacred plants, different communities that are cropping up, Washington, D .C., right?

[296] They just also decriminalize psilocybin.

[297] And there, too, is a thriving underground.

[298] So these are, I think we're going to see that underground, these subcultures really begin to surface.

[299] And I think so, too.

[300] And with the war on drugs now basically almost over, how are we going to think about drugs?

[301] How are we going to respond to them?

[302] The war on drugs almost over.

[303] What a crazy war.

[304] And drugs won.

[305] Well, yeah.

[306] I mean, I've been saying this a lot lately, but like my whole life has been lived under the war on drugs.

[307] Yeah.

[308] I mean, born in the 60s, 58.

[309] Yeah, 53.

[310] Yeah.

[311] So it's, I missed out.

[312] It's like all of a sudden, it's changing and like, what is the society going to be like?

[313] To be around late 50s, early 60s, before everything was illegal when people were just freaking out when, you know, after Hoffman had synthesized LSD and when, you know, basically all of the schedule one compounds were free and legal, I mean, free to consume, you got to wonder, the only thing that was illegal was illegal was marijuana.

[314] Yeah, well, right.

[315] kind of hilarious.

[316] Yeah, it boggles the mind.

[317] It's full of hypocrisy.

[318] But yeah, that was a crazy time.

[319] I don't know if you saw that great documentary Wormwood.

[320] No, I didn't.

[321] By Errol Morris.

[322] I've heard of it, though.

[323] Yeah, it's crazy about, again, the sort of 50s and psychedelics and LSD and the CIA and all that.

[324] Yeah.

[325] So that's a very rich part of the history that pre - Timothy Leary that, you know, Rock Hudson was on the psychiatrist's couch taking LSD.

[326] and experimenting with that?

[327] And, you know, what was that doing?

[328] Again, the notion was miracle drug, medicine.

[329] This is going to help people with their depression and, you know, all of that.

[330] And again, what we don't know, although we're beginning to see this more and more in some of this research is what are the religious implications in a person's life after they trip.

[331] Yeah.

[332] There's a great book that I've mentioned many times in this podcast because I had the guest the author on, rather, Tom O 'Neill wrote a book called Chaos, and it's about the Manson family.

[333] And he was writing a book on the Manson family.

[334] Excuse me, he was writing an article 20 years ago on the Manson family.

[335] Just supposed to be a real quick article, writing it.

[336] And then in the middle of his research, writing the book, he started finding all these problems and weird inconsistencies and weird connections.

[337] 20 years later, he finishes this book, and it's all about the CIA and LSD.

[338] and that the Manson family, Charles Manson in particular, was involved with CIA experiments they did with LSD on LSD with prisoners, and that they were most likely dosing him up when he was in jail and then giving him access to LSD and these psychological techniques that he used on the family when he was released.

[339] And then also all this evidence that every time they would arrest him, even though he was, on parole.

[340] They would let him go because the CIA was encouraging his use of LSD, his promoting it to the family, and they're committing crimes.

[341] And the whole idea was to discredit the anti -war movement and to disrupt the civil rights movement.

[342] There was a lot of shit involved with the CIA and LSD, and they were running a, they were running a clinic, a free clinic in Hayd Ashbury for 50 years, until three months after this book was released.

[343] And then mysteriously, our work is done.

[344] Yeah, it's over.

[345] They closed it down.

[346] Right.

[347] But there's amazing connections that Tom O 'Neill makes in this book to Jolly West, who is in the CIA, who was a part of their LSD program, to Jack Ruby.

[348] I've heard some of this.

[349] Oh, my God.

[350] It's amazing.

[351] Tom is great.

[352] And his book is, I can't recommend it enough.

[353] No, I'll check it out.

[354] It's a mindblower.

[355] Yeah.

[356] Because as you get into the book, you're like, what the?

[357] fuck because meticulously researched over 20 years I mean it was this man's life right and they succeeded right yeah oh yeah manson that was the end of it or you know a lot of people to kind of mark that as being sure yeah yeah yeah yeah and they think of LSD as something that makes you go crazy and want to murder people and kill people and they changed the idea of what a hippie was right right because of the psychological techniques that he learned when he was in jail and all the mind control experiments that he learned and the way they did it.

[358] He would pretend to take acid and he would give acid to the family and then he would mind -fucked them and then have them go out and commit murder and tell them that they were freeing people.

[359] Yeah, well.

[360] Wild shit.

[361] No doubt.

[362] I mean, wild times.

[363] And there was a lot of interest for sure among the CIA for what the potential would be for LSD.

[364] Yeah, he also went over the Operation Midnight Climax, which was a part of M .K. Ultra.

[365] Do you know about that?

[366] Operation Midnight Climax, they ran whorehouses.

[367] They ran brothels in San Francisco and I think a couple other cities.

[368] And they would have two -way mirrors, and they would have the prostitutes dose up these Johns with LSD and their drinks.

[369] And they had no idea.

[370] And then they would have sex, and they would watch them and observe them.

[371] And this went on for years.

[372] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[373] Where they're just giving people LSD, like American citizens, yes, their will.

[374] Right, right, right.

[375] This is a law enforcement agency.

[376] I mean, really.

[377] Bizarre.

[378] Well, you know, I mean, what don't we know?

[379] Yeah, exactly.

[380] What don't we know?

[381] Right.

[382] Well, they only found this out sort of accidentally through research into these files that had been left behind and some Freedom of Information Act stuff.

[383] Right, right, right, right.

[384] Well, that's how people are being able to get access to some of that, some of that information.

[385] But the problem is for so long, people have had this idea as LSD equals lose your mind, go crazy, jump off buildings.

[386] Right.

[387] Well, and then that also gets transferred over to cannabis and other drugs as the war on drugs really picks up with Nixon.

[388] And it does help to demonize certain groups of people.

[389] Well, the real sad thing, too, is in putting these things in Schedule 1.

[390] we've really missed out on research that would be very helpful for people that do have adverse reactions.

[391] There's a lot of people with adverse reactions to psilocybin, to cannabis, to LSD, and we don't know why, right?

[392] Particularly people that have schizophrenic breaks while on cannabis.

[393] It's very common.

[394] Not very common, but it might be like, you know, one out of a hundred or something crazy like that.

[395] Right, right, right.

[396] Right.

[397] It's not huge, but it's enough that we really should be concerned, and we don't know what the fuck's going on because they've kept people from doing research.

[398] Right, right.

[399] Well, who knows if that is going to change?

[400] I mean, it's already starting to change quite dramatically.

[401] And with the results that are coming out of some of these experiments and research studies that are going on, I think, you know, it's convincing.

[402] Yeah.

[403] And when you're helping, you know, war veterans with PTSD, you know, I mean, come on.

[404] MDMA seems to be particularly helpful for that, right?

[405] Well, that's right.

[406] And I know they're doing some of those studies at Emory, but in a lot of places.

[407] Again, this is what is being referred to as the mainstreaming of psychedelics.

[408] It's just, you know, they're going to be more and more a part of our resources in terms of where to go.

[409] Yeah, a mild dose of MDMA for the whole world might fix everything.

[410] Yeah, well.

[411] Just a real mild dose.

[412] Where everybody together.

[413] Three, two, one, go.

[414] We'd all just like, I'm sorry.

[415] Oh, man, let's love you, too.

[416] What are we doing here?

[417] It would be amazing.

[418] Yeah.

[419] I've only done it once, but it was incredibly profound.

[420] But the next day, I couldn't read.

[421] You were pretty fogged out or something.

[422] Oh, my God.

[423] I was so dumb.

[424] And then I had to go on stage and it was terrible.

[425] I did stand up the next night, and I just couldn't get it together.

[426] My brain was so worn out.

[427] Right.

[428] I was going to ask you, I think I saw that you're two, was called Sacred Clown.

[429] So, you know, sacred is my, I like to kind of go after that, but I like that title.

[430] And so I was curious how you came up with that.

[431] It's a Lakota term.

[432] Hayoka is a sacred clown.

[433] Okay.

[434] The Lakota's had a term for a very important part of their culture, which was someone who mocks all the things that are deemed sacred and important.

[435] right on and sort of uh finds holes in all of uh these dogmatic ideas yeah yeah yeah um well that's i mean again that's what religion can do or certain kinds of of sake notions of the sacred can really you know help you to see what's really going on in the world i would have called it heyoka but it seems like that would have caused more problems than well first of all people are like what the fuck does that mean and then second of all people are like you're culturally appropriating You have to be careful.

[436] Do you?

[437] Do you really?

[438] I'm not sure you do.

[439] I'm not sure.

[440] I think you better off.

[441] Yeah.

[442] I mean, certainly in terms of avoiding.

[443] Yeah.

[444] But I get you.

[445] Yeah.

[446] So that's what I'm going to call it once I can tour again.

[447] Right.

[448] And it'll be even more important now.

[449] After the pandemic, you really need to make fun of shit.

[450] Absolutely.

[451] Because people are more on edge.

[452] And then also, unfortunately, or fortunately, people have embedded themselves so deeply into social media that they believe that this really bizarre way of communicating which forms these echo chambers and these really non -empathetic ways of expressing your disdain or anger or hate or disagreement with people that this is common and standard.

[453] It's the most non -psychedelic thing.

[454] The way people communicate on Twitter is like a bunch of mental patients throwing shit at each other.

[455] Yeah, I understand.

[456] And you've gotten off.

[457] Of Twitter?

[458] Of social media?

[459] Well, I'm on Twitter, but I don't use it.

[460] Right, right, right, right.

[461] I'll read other people's stuff sometimes just to go, what is going on.

[462] But if someone's trying to get my attention, good luck.

[463] Good luck, right.

[464] I don't read anything about me. Yeah.

[465] But I don't read anything about me in general.

[466] Yeah.

[467] And Instagram is basically just a giant distraction for me. Right.

[468] I just find it fun to stare at things.

[469] A lot of good images and things.

[470] But I agree, you know, I think that the social media is one of the more powerful forces and the changes that we are obscene.

[471] Yeah.

[472] And the political divisions clearly are kind of one of the consequences of how embedded, you know, these platforms have become in our lives.

[473] It's almost like, like it's all been, I mean, it hasn't all been planned out, but it's almost like it has been in order to really do.

[474] deteriorate our confidence and all these structures and systems.

[475] If you thought about what would be the perfect way to deteriorate it?

[476] Well, you have a guy who's clearly unqualified for the job who was famous for just kind of being an asshole on television firing people and being like a bombastic sort of, you know, a braggadocious rich guy with his name on giant buildings and you're fired.

[477] Fuck you and grab him by the pussy.

[478] And then you have that be, that guy be the president.

[479] Yeah.

[480] And then have everybody like, we've got to get him out of here.

[481] He's the problem.

[482] He's the problem.

[483] And then I think they're going to realize once he is out, no, no, no, he's not the problem.

[484] He's just a problem.

[485] Right.

[486] The problem is human beings.

[487] Right.

[488] And the problem is the political system is just deeply embedded with corruption.

[489] And you're going to realize that with this next guy.

[490] Who's supposed to be your savior.

[491] It's not going to work out.

[492] Well, to bring it back to your earlier point, I think we all could use some MDMA.

[493] Yes.

[494] Everybody.

[495] Right.

[496] Everybody should microdose on mushrooms for sure.

[497] Okay.

[498] Well, look where we're going.

[499] I think we're heading in that direction.

[500] I think we are too.

[501] You know, I believe in the young people.

[502] Yeah, I do too.

[503] I do too.

[504] Well, that's why this podcast works, you know, because I think you can't have the systems that are in place that are bullshitting people.

[505] And then they're out on the streets talking to their friends and communicating in a totally different way than they're seeing in the media.

[506] And they're like, this doesn't represent me. Right.

[507] This is not how I think and feel.

[508] And my experiences with life and with particularly if they've had any psychedelic experiences, these aren't represented.

[509] Right.

[510] Why aren't they represented?

[511] Right.

[512] When I know they're so common and I know they're so profound.

[513] I know they've meant so much to me and my friends.

[514] Why don't I see this?

[515] Right.

[516] So then they find things like this on the Internet and they go, okay, this, I'm not crazy.

[517] Right.

[518] There's other people out there.

[519] So, right.

[520] And the other side of that would be the, notion that we really have lost any sense of powerful authority structures, you know, sort of cultural authorities that really can unite people or kind of help people understand the importance of common cause of some kind.

[521] And, you know, that's, again, partly to bring it back to religion has to do with the conflicts around the church.

[522] and Christianity, especially in American politics, that is being diminished.

[523] I like to write about sort of de -Christianization, you know, as the dominant sort of religious structure begins to erode and you begin to see, again, spiritual but not religious and other kinds of challenges that are coming from different communities or different kinds of spiritual experiences to, you know, the authority structures that are in society, you know, that is part of the context of all of this, where a lot of these battles are going on and people don't know where to turn or, you know, wondering, where am I represented in all this?

[524] And it's not coming from religion or the church and political leaders, Republicans, or Democrats.

[525] So it all becomes self -focused, you know, we're all just about self -promotion and self -identity, becomes the main, you know, force in our lives, I think, for too many people.

[526] Yeah, and hence the celebrity and then the chasing celebrity, right?

[527] This becomes the ultimate, you know, level of this stupid game where I'll play.

[528] Right.

[529] Well, again, for me, as someone who studies this, I try not to be judgmental, but I see, again, it's a religious system.

[530] There's a religious culture at work, and it's, you know, it's just as interesting and legitimate in my mind as Christianity.

[531] I don't, I wish there was a structure that was in place that mimic the positive aspects of church that didn't contain the dogmatic religious ideas that a lot of people find problematic.

[532] You know, like I think there's something great about the whole community aspect of church.

[533] You know, my friends that do go to church, I have a lot of friends that are Christian that are really good people.

[534] They're really good people, like, admirable people.

[535] And I think one of the things that's very admirable about their pursuit of Christianity is this community reinforcing aspect of it.

[536] Right.

[537] You know, they get there together with the members of the community.

[538] Everybody's a real, friendly, they know that they're going to sit there and they're going to submit to this experience and they're going to, you know, read the passages and they're going to hear the sermon and they're going to, they're all going to be together.

[539] They're going to dress nice.

[540] They're going to behave well.

[541] And they're going to feel good about the people that they live near and they're surrounded by.

[542] And I think we're missing that.

[543] There's so many people that I'm friends with that live in cities that don't know the person who lives in the apartment next door to them.

[544] They've been there for 10 years.

[545] And they don't know anybody in their building.

[546] a buddy in mind who's telling me he lives in a building with a thousand people he doesn't know any of them that's crazy well that's such a weird way for humans yeah it's a weird way for humans to live and i think people feel particularly lost when they don't have a real sense of community and i could say as a stand -up comedian one of the things that we all have in common um particularly folks that we're working out of the comedy store was that there was a family aspect to it.

[547] There was a real community there.

[548] And we were very supportive of each other and embracing, physically embracing.

[549] Like people see people that are, they go, hey, what's that?

[550] Everybody hugs.

[551] And so for a lot of these comics who are single, who live alone, maybe don't know their neighbors, like that was the place where they could go to that was church.

[552] Yeah.

[553] Right.

[554] That's what I, I mean, I think that's beautiful.

[555] Yeah.

[556] And right on because you could see in that community of comedians something sacred, something religious that's meaningful and that is profound in some ways.

[557] And as we said, the community aspect, but also, you know, helping people in terms of their own understanding, self -understanding.

[558] Yeah.

[559] And that's, people turn to different kinds of communities, you know, and that's part of the modern world, too, that that community feeling, the sort of collective togetherness can can be found in a number of different settings and certainly the church and the congregation is one but rock concerts or you know the comedy clubs grateful dead I mean the grateful dead's whole thing was acid right well was music right and acid we're gonna turn to that next next week oh are you oh yeah we we end the course with psychedelics and creativity oh fish too right yeah that's their deal too right yeah that's their deal too right It's like a lot of people drop acid and listen to that sort of jam music.

[560] Well, my friends who have done, yes, certainly.

[561] Meaningful, yeah.

[562] Yeah.

[563] My friends who have gone to a lot of dead shows say you don't even really know the dead until you listen to them on acid.

[564] Right, right, right.

[565] Like it's music designed for acid.

[566] Yeah, well, that's something you can find in other musical acts as well, that connection.

[567] I mean, that's the thing about dimethyltryptamine in the iceros.

[568] Have you ever listened to South American ecoros?

[569] When you hear those songs on psychedelics, the images dance to those songs.

[570] Like, they work together like a hand in a glove perfectly.

[571] It's amazing.

[572] Yeah, well, I like that connection between music and drugs and religion.

[573] So you can also, you know, look at the peyote church and listen to some of, of the music that comes from those ceremonies.

[574] Yeah.

[575] Very much a central part of the experience and how people absorb, receive it, and make sense of it.

[576] I think we're way too comfortable with music.

[577] We think of it as like no big deal.

[578] Exactly.

[579] Yeah.

[580] And that's what I do in all my classes, I bring in music.

[581] So in the death class, at the beginning of the semester, I tell students, I want you to be listening, you know, just in terms of the music that you listen to, day to day if you can identify the theme of death.

[582] And, of course, when they hear that at first, they think of nuts and way, you know, out of my mind, and they soon realize it's everywhere, right?

[583] And so, I mean, I know that aspect of my classes can really be powerful because, again, we don't, we take music for granted, but it's so central to our lives.

[584] And, again, I think it can have much.

[585] more of an impact than just, oh, isn't this fun to listen to?

[586] Yeah.

[587] It can shape our consciousness and our communities.

[588] And so I do that in the sex, sexuality class.

[589] We're doing it in the drugs class.

[590] And it's great for students to be able to see that as data.

[591] What do you open up with?

[592] What song do you open up with when you...

[593] For which one?

[594] For death.

[595] Blue oyster cult, Fear the Reaper.

[596] Yeah.

[597] They love it, even though they've never heard of it.

[598] They never heard a blue oyster called, these fucking kids.

[599] Yeah, the kids today.

[600] How do you not hear of that song?

[601] I mean, again, their parents may have listened to it.

[602] Sometimes I get that.

[603] But, oh, man, there's just a lot of things that can be played across different genres.

[604] So it's not just rock.

[605] There's a few recordings that are still available of the Lakota's doing the ghost dance.

[606] Yeah.

[607] Do you play that?

[608] I've used that.

[609] American religious history and then there too.

[610] Music is the main thread where we learn about religious communities.

[611] That is one of the saddest songs in the history of the world because that's these people that really are at the end.

[612] I mean, there's very few genocides.

[613] There's, I mean, there's a few, right?

[614] But there's very few where there's almost nothing left of people that existed in thriving numbers, 300 years ago but in Native American communities it's common it's like the most common they're all gone in terms of like what the way they used to live versus now and that ghost dance was them trying to conjure up the spirit of the past and reignite their culture and bring back the old ways and get rid of the white settlers and get rid of the armies and get rid of all the people that had destroyed their way of life and disease and all the things that had happened to them literally over the course of their life from you know there's people that were born in 1850 that were 50 years old at the turn of the 20th century that were like what the fuck happened when they were born they lived on the plains and life was as it had been for hundreds if not thousands of years right and then all sudden it was gone and so this ghost dance was this attempt at reigniting their old culture.

[615] It's it's it's so eerie and sad and it's it's it's so rare to have an actual recording of something yeah that was an attempt to stop genocide right right and from that period too um is is really value you know valuable to have as as uh again that's it's beyond data it's like you know you this is about our memory and as you said, it's very evocative when people listen to it.

[616] And it does become an important remnant of that movement and that experience.

[617] But yeah, the music and those ceremonies are incredible.

[618] Do you play that for your class as well?

[619] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[620] No, and the book I use, there's a whole chapter on the ghost dance.

[621] Oh, all right.

[622] And so, you know, James Mooney and really trying to dig into some of the historical forces that led to this as a potential revitalization form of religious revival.

[623] That ends tragically, you know, as you say, is something that disconnects people from their past in ways that are difficult to maintain and to keep whole.

[624] And people are still suffering from the momentum of that disconnection today.

[625] In 2020, there's massive amounts of strife and huge problems in Native American reservations because of that.

[626] Still today.

[627] Absolutely.

[628] It's crazy.

[629] And still, you know, as has been the case in Native American history, incredible signs of resilience, of innovation, of, you know, new forms of community that have really they're getting back at us with the casinos well that's what they're doing i've heard that before it's not us i should say clearly i'm a child of immigrants well i mean you know this is uh another development that yeah that's you know kind of ironic in some ways hey no it is it is it's bizarre that they're getting wealthy off of uh this weird vice no well another addiction yeah another addiction is gambling a drug uh is it do you think uh yeah you know It's like, I, we had a great class on addiction.

[630] Have you ever been around gambling addicts?

[631] Like real gambling?

[632] No, I mean.

[633] I've been around a bunch of them.

[634] Well, I imagine.

[635] It's a drug.

[636] It's a drug.

[637] That's what I'm wondering.

[638] Oh, my God.

[639] Something's going on in the brain, too, that's going to be, you know, where you're going to be seeing some, some kinds of activities that, you know, will lead people to continue on in the behavior.

[640] Yeah, it's for sure a pattern that people fall into, like my grandmother was addicted to playing the numbers.

[641] Yeah.

[642] I remember she was always losing, and she was always, like, saying, oh, I was supposed to bet this one and I bet that one.

[643] Like, that was the whole deal with my grandmother, Italian grandmother in New Jersey, you know.

[644] And the numbers were, obviously, this mob run weird lottery thing for the neighborhood.

[645] But it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I started playing pool that I was around real hardcore gambling addicts that would bet on raindrops running down a window.

[646] They would bet on anything and everything, and their life revolved on getting, like, on getting bets and winning and losing.

[647] It was their whole, there was their juice for their life.

[648] Right.

[649] It was all gambling.

[650] Right.

[651] The life source or something, but also destructive in its way.

[652] It was overbearing, but it's hard to say it was destructive.

[653] Well, it was definitely destructive in terms of their financial stability.

[654] They were always broke.

[655] But, boy, they were engaged.

[656] And they would call it action.

[657] That's what they would call it.

[658] Like, trying to get some action.

[659] Like, it was all about this thrill of possibly winning and possibly losing.

[660] Right.

[661] And you could say that people are doing that when they're playing the stock market.

[662] They're just doing a nice, slow version of it.

[663] Or if you're gambling on sports, you're certainly participating in it.

[664] Right.

[665] You know?

[666] Right.

[667] And there are a lot of different kinds of addictions that people have.

[668] I mean, talking about religion, I mean, about drugs.

[669] Well, I think religion.

[670] Maybe an addiction too in some ways, but I think so.

[671] Yeah.

[672] And for some people, yeah.

[673] You just, again, life force, life juice is what you got to keep giving yourself if you're going to make it.

[674] But yeah, I mean, I'm, it's curious to think about what, what are the addictions in our society.

[675] Right.

[676] You know, too much shopping or too much sex or drugs are the obvious one.

[677] But we really stretch out that term to mean, you know, and apply to all kinds of different.

[678] Or social media.

[679] Well, I think that's a brand new addiction.

[680] Right.

[681] That's, and that was in that Netflix documentary recently.

[682] Yes, yes, yes.

[683] Tristan Harris was actually here a couple of weeks ago.

[684] Oh, yeah.

[685] We talked about it.

[686] And it's, I mean, it's, I'm hoping that people recognize that that is not much different than all those other ones.

[687] Yeah.

[688] Whether it's gambling or masturbation or whatever it is that you're addicted to, it's the same kind of patterns.

[689] Right.

[690] It's just this one is particularly compelling because it's with you all the time.

[691] Right.

[692] You know, it's like gambling, you have to have someone to gamble with.

[693] Right.

[694] You have to go to the casino or there has to be some way that you could, like, that goddamn phone is with you 24 -7.

[695] No doubt.

[696] Yeah.

[697] Well, it becomes all -consuming, as you say.

[698] Yeah.

[699] And then, yeah, that can lead to all kinds of, you know, ruin.

[700] We're finding a pattern in all this, right?

[701] It's in humans.

[702] Like, humans have weird sort of pitfalls that we slip into.

[703] We have weird, weird behavior patterns that we can fall prey to.

[704] Absolutely.

[705] I mean, I think that's probably part of just the makeup of what it means to be human.

[706] Yeah.

[707] Is we can get sidetracked and get so consumed by something that you lose sight of the rest of reality in some way.

[708] And, yeah, I mean, I see that in the things that I study, for sure.

[709] people obsessed about death or sexuality or drugs or anything or anything at all yeah but but um but how you know we think about gambling and how that connects to sort of larger social issues and psychological kind of mental issues um is important you know to make sure you're not just uh kind of compartmentalizing the behavior yeah as part of a you know there's part of a larger context and pattern that that's that are worth studying, worth looking at.

[710] How much, how much of a benefit is there in explaining to people the way we fall into these patterns as much as there is exploring the patterns themselves?

[711] Like we, we have these weird sort of vulnerabilities that are built into our system because we're, there's benefits to getting obsessed with, certain things because those certain things can lead you to success as a hunter -gatherer, as a fisherman.

[712] It's going to help feed your family if your brain can completely lock on to in this like tenacious way of succeeding at something.

[713] Right.

[714] If you're a hunter -gatherer and, you know, your feet hurt and you're like, well, I give up.

[715] I can't do this.

[716] Obviously hunting's not for me. You're going to starve to death.

[717] Your children are going to cry.

[718] It's going to be horrible.

[719] Right.

[720] So there's this built -in thing, but that could be hijacked by roulette.

[721] Right.

[722] Well, it's just so weird.

[723] That thing of, come on, I got to get this, I got to win, I got to go.

[724] That could be hijacked by games.

[725] It could be hijacked by many things that we find ourselves obsessed with.

[726] Right.

[727] Hijacked or also motivated by other kinds of inner dynamics as well.

[728] I mean, whether you want to talk about Freud or some other primal instincts that are at work that, depending on the individual and the particular social setting they're in you know family background can can lead to these you know all or nothing pursuits but psychedelics sort of illuminates that for you psychedelics are one of the only things that I've ever found that goes hey stupid look at what you're doing look what that is look what the cause of this is and you're like oh yeah like why didn't I notice that why didn't I see that well you don't see it until you the psychedelics sort of turn the light on for you yeah right And when it does, it's often the case that you don't need to go back.

[729] Right.

[730] You know, it's like, or at least I've read that people, you know, it's not addictive, but also, you know, once, twice, you know, you get, you get it.

[731] You certainly don't need to do it every day.

[732] Right.

[733] I mean, if you want to have, like, I think people feel like a little refresher course every year or so.

[734] It's not a bad thing to just sort of get like, oh, yeah, well, yeah.

[735] Oh, that's right.

[736] I almost forgot.

[737] Right.

[738] resetting the system.

[739] The way I've described a really profound psychedelic experience is like pressing Control Alt delete for your brain.

[740] And for people don't know what that means if you only use a Mac.

[741] That's how you reboot a Windows computer when it crashes.

[742] Control, Alt, delete, your computer reboots, and you have a fresh desktop with one folder.

[743] And that folder is just labeled my old bullshit.

[744] And then you have a choice.

[745] The choice is do I open up my old bullshit and start going through, try to figure out life again through my old memories?

[746] or do I try to form a new view and resist my old bullshit, resist opening it up, and that's where it gets tricky.

[747] Sure.

[748] Because your ego will try to convince you, like, listen, man, have one cigarette, it's not bad.

[749] You know, if I can relax, buddy.

[750] Right.

[751] You know, listen, let's go play some bets.

[752] There's nothing wrong with that.

[753] I'm like, hey, come on, man. Let's go do this.

[754] Let's go do that.

[755] And next thing you know, you fall right back into the traps that you were avoiding.

[756] Right.

[757] Well, the ego can be tricky in that way and leading you astray or making you think it's real.

[758] Or making you feel comfortable with these old patterns that you're really familiar with.

[759] Even if those old patterns are failure.

[760] Right.

[761] Like a lot of people like fall off diets, fall off the wagon with drinking.

[762] They do it because they're comfortable with the feeling of failure.

[763] And the uncertainty of the unknown of the future with these new patterns that you're trying to establish is very confusing.

[764] It's very scary.

[765] No doubt.

[766] And it's religious.

[767] Yeah.

[768] Is that how you would describe it?

[769] Yeah.

[770] In a way.

[771] Yeah.

[772] For lack of a better term.

[773] Yeah.

[774] And what it does, you know, and just that whole metaphor is like being born again or something like that.

[775] And the shamanic journey, you know, you're not the same.

[776] Yeah.

[777] Come back.

[778] And you've got something to teach, you know.

[779] And it's not just, I would say, not necessarily just.

[780] for the consumer of the psychedelic or whatever the substance is.

[781] But it's also, you know, about connections, I think, and sharing the knowledge.

[782] Yeah.

[783] Getting it out there.

[784] What are you teaching in your sexuality classes that's different than what people would normally expect?

[785] Well, one thing.

[786] I try to do is be as a cross -cultural as I can be.

[787] So we look at sexuality and Hinduism, in terms of Chinese religions, in terms of African religions.

[788] So I try to really, for these students, expand their minds as much as possible to see the varieties of ways in which people understand their sexuality.

[789] no that's where I start the class how long you've been teaching this for this class yeah and sexuality um that's another one that's uh post tenure uh but it's um probably been about seven or eight years how much this is a really important question like as a professor what is it like pre tenure and post tenure because it seems to be a night and day difference in terms of freedom and right i i overplay that a bit but everyone does it's not you everyone i guess Yeah, it's a strange whole organization, you know, and logic, the higher education.

[790] I'm opposed to tenure.

[791] I think it's bullshit.

[792] Yeah.

[793] But do you think it protects intellectual freedom in any way?

[794] I mean, I think there was a time in which we might make that argument, but, you know, I don't know.

[795] Who else has tenure?

[796] What other professions?

[797] It's a good question.

[798] It's insane.

[799] Yeah.

[800] It's like not the real world.

[801] So you think it's in some ways not good because then the, almost like you, the intellectual version of being born wealthy, like you're, you're, you have no worries.

[802] And so you, you almost become spoiled.

[803] Well, okay.

[804] No, well, yes, absolutely.

[805] I mean, you know, there, there are arguments that after some faculty get tenure, are they shut down or they.

[806] really not doing as much research anymore, and there isn't that drive.

[807] Right.

[808] I mean, it's a whole tiered system, so you move, you get tenure when you move from assistant to associate professor.

[809] And then, you know, what you want to get to is full professor.

[810] Right.

[811] Right.

[812] And again, that's just a different place in the hierarchy.

[813] Yeah.

[814] But again, it's all.

[815] The papers you write, books you publish?

[816] I mean, yeah, in humanities, it's getting a couple books out there.

[817] But, but, yeah, I mean, I can't deny that I felt much freer after I got, after I got tenure to explore topics that I would be more hesitant to explore.

[818] Like which topics in particular?

[819] Drugs.

[820] Drugs.

[821] For sure, drugs.

[822] Yeah.

[823] As, again, as a research area, full, full force, you know, going to go into it.

[824] Again, because there's a legitimate purpose to a scholarly study of the connections between religion and drugs.

[825] Luckily, I'm not the only one who was pursuing this, but I believe there are a lot of interesting connections that haven't been made, especially in contemporary American society.

[826] The other drug that I'm particularly interested in and seems to get a lot of response is I also include pharmaceuticals and prescription psychoactive drugs as a part of the drugs and religion connection.

[827] And so looking at the pharmaceutical industry and pills as sort of religious objects and structures and cultures.

[828] Really?

[829] How so?

[830] Well, um, like anti -anxiety medication or, yeah, I mean, that is just a kind, you know, it's ritualized.

[831] So you put it, you know, you've got to make sure, you know, you take it and take it when you're supposed to take it.

[832] You put faith in this little magic pill that is effective and can, um, bring you to a better place.

[833] Um, it has importance in terms of community and who you are connected with and how the drug allows you to, to have certain.

[834] kinds of community.

[835] So a lot of this is obviously kind of a message.

[836] Do you see the messages in pharmaceutical commercials, which are for me dripping with kind of religious sentiments and sensibilities?

[837] You can be saved.

[838] You know, where are you saved?

[839] Well, you're saved with a pill.

[840] So this is a subject in particular that like pre -tenure would be, you'd have to be walking on eggshells.

[841] Again, drugs more generally, I would be, I would be, I'd be, I I would, yeah, I would not be necessarily going there.

[842] But, you know, I mean, I'm not sure.

[843] Do other professors share your perspective on tenure that's kind of nonsense?

[844] Or bullshit, I should say.

[845] I would say, yeah, there are some, but.

[846] Most, must enjoy it, though.

[847] I think most people would like to keep it and think it serves some function in terms of, as you're saying, sort of legitimacy of academic freedom.

[848] Some people are internally motivated.

[849] Some people are motivated just by whatever drives them, whatever intellectual curiosity, their goals, whatever it is.

[850] It has nothing to do with financial stability or job stability.

[851] But not most.

[852] Yeah.

[853] Most people, if you give them 100 % job security, they're going to get fat.

[854] Yeah.

[855] I'm afraid I would agree.

[856] Absolutely.

[857] It's weird.

[858] And you're right.

[859] Some people are just motivated.

[860] They want to succeed and pursue their interests sort of no matter what.

[861] And there are certainly a number of scholars who are like that.

[862] Sure.

[863] They make their way to the top.

[864] The path is what interests them.

[865] The destination is not real.

[866] Right.

[867] Exactly.

[868] I think that's exactly right.

[869] And, you know, but as I sort of joked earlier, I joke that I, you know, this is called to work and I don't feel I really work.

[870] Right.

[871] I have a great, great job.

[872] I just, I love what I do.

[873] Well, you nailed it, right?

[874] You figured out what actually interests you.

[875] And for some people, that what you do would be work, but not for you.

[876] No. Well, right.

[877] Exactly.

[878] I mean, again, I'm very fortunate, especially being at Emory.

[879] so it's a different kind of professional life that I've been really fortunate and it wasn't planned you know I was a fuck up and as I write about in this new book you know don't think about death which is a memoir on mortality I was directionless and just fucking around at high school and getting high and taking all kinds of drugs how dare you yeah can you believe that in the San Fernando Valley that's weird you were doing in that in the San Fernando Valley?

[880] No one does that there.

[881] No. You must have been a rebel.

[882] Yeah, right.

[883] Talk about conformity, but oh my God.

[884] What part of the valley did you live in?

[885] Van Nuys.

[886] Oh, okay.

[887] Our old studio was in Woodland Hills.

[888] Right.

[889] And one of your guys grew up in the valley, so I got to talk to him.

[890] It's fun.

[891] I used to work out in Van Nuys.

[892] It's where Benny the Jets Jet's Jet Center.

[893] Oh, yeah.

[894] Right, right.

[895] You know where that was?

[896] Funny.

[897] World famous kickbox in John.

[898] Oh, yeah.

[899] One of the first places I came to when I came to California.

[900] Couldn't wait to to the Jets Center.

[901] Because you had heard about it.

[902] Oh my God, it was legendary.

[903] Benny Arkita is like a legendary kickboxer in the early days of kickboxing and he came out of Los Angeles.

[904] Yeah, it's so funny how many people come out of San Fernando Valley or connected.

[905] I mean, but that's, I guess, not that funny.

[906] Well, a lot of people out there.

[907] Yeah.

[908] Well, but in any case, I was, I was on a different path and luckily came around.

[909] Yeah, for sure.

[910] So what led you out of the fog of adolescent craziness and fuck -upperie?

[911] A woman.

[912] Ah, a beautiful story.

[913] Yeah, oh, God.

[914] No, my current wife, yeah.

[915] Liz really helped to bring me into another direction, although, you know, not, I wouldn't say only her.

[916] But, you know, it was just all of a sudden I started really liking to learn.

[917] Really?

[918] You know, I went, I dropped out of college a couple times, and meeting her, settling down, all of a sudden, thinking more critically and more, kind of deeply, and taking classes more seriously.

[919] So I moved from usually, you're sitting in the back of the room to, you know, the front as I became a junior and senior in college.

[920] So it was essentially just a natural course of progression.

[921] You just became naturally more interested in things, naturally more.

[922] curious, naturally more dedicated to learning.

[923] Absolutely.

[924] But for some strange reason, I was back then very interested in death.

[925] So that was the subject as I was doing my undergraduate work, you know.

[926] Why death?

[927] Well, that's the memoir.

[928] I have no idea, but I'll say the memoir starts with me as a young kid, maybe eight or nine.

[929] and waking up in the middle of the night with all this commotion in our house, the small San Fernando Valley house, three bedrooms and one bath.

[930] And then looking down the hallway and seeing what seemed to be like 50 firemen, but there couldn't have been 50 firemen, so I'm sure there were only a few who were rushing into our bathroom where my grandfather was.

[931] And when he was going into the bath, he had a heart attack and died.

[932] and I kind of witnessed that and they took them out of the bathroom and that was that.

[933] But what really, what's really vivid as a memory associated with this was after the death, the family rabbi came to our house and I just remember very vividly being in the backyard with him and he asked me do you know what the meaning of death is?

[934] it's like again eight or nine I have no idea and you know he must have said some things but the thing that really stood out and is the title of the book is him saying don't think about death just think about the living and trying to help your father cope with his grief and you know I mean when people ask you know when did you start how did you get onto the topic of death this early memory seems to stand out And I utterly failed in the rabbi's advice.

[935] And I think at that point really started thinking a lot about death.

[936] Well, I don't know if the rabbi's advice was so good.

[937] Well, I don't think anybody should ever tell you don't think about anything.

[938] Absolutely.

[939] I mean, don't think about blank.

[940] It's the elephant in the room.

[941] Don't think about the elephant.

[942] I just don't think it's ever good advice.

[943] Well, I've come around.

[944] Yeah.

[945] I mean, again, I had a lovely rabbi.

[946] You know, a lovely experience in the temple, even though after my bar mitzvah, I never looked back.

[947] How old were you when your grandfather died?

[948] I was about eight or so.

[949] Yeah.

[950] Well, that's something you would say to an eight -year -old.

[951] But again, it's just not how people, how people's brains were.

[952] Well, and it's not, you know, being fair to the reality where we're all going to have to face.

[953] For sure.

[954] Death is just integrated in a part of life and I think thinking about it.

[955] and trying to figure it out is valuable.

[956] I think ultimately we've been given a bunch of crude tools to deal with an insanely complex issue, this finite life form that we find ourselves inhabiting.

[957] Our consciousness is trapped in this finite thing.

[958] And we've been given these very crude tools for navigating and for coping and for just the way we interact with each other about these very complex subjects.

[959] We've get very simplistic, very just empty phrases that don't provide any real comfort.

[960] Right.

[961] And that, right, and that are, in some sense, traditions.

[962] They're handed down sort of as part of the lore on how you're supposed to deal with death.

[963] Yeah.

[964] But for me, and what was clear as I was studying more and more in terms of what you were saying is that that is what religion is all about.

[965] You know, I think, you know, religion is very much a response to death.

[966] You know, and religious life is sort of required if you're going to be human to deal with death.

[967] now what are the sources that give you the right tools again traditional religion has been the primary resource you know for people and that's fading and now people are have all kinds of ideas about death and what happens after death and again don't necessarily follow the so -called or traditional authorities yeah who want to teach us about death I had Richard Dawkins on the podcast once there was a real weird moment where we were talking about death and he was saying that he thinks that when it's over there's nothing and then he sort of like semi -aggressively said like you don't think that like what do you think I'm like I don't know I'm like I don't know but I know that I've tripped balls and you have it you're the one who's scared to do an acid you've already had strokes and stuff buddy like when are you going to when are you going to dive into the pool.

[968] Right.

[969] And I think he's brilliant.

[970] And I've loved a lot of his takes on religion.

[971] And I think in many ways he's been aggressive because of the pushback of, you know, his perspective as an atheist.

[972] But I think that I think people that have had profound psychedelic experiences are not that, they're not that confident because you didn't know that that could exist until you had it.

[973] And then once you've had it, you're like, well, I don't know what this is all about.

[974] I think anybody who says, I know what this is all about.

[975] When you die, it's blank, it's dark, and that's it.

[976] You shut off and it's over.

[977] I'm like, maybe.

[978] Right.

[979] Or maybe you come with me and I'll take you to a place and we're going to do some stuff and you're going to meet all kinds of gods.

[980] Right.

[981] And it doesn't last that long.

[982] Like, you got a couple hours?

[983] Yeah.

[984] Like, we could change everything for you in a couple hours.

[985] Yeah.

[986] Right.

[987] It'll completely disrupt and challenge all of your assumptions that you also evaporate them.

[988] Yeah.

[989] Well, I think that, you know, that's what gets me in trouble more than anything.

[990] But why is that get you in trouble?

[991] Well, I mean, when we talk about atheism, because I take this approach, again, much more to be provocative, that there are no atheists.

[992] We're all religious.

[993] Again, if you're willing to entertain my very broad understanding of religion and religious life, then I would say, yeah.

[994] Okay, so that's a very broad, because we're not talking about, when you're talking about religion in terms of, like, taking Xanax, you're not talking about a higher power, really.

[995] You're not talking about faith in a grand creator that has had some master plan for every single living thing, and they're all interconnected, and the entire universe is all part of his master project.

[996] That's...

[997] Well, I don't think you need the creator to be religious.

[998] Right.

[999] Or some divine power.

[1000] I mean, again, you need some access to transcendence.

[1001] You need some way of understanding your own self and identity.

[1002] You need to have a system of values that will guide you through your life.

[1003] A way of being.

[1004] You need to have community in some form.

[1005] So, you know, I'm more anthropological than theological is one of theological.

[1006] one way you might put it.

[1007] So if you're talking about religion in Native American cultures, where, you know, and there's no doubt no, and there's no word for religion in any of those languages.

[1008] So when you think about, well, what's religion, pre -Columbian, you know, native cultures?

[1009] Well, it's what they do with the crops.

[1010] You know, it's you know, how they set up their sort of ritual ceremonies.

[1011] It is their relationship to the weather.

[1012] It's all kinds of things where it's not necessarily a higher power but you know it is about seeing that there's more than just materialism.

[1013] Yeah.

[1014] Or something like that.

[1015] Is the problem the word?

[1016] Because the word religion like we have like a very narrow definition for it.

[1017] It fits into our society and our culture like religion.

[1018] Oh yeah, I know what that is.

[1019] That's, that's, you're a Buddhist, you're a Muslim, you're Christian, you're, that's a religion.

[1020] Dude, you got to take my class.

[1021] Oh, I don't have the time.

[1022] I want to zoom, can I zoom you in?

[1023] Can I zoom you in for a guest lecture?

[1024] That would be so cool.

[1025] What am I going to say?

[1026] Well, come in on the psychedelics.

[1027] We do it this week.

[1028] But, but yeah, no, I mean, I mean, again, I just, I think that the word sucks.

[1029] Yeah.

[1030] You know, the religion, as I like to say, is an invention.

[1031] It's a word that we have invented to label a lot of different kinds of behaviors.

[1032] It's a very clunky word in a lot of ways.

[1033] Absolutely.

[1034] It's just like you say, oh, he's religious.

[1035] Like, oh, got it, you know.

[1036] Right.

[1037] All of a sudden you think you know the person.

[1038] There was a guy that we've made fun of a bunch on the show who was a pastor to a lot of famous people.

[1039] He was like the hip, young pastor.

[1040] We just got busted?

[1041] Yeah, he just got busted.

[1042] Banging some chick.

[1043] Yeah.

[1044] And we made fun of him because.

[1045] I'm like, look, this guy's, there's no way this guy's religious.

[1046] This is what I was saying because he was wearing these shorts that showed what I called his dick root.

[1047] Like he wears these shorts that go way low, which you just don't wear your shorts like that unless you want someone to think about your penis.

[1048] That's why you wear your shorts like that.

[1049] Or maybe in the 70s it would be.

[1050] But I mean, there's no reason to.

[1051] Okay.

[1052] Guys who wear their shorts that low, they're being overtly sexual to people.

[1053] that they don't even necessarily know, right?

[1054] You're trying to, and you want everyone to look at your chiseled body, you know, like, this is none of the, there's a reason why monks dress in these like very modest clothes that cover everything.

[1055] They don't even want to think about their body.

[1056] Right.

[1057] And that is a part of the religion of both celebrity and social media.

[1058] Right.

[1059] That this guy has got these traditional Christian ideas.

[1060] fused in with the religion of celebrity, in with the religion of social media.

[1061] And then you're seeing that it doesn't really work because, you know, like, what's the reward for those, those behaviors?

[1062] The reward is he wants to fuck.

[1063] Like, that guy wants people to, that guy wants people to lust after him.

[1064] And it wound up sabotaging him, ultimately.

[1065] Absolutely.

[1066] I think, yeah, it's now a morality story of some kind of moral sale of.

[1067] Like, you know, this is a kind of celebrity fame kind of pursuing that goes wrong.

[1068] It's a trap because if you achieve, like, what do you, what if you're, you're lusting after this attention and this sexual praise and you want people to lust after you.

[1069] You also want them to think of you as being someone who is more enlightened than everyone else, which is why you're willing to stand in front of them and give these emotional, profound sermons in the first place that resonates with all these lost young people.

[1070] Right.

[1071] Well, right.

[1072] And historically, there's a lot of overlap between sort of celebrity and religious preaching.

[1073] People like Billy's Sunday or, you know, others that the religious leader becomes a celebrity.

[1074] And so those lines get.

[1075] blurred and it all becomes entertainment which yeah for celebrities there's a need for that because they feel very lost and disconnected because they've achieved the thing that they've always desired and they still feel lost like everyone looks at certain celebrities and go oh my god you've made it your life must be heaven and they're depressed and all fucked up and we don't have any sympathy for them right there's no one that's going to be sympathetic to justin beber with you know fucking $300 million in the bank and having sex with anybody who wants to.

[1076] Like, fuck you for being depressed, you a little piece of shit.

[1077] You've been famous your whole life.

[1078] But for him, it's probably very confusing because, first of all, particularly like the really young people who became famous while they were young, like I had Miley Cyrus on, who I think is incredibly talented, brilliant, brilliantly talented.

[1079] Her voice is fantastic.

[1080] I mean, so soulful, but she got famous when she was 12.

[1081] I have a 12 -year -old man. I can't even imagine.

[1082] I can't imagine being the boss and filling arenas when you're 12.

[1083] It's madness.

[1084] And no one survives it.

[1085] They don't, I mean, maybe a few have gotten through it and they're sane, but most of them don't.

[1086] And that's where celebrity preachers come in, where someone can harness your celebrity, and it boosts them up, and they can also provide you, maybe even a, maybe even a, maybe even disingenuous, but some sort of a structure that makes you feel like there's more that you, that you can, you can cling to something that's going to make sense of this all, and that something is Jesus, or Muhammad or whatever it is, whatever it is that you cling to, whatever structure that you cling to, Buddha, whatever it is.

[1087] Right.

[1088] And that can be exploited, you know, especially in those situations, I think, because of what you were saying the sort of a gap or absence of, you know, oh God, I got here.

[1089] Yep.

[1090] And, you know, is this all there is?

[1091] Well, I think with the children in particular, because it's not, oh, God, I got there.

[1092] It's I've never been normal.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] Well, that especially.

[1095] It's like having cement, but you've never added water.

[1096] Like, it's never, there's something missing.

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] Well, you didn't grow up.

[1099] Right.

[1100] And many of them don't.

[1101] They don't survive.

[1102] You don't survive.

[1103] And, you know, obviously drugs can be one way to...

[1104] It's the most common way.

[1105] To deal.

[1106] Yeah.

[1107] You know, try to deal.

[1108] Yeah, I'm well aware of a lot of people in the whole Hollywood show business world that grew up famous and almost none of them survived.

[1109] Yeah.

[1110] Yeah.

[1111] Rob Lowe did, though.

[1112] Rob Lowe got famous really young.

[1113] He's super normal.

[1114] He might be like one of the only ones I've ever met and I've hung out with him.

[1115] Right.

[1116] And I've hung out also, more importantly, with him and his son, really normal, really well -adjusted, but he also got clean and sober early on.

[1117] Right, right, right, right.

[1118] Yeah.

[1119] So, yeah, I mean.

[1120] He made it.

[1121] He made it.

[1122] But he's also very few.

[1123] He's also very beautiful.

[1124] Yeah.

[1125] It's probably easy to be Rob Lowe, right?

[1126] And he's got to be what?

[1127] He's 40?

[1128] No, he's older than that.

[1129] He's, I believe he's older than me. I'm 53.

[1130] I believe Rob's 55.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] Well, anyway.

[1133] There you go.

[1134] He's one of the few that got famous, very young, and has, navigated it through with grace but I think the ones that are children that grow up child stars the you know the ones on the Mickey Mouse show and that kind of shit good luck no I mean that's so they find these celebrity preachers this is often what happens they find gurus they find celebrity preachers right right yeah someone who tries to make sense of things who do we look for to put our faith in you know and that's there there too is a pretty common and universal aspect of human life.

[1135] We've got to have something to believe in.

[1136] Those poor gurus, they fall into the trap too because now they can leach off the success of these famous people and become famous themselves.

[1137] Right.

[1138] And maybe they haven't really immunized themselves, inoculated themselves to the power of celebrity.

[1139] Sure.

[1140] It's a very intoxicating drug.

[1141] Like you've got to understand how to avoid it Right.

[1142] And avoid the pitfalls of it.

[1143] It's not easy.

[1144] Yeah.

[1145] Well, again, that's the life that everyone wants.

[1146] I mean, that's part of the pressure, I assume, for a lot of people.

[1147] You know, the American public, the global audience can be transfixed on you.

[1148] And also, you know, want what you have.

[1149] But I think we can really learn from those preachers, those preachers that only go after, like, really like, not, not, not.

[1150] only go after but uh attract celebrities like there's something to that weird sort of parasitic genre of you know of preacher right no i agree i think um it's right for study i'm not sure there's been any kinds of um they should well i'm certainly i mean maybe you should write a book we've seen well i'm sticking with drugs man for now i don't want to go celebrity's a drug intoxication yeah this is yeah sort of what we're after in some form.

[1151] Celebrity, I think there's a drug in, there's several drugs that are mixed together in sort of a concoction.

[1152] There's a drug of celebrity, which, you know, for sure is a drug.

[1153] And then there's also a drug at being the person who has the answers.

[1154] Definitely.

[1155] And there's something that people do when they convince other people that they have the answers that it elevates their mood and their perspective.

[1156] There's like some weird guru drug.

[1157] Yeah.

[1158] So there's the guru drug And then there's a celebrity drug.

[1159] We're identifying a whole nexus of drug.

[1160] And with that guy, it was the sex drug because he's a beautiful man. He's a handsome, tall, ripped, shredded preacher guy.

[1161] Right, right, right.

[1162] There's a lot of drugs going on there.

[1163] Well, and I wonder how extensive it all was.

[1164] Extensive?

[1165] Well, in terms of his, you know, whatever kinds of activities he was engaged in that got him in all this trouble.

[1166] And I think with people like, and this is where I'm going to give a simple.

[1167] perspective, I think he could have benefited from real drugs.

[1168] So I think a person who's involved in those three weird drugs could have been, they've really, really could have benefited from psychedelics.

[1169] Because psychedelics would have let you say, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, do you see what you're doing?

[1170] Because I see what you're doing.

[1171] The psychedelics would have said, I know what you're doing.

[1172] You're pretending.

[1173] You're pretending to be profound.

[1174] You're pretending to be pious.

[1175] You're pretending to be enlightened.

[1176] you're pretending to be above at all, but you're not.

[1177] Yeah.

[1178] Yeah, yeah.

[1179] You're just one of us.

[1180] Right.

[1181] And that can be pretty destabilizing, you know, for someone like that, but also transformative.

[1182] That's where there's real benefit in those destabilizing.

[1183] I think so, too.

[1184] Well, I tell people I like getting paranoid from pot.

[1185] It's one of my favorite parts.

[1186] Because when it's over, I feel good.

[1187] It's like a near -death experience that you always survive.

[1188] It didn't happen.

[1189] It didn't happen.

[1190] You're okay.

[1191] But also, there's a lesson.

[1192] in it that fear comes with a lesson and that that insecurity comes with a lesson and I think part of the lesson is appreciate the moment of life appreciate life appreciate this you know and when you're all fucked up on on pot and you're like oh everything's crazy like when it's over you can like right you relax and you can appreciate things in a different way right well and that's um having that new awareness can be rejuvenating.

[1193] It's also a hypersensitivity, right?

[1194] Yeah, you mean of an appreciation for, you know, how things are or, you know, a sense of security of some kind.

[1195] The paranoia itself is a hyper sensitivity of the reality of your finite existence.

[1196] Back to death.

[1197] Yeah, because that's really, we're living life like it, I mean, this is, right, Here's another religion, right?

[1198] The religion of materialism.

[1199] Yes.

[1200] It's the most ridiculous one.

[1201] And this is like the Bible telling you not to worship false idols.

[1202] Like part of that is this worship of a thing, of an object, of things that you're trying to acquire that are difficult to acquire.

[1203] But then once you get them, you just want to acquire the next one.

[1204] Well, that's the beauty of consumerism.

[1205] There's no object where you're like, if I just get this one purse, I'm going to be all.

[1206] settled in.

[1207] It's going to be, I'm going to feel so good.

[1208] I'm going to be calm and normal.

[1209] Right.

[1210] Nope.

[1211] Need more.

[1212] Yeah.

[1213] Well, yeah, I'm, you know, there too.

[1214] I'm as a scholar, not judgmental, you know, materialism as a religion and it's, you know, it's got some heft and validity in terms of how people orient themselves in the world.

[1215] But again, isn't it sort of hijacking the same sort of human reward systems in that it's difficult to acquire like say if you want a Mercedes coupe but they're hard to get like you got to have a lot of money to get one of them amg Mercedes coops those are beautiful and an engineer and they come from Germany and they sound great and god you have to have a lot of money to get that so you got it's hard you see one drive down the street oh that guy got one where to get it right right how did he get that i want to be like I want to be that guy.

[1216] Look, he's a baller.

[1217] It's going to make my life better.

[1218] He's got a gold watch too.

[1219] Oh, I'm not a gold watch.

[1220] Why are we striving after all these things?

[1221] I mean, that's where you can get philosophical.

[1222] And that's highlighted by social media as well, right?

[1223] Because people will pose in front of their beautiful Mercedes with their gold watch.

[1224] Like, look at me. Right.

[1225] Look at me. Ballin out of control over here.

[1226] That's, yeah, no. Don't you wish you were like me?

[1227] Yeah.

[1228] You know, they have.

[1229] Yeah.

[1230] Projection.

[1231] It's all image.

[1232] And it's really.

[1233] responsible for a lot of depression too exactly yeah no absolutely that's what that's what they're finding you know in terms of how people more engaged and immersed in their social media just lose themselves especially young kids you know they think they're going to be able to find themselves or at least um you know kind of attempt to project a certain image of the self that they would like yeah right and that's you know that's just living by that i think is is is um debilitating in terms of a person's sense of ego confidence who they are you know in real life do you think that there's a religion or not not a religion but um a framework or a structure that maybe someone could develop in order to successfully like classes in the pitfalls of all of these things that we're talking about.

[1234] Materialism, social media, that there's maybe a religion that can be developed to deal with the modern time.

[1235] The modern times pitfalls of the problems and trials and tribulations that we're dealing with today.

[1236] They're not worse than famine.

[1237] I mean, I'm in the middle of, how do you say his name, Noah Yuval Harati?

[1238] How do you say his name?

[1239] You know, the guy who wrote Sapiens?

[1240] Yuval Noah Harari.

[1241] Harari.

[1242] Homo Dias is this book that I'm in the middle of now, and it's stunning.

[1243] He starts the book off with all of these examples of famine, plague and famine, where the vast majority of cultures have experienced one of those two things, plague or famine, or both plague and famine throughout history, and it's talking about how many decades they went on where people starved to death.

[1244] And how many times in history people lost 30 % of the population, 20 % of the population to starvation.

[1245] I mean, it's madness the things that people had to deal with today.

[1246] So in terms of like what we have to, our trials and tribulations, our biology survives far easier to death.

[1247] But maybe our consciousness is just as vulnerable now as it's ever been before, if not more.

[1248] But the problems aren't as big.

[1249] But what we think they are because of the only problems we know.

[1250] Right, right.

[1251] Yeah, and consciousness is just trying to, you know, understand its surrounding in some way.

[1252] And the surroundings are pretty complex.

[1253] You know, it's not just a matter of food for survival or something or a shelter.

[1254] They're weird problems.

[1255] Yeah.

[1256] Yeah, it's, you know, what we think are real problems, but are inconveniences or some difficulties and some, obviously lots of serious problems.

[1257] But, I mean, I think, you know, we don't have the tools, the intellectual, religious, spiritual, mental tools in terms of dealing with all of these so -called problems that surround us.

[1258] You know what?

[1259] Yeah.

[1260] Well, I was just thinking, but, yeah, we're in the middle of this pandemic and whatever, getting close to 300 ,000 dead.

[1261] and that has the feel of some kind of mass death event as well and how that will affect our consciousness as deaths continue will be interesting.

[1262] Have more people died from cigarettes during this pandemic than have died from COVID?

[1263] That I don't know.

[1264] Well, don't like a half million people die every year from cigarettes and aren't we at about eight months in?

[1265] We're about eight months in.

[1266] Yeah, so wouldn't that mean we're probably neck and neck with cigarettes?

[1267] Well, I mean, there are a lot of different causes of death, you know, that you can point to.

[1268] This seems to be, again, of a different kind of order.

[1269] Certainly because it's non -voluntary, right?

[1270] Right.

[1271] It's not of your own decision to smoke something that has been clearly labeled a carcinogen.

[1272] Right.

[1273] And it's mysterious.

[1274] Yeah.

[1275] We're not sure what the virus is or how it's going.

[1276] But again, you know, in terms of going off what you were saying, I'm just sort of wondering how consciousness, how our collective consciousness is going to be, you know, dealing with our ideas about death and sort of questions around social, you know, social responses in the face of this kind of event.

[1277] Yeah, well, this is a, an issue that we haven't overcome before.

[1278] It's a new thing.

[1279] It's novel.

[1280] One of the weird things about people is it doesn't help to tell people.

[1281] people that, well, compared to other times and other generations, we have it easy.

[1282] Because as hard as you have it today, the worst that happens to you today is still the worst that happens to you.

[1283] And that's all that we understand.

[1284] We don't really understand.

[1285] Like I'm telling people about famine, like when I was explaining the Harari book.

[1286] No one, that's not going, no one is going, oh my God, now I get it.

[1287] now I'm going to not think about social media and I'm going to be happy that I can just go to in and out and get a burger.

[1288] They're not going to think that way.

[1289] No one, that's not, that has worked on zero people.

[1290] From me saying that to these people hearing it, no one has had a light bulb go off.

[1291] Like, of course, there's no famine now.

[1292] I feel much better.

[1293] Right.

[1294] Thank you.

[1295] It doesn't work that way.

[1296] It doesn't work.

[1297] People only understand what's the worst thing to happen to them.

[1298] Right.

[1299] That's why spoiled people.

[1300] scream and yell over nothing like oh my god you're so spoiled but we're looking at the wrong way that's just the worst thing that's ever happened to them right you know and and that's the what the only thing they know and yes how do you break people out of that very insular understanding of the difficulties of life in the 21st century yeah you know what it's like when kids are young and they think it's the end of the world like one of my daughters is 10 the other one's 12 the 12 year old ate a couple of pieces of the 10 year old's Halloween candy and oh my God was there chaos in my house yesterday chaos and screaming my 10 year old she doesn't take any bullshit she gets mad and she starts screaming I'm like Jesus Christ it's candy just this is not and it takes a while and I don't think they really ever understand how good they have it it's it's hard for people if that's the worst thing that's happening they think it's the worst thing they think it's like a real bad thing.

[1301] The perspective is so difficult to achieve, like, to achieve, like, and, like, to lift above and look at it from above.

[1302] Yeah, exactly.

[1303] And a parent isn't necessarily going to help.

[1304] Oh, barely.

[1305] I mean, maybe in the long run, that can turn out.

[1306] But, yeah.

[1307] It seems like you could talk to them and then let them blow off steam, but that's...

[1308] No, well, look, that's kids.

[1309] Yeah.

[1310] And as I was saying, you know, when they start transitioning into adulthood, you know, That's when things really come to the four and they start thinking about who they are and how they are.

[1311] Yeah.

[1312] And, you know, the difficulties get greater and weirder.

[1313] And then with time, those seem minuscule.

[1314] Like I remember when I was 18, my girlfriend broke up with me. I thought it was the end of the world.

[1315] I couldn't believe it.

[1316] Oh, my God.

[1317] I've never been so sad.

[1318] So depressed.

[1319] Right.

[1320] You know, and then like a couple years later, I'm like, thank God.

[1321] She's so crazy.

[1322] like what was I thinking like I was in the middle of this terrible relationship and I didn't even understand it right well and it sort of goes back to something you said earlier about you know how we don't know how to deal with our own struggles our difficulties you know we just don't know how to we hit them to the other side right and even then you know it's where do you turn for community or for sort of buffering yeah of support and and that's I think hard for I think especially a lot of younger people.

[1323] People coming of age into adulthood.

[1324] Well, that's why I try to preach the religion of physical struggle.

[1325] Because I think the one thing that's helped me through all sorts of things is to make my physical workouts so much more difficult than anything else I'll have to deal with in my life.

[1326] Okay.

[1327] So it's so hard to do and so fucking exhausting and I don't want to do it.

[1328] And then when it's over, other things are just like, whatever.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] Because I make my own bullshit is basically what I do in order to not get spoiled by life.

[1331] And I think there's a real, there's a real lesson to learn in there, and I've learned it from other people.

[1332] It's not like something I figured out on my own, but I've pieced it together in a way that works for me. And I think that whether it's yoga or even mental things, whether it's playing chess or meditation or something, it's more difficult than regular difficulties.

[1333] Right.

[1334] Right.

[1335] I was going to follow up.

[1336] You said, you know, talked about, you know, the religion of exercising and working out.

[1337] And for me, I would say my religion is learning, you know, and knowledge and just trying, you know, to intellectually kind of absorb as much as I can.

[1338] And that's not like working out.

[1339] But it's more on the mental stuff that you're talking about where it's.

[1340] But it's exhausting.

[1341] Even the darkest of times, you know, it's just, I've got to sort of go back to the books and try to learn as much as I can on whatever topic we're talking about.

[1342] But again, it's you're doing something difficult.

[1343] And I think, like, there was a study they did on chess players, and they were trying to figure out why chess players lose so much weight during these big tournaments, and they realized that they're burning thousands and thousands of calories a day playing chess at a very high level.

[1344] Right.

[1345] And, like, these guys would lose tremendous amount of weight.

[1346] Yeah.

[1347] I wonder how that works.

[1348] Yeah, a crazy number of calories.

[1349] I forget what the exact number was.

[1350] Maybe Jamie could find the study, but they were trying to figure out what was happening to these chess players.

[1351] And then they realized, like, oh, when they're playing at this incredible high -level world championship caliber, their brains are flying.

[1352] Here, 6 ,000 calories.

[1353] Robert Sapolsky, who's brilliant.

[1354] So you're just sitting there.

[1355] But you're not.

[1356] Your brain is firing up at a million fucking RPMs.

[1357] Robert Sapolsky, who I love, who studies stress and primates at Stanford, says a chess player can burn up to 6 ,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament three times what an average person consumes in a day.

[1358] That's amazing.

[1359] That's amazing.

[1360] That's amazing.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] But it makes sense.

[1363] Right?

[1364] When the brain is going.

[1365] Oh, my God.

[1366] When you're thinking.

[1367] Yeah.

[1368] When you're so focused.

[1369] Well, they're playing multiple.

[1370] levels, they're playing several different games, right?

[1371] Because they're not just playing what's in front of them.

[1372] They're playing, if I do this, he does that.

[1373] So, but if I do this, he does this.

[1374] If I do that, this happens, and then that happens, then this happens.

[1375] Or that happens, if that happens, this happens.

[1376] And their, their brain is going, bang!

[1377] And then the body, yeah, I mean, and there are calories in, yeah, and how the body is functioning.

[1378] Well, that's a weird thing about doing podcast is like sometimes at the end of the day, I'm fucking exhausted.

[1379] I'm like, I haven't done anything.

[1380] I've just been sitting talking.

[1381] So goddamn easy.

[1382] Look, what's wrong with me?

[1383] There's coal miners out there, bust their ass, working really hard.

[1384] That's what I always remind myself, too.

[1385] Sitting teaching or reading a book and working.

[1386] But I think these intellectual pursuits, yeah, I think there's more struggle than we think.

[1387] Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to argue.

[1388] It has to be.

[1389] Otherwise, everybody would do it.

[1390] I think there are lots of factors.

[1391] in terms of why people go on and to graduate school and continue in the life of learning.

[1392] Yeah, for sure.

[1393] But it's a weird feeling like that.

[1394] I've joked, but also been serious.

[1395] That's my religion.

[1396] What religion are you?

[1397] Well, learning, you know, that's where I get by religious meaning.

[1398] It feels like teaching sexuality over the last 10 years would have gotten increasingly more mind -field like.

[1399] Definitely.

[1400] Definitely.

[1401] I mean, a lot of topics have, I would say, over the last 10 years.

[1402] Sexuality for sure.

[1403] But I do.

[1404] I mean, I get off getting into the topic and especially in this kind of, with this kind of purpose.

[1405] You know, how can I blow students' minds around the topic?

[1406] And I'm, you know, you have to be fully aware of the various sensitivities that might be out there with students.

[1407] And I'm, I always, well, I mean, it's just, you know, I'm going to be covering some very touchy topics.

[1408] And if you aren't able to deal with that, you shouldn't be in the class.

[1409] Like what seems to be the most touchy?

[1410] Or what's an example of a particularly touchy subject?

[1411] Well, for sure the death class would be suicide.

[1412] You know, that's just one that I have really.

[1413] tiptoed around until recently.

[1414] Tiptoed also?

[1415] Tiptoe, because I don't want to talk about suicide.

[1416] Really?

[1417] Yeah, it's kind of weird, but I've had this aversion to having that really be a topic in my class until recently.

[1418] And that's, I think that had a lot to, you know, to do with a feeling of I'm not fully prepared or trained to deal with students who were really struggling with suicide.

[1419] I would feel that would open that up.

[1420] But I've changed in the last couple years.

[1421] It's like, you know, there are too many suicides.

[1422] The numbers have gone up.

[1423] And, you know, I mean, I think it's an important topic.

[1424] That's one thing that's ramped up in a huge way during this pandemic.

[1425] I just read that.

[1426] Yeah, it's terrifying.

[1427] Yeah, and it's an underreported.

[1428] There's suicide.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] I have a buddy that was talking to a sheriff in L .A. And he was saying that they used to get, you know, one suicide a week.

[1431] And now they're often dealing with five a day.

[1432] that's crazy it's crazy i mean yeah and it's not something that people point to as being a side effect of of the pandemic i mean they maybe give it a cursory right sort of they talk about it very very rarely but it's i think it's a huge issue right right despair and also this feeling that a lot of people have there's no way out of this i think that's getting you know financially yeah losing their businesses losing their homes losing their ability to feed themselves yeah no I mean this is unprecedented for so many people yeah where they find the strength you know to carry on and deal with it is not so easy so how did you prepare differently for a subject that you've had such a difficulty in in describing and and and teaching before it was suicide what do you mean did you depend when you decided to start talking about it how much time did you spend sitting down by yourself thinking okay how do I do this um quite a bit of time I think with that topic and and really trying to um again I want to position myself so I'm not the school counselor and I'm not the rabbi or the preacher and I'm not the parent so you know it's carving out this intellectual space of you know what is the history of suicide what are the you know, kind of motivating factors and forces and patterns of suicide and so on.

[1433] And then I really try to bring in popular culture, you know, songs that express ideas about suicide or thinking about suicides of celebrities.

[1434] So, you know, I try to find a way to put those pieces together and a, or a, again, a way that's intellectually stimulating that doesn't just kind of work on the psychological level.

[1435] If you can think about that as a distinction.

[1436] The psychological level.

[1437] There's so many different reasons.

[1438] Right.

[1439] I mean, as silly as it sounds, I mean, my goal is to sort of depersonalize.

[1440] I try to keep personal experience, and feelings out of the class.

[1441] That doesn't sound silly at all.

[1442] No, it's hard to do, obviously.

[1443] And they do creep in and find expression.

[1444] But still, with these topics, that's the game plan.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] How long have you been doing the suicide discussions?

[1447] Well, it really passed a few years.

[1448] As I've seen these, and as I've heard from students who, I mean, this is really a key reason.

[1449] It's just the number of students who came into my office telling me about someone they knew who committed suicide.

[1450] I mean, it was just, again, like three or four years ago when I would have more and more students just talking about it.

[1451] And again, the death class opens up that space where they can feel they can come in and want to talk about it.

[1452] Were you worried about not doing it justice?

[1453] Were you worried about pushback?

[1454] What was the fear of not discussing this previously?

[1455] That there were students who might be suicidal.

[1456] And then you might somehow or another...

[1457] Wow.

[1458] Well, I mean, again, it may be an overblown fear, but...

[1459] No, it's a responsible fear.

[1460] I mean, I think you're being very responsible thinking that way.

[1461] It's just, you know, for so long, I just knew it was the topic.

[1462] I intentionally kind of go there and, um, But as I said, it's changed just because the dynamics have changed with, I think, young people in suicide.

[1463] Yeah.

[1464] How has that evolved over the few years that you've been teaching it?

[1465] I think I've grown more comfortable with it mostly as an important element of the class.

[1466] And I can see students being willing to engage in the topic, I think, in ways.

[1467] that I imagine would not have been similar earlier.

[1468] I just, I like to go after the taboo topics where I know kind of students are already considering and reflecting on them, even though they don't have an outlet for really intellectual kind of consideration.

[1469] really removing themselves from whatever they personally think about suicide or homosexuality or whatever and allow them to kind of again learn history, learn about different cultures and I try to provoke them as much as I can to get them to really think outside the box but also to sort of dig in to to their own abilities to figure some things out.

[1470] When you're teaching a subject like the first day, when you've been thinking about doing it for so long but not wanting to trigger people, the first day you did it, that had to be a very unique kind of class for you?

[1471] Well, it was.

[1472] I mean, I think just the hesitancy from before and then bringing it up, this class has two to 300 students.

[1473] So it's not like me and 12 people.

[1474] Right.

[1475] You know, it's a very, the part of that setting forces me to kind of think about what, oops, that's me. Okay.

[1476] It forces me to think about delivery, you know, because it's not going to be so interactive.

[1477] And so that, you know, when I really went in to the class with that topic, I felt like I was able to really convey the points I wanted to get across.

[1478] and get them to, which is the most important thing, even in a class that size, is to feel like they could chill and kind of relax and talk about the topic without feeling, you know, pressures from anyone or feeling anything's taboo and can't be said.

[1479] Do you get questions from students during your lectures on this?

[1480] Well, generally, yeah.

[1481] You open it up too?

[1482] Absolutely.

[1483] Absolutely.

[1484] What's a common question that they have when it comes to suicide?

[1485] There aren't a lot of common questions.

[1486] I think, you know, students have asked a variety of different things that often have to do with what does Christianity say about suicide.

[1487] What does, you know, what do the religion say about suicide?

[1488] I guess what I'm getting at is do they turn to you for help?

[1489] No. What can I do?

[1490] What should someone do if someone knows a friend who's suicidal?

[1491] I give them the resources where people who are trained can really help them with those kinds of more practical, intimate concerns.

[1492] I play the role up of a professor who doesn't want to get personal, doesn't want to hear about a personal experience, whether it's about drugs.

[1493] or grieving or, you know, sexual experiences.

[1494] Yeah, the sexual experienced one, you were saying also that you have to be very sensitive to the feelings of the people in your class, your students.

[1495] Like, how do you, like, what are the particularly difficult subjects to explore when it comes to?

[1496] Well, like sexuality and popular culture and music where, you know, all kinds of graphics.

[1497] language is used.

[1498] Like that WAP song?

[1499] Do you teach that?

[1500] No, I haven't gone.

[1501] You should teach that.

[1502] Well, maybe I'm teaching this class in the fall.

[1503] Play that song and teach it.

[1504] Hey, I go, I try to go there.

[1505] But again, some students are like, you know, going to be less insulting or this is terrible.

[1506] Or, you know, I mean, again, it's data.

[1507] It's not a frame, but it's data.

[1508] Yeah.

[1509] You know, if you want to take the study of religion seriously, you're going to be encountering things that make you uncomfortable.

[1510] Yes.

[1511] And if you're going to discuss sexuality, if you're particularly prudish, or you have a very difficult time discussing, the way various people go about it.

[1512] Right.

[1513] Or the varieties of whether we're talking about polygamy or orgies or whatever.

[1514] You know, it's out there and, you know, all kinds of things.

[1515] Well, there's other than religion, that's probably the most charged subject that you could discuss with people today.

[1516] I mean, people have some really steadfast ideas about what's right and what's wrong.

[1517] And when it comes to sexuality, it seems like at least one place where we're gaining or we're showing some evolution or showing progress is with the acceptance of homosexuality.

[1518] Homosexuality seems to be way less taboo now than any other time in my life.

[1519] like people are becoming much more comfortable with it there's a any like universally in in this country at least there's very little resistance to gay marriage very little resistance to gay unions or gay rights that's all changed yeah it's all changed when I was a kid it was I mean you were a kid the same time I was a kid but when we were young I remember I lived in San Francisco from the time I was seven until I was 11.

[1520] Yeah.

[1521] So I was around a lot of gay people and my next door neighbors.

[1522] My aunt used to get naked.

[1523] They would smoke pot and they would play the bongos with this gay couple that lived next door.

[1524] It was hilarious.

[1525] I was just around it.

[1526] It was normal.

[1527] Yeah.

[1528] And then we moved from there to Gainesville, Florida, which is really like the universe throwing me a curveball.

[1529] And I had his friend and his dad was really mad to gay people getting married.

[1530] And he threw the newspaper down on the table and was like, I can't fucking believe this and I was like what is like what is he so upset about I don't understand it he was mad that gay people were going to be allowed to get married yeah and I remember thinking wow what a dummy and I was 11 I was like this grown man 30 years old freaking out about some stupid shit right like what I didn't understand it didn't make sense to me like it was normal to me but I think those people are really rare now people like him they're they're much more rare than they were when I was 11 absolutely yeah no there's been a big huge sea change in attitudes.

[1531] Yeah.

[1532] Um, and that's, you know, led to a lot of conflict and sure aspects of the culture wars.

[1533] But still, I would agree, you know, absolutely.

[1534] Most people have come around on that.

[1535] Do you discuss that kind of stuff like this, the, the, the evolution of our ideas about sexuality?

[1536] Sure.

[1537] Yeah.

[1538] Definitely.

[1539] I mean, I try to as a part of it.

[1540] But for me, sexuality is, you know, it's not just sex.

[1541] It's gender and religion.

[1542] Religion.

[1543] in reproduction and religion.

[1544] So it's a broad gender.

[1545] It's a broad category.

[1546] Absolutely.

[1547] But in America, especially when you start, when you move outside of, you know, the traditional man and woman having sex in the missionary position.

[1548] You go to death.

[1549] You go to hell.

[1550] You go to hell.

[1551] So as you move outside of that.

[1552] You're going to hell.

[1553] It's going straight to hell.

[1554] That's right.

[1555] So, you know, that is the dominant ideal as, you know, as, you know, as, you know, as, gone by the wayside.

[1556] I mean, it is certainly the ideal for many, but sexuality in America today is fast and furious.

[1557] Right, but if you think that that's the ideal, then you're a freak all of a sudden.

[1558] Right.

[1559] Well, I mean, surely, that's part of, yeah, the shifts in attitudes.

[1560] That's what's interesting to me. Who's the authority to tell us what is right or wrong?

[1561] For sure.

[1562] And then also the hypocrites.

[1563] Like, there's so many people that we have looked at.

[1564] as these religious leaders, and it turns out, oh, these guys are freaks.

[1565] They're perverted.

[1566] Oh, yeah.

[1567] And where, I've read, I don't know where the study is, but, you know, viewing pornography is kind of, you know, the highest in the Bible bill.

[1568] So, again, it's like.

[1569] Makes sense.

[1570] Well, what's, you know, again, that discrepancy is like, well, what's really sacred to you?

[1571] Right.

[1572] You know, Jesus on Sunday or, you know, what you're doing?

[1573] Or gang bang.

[1574] Yeah.

[1575] Right.

[1576] I mean, whatever porn job you're going to.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] So, you know, people like to project and say who they are and they have other interests.

[1579] Yes, they like to project.

[1580] Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

[1581] They do like to pretend.

[1582] Make believe.

[1583] Do you discuss the type of pornography that people view and how that has sort of changed?

[1584] Well, I mean, I write about pornography in that book, Sacred Matters.

[1585] I have a chapter on sexuality and I write about deep throat and you just swallow Yeah Sound effects I'm not really going to say that Deep throat Oh yeah Linda Loveless Yeah Harry Reams and their story is again a morality tale We want to talk about sexuality We're going to talk about religion Didn't Harry Reams become a politician afterwards Well as I remember It became a realtor he might have reams related or something.

[1586] And became very successful as a realtor, right?

[1587] Yeah, in Los Angeles, right?

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] Well, you know, so I mean, I obviously want to include, you have to include that.

[1590] You know, non -reproductive forms of pleasure and sexual activity is not disconnected from religious pursuits.

[1591] Deep Throat was a movie that played in movie theaters for people that don't know.

[1592] People went to see that movie and they waited in a line like couples would go, dressed normal, not wearing raincoats, like regular people.

[1593] In fact, Johnny Carson was in line waiting to see Deep Throat, and they interviewed him and talked to him about it because it was a movie that was a movie.

[1594] It wasn't just a stag film.

[1595] And the whole idea was that back then, pornography.

[1596] in terms of like, that's what they would call them, stag films.

[1597] They'd be these films they would play because people didn't have access to a movie projector for the most part.

[1598] It was a very rare thing to have in your home.

[1599] So for people like to play those things, they'd have to get together with a bunch of guys at a party, like when a guy was about to get married, look at this, this is what you're going to do, we're going to watch people fuck.

[1600] And those films, if you've ever seen them, they're really weird.

[1601] Very, very, very.

[1602] The films from the beginning of the 20th century?

[1603] Yeah.

[1604] Very strange.

[1605] No, the history of pornography is fascinating.

[1606] And there's, I remember watching this thing on Deep Throat, and then I just remember very clearly Johnny Carson getting interviewed talking about.

[1607] I think I can remember that.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] Do you know what I'm talking about, Jamie?

[1610] I typed in Johnny Carson and I found an article that says Ed McMahon, his sidekick, was such a fan of the movie.

[1611] He showed up with six friends in a case of beer.

[1612] That's not fake news.

[1613] That's a real news, I am sure.

[1614] I'm sure that's true.

[1615] Frank Sinatra was one of the early audience members.

[1616] members, along with Vice President Spiro Agnew, Warren Beatty, Truman Capote, Shirley McLean, Nora Efron, I don't know who that is, Bob Woodward, wow, Woodward and Bernstein, and Sammy Davis Jr., who grew so enamored of Linda Lovelace that within the year he and his wife would be having group sex with her and her husband.

[1617] Holy shit, Sammy.

[1618] Sammy got crazy.

[1619] Wow.

[1620] It was the longest 62 minutes that millions of people would ever sit through in retrospect, the most inspired decision Damiano, I guess the person who made it, made was to rename the movie Deep Throat.

[1621] Nothing else could possibly explain its success.

[1622] Wow, what was the original name for it?

[1623] Love Laves was interviewed by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

[1624] Wow.

[1625] Further stoking the interest of socialites, students, swingers, and the curious.

[1626] See, that's what's interesting.

[1627] It's like, crazy.

[1628] People didn't think of pornography as being something that was awful that you should hide.

[1629] It seems to me that it's discussed far less now that it's much more accessible.

[1630] It's like people almost don't want to talk about it in terms of like average day -to -day conversation.

[1631] Yeah.

[1632] Because it's so pervade is everywhere.

[1633] Yeah.

[1634] Well, it's not just pervasive.

[1635] It's also, it's too accessible.

[1636] Yes.

[1637] You don't, it's still, you could just.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] It's not taboo like it once was.

[1640] Right.

[1641] It's weird.

[1642] It's, it's, and I've done research.

[1643] And one of the things I've noticed is there's a lot of stepmother porn lately.

[1644] That's basically all you get.

[1645] What is that about?

[1646] I don't know, man. But if you go to you porn, a lot of it's stepmom stuff.

[1647] It's like my hot stepmom, you know, dad's out of town, that kind of stuff.

[1648] Weird.

[1649] Well, I will say, I hope my colleague doesn't mind me calling her out.

[1650] Don't say her name.

[1651] Okay, University of California, Santa Barbara.

[1652] In the film studies department, they have a class.

[1653] on pornography, or they did.

[1654] About stepmoms?

[1655] Well, not that.

[1656] I don't know if that topic made it in, but as a genre of film, you know, that you can teach about it.

[1657] Yeah.

[1658] Well, it's, listen, it should be a genre of study because it is a part of human life.

[1659] It's a weird part of human life.

[1660] That is not very disgust.

[1661] Right.

[1662] And why are we so?

[1663] Yeah.

[1664] Super nervous.

[1665] Well, and people love it.

[1666] I mean, billions of dollars and, you know.

[1667] Not really anymore.

[1668] I don't think they make much money anymore.

[1669] I don't know.

[1670] It's weird.

[1671] I don't know the economics.

[1672] But in terms of the impact, though, or in terms of the prevalence of it, it's incredibly prevalent.

[1673] I think there's something bananas, like 20 plus percent of all internet traffic is pornography, which is insanity.

[1674] It's an insanely high number, yet the amount it's discussed in polite company is like less than 1%.

[1675] Right.

[1676] It's very, very rarely discussed, if not dismissed as a joke.

[1677] Right.

[1678] And there's something, that in itself speaks volumes.

[1679] That's the weird part about it.

[1680] Here it goes.

[1681] 35 % of all internet downloads are related to pornography.

[1682] How can, I mean, that is amazing.

[1683] Is that the highest percentage of any topic, I wonder?

[1684] I don't know.

[1685] Must be.

[1686] I would, I'm sure.

[1687] Must be.

[1688] Listen, this is what's hilarious.

[1689] About 200 ,000 Americans are classified as porn.

[1690] addicts.

[1691] There's probably another hundred million that are full of shit.

[1692] That's right.

[1693] 200 ,000.

[1694] Get the fuck out of here.

[1695] That's such a low number.

[1696] This is a very low number also.

[1697] 37 pornographic videos are created in the...

[1698] Every day.

[1699] Every minute or hour probably.

[1700] They've never been to the San Fernando Valley where you grew up.

[1701] That was the center of it all.

[1702] Well, they passed some sort of wacky rule a few years back where they had to wear condoms in the porn.

[1703] In California.

[1704] Yeah.

[1705] And then people are like, well, we're moving out of California.

[1706] And they started doing it other places.

[1707] Right.

[1708] Nobody wants to watch people being safe.

[1709] Fuck out of here being safe.

[1710] I want you to have sex with your stepmom.

[1711] I don't want you to do anything safe.

[1712] I want the dad to be pulling into the driveway when you climax.

[1713] That's what everybody wants.

[1714] They want naughtiness.

[1715] Yes.

[1716] But that's, it's weird that when it's so prevalent, it's also so rarely discussed and just as a topic of a class like that would be a very interesting thing to discuss just in terms of human nature and psychology sure and history yeah I'm thinking about that yeah yeah the other I'm really going to be talking about this the other understudy topic that's starting to get more study is the orgasm right and thinking about mystical experiences or certain kinds of ego -dissolving aspects of human life.

[1717] It's in there.

[1718] And I teach about that as well, you know, in both the death class and the sexuality class, right?

[1719] Do you discuss tantric?

[1720] Well, some.

[1721] My training is an American religious history.

[1722] But in these courses, I do try to very superficially, you know, talk about different religious cultures, and certainly tantric.

[1723] Yeah, because that's a weird one when it comes to the orgasm, right?

[1724] Because they're like trying to internally orgasm.

[1725] Yes.

[1726] Is that real?

[1727] Well, I don't know.

[1728] I've like no idea.

[1729] Seems like some guru shit to me. Yeah, well, and even in American history, there have been interesting attempts at different kinds of sexual cultures, you know, the Oneida community.

[1730] Oh, yeah.

[1731] John Humphrey Noyes, you know, wanted, didn't want anyone to orgasm, you know.

[1732] That was, you want to hold it.

[1733] it in, but you have sex with whoever you want it, no marriage.

[1734] That never lasts.

[1735] Those guys all fall apart.

[1736] Like, how about this?

[1737] The community did fall apart.

[1738] This sex cult, the next, how do you say it?

[1739] Nexium.

[1740] Yes.

[1741] I have not been following it.

[1742] I haven't either.

[1743] I haven't either, but I keep making a mental note to eventually.

[1744] There's a documentary apparently.

[1745] It's a documentary series or something on it, a Hulu thing or something.

[1746] But it's apparently pretty fascinating.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] Because it involved like legitimate celebrities.

[1749] right like people on television shows and stuff getting branded or something you're right it's like a documentary show on stars stars four or five episodes yeah um that's a weird one right right well I mean most sex cults are or that that kind of um um focus on sex as a part of religious trust and religious what is the law against that like how are they arresting people like what did the people do that they're do you know jamie like people are going to jail for this the sex cult right uh i don't i mean i've only the thing that sticks out of my head is i know people are getting branded right you know that was like the next the next thing there's also another show called the vow that has some it's i think it's the same topic that's on hbo i don't know if that's direct documentary or like uh i'd like to find out what they're drawn to jail for i'll look i'll look because people are going to jail yeah well that's right right right right one of what they did where they said all right this is this is where you cross the line right you can't just did you see wild wild country that is that the documentary that's the documentary the people that lived in Oregon going back to Oregon not right fucking crazy Oregon sex trafficking we're all going to Oregon conspiracy conspiracy to commit forced labor forced labor who knows what you know it sounds like they didn't have good enough release forms yeah well I'll see about putting it on the syllabus.

[1750] Yeah, I'm interested.

[1751] Some things, yeah, you don't need to go.

[1752] But Wild Wild Country.

[1753] Almost felt, yeah.

[1754] Monkey ass.

[1755] Got it.

[1756] This bottle does not want to stay up.

[1757] Wild Wild Wild Country is the documentary on O'Sho.

[1758] Yeah.

[1759] That, the guru, the Indian guy that had the cult up in, with that girl, Shiloh, poisoned a bunch of people.

[1760] Right.

[1761] That is an amazing Netflix documentary.

[1762] Yeah.

[1763] Yeah, I've seen some of it.

[1764] Oh, my God.

[1765] Yeah, but it's one that I always hear about.

[1766] And, you know, again, it's really well done, but also revealing what is now we're seeing a fairly common story.

[1767] It's so funny because my friend Todd saw the first episode, and he's like, it looks like so much fun.

[1768] Like at the beginning, it looks so great.

[1769] And he's right.

[1770] In the beginning, it did look so great.

[1771] But it combined both these things we're talking about, combined sexuality and religion.

[1772] And it's like this, their religion was of love and of peacefulness and sex and harmony.

[1773] And it all went terribly wrong what they always do.

[1774] Like they often do, right.

[1775] Always.

[1776] What cult has nailed it.

[1777] What cult has never gone wrong, figured out all the traps and pitfalls and made it to the finish line.

[1778] None.

[1779] Zero.

[1780] Well, well, that's, I think that I would agree with that statement as a general.

[1781] statement.

[1782] Yeah.

[1783] It seems weird though that they can't, someone can't do it right.

[1784] Yeah.

[1785] Well, I think that's maybe built into religion, you know, it's just no way to perfect it.

[1786] Well, at least religion has figured out a way to achieve tax -exempt status and a long, illustrious history of success.

[1787] Right.

[1788] Yeah.

[1789] Well, that's the beauty of the country.

[1790] Yeah.

[1791] Right.

[1792] Freedom of religion.

[1793] Supposedly.

[1794] Yeah.

[1795] Yeah.

[1796] Yeah.

[1797] Yeah.

[1798] But, once you get to a point where you're doing the wild, wild country type stuff.

[1799] Right.

[1800] It's not, um, yeah.

[1801] It's no longer, yeah.

[1802] So, do you discuss those kind of things in your classes, sex cults?

[1803] Some, you know, uh, that are a part of, um, the longer history.

[1804] So it was Mormonism, um, you know, as an early cult, you know, kind of marginalized community had a very different understanding of, uh, sexuality and marriage.

[1805] Well, it was started by a wackyism, um, you know, was started by a wacky, 14 -year -old was completely full of shit.

[1806] I won't exactly characterize them that way.

[1807] Well, I'll do it that way.

[1808] He was a little con man. Anyway, so, yeah, you know, I try to cover a lot of bases on the varieties of ways that sexuality gets, you know, bound up in religious life.

[1809] Yeah, Mormonism is particularly unusual, right, and that their interest in polygamy led them to leave the country.

[1810] Yeah, at the time.

[1811] They were heading west.

[1812] Well, they're still there.

[1813] No, in Mexico.

[1814] Oh, that, yeah.

[1815] Yeah.

[1816] They're continuing that, yes.

[1817] Well, that's, you know, that whole Mitt Romney's family story?

[1818] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1819] They're all down there still.

[1820] That, yeah.

[1821] Mitt Romney's dad was actually born in Mexico.

[1822] That's why he couldn't be president of the United States.

[1823] Mitt Romney's dad could not be president of the United States because he was born in Mexico.

[1824] Right, right, right.

[1825] Yeah, they lived in this compound.

[1826] This is the compound, the same kind of compound that was originally, in the news because they had been attacked by the cartel and women and children had been murdered.

[1827] Okay, yes.

[1828] Those were, I mean, they're not really expats because they've been there for so many generations that they're now Mexican citizens, but they're living in these compounds, these fortified compounds in Mexico.

[1829] And they originally went there so that they could practice polygamy.

[1830] When it was outlawed here, of course.

[1831] Well, not only that, when there was no difference really between living in the United States and Mexico.

[1832] Yeah.

[1833] you know, 1812, the difference between the United States and Mexico was not that big a deal.

[1834] Well, right.

[1835] Just take your horse, you go over there.

[1836] Right.

[1837] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1838] And you bring your eight wives.

[1839] Right.

[1840] Yeah, exactly.

[1841] Right.

[1842] There's a way out and a way in.

[1843] We'll talk about a subject that's filled with pitfalls.

[1844] Like that subject is probably particularly different.

[1845] The subject of polygamy.

[1846] Yes.

[1847] Is a particularly touchy one.

[1848] And almost always is a lot of wives.

[1849] Right.

[1850] Very rarely is one woman who gets the pleasure of ten husbands.

[1851] Right.

[1852] Right.

[1853] There are some, you know, I think examples of that.

[1854] But, yeah.

[1855] Are there?

[1856] Well, I mean, polygamy is for, you know, husbands with multiple wives.

[1857] Right.

[1858] Have you ever heard of the other way?

[1859] Well, no, I mean, not in polygamy, but I believe there's another term.

[1860] I bet there's a few gals that can pull that off.

[1861] Well, Jennifer Lopez.

[1862] Yeah, right.

[1863] I imagine.

[1864] But, yeah, I mean, so.

[1865] It's part of the story, and it is a little bit.

[1866] There it is.

[1867] Polyandry, the form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time.

[1868] For example, fraternal polyandri is practiced among the Tibetans and Nepal, parts of China and parts of Northern India, which two or more brothers are married to the same wife, with the wife having equal sexual access to them.

[1869] Interesting.

[1870] Five places where women have more than one husband.

[1871] All right, there you go.

[1872] So, I mean, yeah.

[1873] Mm -hmm.

[1874] Look at that photo, though.

[1875] Go to that photo.

[1876] Look, the woman's looking straight ahead, like, mm -hmm.

[1877] And both guys looking off the side, like, shit.

[1878] Right.

[1879] I can't believe they're taking my picture here.

[1880] But she's got her hand on both of their knees.

[1881] She's like, I own these two motherfuckers.

[1882] But they're all looking off in the distance.

[1883] Like, oh, okay.

[1884] So there's one lady with four husbands.

[1885] Hey, hey.

[1886] Look at that.

[1887] That lady's bawling out of control.

[1888] Where is she?

[1889] She's dead.

[1890] That's an old -ass picture.

[1891] That's a picture from the 1800s.

[1892] Look at that picture.

[1893] That was like one of them those standstill, you know.

[1894] And who was she?

[1895] One of those pictures.

[1896] Look at that.

[1897] Whoa.

[1898] What is that?

[1899] That's like from some Norman Rockwell shit.

[1900] Yes, their ladies.

[1901] Okay.

[1902] No pun intended.

[1903] Google goes deep.

[1904] Uh -oh.

[1905] Anyway.

[1906] Listen, man, I really enjoyed talking to you.

[1907] So a fascinating series of subjects we brought up here.

[1908] Loved it.

[1909] So you're in the middle.

[1910] of writing a book right now.

[1911] What is the book?

[1912] It's on religion and drugs.

[1913] Do you have a title for it?

[1914] Not yet.

[1915] No. I'm playing around with some things.

[1916] But if people want to read your past work, what can they read?

[1917] Well, they can read any of the books.

[1918] They can go to my website, Gary Laderman .com.

[1919] You can see the books.

[1920] One I mentioned a couple times called Sacred Matters.

[1921] And then this new book is on death.

[1922] And it's called, as I said, Don't Think About Death, a memoir on More You can look me up.

[1923] There'll be other things that I've written that are on the web.

[1924] Do you have social media?

[1925] Yeah.

[1926] What do you have?

[1927] Well, I play around on Facebook and Twitter.

[1928] Do you have an Instagram?

[1929] Instagram, yeah.

[1930] Okay.

[1931] What is it?

[1932] At Gary Laderman.

[1933] And same as Twitter?

[1934] Gary Laderman on Twitter as well?

[1935] Okay.

[1936] All right.

[1937] On Facebook and yeah, I'm around.

[1938] Well, thank you, Gary.

[1939] I really enjoy talking to you, man. Thank you so much, Joe.

[1940] It was really fun.

[1941] Yeah, I had a great time.

[1942] I appreciate it.

[1943] Beautiful.

[1944] All right.

[1945] Bye, everybody.

[1946] Bye.