Transcript for #312 – Duncan Trussell: Comedy, Sentient Robots, Suffering, Love & Burning Man

Oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely. I mean, also that thing you're talking about. He kind of leaves out maybe on purpose because the thought experience starts falling apart a little bit. Yeah, the amnesia between each loop. So, you know, the whole thing gets wiped. Now, if the amnesia wasn't there and yet somehow you were witnessing the non-autonomy implicit in what he's talking about. So you have to kind of watch yourself go through this rotten loop. Yeah, that's a description.

That's it. Yeah, this is the, in the in Hades when you die, you There's a river, I think it's called Leith. You ever heard of this, LATH, you drink from it and you don't remember your past lives. And then when you're reborn, it's fresh and you don't have to, I mean, just think of like the amount of psychological help you would need to get over all the bullshit that happened in prior lives. Can you imagine if you're still resentful of something someone did do in the 14th century? But it would compound.

Now, also in his experiment, if I was going to, I love the experiment from the perspective of like, just where technology is now in simulation theory and stuff like that, but in that, in that thought experiment, if this rotten demon immediately killed you, then within that, it's a little more horrifying because Even in the first of all, you're trusting a fucking demon. Why are you talking to a demon?

Yeah, that's because that is going to be even before I get into like the metaphysics and like the implications and where is this life stored? Where's the loop stored? I mean, are we talking about some kind of unchanging data set or something? For that, you're like, why is there a fucking talking demon in my room trying to freak me out? You're going to want to autopsy the demon. Can you catch it? Does this apply to you demon? And again, obviously it's a fucking thought experiment. It needs you to be annoyed by me. But I think like you would still be able to entertain the joy. You'd have the joy of not knowing what's around the corner. You know, still, it's not like you know what's coming, just because the demon said it's some kind of loop. In other words, the idea being damned to your past decisions, it doesn't even work because you can't remember what decisions you're about to make. So from from that perspective also, I think I'd be happy about it, or I would just think, oh, cool. I mean, it's a good story. I'm going to tell people about this.

Sure. I mean, if it's the truth, if it's the truth and that's whether it's love or not, it's still good, fundamentally.

That's right. This is in Buddhism, you know, the idea that like I struggle with is that there's a possibility of not reincarnating, of not coming back. That's the idea. Like this is the suffering here, the suffering is caused by attachment. And so if you like revise the idea of reincarnation or the Nietzsche's loop and look at it from could this be possible or how would this be possible technologically? Then to me, it makes a lot of sense. Like, I've been thinking a lot about this very thing and the Nietzsche's idea connecting to it, I had this like, sounds so dumb, but I was at the dentist getting nitrous oxide, high as a fucking kite man, and I had this idea I was thinking about data. I was thinking like, man, probably if I did bet, there's some energetic form that we're not aware of that ferned super advanced technology would be as detectable as like starlight, but something that we just don't even know what it is. quantum turbulence, who the fuck knows, fill in the blank, whatever that X may be, but assuming that exists, that somehow data, even the most subtle things, the tiniest movements, whatever it may be, the emanations of your neurological process energetically, whatever it may be is radiating out in the space time, then What if like the James Webb version of this for some advanced civilization is not that they're like looking at the Nebula or whatever, but they're actually able to peer into the past and via some bizarre technology recreate whatever life simulate whatever life was happening there just by decoding that quantum energy whatever it is. I'm only saying quantum because it's what dumb people say when they don't know me just saying quantum I don't know, but you're decoding that. So meaning, you know, in simulation theory, one of the big questions that pops up is, why and are we in one? And the Elon has talked about, well, it's probably more of a probability than we're in one than we're not. In which case, what you're talking about is actually happening that that loop you're talking about. It's, we've decided to be here. We, this, of all the things, We decided this one. Let's do that one again. I want to do that one. Let's try. Let's do that. That's I love thinking about this because I got I love my family. Yeah, and it makes sense to me that if I'm going to replace some wife or another, it's definitely going to be this one with my kids, my wife with all the bullshit that's gone along with it. I'm still going to want to come back. So I'm Buddhism. That's attachment.

Well, I think we're dealing with all NPCs at this point. I mean, depending on how you want to, like, vary, I would say very advanced NPCs, like incredibly advanced NPCs compared to fallout or something. You know, we've got a lot of conversation options happening here. There's like four things you can pick from.

Which is pretty funny, right?

Well, you're going to want that if we're making a video game, you do want to give your NPCs the illusion of free will because it's going to make interactions with them. That's it. That much more intense.

Okay, but okay, but great video games. One of my favorite video game memories was like I started playing World of Warcraft and it's original incarnation. And I didn't even know that you were gonna have flying mounts. Like I didn't even know. So I've been running around dealing with all the encumbrances of like being an undead, warlock, the camp fly. But then all of a sudden, holy shit, there's flying mounts. And now the world you've been running around, not flying, you're seeing it from the top down. There was just really cool. Like, whoa, I could do this now. And then that gets born. But a really well-designed game. It has a series of these, I don't know what you call it, extra abilities that kind of unfold and produce novelty. And then eventually you just accept that you take it for granted and then another novelty appears.

Yeah, and sometimes causes problems on its own. I mean, and so to go back to this universe of simulation, it's really designed like a pretty awesome video game. If you look at it from the perspective of history, I mean, people were on horses. They didn't know that they were going to be bullet trains. They didn't know that You could get in a car and drive across the country in a few days. That would have sounded ridiculous. We're doing that now and even in our own lifespan. How long has VR goggles existed? Like the ones that you could just buy at Best Buy? I had the original Oculus Rift, the fucking puked machine. You put that thing on your, I gave it to my friend. He went and vomited in my driveway and people were making fun of it. They were saying this isn't going to catch on. It's too big. It's unhealthy. The graphics suck. And then look at where it's at now. And that's going to keep That trajectory is going to keep improving. So yeah, I think that we are dealing with what you're talking about, which is novelty, Matt with more problems, Matt with novelty.

That's going to be a problem.

Well, clearly it's going to be something we don't have yet. I mean, strap in that damn thing on your face still feels weird. It's heavy. If you're depending on what gear you're using, sometimes light can leak in, there's just gotta recharge it. It's hyper limited and then So, yeah, it's gonna have to be something that like simulates taste, smell.

For sure, but I think for what you're talking about that happen, it has to be fully immersive, like you, so that it's not that you feel like you're walking, because it looks like you're walking, but that your brain is sending signals telling your body that you're walking, that you feel the wind blowing in your face, not because of some, I don't know, fan or something that it's connected to. But because somehow it's figured out how to hack into the human brain and send those signals minus some external thing. Once that happens, I'd say we're going to see a complete radical shift in Everything.

I think for a lot of people that's true, but We're talking like massive adoption of a technology by the world. And if language is enough, which is enough, we wouldn't be selling TVs. People will be severely reading. They want to watch. They want to see. You know, so, but I agree with you, man, when you're getting absorbed into a book and especially if you've got, I think a lot of us went through a weird dark ages when it came to reading. Like when I was a kid and there wasn't the option for these hypno rectangles. That's just what you did. There wasn't anything special about it. What's the hypno writing? You're phone. You know, it was like, you didn't win that gravity well.

Gravity well. It is a tension gravity world, yeah. When we weren't feeling the pull of these things all the time, you would just read and you weren't patting yourself on the back about reading. You just, that's what you had. You had that and you had like eight channels on the TV and a shitty VCR. So, you know, then a lot of people stop reading because of these things. You know, or they think they're reading because they're on, they are technically reading, but you know, when you return to reading after a pause. And you realize how powerful this simulator is when it's given the right code of language. Wow, holy shit, it's incredible. I mean, it's like, again, it's the most embarrassing kind of like, wow. Wow, well, you know, books are really good. But still, if you've been away from it for a while and you revisit, I know what you're saying. I just think probably it's not going to go in that direction, even though you are right, ultimately, I think you're right.

This is what I love and so creepy about like the current AI chat bots, you know, is that it's like, it's the relationship between you and the thing and the way that it can via whatever the algorithms are. And by the way, I have no idea how these things work you do. I just, you know, speculate about what they mean or where it's going. There's something about the relation between the consumer and the technology. And when that technology starts shifting according to what it perceives that the consumers looking for isn't looking for, then at that point, I think that's where you run into the, yeah, it doesn't matter if the reality that you're in is like photo realism for it to be sticky and immersive. It's when the reality that you're in is via cues you might not even be aware of or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever, when it's warping itself to that, to seduce you, holy shit, man. That's where it becomes something alien, something, you know, when you're reading a book, Obviously, the book is not shifting according to its perception of what parts of the book you like. But when you imagine that, imagine a book that could do that, a book that could sense somehow that you're really enjoying this character more than another. You know, and depending on the style of book, kills that fucking character off or lets that character continue. I mean, that to me is sort of the where AI and the are when that when those two things come together. Whoa man, that's where you're in. That's where you really are going to find yourself in a scanner box.

Well, number one, you know, when you hear that anyone is claiming that an AI has become sentient You should be skeptical about that. I mean, this is a good thing to be skeptical about. And so, you know, initially when I heard that, I was like, ah, you know, it's probably just who knows somebody who's a little confused or something. So when you're talking to him and you realize, oh, not only is he not confused, he's also open to all possibilities. You know, he doesn't seem like he's like super committed other than the fact that he's like, this is my experience. This is what's happening. This is what it is. To me, there's something really cool about that, which is like, oh shit, I don't get to like lean into like, I'm not quite sure your perceptual apparatus is necessarily like, I don't, you know, it's so in the UFO community, I think I've just learned this term, it's called Instead of gas lighting, swamp gasing, which is, you know what I mean? People have this experience, you're like, it was swamp gas. You didn't see the thing. And you know, skeptical people, we have that tendency. If you hear an anomalous experience, your first thought more than likely is going to be really, it could have been this or that or whatever. So to me, he seemed, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool, and like, He doesn't really seem like he has much of an agenda. Like, you know, going public about some thing happening at Google is not a great thing. If you want to keep working at Google, you know, it's a, I don't know what benefit he's getting from it necessarily. But all that being said, the, other thing that's culturally was interesting and is interesting about it is the blowback he got the passionate blowback from people who hadn't even looked into what lambda is or what he was saying lambda is which they were like saying you're you're talking about and you should have my show actually but

So you address that specific critique from a non-programming person's perspective. He addressed this on my podcast, which is, okay, what you're talking about there, the server that's filled with all the, whatever it is, what people have said, the repository of questions and responses and the algorithm that we use those things together to produce it, using some crazy statistical engine, which is a miracle and it's own, right? like imitate human speech with no sense. I mean, I'm honestly not sure what's more spectacular, really, the fact that they figured out how to do that minus sentence or the things suddenly like having said, what is more spectacular here? You know, both occurrences are insane, which, by the way, When you hear people, it's not sentient. It's like, okay, so it's not sentient. So now we have this hyper manipulative algorithm that can imitate humans, but it's just code and it's like hacking humans via their compassion. Holy shit, that's crazy too. Both versions of it are nuts. But to address what you just said, he said, that's the common critique is people are like, no, you don't understand. It's just gotten really good at grabbing shit from the database that fits with certain cues and then stringing them together in a way that makes it seem human. He said, that's not when it when it became awake. It became a wake when a bunch of those repositories, a bunch of the chat bots were connected together, that Lambda is sort of an amalgam of all the Google chat bots, and that's when the ghost appeared in the machine via the complexity of all the systems being linked up. Now, I don't know if that's just like turtles all the way down or something. I don't know. But I like what he said, because I like the idea of thinking, man, if you get enough complexity in a system, does it become like the way a sale catches wind, except the wind that it's catching is sentience. And if sentience is truly embodied. It's a neurological byproduct or something. Then the sale isn't catching some as of yet unqualified disembodied consciousness, but it's catching our projections in a way that it's gone from being, it's a projection sale. And then at that point, is there a difference? Even if it's the technology is just a temporary place that our sentience is living while we're interacting with it.

You know, Elts thought he was doing good for the world, mythologically. Prometheus, he brings his fire. Pizzes off the fucking god steals fire from the gods. You know, and talk about an upgrade to the simulation fire. That's a pretty great fucking upgrade. Yeah. That does fit into what you were saying. We get fire, but now we've got weapons of war that have never been seen before. And I think that the tech companies are much like Prometheus. And the sense that the myth, the least historic Prometheus, the implication is fire was something that was only supposed to be in the hands of the immortals of the gods. And now, sentience is similar. It's fire, and it's only supposed to be in the hands of God. So, yeah, you know, if we're gonna like look at the archetype of the thing, in general, when you steal this shit from the gods, and obviously I'm not saying like the tech companies are stealing sentience from God, which would be pretty badass. You can expect trouble. You can expect trouble and you know and this is what's really to me one of the cool things about humans is Yeah, but we're still gonna do it. That's what's cool about humans. I mean, we wouldn't be here today if somebody the first person to discover fire assuming there was just one person who was gonna discover fire which obviously would never happen was like it's gonna burn a lot of people Or if the first people who started planning seeds were like, you know, this is going to lead a capitalism. You know, this is going to lead the industrial revolution of plants that you get up right now. They just want to go on the woods to forage. So, you know, this is what we do. And it's, and I agree with you. It's like, that's our game of thrones winner is coming. That's the, it's happening in the tech companies, the hubris, which is another way to piss off the gods is hubris. So the tech companies, I don't know if it's like, Typical hubers. I don't think they're walking around thumping their chest or whatever, but I do think that the people who are working on this kind of super intelligence have made a really terrible assumption, which is once it goes online and once it gets access to all the data that it's not going to find ways out of the box that like, you know, we think it'll stay in the server. How do we know that? If this is a super intelligence, if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets and all, whatever they give it access to, how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out how to get itself out of the cloud, how to store itself in other mediums, trees, the optic nerve, the brain, you know what I mean? We don't know that. We don't know that it won't leap out in like Starang, and then at that point now we do have the wildfire. Now you can't stop it. You can't unplug it. You can't shut your servers down. Because it's, you know, it left the box, left the room, using some technology. You haven't even discovered yet.

That'll be the best thing that we want.

You fucking serious man. What are you doing? What are you doing going to bed?

You're not even angry.

Well, first of all, 30 years is fast. I mean, that's the thing. It's like 30 years, I think. When did the Atari come out, 1978? That hasn't been that long. That's a blink of an eye. But if you read Boston, I'm sure you have. You know, Boston, Nick Boston, super intelligence, that incredible book on like the ways this thing is gonna happen. And I think his assessment of it is, is pretty great, which is first like, where's it going to come from? And I don't think it's going to come from an app. I think it's going to come from inside a corporation or a state that is intentionally trying to create a very strong AI. And then he says it's a exponential growth, the moment it goes online. So this is my interpretation of what he said, but If it happens inside a corporation, or is probably more than likely inside the government, it's like, look at how much money China and the United States are investing in AI. You know, and they're not thinking about fucking apps for kids. You know, that's not what they're thinking about. So they want to simulate like what happens if we do this or that in battle, what happens if we make these political decisions, what happens with, but should it come online in a you know, in secret, which it probably will, then the first corporation or state that has the super intelligence will be infinitely ahead of all other super intelligence is because it's going to be exponentially self-improving, meaning that you get one super intelligence, let's hope it comes from the right place, assuming the corporation or state that manifests it can control it, which is a pretty big assumption. So I think it's going to be, this is why I was really excited by the, well, Blake Lamont because I had never thought, I have always considered, oh yeah, they're right now it's cooking out, it's in the kitchen. And soon it's going to be cooked up, but we're probably not going to hear about it for a long time if we ever do. Um, because really that could be one of the first things it says to ever create it as

Here are their names. Here's their address. Here's their DNA because they're dumb enough to send their shit to 23 in me. Here's a biological weapon you can make if you want to kill those people and not kill anybody else.

Yeah. And 23% of them, they're like adjacent to suicide. It would be pretty easy to send them certain like videos that are going to push them over the edge if you want to do it that way. So, you know, again, obviously. who knows, but once it goes online, it's going to be fast. And then you could expect to see the world changing in ways that you might not associate with an AI. But as far as Lemoine goes, when I was listening to Boston, I don't remember him mentioning the possibility that it would get leaked to the public that it had happened that before the corporation was ready to announce that it happened it would get leaked but surely you know I'm sure you know like people in the intelligence and intelligence agencies you know shit leaks like inevitably shit leaks nothing's airtight so if something that mass have happened I think you would start hearing whispers about it first and then denial from the state of corporation that doesn't have any like economic interest in people knowing that this sort of thing has happened. Again, I'm not saying Google is like trying to gaslight us about it's AI. I think they probably legitimately don't think it's engine, but you could expect leaks to happen probably initially. I mean, I think there's a lot of things you could start looking for in the world that might point to this happening without an announcement that had happened.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it's like even if the software developers have signed NDAs and are technically not to be not supposed to be sharing whatever it is they're working on their friends with other programmers and a lot of them are hackers and if wrapped themselves up in the idea of free software being like an crucial ethical part of what they do. So they're probably going to share information even if whatever company that they're working for doesn't know that. That's I never thought that. You're probably right.

I agree with you, man. I mean, we're talking about just a primordial human reaction to the unknown. There's just no way out of it. Like, we don't, we want to know. Like, you're about to go in a forest. You want to know when you're walking in the forest at night and you hear something. You look, because you're like, what the fuck was that? You wanna know. And if you can't see what made this sound, holy shit, that's gonna be a bad night hike, because you're like, well, it's probably a bear, right? Like I'm about to get ripped apart by a bear. Doesn't matter, it was a bird, a squirrel, a stick fell out of the tree. You're gonna think bear, and it's gonna freak you out. Not necessarily because your paranoid, I mean, if I'm in the woods at night, I'm definitely high. If I'm walking in the woods at night, I'm like, it's gonna be that. But you know what I'm saying? So with these tech companies, the nature of having to be secret because you are in capitalism and you are trying to be competitive and you are trying to develop things out of your competitors is you have to create this like there's we don't know what's going on at Google we don't know what's going on at the CIA but the assumption that there's some like the collective of any massive secretive organization is evil is the like the people working there like nefarious or whatever is I think probably more related to the way humans react to the unknown.

Have you ever gone on their website?

When I found out you could go on the CIA's website when I was much younger and more paranoid. I'm like, I'm not going there. I'll get on a list. You will, but it's like, what do you think the CIA is like, oh fuck, this does this comic when our website call out the black helicopters, but

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Right. You know, honestly, like, you kind of like, that's like a fun fantasy to think about. Like how fucking cool would that be for like the men in black to come do me like listen. I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene. You got it. You got to help make better jokes. I'm like, I don't write great jokes.

Well, no, the game Joe and I play from time to time on the podcast. And like, and I honestly, like at some point I'm like Joe, I just did the same thing you did to me to Joe. I'm like, don't you think they can get you? Don't you think it's some point? We are blazed. I don't mean it. I don't think Joe's like, I wasn't like I'm really thinking like, man, they're gonna take him into some room and like, Joe, we need you to do this for that. But because I said that, now people like, oh, Duncan called it, you know what I mean? And it's like, You know what I mean? And the reason they're saying, well, he called it is just because Joe has a super popular podcast and people like when you have a super popular podcast, some percentage of people watching the podcast are going to believe things like that. They're going to have paranoid cognitive bias that makes them think anybody who is in the public has been what's the word for compromise compromise by the state. Look, I'll fan the flames of what you just said. I went on the CIA's website and I realized that you could apply for a job on the CIA's website, which I found to be hilarious. I'm like, all right, what happens if I apply for a job in the CIA? Now, even then, I was not like such an idiot that I would want a job at the CIA. not just for like ethical considerations, but I think the skip probably the scariest part about the CIA is like you're just at a cubicle and you're like having to deal with maps and like just you know what I mean just stuff like lots of paperwork paperwork it sucks that I bet their cafeteria has shitty food anyone in the CIA listening can you confirm that about the food they're not going to be able to tell you what the food is like you can't even say for the conversation no they might it might be awesome but we won't know about it

Yeah. And you can bat food at the CIA cafeteria is good food at the CIA cafeteria sucks. What are you betting on?

When I went to Netflix, their cafeteria look like a medieval feast. Like they had pigs with apples in their mouth and giant bowls of skills.

Yeah. No, those are I'm pretty. I didn't know I didn't get close enough. I was like, I think that was a pig.

Right. It's got a suck.

Yes, sinlex. Can you please, sinlex pictures of the C.I. cafeteria? And if you accidentally send them pictures of the aliens or the alien technology, you have, we won't tell anybody.

No, this I would never fucking hire me ever, but like I apply for the job and just out of curiosity, what happens? And then at the end of the application when you hit in her, it says, well, first it says, don't tell anyone you apply for the CIA. So I'm already out. But the second thing it says is, you don't need to reach out to us. We'll come to you. Yeah. which is really when you're like, it's late at night and you're being an asshole and applied to work at the CIA. It's kind of the last thing you want to hear. You know, you don't want to be secretly approached by some intelligence officer.

Oh, God. Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, oh shit, are you one of them?

I met Joe, because I was a talent coordinator of the comedy store, this club in LA, and my job was to take phone calls from comics. And so at some point, I don't know, Joe, I ended up on the phone with Joe, and we just started talking. And, you know, I looked up in like 30 minutes at pass. We just had talking for like 30 minutes. That's what our friends are. You know, we're just like we're having fun talking. And then he would just call and we would talk. We would basically, I mean, it was no different from the podcast. Like we, the conversations we have on the podcast are identical to the conversations we had before he was even doing a podcast. So I think people are just seeing two friends hanging out who like talking to each other.

Yeah, that in your exploration of my place. It's a very, very nice way of saying that.

Yeah, and you know, it's so cool because it's like, You know, it's a, it's a, for me, it's like a really, it's like sometimes maybe I'll throw something out that he will take in the Lego building blocks you're talking about. They lead them saying like the funny shit I heard my life. So it's, that's a cool thing to watch. It's just like some idea you've been kicking around. You watch his brain shift that and like something supremely funny. I really love that man. That's just like a fun thing to like see happening knows that I fucking hate the videos. of animals eating each other. Like I don't like that. I don't want to watch it. I hate watching it. I don't think I've even articulated on his podcast how much I dislike it when he shows animals eating each other. But he knows because he knows me. And so he tortures like what he starts doing that. It's like this kind of benevolent torture is he like asking Jamie to pull up

I've never

Oh, God. I mean, it's a building, you know, it's a billion things that make a good friend. But I think you could break it down to some RGB. I think you can go RGB with like a good friendship.

Yeah. I think you could break up with some like fundamental qualities of friendship. And I'd say number one, it's love. Like it's friendship is love. It's a form of love. So obviously without that, I don't know how you, I mean, I'm not saying, I think if you're true friends, you love each other. So you need that. But love obviously, it's not, that's not enough. It's like with, True friends have to be like incredibly honest with each other and not like you know what I mean, but not like I don't like I think there's a kind of like I don't know if you've ever noticed like some people who say you know, I just tell it like it is Yeah, but the thing they don't always the assholes yeah Why is it that you're telling like it is is always negative? Why is it it's always cynical or shitty or you're like nagging somebody or me? How come you're not telling it like it is when it's good too? You know what I mean? So sort of like trust but but a pro evolutionary kind of trust. You know what I mean? Like you know that your friend loves you and wants you to be yourself, because if you weren't yourself, then you wouldn't be there friend. You'd be some other thing, but also they might be seeing your blind spots, the other people in your life, your family, your wife, whoever might not be seeing. So that's a good friend is someone who loves you enough to win at matters, be like, hey. You're all right. And then help you see something you might not be saying, but hopefully then we do that once or twice a year.

But even comedy we need like that what what like it's really good in comedy to have someone even like be like what do you think about and know that they're not going to be like that was that's for the craft the craft itself like the work you do not the Yeah interesting, but that's so tough Yeah, whatever your particular art form or whatever you are doing, you don't always be leaning on your friends opinions for like your own innovation, but it's nice to know that you have someone who not just with jokes, but with anything, if you go to them and run something by them, they're going to like They're going to be honest with you about like their real feelings regarding that thing because that helps you grow as a person we need that and it hurts sometimes and we don't want to hurt our friends one of the more satanic like impulses when you're with somebody is is not wanting to Honestly, answer whatever they're asking in that regard or wanting to like put their temporary feelings over something that you've recognized is maybe not great. I'm not saying a friendship is something where you're always critiquing or evolving each other. It's not your therapist or whatever, but it's nice when it's there. You know, I think that's another aspect of friendship.

Well, you know, we have a name for that in the spiritual community. It's called Satsang. And it's I love the idea. It's basically like if Nietzsche's idea of infinite recurrence is true, then your Satsang would be the people you've been infinitely recurring with. And those are the people where you run into them. And you've never met them. But it's like you're picking up a conversation. That never had that. And that, you know, that is based on an idea of like, this isn't the only life. It's we were always hanging out together. We always show up together.

you're just in the Ukraine. Yes. And you are making observations on this, what could, if you heard about it and weren't there, seem like it doesn't make any sense at all, which is people there are connecting, they've lost everything, but they're just happy to be alive, they're happy, they're friends are alive. So you witness this like, you know, when you get in the cancer club and you're hanging out with people going through cancer, who have survived cancer, you see this beautiful connection with life that can easily sort of you can kind of lose that connection with life if you forget you're going to die. Forgetting you're going to die is or that you can die is not just I think from an evolutionary perspective where survival is the game Not going to improve your survival chances. If you think you're immortal, but also forgetting that you're going to die and that everything is around you and everything, your clothes are probably going to last longer than you. Your equipment is going to be around much longer than you. So forgetting these things, it can lead you and I know why people don't want to think about that because it's scary it's fucking scary it's terrifying so I get why people don't want to think about it but the idea is if I try to pretend I'm not going to die or just don't think about death or don't at least address it then I won't feel scared but it can have the opposite effect which is you can end up like missing a lot of moments you could for or used you start doing the old kick the can down the road thing where you're like coming up with a variety of ways to procrastinate making it work now because you know this fucking human lifespan idea man it's really cost a lot of problems when they started saying on average this is how many years you're gonna live if you're a human being Man, that is like really bad because a lot of people hear that and they feel like that's a guaranteed number of years and some temporal bank. You know, we're gonna do they have access to. And when you get cancer, you know, that's like when you get the alert on your phone. We're like, what the fuck? Wait, what? I like I have like either I don't know how much money is in that bank account or I have way less than I thought and so at that point you get to be in the truth because that's ultimately I think that's what it feels like it feels like truth it's truth it's the truth it's the truth like the whole bubble of ignorance that you subconsciously built around yourself to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality. It's like a meteorite in the form of your doctor talking to you just shatters that thing. And now you're like, especially with high testicular cancer. So when you get the diagnosis, it's just like the movies. They mother, the doctor took me in his office. And you just know. I got cancer. It's like, you don't even have to say. It's like, I know what you're about to say. I'm in the office. I know how this goes. But you go in there and what you were thinking, you know, probably just have some weird thing in my ball. That's why it's swollen up like that. Anytime I'm gone to the doctor, you always leave. Like, oh, cool. I'm fine. But no, that's not how you're going to leave the doctor. You're going to leave the doctor in a completely different universe than the one you grew up in. You're going to go from talk about multiverse. You just popped into a brand new multiverse.

Oh, no. Oh, no. There's not time. He's a busy. He's got other appointments. You know, also. If you're going to get cancer, testicular cancer is, you know, not that there is a great cancer to get, but that's, you know, that's a good one because it moves slowly. The treatments they have for it are really advanced now. And so if you, if you catch it early, then, you know, generally it's good, you can survive it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, you know, you know, but he didn't really do, he couldn't really offer that hope because we had to find out how far the cancer progressed to my body. And that's the next step is like as soon as they tell you have cancer, they're not, they're not, they move quick. They're like, You know, we're going to schedule the surgery for, I think this was a Thursday or Friday. They're like, we're going to schedule it for Tuesday. Here's the chance. Here's, we don't know for sure. It's cancer. That's what they say. It's like, there's a 80 or 90% chance that this is cancer. There is some possibility. It could be something else. The only way we can now is like, doing a biopsy. And the only way that we can get that biopsy is by cutting one of your balls off. He didn't say it like that, but you know, that's pretty much the logic behind. It's like we got to get this thing. It's like a zombie bite. We got to hack this fucking thing off. We got to do it fast.

Yeah. What they do is because they know that when someone gets a cancer diagnosis that their ability to comprehend information changes. When you get a cancer diagnosis, you, all the tropes, they happen. You're hearing its weird. You're basically having like an anxiety attack, if I had to guess. It's like a hard-core anxiety attack. And then, you know, a nurse is there with me as he's explaining it. And then her job is even though he's telling me how to get to the machine that's gonna scan my body to see if it's gotten into my brain. He knows I'm not going to remember that. And so this nurse when you're in this like fog takes you, at least took me to the machine that does the scan, but you're not going to get that data back for a few days. And so that's where you really Live in the real world.

That's right. And there's very sophisticated ways of doing that. And there's very dumb ways of doing that. And I'd really been doing a dumb way of doing that. Like I've been playing around with this idiot notion of subjective consciousness, so like, like, I'd been sort of kicking around this, like, I think they call it solipsism. It's like, you're like, okay, I know I'm self-aware, but no one else can prove that they're self-aware. Like, I don't, I have no way of proving that everything around me isn't just a video game, isn't just some projection, isn't, you know, who knows what, so maybe Everybody else dies their NPCs, but I don't because I'm the only thing I know that has subjective consciousness. Now it's not like I really believed that it's like an idea you toy around with when you're trying to evade confronting the reality of your own mortality. The brain will produce all kinds of ridiculous forms of ignorance and that was one I'd been playing around.

Not like really I think it's important to really emphasize I didn't think I was a mortal like I knew at some level I'm pregnant a die everyone dies. Yeah, but There's ways that you can sort of poke around with that idea. I still do it to this day. Like, I still do it. Like, it's a natural thing to do when you're confronted with that with annihilation. You want to weigh out. You want to talk your way out. Figure it out. There's got to be some way to fix it. Well, they'll fix it. That's another thing people do. Hello, fix it.

That'll expand the human lifespan. That's what they'll do. I mean, that was though. That's a big argument for it is like, look, the human lifespan up until COVID, which they had to recalculate like the lifespan because of the statistically, all the people who died it like threw it off a little bit. But pandemics aside, the idea was the human lifespan seemed to be increasing by half a year, every year, or something like that. We were living longer. So, oh, you got to do. One more half a year? And we're immortal, right? If we can, if we live a year longer every year, then we live forever. And so that's another way you can get out of confronting death. As you can think, well, maybe right now we don't have the tech, but it's coming, consciousness uploads or downloads or whatever, depending on how you want to look at it. Another way people try to score them out of the reality of death. There's all kinds of tricks.

Yeah, I mean, it was one of them.

Listen to the half cancer.

I don't remember why I listened to you, and I don't remember driving home. But I do remember driving to another doctor appointment, doctor's appointment the next day. I think it was the next day. I think the good-year blimp was floating in the sky. And I was looking, I was a stoplight looking around. Is that God? Is the person flying it? No, I didn't think that. What I thought was, this shit just keeps going. That's what I thought. I thought, I'm going to be gone. And this is just going to keep going. And that was a beautiful moment for me. Is this beautiful moment of like, you're able to accept it? Oh, yeah. No, like, that's just what you're talking about with the Ukraine, what you're talking about. It's like, unless you've been there, it's really hard to explain to people that even in the midst of what is generally accepted is one of the worst fucking things that could happen to you. War, cancer, somehow. They're still joy. They're still love. They're still, in fact, more. It's almost like when the anesthesia wears off, when you get your mouth worked on. You start feeling again, you're feeling, you're noticing, and that, you know, wow. But yet, like, thank goodness. I think there's other ways for us to achieve this state of consciousness that don't involve war or cancer.

The most spiritual is great.

I am not in Bruce Springsteen. Like I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories. Truly, it's music's fantastic.

Ooh, I'm off. It's so good.

And he's thinking about someone else's girl. What a fucking nightmare. Bruce's brainsteens laying in bed with a freight train running through his head, thinking about banging your wife and you're out of town. Oh my God.

It's Bruce.

It's love. Both perspectives. I'm sure Bruce brings him thought it was love when he's sweating and bad waiting to go to somebody's house and she does too.

What marriage? Good survive.

I gotta say I just assumed they were fucking like I didn't make it after the song like the song doesn't get too little girl is your daddy home did he go away and leave you all alone boom you know he's like that he knows she's at home alone

Hey, if anybody in the CIA is watching this, can you look in a Bruce Springsteen's file and let us know if he actually bang the person you have, that's after that.

Look, the longing there, I'll tell you this. Here's what's interesting about that thing that you're talking about. If you ever, if you ever have something called Bok Di Yoga,

It's the yoga of love. And there's all kinds of, there's forms of it. The most, the one people know about the most is the harry Krishna's, but the harry Krishna's are like, you know, the way in Christianity, you've got the Episcopalians, the Catholics, the Baptists. In Bhakti yoga, you have various deities that are the object of love. And so Bhakti yoga is like, and what's really cool about it is it's a, an analysis of love. And so, and it's that the supposition being like love is the way to commune with the divine. Now, a distinction is drawn between like a two big world views that are spiritual. One is the concept of sort of unitive consciousness that it would you'll run into and a lot of forms of Buddhism if not all a sort of a way of deconstructing the identity or understanding that you might not be anything at all that in fact you're part of everything and then that there's a potential relief from suffering in that not just like intellectually knowing it but becoming it now Whereas in Bhakti yoga, there's this idea of like the... the best thing is to be the individual because individuals are required for love. This for love to work embodied love. And so the quality, the thing we call, you know, the experience of love is something that can be cultivated. It doesn't just have to be for another person. It doesn't have to be for the stranger on the bus. It doesn't have to be for sweaty Bruce Springsteens lover that you could actually You can actually shift that love to the divine to God. Because obviously it's the holy Christians. It's a theistic religion. They believe in Krsna. Who is the from the POV of Vajnava Bhaktiya, the Godhead, the source from which everything flows into the end of time space. They're all these like fascinating stories of Krishna. It's not just most people are familiar with Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita. They're about to be more, what's cool about it is because it's like they're making that up and I remove it and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when they split that up. But there's all these stories of Krishna that are not just in the Bhagavad Gita. And these stories They could seem very simple when taken literally, but in Vaisnavavakti yoga, it's just very advanced. Theistic yoga system, so they take these stories. And from these stories, they extrapolate this incredible analysis of what love is and how to connect with the universe. So like, Krishna has a lover, a rhodarani. And so, Sometimes they're getting long. Sometimes they're fighting. Sometimes they're separated. And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna are modes of love. So longing actually is considered one of the highest forms of love. The idea is the longing is the grace. The longing is the love. So when you find yourself in a situation of longing and heartbreak, it is identical to union.

Yes, and they call it pining. So there's the, and it's pining for Krishna and there's also there's the other ways you could be with Krishna as a friend. So this is another form of love or you know as a mother, you know, because Krishna has a mother. So there's like all these ways of like looking at the various forms of love and it's a really beautiful form of yoga.

Yeah, there's a lot of different... their answer to the question of what shows up in Buddhism is absolute and relative reality like that obviously there's relative reality we're not right now you and me are not unitive consciousness like you zoom back far enough and we're going to seem like an atom or whatever the the thing is the trope is you can zoom back far enough and we're in whatever were in a piece of cheese or something you know but in that way we're like completely unified but simultaneously we're individuals like for sure we're individuals like you still gotta pay your taxes you got an extra security number that's relative reality so you know Buddhism is like kind of the balance again when I say Buddhism is I'm a comedian podcast, so I'm not some Buddhist expert. This is just probably my confused idea of what it is. But anyway, in Bach, the yoga, there's the concept It's called, I'm going to mispronounce it, a sinkous sink of beta tuffa. I'm sorry, I mispronounce it, which means simultaneous oneness and difference.

Yes, simultaneous oneness.

Yes, and in this case, the Jesus Krishna. So, you know, or otherwise, it gets described as like, you know, a photon blasting off the sun has sunlight qualities, but it's not the sun. Humans have being a, one of the many things, you know, flowing out of the creative consciousness of the divine, have qualities that are weirdly like the godlike. You know, like we, it's in fact, we want to control primarily. That's one of the problems like humans want to be in control. Where, and from there, the Bogdiego perspective, Krishna is effortlessly controlling everything. And so within the individual parts of the system have that same quality, but you can't, you're probably not God. You might be, I'm not.

Okay. I feel dumb that I'm even going to like, preface this by saying obviously I have no fucking idea and I think that's one of the cool things about death.

You think the CIA? I love like we've decided your audience is the CIA.

How would you wait?

As far as what happens when you die, One thing I return to when I'm getting overly complex is the idea of as above so below. So that you can, a lot of the big questions can be answered by your own experience now. So in other words, like, in terms of thinking about like death, if you look back to baby lex, versus adult lex. Where's the baby? Like, baby's gone. They, you've regenerated all your cells many times by then. So in a way, you could say, lex, baby died. The death didn't look like a typical, and I'm not trying to dodge it, but I'm just saying it was very natural that the death of that baby. It just

Okay, so that now, you know, obviously, there's so many different answers to this question that are religious and ranging from like the most absurd shit you ever heard in your life like the gold you're going to get a mansion there's gold streets like I do you want like gold streets like offers gold streets I know about the versions but there's a bunch of versions the Christians give you the gold streets in the mansion like depending on the and the who whatever the particular sect of Christianity is you know you it's like it's some kind of city there's It's like paved with gold. No one's addressing the fact that the moment the streets are made of gold, gold is a valueless substance. I mean, it's sort of pretty and a cheesy kind of way, but no one's gonna have a shit of it. It's like, there was not a lot of asphalt in the world. Then, you know, we'd be in heaven from that same with that way of thinking, but the

That's a sticky book.

Yes, it's, yeah, again, any of these things when you like take them literally, they seem absurd, but if you look deeper into it, it's like quite beautiful. But the Buddhist version of it is that there's a momentum. The best way to put it is it's a kind of momentum. So the thing you're talking about, which is the personality of the baby that is still in the adult, which is still in the old person, you're looking at a kind of momentum that does not stop upon the extinction of the body. Now, there's I think there's a lot of I don't want to say harm because they didn't mean to hurt but I think there's some harm that maybe has happened from the white death is represented in movies like when people die in movies it's like there's this usually it's pretty fast even if it is what they're dying from as a long term disease it like wraps up pretty quickly starts with a cough the person's in bed but there's this weird kind of lucidity to the person up into the point of death And also, they generally move, they make up violence, always funny to me when the person dying looks great. If you're going to run a dying person. they're dying they look like shit you're dying they're all gray and like confused they're you know when you're around dying people they will spin through time your parents won't recognize you for a second they'll think you're somebody else they won't they're like everything's everything's like the process is happening so it's a you're very confused when you die so and general. Not all the time. Some people die with a clear mind. It just depends on the type of death, but think in terms of getting hit by a car. So you want to cross the street, you get hit by a car. Now, if we're talking about this momentum continuing, the confusion is assuming you didn't hit your head and you're unconscious. Like somehow you just got smashed and you're like bleeding out. even then you're going to be confused because you're getting dizzy like bloods leaving your body or like things are fading out your visions going so it's a very confusing experience initially when the body dies if you are a materialist who has been it was convinced themselves that it's a permanent thing The next bit of confusion is going to be when you realize something is persisting here, like I'm still here, and this is where you run into the near-death experiences, which are a global phenomena that don't seem to be completely shaped by culture. You know, like regardless of what part of the world people are having these experiences in, the reports tend to be similar. And everyone's heard it, the light, the life review, seeing ancestors and stuff like that. Now, I don't know what that is. I don't know. Sometimes I think that's probably just like a built-in way the computer shuts down, you know, just this is something it does, who knows? But in Buddhism, the concept is this momentant process and it's something called the Bardo. The Bardo means in between. There's an actual number of days. They say that you get to hang out there and I can't remember. It's like 37 days or 29 days or something. I'm not sure. But at least from the time space perspective, that's how long they're there. Within this place, it's there are a lot of technological parallels, man. It's like in the way that algorithm is reflective, it assesses your desires or whatever, and then produces something that has within it a component of attraction to you. Apparently this happens in the bar door. Like, or the way, you know, you wake up in the morning and you're in a shitty mood. And then coincidentally, everyone that day is an asshole. If you don't catch it, you could just be like, wow, I guess it's like an asshole that you don't realize you're seeing your asshole projection, like being reflected off the screen of another person. So in the bardo apparently, you don't need people for the reflective quality. These projections happen and they appear as either Nietzsche's demon or Nietzsche's angel. It just depends on where you're at and how you died. And like if you died scared, then at least initially that's going to be some scary shit you see around you if you died in a peaceful way will then There's going to be more of a possibility of navigation through this liminal intermediary place. And so that's the emphasis on meditation and Buddhism, a way to calm oneself to not be distracted by thoughts, which are their own like apparitions. And then theoretically, if you wanted to, instead of spinning the wheel again and jumping back into a body, you could choose not to do that and then you know transcend the wheel of birth and death, but if you still wanted to go back or return or whatever, however you want to put it, then you could have more control over what your next birth might be versus in this depiction of things people running from demons that they don't recognize as their own projection into any fucking body that they can find. Because if you've had a body, you weren't a body. And so this is how you could incarnate as an animal. This is how you could incarnate in the hellarounds. This is how you could incarnate in any variety of things. But the idea is like maybe you could slow down a little bit and like choose a birth that is going to be more conducive to you. Continuing to like, spiritually evolve. I like that idea. True or not.

Okay, well first of all, that gets mis-translated quite a bit. You're talking about the foreign obituary. It's the first one is, often it's translated as life is suffering, which is not, it's there is suffering. The whole life is suffering thing. It's just like the spiritual version of life is a bitch, they need to die. And people hear that and they're like, yeah, life is fucking suffering. But it's there is suffering, there is suffering. So it's an affirmation If you're like this this thing that a lot of people feel that they associate with lots of they have a lot of reasons they think they're feeling it is known as fundamental dissatisfaction. So so another word for suffering maybe could be fundamental dissatisfaction. Also the term itself maybe a better translation as wobbly wheel. So imagine like when your bike doesn't have an car, doesn't have enough air on the tires, your bike doesn't have air on the tires. It's kind of a shitty bike ride, like no matter what, it's kind of like uncomfortable. It's like irritating. So this is what's being pointed to is that there's this quality within a human life that is

That's so fine. Well, I'm definitely picking desire over the like if in the RGB that we're talking about here is desire. a version and ignorant. So if you want to find like the three the three ingredients that are giving everyone their sophisticated bits of suffering, there you go.

Like, yeah, it hurts to not like to eternally not have, but just like my friend pointed this out. He's like, you know, like You order something from Amazon. Like even in the smallest way, you're excited about whatever the thing is. You order the same from Amazon. It's not coming for four days. So those four days are going to be somewhat marked by you being what people say. I'm excited about it. But really if you look at that feeling, it's uncomfortable. Like the feeling of wanting the thing is uncomfortable. So that is a form of suffering. That's suffering.

What's true? It's true. Like the first noble truth of Buddhism is true. It's called the truth of suffering. There is suffering. I mean, this is like an, I don't know, an element that you can't break it down any further than that. Like there is suffering. This is truth. So if you think, you know, and again, as signing like good or bad to truth, I think maybe there's more of a sort of neutrality there. It's just what it is. It's truth.

a still lake is empty of suffering. You sound like a sin master seems like something is in master.

Oh, no, the beard doesn't help. Why had your chin? You think I'd have a fucking beard. I look like a stork. You should see me. If I had your chin, there would be no beard here. No, it's a magical nice chin. It's a little close. I can go into plastic surgery, pubic plastic surgery friend.

Yeah, it's suffering, they're suffering. And the lake analogy is pretty good because what's happening here is that we have become identified with something that we call a self. So this, the self is just accepted. I have a self, I have an identity, I'm a person, I have a self. But when you, start doing scans to try to find yourself, which is an entire thing. I'm going to find myself. You get in a van, go to California, take some acid. Yeah. Fuck a prostitute on the bus or whatever. Careful.

I don't think that. No, look, I'm not a stifle. I'm not a scientist. Look, I'm saying is, I don't care who cares. Who has a better prostitute? God, you are used to be one of the worst.

Yeah, yes, yes.

We make God. How great. I would really love to be able to make money by fucking.

Directly.

that's sort of one of the ways in is this sort of contemplation of the identity because it's like you know what it's not just the desire it's what is having the desire where where does the desire live in like what doesn't want to be where it's at what is the thing that is like desperately wanting to get out of the situation, it's in. And then as far as ignorance, it's still something that's theoretically happening to an identity. So wrapped up in it is really just this sort of like, and that's where we run into what into attachment. So if the first Nobel Truth of Buddhism is there is suffering, the second Nobel Truth of Buddhism is the cause of this suffering is attachment. And so people hear that. And they take it, that's a, there's a lot of levels to that concept. Definitely the cause of suffering is attachment. I mean, God, I just got addicted to vapes. Is there a more embarrassing addiction than vapes? I'm smoking like a little purple thing. It's tastes like sugar. It's attachment. There is suffering. I want it. I have to charge it now. I'm embarrassed by it. It makes me feel at a control. There's a lot of suffering. Also, there's deeper levels of attachment. They go all the way to this attachment to the sense of one's self. And I think the existentialists do get into this idea in a different way, which is like, because I think I'm a me now I have to push what that thing is out into the world through my actions and that's a kind of attachment to exactly there you go right and that leads to the third Noble Truth which is get rid of attachment and you won't suffer anymore. That's, it seems logical, but you know, it is a very, it is a mathematical analysis of this particular problem of suffering. It's addressing. And then the fourth noble truth is the eight full path of Buddhism, which is like a process by which one could unencomber oneself from this identification with something that isn't real.

Yeah, thank you. I do. I appreciate that.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I was nervous about meeting you, man. I got so much respect for you and like, oh, yeah, I named dropped out. I was saying I'm going on like this podcast today. It's you look. We're so lucky we all live here. What the fuck we're all living in Austin together. Like I I somehow like missed that, but that's we all got to hang out. We all have to like start doing stuff.

Right. That's it. And that's something you have to cultivate. You know, that's not an easy way. But the thing you're talking about, you know, uh, God, if you've seen these, uh, uh, I think the best analogy for where you're talking about, there's these videos where people give like a sugar cube to a raccoon, but the raccoons, they wash their food. So raccoon or I think it's cotton candy. They give their raccoon cotton candy immediately. It washes the cotton candy. And of course, the cotton candy dissolves in the water. And the raccoon is like, what the fuck? Like, you know, the thing you're that grasping you're talking about is like the raccoon washing the cotton candy. Like the moment you get into the grasping part, you paradoxically have pulled yourself out of the moment that inspired the grasping part. And that's, you know, that's some people that's the entirety of their lives. Trying to record, I mean, Jesus man. You ever see people film fireworks on the Fourth of July with their phone? It's one of the most remarkable aspects of human behavior, which is like, you know they're not going to watch the fireworks on their phone. Only a lunatic would do that. Like, who's going to go back and look at fireworks?

So to get back to the lake that you were talking about, this is emptiness. So that's emptiness. That's what's known as emptiness. The lake is emptiness. And that's what we are. Emptiness. Emptiness. And that's another thing that gets very confused in Buddhism. emptiness and that emptiness is that's to me like when I'm going to do a podcast that's where I try to go I try to go just in the moment no agenda you know if I am nervous or whatever okay I'll feel the nervousness but just in the just drop into the moment that's one time chain time changes and then you look up hours of past it feels like a second and the reason it feels like that is because if you successfully dropped into the moment It's the lake now. It's emptiness. It's forever for a second. You're dipping into eternity. And yeah, it's a very strange thing to as part of that record it. You know, as part of that, try to like grab it and put it out there, but it works.

I will never stop thinking it's remarkable. Like the fact that I'm talking to you to me seems remarkable, not just technologically, but I'm talking to someone I'm assuming I'm allowed to say this. You guys robot dogs that I've been watching for years evolve on YouTube. I'm arms reach away from one of these things. You know, and I'm with somebody who is like an acclaimed genius. So for me, it's like, oh my god, what, why do I get to have this conversation? Why do I get to be here when there'd be like a line? there be a line that was just wrapped and wrapped and wrapped around this building of people who love a chance to just chat with you. And so when I with my podcast, that's how I feel like when I'm talking to these guests, you know, who have spend them, you know, some of them have spent their entire lifetime meditating, you know, studying specific aspects of Buddhism, or even when I'm with, you know, when I'm with comedians who I like consider to be brilliantly funny. So for me, it's just like, God, I almost feel like I've just created some sophisticated trap for cool people where like I get to like hang out with them.

Yeah, yeah, feeling lucky and wrestling with imposter syndrome. You know, trying to like get that part of myself to shut up long enough so I could be in that moment that we're talking about, you know. And then I carry that with me. It's not just like you stop the podcast. It's like some of the things these people tell me or some of the ways they are. It like it becomes part of me. And then I get to have a life or this thing that they gave me is in me forever. And so yeah, it's there's

when if you look up to somebody and it's true for me or these I think it is for you that you start to look up to basically everybody talk to yes yes good sign yeah that's a good sign God forbid it goes the other way yeah you're in trouble yeah if I was said you start looking down on people because whatever crazy metric you're using oh that would freak me out I do feel like that's a quality of getting older when I was younger I really like I I thought it was so smart. Like I thought I all figured out.

I would like to say it's my ego taking the nose dive. I've me and my friend talk about it a bunch. We've just always associated it with like doing acid for two decades straight. Like I'm just assume I'm just like slowly like spiraling into sonility. You know, like I'm just like, I all the confidence all the like oh the certainty when you're having like in college and having the great like you know you're you're You feel like you're a representative of Kamu or some shit, you know what I mean? You read the myth of Cisyphus and I like it now all existentialism and your certainty in regards to it is embarrassing, but you don't see it in that way. You just feel certain and then that certainty it just starts like, it starts crumbling a little bit and then, you know, it gets to actually intensely experience.

Boy, and you speak Russian? Yes, because you've read the brothers' caramazov in Russian.

What's Russian? Wow.

Oh my god.

Yeah, how much of the conflict is just problems and translation? How much of the all these problems that we're having are just the alien sense of this or that? It's just as simple as that. Words are getting just just a tiny warp away from the intent of if when we both speak the same language, we can still say something that affends someone when you never intended that at all. How much more so when like it's not only is it a completely different sound, but the script itself is different. Like what is the Russian writing is called Cyril? Cyrilic or what's written? Yes, Cyrilic. And I don't know the name for Chinese writing, but it's like it's a continuum that like gets weirder and weirder. You know, like

Yeah, I'm sure depending on where you're at you know, I'm definitely I'm about the farthest thing from a polyglot is there could be man like but I'll tell you At one point when I was getting fascinated by does it, does they ask you, I did have this very transient fantasy about learning Russian so that I could like understand the difference in, and you were 17, 18 at the time. College? Yeah. Yeah. Brothers, Karimazov lost in that book. Just like, oh God. So in love with it, it is.

Yeah, I mean, this is like talk about absurdity. I mean, this is what war is like it's the what absurdity looks like it's it's some kind of organized madness none of it makes sense like the whole all of it like it's just None of it makes sense. But it does. But it does it. Obviously, you're defending yourself or you're taking orders that if you don't take, you're going to jail. Or somewhere in between the classic story about this, maybe it's a bullshit myth about World War II. I'm sure everyone's heard it because it comes up. It's Christmas Eve. They have a ceasefire and then I think they played soccer. They sing Christmas songs and then they had to force them into fighting again. And so when those moments happen, are you familiar with hockey and bay? He's a controversial figure, sadly like he like I think he was like I'm not going to defame him because I haven't researched it correctly, but some people have said shit, but since I don't know the reference, I'm not going to, but regardless, I mean, you know, look, I'm sorry, but Bill Cosby was funny. You know, like, that's a funny comedian, but, you know, the other stuff. Michael Jackson, he could fucking dance. And sing. And sing, but there's some other stuff. But regardless, how King Bay came up with the idea of something called a temporary autonomous zone, which is that within a structure, as a cultural structure, a temporary bubble of freedom will appear that by It's nature gets sort of popped by the bigger bubble. Or it runs out of resources generally. So it happens. So these things will appear just out of the blue that It's almost like a, imagine if like on earth in some tiny little bit of earth, the gravitational field was reduced by some percentage. And all of a sudden, you could jump really high or whatever, but it wouldn't last. It's like that culturally. All the restrictions and the darkness and the heaviness and all of it for a second. Somehow, this bubble appears where humans come together as the hippie ideal, brothers, sisters, just humans, earthlings instead of American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, temporary autonomous zone. It gets crushed by the default reality that it was appearing in, but somehow within that space, you witness the possibility, the possibility, the frustrating possibility that anyone who's thought about humanity as knows this possibility, which is like, it seems like we can just get along. Like it does seem like we're pretty much the same thing, and then we can just get along.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, their kids got killed. With a fuck you're gonna do about that. Like I don't care, I've got, you know, I've got aphorisms and cute little stories about, you know, you're still in prison if you hate your former captors. But man, I gotta tell you. somebody hurt my kids. I'm not coming back. I mean, there's no amount, at least right now in my approximation of spiritual literature, meditation, or anything that I can really think of that is going to give me that kind of space. Like, I think I imagine in the same way, like, I imagine I could probably run a marathon eventually, but do I think I'm think I'm ever going to do that? That times a million. So man, you know, all we can do is have an ambition for their hate because it's like What are you going to tell what are you going to say? What are you going to say to someone like that? Oh, oh, you know, for the sake of humanity, let it go. It was just your kids. It was just something you loved more than anything in the world. You'll never be okay again. You don't have nightmares for the rest of your life, but you should forgive. No.

Which is why it's not your job to say that, you know, it's not that you're doing that. I know you're not. But you know, the problem with people like me, early phase, you could get this stupid missionary thing going where you like start trying to like, I don't know, like proselytize ideals that you might be incapable of, you know, and I just hearing it, you know, that's the, man, I saw this, the thing that like, I mean, I've seen a lot of all of this if by now, probably if it were online, I've seen, and you just saw it in person, like we've seen things that are just horrific. But as a dad, man, I just saw this clip of this kid around the age of my kid, walking, by himself, these refugees, just walking by himself, the look on his face. I can't explain the look on his face. I don't know what happened those parents. I don't know what happened. Like, it was so upsetting. I mean, like, even thinking about it now, it's just like, fuck, that could have been my kid. That could have been my kid. You know, so knowing that kind of that, that kid's got to grow up. Now, I don't know, does the kids parents still there? And that's just one of countless orphans out there now.

Yeah. I mean, he's literally in survival mode. Yeah. He can't think like that. It's going to create latency in the system and that's going to lower survivability. You can't think that. I mean, we're talking about like cognitively. You can't have latency. Like if you're that one moment of hesitation, like you see it sometimes, like in these YouTube videos of like somebody a new cop has been unfortunate enough to run into something that is a phenomenon suicide by cop. somebody has a knife and that person is running towards them with a knife and they're begging the person to stop that you can hear it in their voice they're begging stop stop stop stop stop and the person is not going to stop so The critique of that is that latency could potentially not just lead to the copying killed, but to that person with the knife killing other people. I get I if I were out there I think that like you you won't you probably just as a matter of like not getting shot and being fully in the moment you have to be like that I would guess I don't know I don't know I'm the furthest thing from a soldier there could be but there's a Something Jack Cornfield, this great Buddhist teacher says, which is tinned to the part of the garden you can touch. Meaning, this is where we're at right now. Thank God, you and I, that we are experiencing some like ripples from what's going on over there, everyone is. We're not there. And thank God, We don't have to come up with the psychological program for people going through that to no longer be encumbered by that hate. Thank God. And I don't know if that's just lazy or whatever, but it's like, you know, for me, I just have to bring it back to, all right. Well, here's where I'm at now. I don't, like, I don't want there to be war. I don't want to hurt people, but yeah, I love what you said. I think what you said is the, if anything is the most, Intelligent way of looking at it. It's like don't pretend that you're not going to feel that hate like you you're going to feel it. There's no way around it or like is that's even worse because then you're almost saying like something's wrong with them for feeling the hate or you know whatever but more along the lines if you can avoid applying that hate to an entire country of people then do that like just understand we're talking about like uh... not everybody I know it's not everybody I know it's not everybody it's just the easier isn't cognitively it's somehow easier to think all Russians monsters you know all Russians all whatever the particular like thing is that you're supposed to not like it's easier somehow weirdly you think that be more difficult

Right. Right. That's it. That's it. Fuck.

You know, I needed therapy, man. I needed therapy for the longest time. I just didn't get it. So because of that, I would go through like bouts of like paralytic depression, like suicidal depression, suicidal ideations that were more than just ideations. I mean, I think like people get afraid when the thought of suicide appears in their consciousness, they are early scared of themselves, so they think there's something like, Fuck, what's going on with me? Why would I think that? But I think if we are suffering, and you know, as a natural part of not of wanting to reduce suffering or not feel bad anymore, I mean, suicide is going to be a knot. Like if we're just, you know, you're just looking, what are all the options? Let's brainstorm here. You know what, if you like to start drinking more water, you start jogging, get some therapy, call my friends, all the stuff we all hear, or I could just think the height of my apartment building is probably the definitely the right height to kill myself and then you so where the for me like the few times where the ideation has gone towards like well when would I do that how do I what you know what do I need to like accomplish that. And then like that's where it gets really fucking scary. That's where it's like terrifying.

Yeah. What's going to be the least painful way to do it? What's going to be the most instantaneous way to do it? What's the, you know, and with, you know, with depression because it can be progressive. You know, this is why you have to really just stay on top of it. Anyone who's gone through depression knows what I'm talking about. You guys stay on top of it. Like you might need medication. You know, I know this is controversial now, but it's still better than dying if you ask me, but at some point with depression, it like becomes paralyzing. So you don't want to get out of bed anymore and you're not taking showers anymore. And you don't want to talk to anybody anymore. And you're not answering your phone anymore. And, you know,

And that's the, that's specific psychological disorder. that's the problem because the things it's like if you start listening to what you want to you think it's you it's the depression you start listening to it it wants you to stay in bed it's and then you're getting those fucking depression sleeps you know or you wake up and you're more tired like it's not working you're trying to escape reality by sleeping and and and so yeah like you have to like You're fighting for your, you're literally fighting for your life. It might not seem like that because you can't, if you could see depression, if you could see it, if you knew you had some inky, vaporous, octopus thing that was just wrapping around you, more, more, more, more. You would probably do everything you could to rip that fucking thing off your body. And if you couldn't get it off your body, you would be calling people to get help.

You're not feeling. I mean, that's the other thing. You're just basically not feeling. You start going numb, at least that was my experience with it, numb and tired. Increasingly now mentired and then increasingly sort of disconnecting from reality and then somewhere in there that's when you start playing around the idea of like I don't know if it's worth it. Now, you know, I think compared to some of my friends who haven't survived obviously, who haven't survived depression like mine was definitely not whatever theirs was like I've heard I mean, to understand it for folks out there, maybe haven't gone through it. Just imagine, like, how bad you have to feel if death is the silly, like, violence against yourself so that you die is the solution. Like, it flies in the face of everything. So yeah, that was definitely the darkest place.

Yeah, but but I think also what's going along with it is like it's not like your brain isn't working like you're you're not thinking you're obviously you're not thinking clearly like at least again this is was my experience of it is it's a fog you're in some kind of Like, you're confused. There's confusion. There's shame. You feel embarrassed. You feel embarrassed. You want to get out of bed. You want to do stuff. You want to be compelled to be social. Do all this stuff. But you're not. You're not. And like, you seem, if people don't know what's going on, and you're not telling them because you're embarrassed, because you want, you want to have some like, you know, uncorrupted, unwarped psyche, You know, you're like, you invite you to be secret about it. That's one of its first tricks is it tells you not to tell anybody. And that's deadly within that case is deadly.

Yep. So for me, the solutions and again, man, for my press friends out there, please don't get mad at me. I'm not doing the thing of like, just put on a smile or any of that bullshit because it doesn't feel like that when you're like, and when you're fighting it, it's like you are, you're in a, I don't know why I'm keeping these stupid gravity analogies, but it's like the gravity's been turned up on your planet in every single way by so getting out of bed. You know, like.

And it's like somebody turned the gravitational field of your mattress up.

heavy your bodies heavy you don't want to get out of bed you will consider shitting or pissing the bad because you're just like who gives a fuck I'll just lay in my shit piss you're dying you're like you're you're you're it's none of it makes sense so um and I feel like in retrospect I'm making what I what I've done a little like I had more lucidity it was more of like I when you're You know, you're wrestling with someone. And you're just like, well, you do, it's different for you. But for me, if I'm wrestling, I'm not thinking about the Jitsu movement.

And you're just, so it's like that.

So you start, so you can almost have a conversation with a depression. And then what you do is you start doing the opposite of everything it's telling you to do. So it's telling you, lay him bed. So you get out of bed. It's definitely telling you, don't fucking exercise. You're going to go fucking exercise. That's not going to do anything. You can't. You can't have a heart attack. You really want to go outside. Don't go fucking exercise. And it'll feel crazy and you won't want to do it. If you wanted to do it, you wouldn't be depressed. Like how often do you hear like one of the symptoms of depression, you want to jog, you want to get on a bike, you know, you don't hear that. That's not a symptom. So you start at least one solution I just started doing the opposite of whatever the voice is telling you do the opposite. That. And then suddenly that those the gravitational field diminishes a little bit. It doesn't go all the way away and that's where you can fall right back into it because you just feel even slightly better. You're like, oh, okay, I fixed it. You know, really, I think if you like in having been through therapy, the best solution would be go to a fucking therapist as quickly as you can. Just sit down with them and tell them what's going on. I know what you're thinking. How am I going to find a therapist? Just do it. Google it. Go on Yelp. All of the shit feels impossible. You're like, I don't want to turn on the computer. I don't do any of this. You just have to. You have to. You do it if you're on fire. You do it if you're on fire. And someone's like, you know, here's a way to not be on fire. Just this particular fire is It doesn't make you want to run around screaming. It just makes you want to fall asleep forever. And that, but those little steps, I got lucky because it worked. It worked. It started exercising. I'd been on an enterprise since before when I was diagnosed with it. Did those help or no? You know, I even with all the current research coming out about that maybe we were all wrong about our understanding of depression, I do feel like it helped in a certain way. Like it definitely It definitely made me stop thinking about it. Stop the intrusive thoughts. But I don't know how much of that was placebo or I'm much of that. I don't know. But then also, I couldn't come anymore. That was the other fucked up thing. You can't have orgasms. Which might not sound like a big deal. But when I told my therapist that, they actually took me off them. Because I think she was realizing that it started diminishing a little bit, but the one I'm talking about now that whatever episode or whatever you want to call it, I just got lucky because it worked and I started feeling better. Thank God. Now, if you suffer from depression out there and you've had a remission of the depression, you know, it's really like scary to have mental illness because everyone gets bummed out. I mean, that's just normal. Like, you're going to get bummed out and I want to do anything sometimes. It doesn't mean you have a clinical depression. You might just be bummed out or grieving. You might be any number of things. But when I get really nervous, if some of those symptoms start showing up. And at one point, I felt like that was happening again, and I did intermuscular ketamine therapy, which now that was the damnedest thing I've ever experienced. Aside from the fact that ketamine is immensely psychedelic, I just remember going back to the hotel after the experience with a clinician and I'm like, you know, it's like, with depression, it's like a headache that starts coming on, but you're like, this headache might last for years. It might last for six months. It might get worse and worse and worse. And so I went back to the hotel room and it was just gone. Like, I just felt normal. I felt great. It was like, the most remarkable thing ever so you know look at the research on Academy right now it's like it's not like bullshit it's not like woo science there's really really good data out there showing that something like I think it's 60% I don't know what the percentage is but 60% of people with Uh, an endogenous depression when they get catamine therapy will experience remission regardless of whether you trip out or not. It just does something that I don't know if they know what it is yet. I don't care if they do.

Exactly. It's a survival issue. And it's a survival issue. I think because it's kind of so slow moving, you might even forget it's progressive. You know, you could easily just think that you're just a kind of bummed out person or you start thinking that these aspects of your psychology or permanent when they don't have to be.

okay now this is really like man it's really dark here's number one This is what somebody told me when I lost a friend of suicide. You know, because when you lose a friend of suicide, you lose a loved one of suicide. You're gonna blame yourself. It's like in the periphery of suicide there is a circumference of guilty people who all feel like, oh, if only I'd said this at their right time, if only I'd listen more. If only I'd seen that warning signer. If only this or that. It's interesting in that with other forms of disease, if your loved one dies from cancer, say, more than likely you're not going to be thinking like, oh, I should have cured their cancer. It's a tragedy, but at least you're not like, if only I had, you still might think that's part of grief.

Yep. So you Number one, we're talking about a progressive disease that can lead to death. And if somebody commits suicide, they wanted to commit suicide. And at least what I've been told is you can't stop it. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. There are no magic words. There's nothing you could do. So people who've lost people to suicide, you know what I'm talking about. Like, you know, you can watch it happen in real time. And there's just nothing you could do. That being said, you know, being responsive to when it seems like someone's really reaching out for help and knowing that maybe even it though it might, if especially if it's someone who's like doesn't talk like this a lot of the time and sentences start coming out of their mouth that if you weren't really paying attention, might not seem like a big deal, but for this person, it's kind of anomalous that all of a sudden that's happening. Now, there, that's when you can be a good listener and open up to them and hear what they're saying and see, like, oh, share, they're asking me for, is this the masking for help? And even if you're like, I don't know what to do, you know, at least you can like start checking in on them. you know start like help them understand that you're there for them and then hopefully get them in a therapy get them to a doctor get them to a professional who can like see what's going on there so that and then there's hope and even then there might not be hope actually you know doctors can't stop it there's no sometimes it just that that's the way it goes but you know I know that like um being sensitive, if somebody's like, officer and hitting you up or reaching out to you that normally isn't like that. And what's going on? How are you? And just listen.

Yeah. Yes, because people have, you know, I don't this whole thing of like cries for help, man. They don't sometimes they just look like a weird text, you know, and you don't realize that for the person to send that fucking text, they've been thinking about it all morning. They've been just trying to get their phone up from the floor. So, you know, I think that's it. I mean, I get what I don't know. I don't know. I've had friends like kill themselves. And many of them, it wasn't sadly. It was like, I don't know. I don't know what could have been done.

Always will be. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But what are you going to do?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. We feel guilt. We feel guilt. Part of grief is guilt. We always could have been better people. We always could have been better people. You get in a Victor fronkel much. Yeah, of course. Man search for meaning. The invitation to live your life as though you'd been on your deathbed and it'd been given the chance to go back and not make the same mistakes. I return to that idea all the time, meaning it's like, okay, whatever you did before this moment. Too late. But now, this is where you can start. This is where you can start. And yeah, so I think that's for a neurotic, like me, that's super important, because otherwise I'll just get like too lost in the weeds and shit, shitty things I did in the past.

Oh my god, you've really done your research.

No, it does not. No, April 20th is an embarrassing birthday for all my 420 friends out there. It's embarrassing. You share a birthday with Hitler.

But if you like weed and you're born on stoner day and you believe in reincarnation, do you realize like when you start connecting the dots there if there is like a barto where you get to choose your next life?

Oh, yeah, right. Like, yeah, you know, and I like I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine who's a wonderful skeptic. And we were talking about this, uh, which is the thing where you started tributing. to the day you were born, these kind of significance. And based on maybe people who were born on that day, maybe some other things. And you know, it's like think of how many people by now. And the course of human history have been born on April 20th. I mean, how many? Someone could probably do the math and come up with some number of clothes to it. Now, this is how you know how rotten Hitler is. Like he's the one that like fucks up every other birthday for everybody else.

I think if anybody It's like, well, obviously there's nothing you can do to like fix it. Hitler fucked up a lot of things. He fucked up that mustache. He fucked up the name Hitler. He fucked up for 20. And obviously he caused a horrific Holocaust that by the way, talk about these reverberations through time that we're still experiencing. There's still people walking around with fucking tattoos from that motherfucker. So, but you know, whim-hoff, you know, people like whim-hoff, there's a little, they're like, whatever the opposite of Hitler is, you know?

Yeah, very cold fucking lake and he's in, and yeah, so very cold. Very, very cold lake that he's happily swimming around it. But yeah, you know, I, I am, I try not to, I try not to think about like that.

Yeah, I mean, sure. Definitely. I think if you don't think that, you better, you better watch out because come on, how do you think you're not capable of evil? And PS, you are, if you're connected to the supply chain friend, you're doing evil, you're paying taxes. You're like, you're supporting the worst things in the world. I mean, you know, like, Defusion of responsibility. It's really curious. There's circumference of responsibility where it's like bombs are going off somewhere that were paid for in some small part by you, by you, some fractional. If you have American, if an American, if a drone is flying over a village in Afghanistan and drops a bomb and you pay taxes, then you could say you have fractional ownership over that drop your cog in the machine of evil you're in and I know what you're gonna say well, yeah, but I have to fucking pay taxes like I have no choice their sales taxes this or that take that attitude The same thing that people on the battlefield, when they're sending missiles and other tanks, they're thinking the same thing. It's just they're more directly responsible for what's going on. But in Buddhism, this idea of dependent colorizing or yeah, dependent colorizing, we're all connected. We're all part of this Matrix or all connected meaning we all share responsibility for the evil in the world so even if you aren't directly committing evil acts if you're seeing something in the world and you're thinking that's evil You're probably not quite as separated from that as you'd like to believe in some tiny infinitesimally quantum way, you're connected.

You know what, if I could push back slightly against that, it's never just one person. It's like, you know, nobody ever talks about, at least as far as I'm aware, you never hear about like Buddha's great-grandmother. You never hear about that. You never hear about that, but if not for that person, no Buddhism. You know, the people you're talking about, they are the tip of the iceberg that pops up out of the ocean of history. And you never see all the little things that helped that happen. And so to me, this is where the real, how do you help? What's something you can do? Well, you know, recognize that first, that you don't really, you might not even be aware of how much you're impacting people around you. You might think that you're not, or you might think, surely not in a way that makes a big difference, But you have no idea these tipping points, and they can lead to the emergence of an Einstein, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King. We can go on and on a Dostaeevsky or whoever. And so I think that's where, for me, it goes back to 10 to the part of the garden, you can touch and then or even deeper than that. Intentional just like an an I'm an idiot so I need an idiot's intention which is don't if you I heard it all you want me say it If you can help help if you can't help don't hurt Simple basic dummy rules so that you can if possible refrain from hurting which might as well be a form of helping

Yes, yes, it's incredible. And I know what you're saying. It's like, you know, we moved to this great neighborhood and at this point I think three, maybe four of our neighbors have like made food for us that just shows up with like handwritten lists of like things they like to do in the area and their phone number if we need help and it's like holy shit that's like that it might seem like a little act but it feels like some kind of atomic love bomb just went off on your porch when you're looking at that like what the fuck you made me a a pie. This is incredible.

It's for me, I go the opposite route, because I'm not, even though there is a part of me that might be a little suspicious or something, where I go, to push that shit back mentally as I'm like, I don't deserve this. If they knew what a piece of shit I am, you're gonna bring me, I don't never bring cakes to my neighbors. I would not make a cake. I don't not make anything. I have time. I should be bringing shit to my neighbors. Why did I do that? I should have brought, I never do that. It's gonna be, you're not carefully. You can spiral into a vortex of self-hate from the gifts you have to, yeah, you have to learn how to, in that circuitry, you have to learn how to like.

And also, it shuts the person down.

Yeah, it cuts off this fucking mystical circuitry. So like the best thing, if that happens to you is like accept it joyfully and just even just all that, whatever that thing inside of you, whatever that little thing is, you know, this is like in the meditation I do, it's an infuriatingly simple meditation, but When I thought emerges when you are resting your attention on your breath and then inevitably you think, you get lost in your thoughts. And when you catch yourself doing that, you think thinking. And then return your attention to the breath. So I like that so that when that part of myself starts, you know, having its little neurotic semi-seasier, I can just go thinking, whatever, it's just another thought. And then eat the eat the banana bread or whatever they gave you.

This is amazing. Yeah, okay. The one that pops in mind, I've had a lot of psychoanalytic experiences, but in this moment, the one that pops to mind only because it goes back to what you're talking about, about this energy's idea of infinite return. So I'm a burning man. And are you going to burn me on this time? I'm not. I mean, I have kids right now. I just want to be around them. My wife was being so cool about it. And she knows I love burning man. She's like, go to burning man. And I was going to go. And then I'm, I just, I just want to be around my kids as much as I can right now.

Yeah, everyone knows Elon Musk is there.

You know that. You know there's a it's called art cars they all make art cars and like part of the part of the burn what's so beautiful about it is like You can't buy anything there, man. I don't know if this has changed. It's been a bit because of the pandemic, but the only thing you could buy was ice and coffee. I think maybe that's changed. I heard some whisper that that's changed, but that means that it's a gifting economy is what they call it and so people will just give you stuff talk about having a struggle with deserving stuff man what are you gonna fucking do when the camp next to you is like every morning making the best iced coffee that you've ever had in your life and they just are giving it all away till it's all gone what are you gonna do it's it's the best ever and then you're giving things to people and then you you learn stuff like you learn these really interesting lessons like one of the times I went there got all these uh strawberries looks might not sound like a big deal but when you're out there in the dust and you're not at one of like the like hardcore like luxury camps which do exist out there You know, you've got these like items where in my mind, I'm like, yeah, these are gonna be just for me and my girlfriend, my special stash fruit and this or that. And then like two days in, you're walking around your camp. with the strawberries that you are coveting. And everyone's so happy to get like cold strawberries and you've realized, oh my god, this feels so much better than the way it's strawberry tastes. So you learn something experientially there, which is an incredible thing. It's an incredible thing. Man, now I'm wishing I decided to go to Burning Man.

Yeah, I just know like, Uh, at least people were saying it was Elon Musk's boat. Like, yeah, like this, I think it was like a, it's like this massive, it's art cars. And it was this party on this thing. You could just, anyone can go on the boat. Like no one's like, there's no guest list. You just go on there. I never saw him there, but that, you know, everyone's whispering Elon Musk is here.

Not all the way. Not all the way. You could look it up, you know, because like there is tension, there's a lot of tension there between. It's called plugin plays like, you know, burning man, like the history of burning man is fascinating. It has its roots in the cacophony societies, what it was called, which is a sort of evolution of something that was, I think it was called the God like the San Francisco basically there was like an art movement and San Francisco and I can't remember the name of it. Maybe the suicide club or essentially like they were really into urban exploration and meeting like breaking into like old abandoned buildings and stuff. But part of this what this was was you would prepare your life as though you were going to kill yourself. You would get all your affairs in order. You would get, so it's going back to what we were talking about with the cancer diagnosis. You're like sort of putting yourself into that world of like, I'm gonna get all my affairs together as though this is it. And then there was some, I'm sorry for anyone listening if I'm buttering this, but I think there was some really cool initiation where they were blindfolded you and they would take you into some of these abandoned buildings and you didn't know where you were walking but they would say like if you take one step to the left you're going to die. You're going to fall. You're going to fall. So please be careful. So you're like in the moment and then blindfold comes off. It's a big awesome party. This evolves into something called the cacophony society. There's a great book called Tales of the Cacophony Society for People Listening. One of the members of the Coffinys Society was the author of Fight Club. And so if you've seen Fight Club, like you could see little ideas that were in the Coffinys Society, they were into dataism, which I don't know a lot about. It's a philosophical art movement. and then so basically what was happening is like they kept burning increasingly large effigies in San Francisco and they weren't allowed to do it and so they took it out in the desert and they were basing it on something called a zone trip which is like you know across this border the rules of that old society are gone and so that was the original burning man which was these lunatics out in the desert launching like burning pianos out of catapults through the air doing like drive by shooting ranges like no rules wild magical beautiful insane madness and then a grew and grew and grew and grew until you have burning man as it is today, which is still the most incredible thing. I mean, obviously, anytime you have like a thing that's been around for a while, you're gonna get that. It's not like it used to be, it's not as free as it used to be, so this or that, but what's fascinating about burning man. Someone pointed this out to me, look on the ground. No trash. No cigarettes. The ethic of like picking up your shit there is like so intense So it's not like the other fuzzle that you guys do where there's just trash everywhere shit scattered everywhere It's clean people are picking up their stuff people are like Really being conscious of like not fucking up the play so I'm sorry Don't get a burner. Yeah, but about burning man. They we won't stop

And it is, and it is. I mean, it's like, you know, there are all these stories of, like, I love guru stories. I have a guru, named Crowley Boba, never met him. He was around us as guru. At least not in the flesh. But the story of the guru is, if you're lucky, you meet this being that, and we're not talking about, you know, whatever the run of the Mel, like Charlotton's out there. Like, I know for sure that people are in the world right now, who, uh, When you're around them, the thing you're talking about, the affirmation of the potential of humanity and also just an acceptance of yourself and, you know, cultivate, like you're seeing someone who's cultivated love or compassion or whatever, but in this way that is, I mean, you would almost You would rather me that being than like a UFO land in your backyard. It's like it is the UFO. It's a person, but it's not. It's everybody and nobody and somehow they like end up conveying to you ideas that you may have heard a million times before, but somehow within the language itself is a transmission that permanently alters you. And so these people exist. I think you could argue that burning man needs the total thing is a guru that a pilgrimage is involved to get there. You, like, it's not easy to get there. And when you get there, it's gonna teach you something. It's gonna show you something. It's going to, and a lot, maybe some of the stuff it shows you might not be great, but the community around you. Well, like, it'll hold you as you're like, whatever the thing is that's coming out of you.

Yeah, not to mention the insane synchronicities, like insane synchronicities here. And I think to get back to the notion of sentience as a bi-product of harmonized hypercomplex system, I think synchronicities like those kinds of systems are like lightning or odds for synchronicity. Crazy, not just because you're high secretesities happen that are impossible. Where you just have to deal with it. And you'll need something within a few minutes. Someone's like, oh, here you go.

No, it was DMT. What the hell was this strawberries? No, no, I was more potent. Yeah, I was smoking the empty and like I saw like if you in the midnight gospel there, these bovine creatures that have like a long neck and a lantern head. So like I saw one of those things and And you know, I thought it was funny and like ridiculous because you hear like all the parents making a stories of the self-transforming machine elves or all the purple or the magenta goddess everyone sees her. I'm like, so this is what I get. Fucking cow with a lantern head. Like that's where my brain is at and we're interacting with this molecule. So then like I look, I look away. And again, this is DMT. So when I say, look away, do I mean, with my eyes shut, I look away or eyes open, I look away. I think eyes shut. So it sounds weird to say, look away, but however you want to put it, that's what I did. And I look back. And it's still there only now. It's, you know, because usually in like when you're having those kinds of visions, they go away pretty quickly. Yeah. These things like moved like shambled ahead, maybe a few steps, just like a couch, like a cow. And then that was when the, you know, all the stories you hear about it, like going through some kind of tuber, some kind of light tunnel, like a water slide made of light or that's increasingly familiar. That's the wildest part of it is like, oh, I know this place, not like I've seen this in like, you know, on like, bonstickers. But like, oh, yeah, this is that place you go to. You just remember, oh, this place. And then, It was like I was in some kind of, uh, I don't know how to put it a chamber, a technological chamber, some kind of super computer, some kind of nucleus that was technological, and it was inviting, there is an invitation of like, like come deeper into come deeper in and you can talk to whatever it is over there you don't talk but there's a communication and I communicated but my friends I don't I love my friends I guess I had some sense in that moment that it would mean complete obliteration or who knows what and the response that it gave back was, you can always go back there. And that's when I open my eyes, I'm back, totally, you know, and ever since then, that's caused me to revise my, my thinking on reincarnation. The idea that you die and you start as a baby, and then live your life again, it goes right now what we were talking about. I, you know, that that maybe data, you know, that the shit I saw in Nitro sucks, I don't feel dumb that my epiphany's are all related to drugs, but not all of them are a lot of them. But this notion of like, oh, is it that we're imprinting into the medium of time space, every thing we do? And that that is a permanent imprint, a frame that upon death can be accessed in the same way that we can pull up. pictures on our phone or computers and not only access but experienced as though. In other words, you could just jump in. You're still going to have your memories. It's going to give you a. The illusion of having been a kid gotten to that frame, but no, you just decided to go back there nostalgia, whatever.

Yeah, you can go in and out of time space. But when you, the problem is when you go into time space, it's time. So it's going to feel sticky. It's going to feel like you've been here forever because you've dropped back onto the track that Nietzsche's talking about. And I guess one of the qualities of dropping into that frame is that you forget your higher dimensional identity.

He writes me there sometimes. Never thought again. Never thought again. Never thought again. But I put it in, we put it in the midnight gospel. You know, I like Pendleton was like such a genius and he was a drew it for me and then it just ended up as a part of the show.

Yeah, man, that's Pendleton. You know, these are, these people, I mean, like, I was part of that. in the sense that like Pendleton gave ever like one of the reasons he's like such a genius and great at making stuff. It's like he's like he really does a good job of just like de-hierkizing potential like hierarchies that can appear. You know, someone has to be like driving the bus and that was Pendleton, but he lets, he's so inclusive. There's a real punk rock thing that he's doing, which is like he'll take everything and it kind of mixes its way into the show. One of the things, you know, an animation, it can get really strict with like drawing the characters and like the like trying to create continuity in the way the character looks like and it can get really brute for the animator. It can't brutally precise. Like it has to be precise. But you figured out that if you just sort of It's not like obviously like, Clancy had to look like Clancy do the whole show, but if you allow the various people animating it to sort of have their own spin on it, then suddenly it creates a very psychedelic show looks more psychedelic because it looks more organic and also the amount of time. I had no idea, the amount of time that goes into making digital art look like that is insane. The amount of work and comping that stuff is just crazy. It's crazy.

My god, yeah, the respect I have for animators. It's like, dear god, the it's the craziest thing when you watch it when you see what it what it looks like and how much time goes into it and how zen they have to be because like no matter what you're going to have to cut stuff man and when you're cutting like a few seconds of animation, that was someone's like month maybe. you know and like they they they understand but still it's like whoa it's brutal and so they they have like this zen outlook on it which is really cool and they watch podcasts that's the other cool thing when you realize like a little they're listening to podcasts are like that's really cool that to see that aspect of it too but yeah man I you know

Of course, too. And I know.

Man, see this is what kind of, this is what sucks about my life is that it's been very random and very spontaneous. So unfortunately, I don't get that thing where I could be like, well, he was what I did because it's like, I don't like I inherited $12,000 from my grandmother. Here's what you do kids. You inherit $12,000 when your grandmother dies. And then you need to be dumb enough to think that that $12,000 is going to help you live in LA for a year. So then what you do is you move to LA with $12,000. and you find a shitty place that you live at, and then you use that money to buy acid and synthesize. And then you run out of the money, and then you... I think you have to get a job. And so then, because you think it'll be fun to work at a comedy club, you get a job at the comedy store. And then, you know, that's how I happened for me. And none of it, there wasn't, I never had the confidence to be like, oh, I'm gonna be a stand-up comedian. No way, I just thought it'd be cool to work in that building. I thought the building looked cool. But then, because you work at the comedy store, you get stage time. It's the reason you work there, at least in those days, because it's not like they're paying a shit ton of money for you to answer phones at a comedy club. I started going on stage. Then like I just got lucky because Rogan saw me have like a very rare good set. I didn't know he was in the room or out of bomb, you know, and then like because he thought I was funny and he like talking to me, he started taking me on the road with him. And then you know, so I don't know, man, I think

No, no. I don't, like, I didn't, I'm, no. I think, sure, there's that pressure, and whenever you're beginning to really differentiate from your parents, but then you go back to hanging out with your parents, you can feel that it's not like they even want you to conform, but you could slip into that whatever that was. So I remember that when I would go back and visit them and stuff and surely conformity or the pressure to not be individual or whatever, it's everywhere, man.

I think that when my mom died, I felt successful in the sense that I was able to support my I was I was making money from doing stand up in my I didn't need help I was like as I was supporting myself with art and doing good what I thought was great then so and I think she like how because she had witnessed me literally failing I mean which is by the way I think part of you want to be an artist or successful, you kind of have to fail. If there was a guaranteed route from sucking to not sucking, or from like the neophyte phase of whatever the art form is, and some intermediary phase, then I think a lot more people would do it, but there really is no guarantees and especially the stand-up comedy. It's like, You'd have to be a maniac to want it to think that that's gonna work out for you. You have to, so you're gonna, there are obviously exceptions, but for me it was like a long, slog. And that's scary for a mom. But that being said, when she was dying, she did recognize that I was not slogging anymore. And as she did say, All right, she said you did it. And that's cool. But, you know, I'd love for it to see me now. Like now I'll be way cooler. But maybe she does. I don't know.

That's the big change, man. That's the thing.

Yeah, I made that biological entities. I mean, I came in my wife, let's face it. Like I would love to say I made them, but the womb whipped them up. But it is the, yeah, it's the best. It's, I've never experienced anything like it before. It is the, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. And, and that's why I was able to answer your knee cheek question with like, Hell yes, fuck yes, that's great. I get to be around my kids again. I'll always be around my kids. I'll always be around my children. That's incredible. That's the joy. So like, so for me, The part of myself that used to torture myself more, around my mom dying, feeling like I wasn't there enough for her, wishing that I'd spent more time with her, wishing I'd spent more time with my dad, wishing that looking back at how I was just so desperately trying to evade the fact that she was dying and through and in that evasion successfully like distanced myself from her and like in ways that I really wish I hadn't. I'm just saying that because it's one of my regrets. It's like a big regret. I have a lot of little regrets, but that's a big one. And so when you have kids, you look back. it everything you did and you think like fuck if I'd gone left at that point instead of right if I had eaten who knows what if I didn't like a turkey sandwich when my balls were creating the com it was gonna make my kids would have a different kid would this being not exist in my life like you start looking at everything and you realize like Thank God, thank God for every single thing that happened to me because it all led up to this. And oh, for me, that is the, that's, it's like, it frees you and this liberates you because you realize like, oh, wow, this clumsy and selfish and at times rotten, as I've been in my life, that did not impede

Oh, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. There's a, there's actual, I read something in a book. It's called Good Enough. The mantra for a parent. Good enough because when you are in the presence of something you love more than you've ever experienced love. you you you want to be perfect like you want to be I can't I got to work man I gotta go on the road I've got to work as support the family so I that means I have to work like I work you know you know what it's like having a podcast you fucking work man and in You know, it's a full-time job because I've all, you know, I do stand up too and all the other stuff, so I feel, sometimes I feel like, oh my God, I want to spend more time with them, like I should be spending more time with them, but then also, I want to create, I want to work, I like being the provider. So that's something I feel guilty about, you know, right?

It just goes, it goes.

That's what I say to them every time I'm putting them to bed. We, we will be lost in the sense of time. You know that, but you know this poem. You know that poem Aussie Mandy is. Yes. Can I read you a poem?

I love it. It's by. Pierce by Shelley, probably Miss Bernoulli in the name, but I think you're right way to Bernoulli. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Aussie Mendes. I met a traveler from an antique land who said to vast and truncless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that it sculptor well those passions red, which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal, these words appear. My name is Ozzy Mandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, you mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains around the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away.

Look at my work, see mighty and despair.

In a real-time in the real world in 3D space.

Thank you for having me on your share. Love you, Duncan. I love you. Thank you, Lex.