Welcome to Mind Escape New telos.

8 years ago I started Mind Escape with my cousin Maurice.

At the time I was in the middle of a transformation, maybe even an existential crisis.

My mother had just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.

I was desperately searching for meaning, for answers about who we are and why we are here.

That search led me back into spirituality and eventually into the world of ancient mysteries and esoteric knowledge.

I felt strongly that somewhere in those traditions, somewhere in the fringes of human thought, there had to be wisdom, or at least clues to the questions I was asking.

So I dove in, I read endlessly, and I started reaching out to authors, researchers, and thinkers to ask them directly about their work and their experiences.

That journey connected me with incredible people, some of whom I now call friends, others I still exchange ideas with regularly.

Many were brilliant, some had perspectives I had never even considered, and all of them helped shape the trajectory of mind escape.

In those early years, I was trying to find the line of where reality meets magic.

Because I approach things with an open mind and an open heart, I sometimes fell victim to rhetoric and repeated ideas that, looking back, I wouldn't endorse now.

But I also tried to call out inconsistencies and keep things fair.

Whether I was dealing with the academic world or the fringe communities, case by case, I was trying to sort truth from illusion.

About five years ago, that path led me deeper into philosophy, specifically epistemology, ontology, and teleology.

I developed a habit of chasing origins.

Where did an idea start, and why?

Through that process, I became more aware not only of other people's biases, but of my own.

And that awareness changed everything.

Many of the so-called mysteries I once thought were truly inexplicable turned out to be explainable, quantifiable, or simply products of human error, flawed memory, or in some cases, unfortunately, an outright grift.

But some questions remain, questions that resist easy answers.

I'd call these the true mysteries.

Who or what are we communicating with in deep psychedelic states?

What are UF OS, really?

Did life emerge through abiogenesis, or was it through some sort of form of panspermia?

Do we live inside a black hole, or are we in a multiverse?

These questions belong more to metaphysics than magic, and that's the shift I've come to embrace.

The truth is, the magic we're searching for isn't out there, it's within us.

Mind creates matter, at least to a certain degree.

We are the magic.

That realization changed my purpose, my telos, if you will.

Mind escape.

New telos reflects where I am now.

Skeptical but open, critical but imaginative.

Committed to clarity without losing wonder.

To truly breakthrough in thought, you have to shed belief.

Belief clouds observation, and observation is the foundation of discovery.

New Telos is about making that leap, letting go of dogma so we can see more clearly and think more freely.

Philosophy is a way of life.

There was a time when I leaned on spirituality and higher powers as a way to cope with suffering.

It was intoxicating.

It lifted the weight off of life for a while, but it ultimately left me in a cycle of why me and poor me because I wasn't actually doing anything about it.

Philosophy changed that.

When you understand your own mind and biases and then apply epistemology, ontology, and teleology, you gain the tools to take ownership over your own mind, your life, and your decisions.

I am not just talking about philosophy, I am living it.

So what's next for mind Escape?

While I was on hiatus building my new series called Masters of Rhetoric, which you should definitely go check out on YouTube and all audio podcast platforms, I received emails, DMS, and even texts from longtime listeners who said they missed Mind Escape and hoped that I would continue it.

Honestly, I plan to overhaul the whole thing and just make it unrecognizable to old Mind Escape.

But after reflection, I realized I don't need to erase the past.

The new Telos era will keep some of the familiar elements while adding new ones.

I will continue to do live episodes with guests.

There will also be pre recorded conversations for guests that are overseas or that are being recorded at odd hours.

There will be more solo episodes on science updates, philosophy, and personal reflections.

I will be implementing YouTube Shorts and clips which is something I've been doing with the Master's Rhetoric channel.

Again, please go check that out.

The link is down below.

There will also be a new segment and maybe even more in the future, but currently the new segment will be called Mike's Mind Melters where I will ask 5 philosophical questions to my guest.

I feel refreshed.

I feel revitalized.

I'm ready to start this new era of mind escape.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the show from the beginning and those who are just joining the journey now.

Please leave a comment or e-mail me with any guest or topic suggestions.

As for tonight, I will be recording this first episode of New Telos with Dennis Walker AKA Micropreneur, where we will be discussing his satire, comedy, psychedelic updates, and the fascinating world of functional and medicinal mushrooms.

Please check out Dennis's podcast Micropreneur and also anything he does.

This dude is just constantly traveling the world and engaging with different people from all walks of life on mushrooms and psychedelics.

So again, please check out his work.

It's super fascinating.

Thank you and stay tuned for the show.

All right, Dennis, thank you so much for coming back on.

How are you doing?

It's great to be here and welcome back dude.

I'm a fan of the show.

Hello to everyone and I missed that intro music man.

I remember you produced your own intro music.

I was very impressed by the whole the visuals and the music but welcome back none none the less.

Thank you.

Yeah, it'll be added in to the episode after I actually, I'm going to edit a little, put a little effort into it going forward and you know what I'm saying?

But I appreciate it and I appreciate you coming back on.

And if you don't know who Dennis is, follow Micro Mycopreneur.

I have the links down below.

And he does satire.

He has, you know, a whole community online of entrepreneurs, people associated with the psychedelic community, mushrooms, functional mushrooms, all that kind of stuff.

So check it out.

But yeah, man, what's going on with you?

It's been a while since we caught up.

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the major development of my life is I have a 8 month old boy right now.

So first time entering parenthood.

He's been keeping us on our toes.

It's been an amazing, extraordinary journey so far.

And if I doze off in the middle of the interview, that's probably why, honestly, you know?

Yeah, you got to, you have to get that sleep when you can, especially with a a little guy there and is somebody that has an almost 4 year old now it it doesn't get any easier unfortunately.

Charm to hear that, Yeah.

I mean, I've been waking up at

like 5:00 AM because pretty much 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM are my only uninterrupted hours until he goes to sleep.

It's 8:30 and change where I am and he he's usually winding down

at 8:00 PM.

But it's been awesome.

You know, it's something I've always wanted to do.

And I guess there's no way to really prepare someone for it.

Kind of like a psychedelic trip.

You can read about it, you can talk about it, but until you go through it, whole different ball game, brother.

Oh 100%.

And I know it's cliche, but having my son was easily the best and greatest thing I've ever done, no questions asked.

So I feel you there.

I thought we'd get crack in here.

Let's start off with a little bit of your background.

I think in the past we've talked about like how you got into all this and like psychedelics and all that stuff.

But like when you were building Micropreneur and you were thinking about how you were going to do it, was it initially like a brand idea or are you trying to create like a like a cultural platform?

And did you initially try and start with the satire or was that something that you added in later?

The satire came later.

So I've always been a psycho now from day one.

I think I was 17 when I had my first psilocybin mushroom experience, and I identified with the psychonaut crowd before that because quite frankly, my early cannabis experiences were pretty psychedelic, pretty visual, close eyed visuals, geometric patterns and all that.

And so I knew there was something there.

It was clear to me and I did my research.

I went to the library.

This was literally before we regularly used the Internet like I had it, but we had a computer lab at school.

It wasn't like we all had the Internet on our phones.

So I remember going to the library and checking out books from like Yale ethnobotanist from Mark Plotkin, I think was really one of my first points of entry.

And then I discovered Erewid.

And over the next couple years, this was like circa 2005, 2006 around there.

Then I became increasingly infatuated with these visionary compounds, and more specifically from indigenous cultures around the world, started reading about ayahuasca, started reading about Maria Sabina, and found Terence McKenna.

And then so that was over many years, and I went to school in San Francisco, which is kind of like Ground Zero for Western psychedelia and was a stone's throw from the hate street.

So I kind of cut my teeth 2007 through 2012, living on the hate and connecting with that whole legacy and learning about a lot more of these Western pioneers of psychedelics, which sent me down a million different roads.

And then it was 2020 when I decided to launch Mycopreneur.

So it was very much a pandemic project.

I already had edited and produced media.

I'd done podcasts for a couple well known international brands where I was kind of on the production side of them, like for example, Occidental College in LA for their diplomacy and world affairs department.

So I had a sense of how to podcast, but I had never considered hosting a podcast and even less so, I had never considered openly talking about psychedelics and mushrooms.

But I sort of had the put two and two together moment, that aha moment where I was like, OK, it's more culturally acceptable now to talk about psychedelics.

And that really happened in 2018-2019 going back to like 2012 through, you know, that whole, there was nobody talking about very, very few people talking about psychedelics outside of like a few, you know, The Who who like Johns Hopkins researchers and a handful of things.

But it was kind of like if career, career suicide is one word for it, like if you were going to openly discuss that you were a psychonaut, you know, there's a reason everybody was using pseudonyms and code names and Internet names and all that.

And then that, for whatever reason, around 2018-2019, thanks to a few of these kind of pop culture breakthroughs, be at the Michael Pollan book or the Fantastic Fungi Netflix film, etcetera, all the sudden it became a little bit more culturally acceptable to speak about them.

And during the pandemic, I just said, you know what?

The world's kind of topsy turvy turned on its head.

There's this whole new normal thing going on.

I think it's time for me to speak openly and own my story.

And that's when I came out with Micropreneur Podcast, and I remember sending out a cold message to like 12 people I knew who I knew were into psychedelics and mushrooms, but also kind of had a platform and a degree of cultural legitimacy.

There was like, my first interview was Michelle Janikian.

She was a Playboy writer and wrote a book about mushrooms she had written for a Rolling Stone.

So already it's like, OK, this is a journalist who has professional experience and also has written a book about mushrooms.

Of course she said yes.

Another guy, Alan Lilienthal, he has a podcast on KPBS and I know he's been very open about psychedelics.

So pretty much everyone I asked said, yeah, I would love to talk to to you about my mushroom experiences.

And then one thing leads to the next and it's like, next thing you know, I got a veteran who's been on 2 tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Shut up Colin Wells and veterans walk and talk.

And then I've got a therapist friend from college and over time it led to I've got publicly traded CEO's now I've got people from, you know, multi $1,000,000 companies who want to come talk about their research.

And that kind of gave rise to the satire because about a year in, so around 2021 or so, I realized mushrooms, psychedelics, etcetera.

They're have a very funny side to them potentially.

Like how many times have people laughed and tripped or gone to a concert and just had the time of their lives?

But to make them culturally acceptable, there has to be this sort of scientific rigor.

And I think that's good, but not at the expense of losing this kind of funny, hilarious side of things.

So I really leaned into that and it's worked out over the last couple years.

So that's kind of in a nutshell how I got to where I'm where I'm at today.

Awesome.

Yeah, I, I can identify with a lot of that.

Obviously for the last, I mean, since I was in high school, we've been playing in jam bands and going to see fish and you know, the whole jam scene and everything in shakedown and psychedelics.

That was always a huge part of that culture.

So you know, Maurice and I, my former Co host and cousin, we've seen a ton of shows together and I remember being 15 or 16 and reading Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and then on the road and just like all these ideas kind of came together and we're like, let's start touring around seeing stuff, experiencing things and yeah, totally with the arrow wid and all that stuff.

So I can identify with a lot of what you're saying, minus the business side, which is why I like following you because I learned a lot in terms of like what's happening on the financial side of things and the legal side of things and all that.

Because I'm not really too interested in that.

I'm more looking at it from like a phenomenological standpoint, like the whole experiential thing.

But it is interesting when you look at the business and the culture and how it's evolved and grown and everything like that.

And I remember seeing, I forget what it was, it was a podcast.

It wasn't Joe Rogan or anything like that, but it was in the early days of podcast, somebody was talking about psychedelics.

I'm like, oh, you know, people are talking about this on, on here now, you know, so that was something that we'd always, you know, kind of hush, hush talk to amongst friends and close personal bandmates and things like that.

But yeah, it's, it's come a long way.

Same thing with cannabis.

I mean, I think it's headed all in the right direction in terms of at least investigating to see what can be used beneficially and what's kind of BS.

So you've interviewed mushroom entrepreneurs across tons of countries and all around the world.

What are some common themes that keep coming up in conversations when you talk with these people, whether it's cultural or business or whatever?

Yeah, thanks for asking.

So I definitely came out all of this from the cultural side.

I played in a band in college for five years and was heavily experimenting and investing my time and energy with mushrooms and all kinds of other psychedelics.

And so that was kind of my point of interest mainly is psilocybin mushrooms and quote, magic mushrooms and the whole like cultural side, scientific financial side that's coming out of all that has sort of been a byproduct of my interest.

And like I always say that I got into this by listening to OK Computer on a macro dose Radiohead album super far out.

And it sent me to these unimaginable, previously unimaginable dimensions, which were very intelligent, it felt like, and very ancient.

Who knows?

I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, I bet.

But it was trying to figure out like, what's going on there and how come we're not talking about this?

And how come this isn't a, this isn't a cultural blind spot.

So it's sort of been a sort of accidental happenstance that I got into this kind of, I guess, financial side of things, if you will.

But what comes up with talking to all these different people?

I think that there's a huge amount of ethnomycology knowledge, ethnomycological knowledge, like little pockets around the world of ancestral and indigenous knowledge about mushrooms.

But that's just one focal point for a broader relationship with how to interact with the world, how to interact with altered states, things like dreaming and ceremonies for curing illnesses, etcetera.

And that's always been so fascinating to me.

Like if you go to a little remote corner of Northeast India that they have all of these folk tales about mushrooms and OK, when the Thunder hits, then it produces the mushroom.

The mushroom spirit comes and then we give it to someone when they're sick.

There's just so much that you can unpack there.

And you hear these stories from all over the planet.

Like there will be tribes in Norway and tribes in Uruguay or Paraguay that have the same mushroom with the same origin story.

And that stuff is just so fascinating to me.

The ethnomycological traditions basically, so those come up a lot where people will say, Oh yeah, the ancestors or the the elders of our tribe, they have very detailed knowledge about these different mushrooms, the morphology of them.

They'll be able to distinguish which ones are edible versus toxic.

They'll know which ones to give you to have visions or to cure an illness.

And also this is a, this knowledge is emerging from all over the world.

So for years, academia has only.

Substantiated that Maria Sabina and Mazitex and in Mexico and kind of this Central American Mexican tradition around psilocybin mushrooms.

But there's been increasing substantiation academically from other pockets of the world like from South Africa has come out with indigenous knowledge around mushrooms.

And I've heard anecdotal reports of healers in West Africa and including by academics who've said, yes, they have knowledge of mushrooms, but there was just really, it's an underfunded science.

It's a citizen science driving this.

So how many mycologists are there?

This is a new thing.

Like, I spent a lot of time in Chiapas, Mexico.

I'm here right now.

We have a mushroom festival this week.

For years.

There's literally like one or two mycologists in this entire state that encompasses millions of square miles and thousands of years of tradition.

But it's like that all over the planet, Papua New Guinea, all all over Africa.

So I think it's really a case of just like nobody's really gone there looking.

And if they have, then there's a lot of gatekeeping for obvious reasons, because historically a lot of indigenous tribes, they know that if they share this knowledge, it's probably gonna be taken from them.

You know, they were many people were burned at the stake for witchcraft for these.

So that's one thing that keeps coming up is people will say, Oh yeah, we have knowledge around mushrooms in Borneo, we have knowledge around mushrooms in Africa, etcetera.

In India.

I got to go to the first mushroom festival in India.

There's like they just did a survey of the mushroom landscape there and kind of counted a bunch of species in this one area.

There's like 40 plus solosity species in India like across the subcon, and that's just based on a few surveys and people are finding new ones all the time.

So that's one that comes up.

But I think more broadly than just like tripping on mushrooms, there's a lot of potential uses for like bio materials for kind of advanced technology, things like mycotexture.

People are building houses out of mushrooms, tiny houses using mycelium and hemp composite materials and structural insulated panelling.

You've got just the biggest companies in the world investing in fungi tech like NASA, IKEA, Dell, the US Department of Defense, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, the list goes on and on and on because there's a lot you can do with this material and we're just starting to scratch the surface of that.

So there's off planet applications like Astro Mycology.

Well, I was going to say because mushrooms can survive the the vacuum of space, right?

Yeah, there was just an Australian company that grew mushrooms to feed a sub orbital space crew that they had.

And that's part of what NASA has invested in is to do R&D about growing habitats basically.

Because let's say you want to put a base on the moon or on Mars or whatever, thinking long term, what are you going to like transport a bunch of heavy materials up there?

Or you could potentially grow the habitats using some kind of byproduct, you know, and that's what translates, I think, to a lot of different marginalized cultures.

Embracing the potential of mushrooms too, is that you can grow habitats, food, medicine, etcetera, out of the byproducts of waste, out of agricultural byproducts.

So I'm going to Uganda in November, super pumped about it, and I'm going to participate in the third African Rising Mushroom Festival.

And that's a whole community of people who have figured out how to grow mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, lion's meat.

They're completely detached or separate from the whole, like psychedelic microdosing movement.

And I think that's something that I wanna bring into this whole cultural phenomenon in the West.

Like, people are so interested in tripping and psilocybin and microdosing, but to me, that's just sort of the gateway into the much broader potential of what you can actually do with mushrooms.

And you really can cover the whole Maslow hierarchy of need.

You can get food, medicine, shelter.

There's people making clothes and materials.

And so that's really where the whole kind of premise of mycopreneur comes from.

It's not about this like Silicon Valley startup ethos and we're going to sell super exclusive expensive meat to Erawan.

That's like 1 angle of it, but it's this.

See right there, that was one of your skits, basically like that whole thing that that evolution of thought you just threw out there is kind of how I see you come up with the stuff.

Because then you'll take that and turn that into a reality of like, that's how people are about it too in reality.

And there you go, there's your satire.

Oh dude, I get so many like Chat GPTPR pitches for the podcast of like our founder is a expert in psychedelics.

They started micro dosing in 2024 and now they're a keynote speaker and I'm just like you sent that to.

2000 they did mushrooms one time and became a shaman.

He.

Saw faces in the guacamole at the Super Bowl party.

No, totally.

I'm all about that.

I like I said, I, I mean, part of me is jealous too.

I see you.

You're, I don't, I think you might travel more than anybody I've ever seen online.

I mean, even like people that travel as their job, you travel a lot.

So I grew up hosting exchange students.

So I think that really kind of informed a sense of like the world was bigger than San Diego where where I grew up.

And just over time, like I've kept in touch with a lot of people.

I've been raised in a very international environment.

I've worked my first like real job out of college was in Saudi Arabia.

And everybody works in Saudi Arabia is there to make money and get the hell out of Saudi Arabia.

So, you know, I got to travel all over the Middle East and Sri Lanka and Asia and West Africa and or East Africa.

So, yeah, I mean, I think you just pick that up as time goes on and then it's a expensive habit.

You know, some people are into cocaine and fine wine and I, I love to travel, but also those other two are great too.

Nice actually, so we were just talking about like sacred uses and stuff.

I just read.

I don't know if you're familiar with Tom Lane, but he just wrote a new book called Sacred Mushroom Sorcery of Ancient Mexico.

I was in contact with him.

I'm trying to get him on.

I don't know if we'll end up linking up, but I did do like 5 episodes with them over the past.

Yeah, probably the span of like a year early on and, and mind escapes evolution.

And he took us through a lot of like the metaphysics and the way that the ancient people and the Maz attack and you know, Nawa and all those people interpret reality versus the Western idea of reality and you know, how the universe works and things like that.

So I actually recommend checking that out if if anybody's interested in that kind of stuff.

I just saw that he dropped that new book and it's very interesting to me because, you know, I grew up in the South of San Diego, 5-10 minutes from the border.

So I've been coming down to Mexico for since like 1990.

I was born in 89, so very, very young in my life.

I would cross my church.

I grew up and was very active on both sides of the border.

And then as time went on, I just became increasingly interested in the other side of the border.

And so I, I spent a good amount of the year down in Chiapas.

And so everything Tom Lane was writing about, I've had some experience with some of the different traditional uses of mushrooms in the Mazatec culture, etcetera.

And like I mentioned this week, we have a big mushroom festival that's exclusively focused on one mushroom called the Moni mushroom.

It's edible.

It's the Lactifluse chiapenensis, it's called, and it's a very important mushroom to the Chiapenekin people in the capital of Tutla Gutierrez and surrounding regions.

So like that's kind of I tapped into that network of people and it's very interesting because it's ancestral knowledge, but with a homegrown crowd of scientists who can really understand like DNA bar coding, the morphology and the taxonomy and the Latin names.

So once I kind of linked up with that group, I just opened the door to a lot of cool opportunities because there are a lot of these pockets of these homegrown people who recognize the cultural heritage and the importance of mushrooms, not just in Mexico, but like I mentioned in places like India, South Africa, Serbia.

And it's wild, dude.

You just, if you try to Google some of this knowledge, it's just not there.

You know, there are.

It's a lot of dude.

I look at like Alan, Alan Rockefeller's posts and it's like he just picks something up and goes, this is what it is.

Like how did you like, there's got to be, I mean, I don't even know how many species there are, but I mean, he, you watch his videos or like these things that he posts, he's like, how does he know that?

And then he pulls out his like microscope and starts like analyzing these things.

It's crazy.

They're finding new mushrooms all the time, like Alan finds new mushrooms every time that we go out with the group fungaria that I've been working with.

We find new mushrooms to science.

And that's part of what drew me to spending time in this region is that there's an estimated 50,000 types of fungi in the state, and only 2% have been identified and described.

But it really is that bridging of this sort of ancestral indigenous ancient knowledge with modern scientific rigor.

And that gets so exciting because we'll be out there foraging and there will be someone who speaks Tozo, which is one of the Mayan demographics and languages here.

And they'll say, oh, we have this word for this mushroom.

And then the Mexicans, the Chupanekins I work with will be like, well, here's the Latin name for it.

And then there will be like a white mycologist from the States would be like, here's what we call it.

And to see that happen in real time and to have the traditions and the science all merge is just extremely exciting for a lot of reasons, I think.

Oh yeah, that's awesome.

Are there any differences you've noticed in terms of like how psychedelics are framed in the US versus internationally?

I know obviously it's illegal in a lot of places, but places where it is part of their heritage or ceremonies and things like that, you know, how does how does it compare?

And then how does it compare to, you know, in the US we don't really have, I mean, maybe Native American, obviously, but other than that in terms of like Western culture, I mean, it kind of died with the elucity and mysteries a long time ago, so.

Yeah, it's huge, honestly, because like a lot of parts of the world that I've been fortunate to travel to and speaking from my experience in Mexico is like the idea of psychedelics and traditional metheno medicines are very different from each other.

So I've heard Jonathan OTT talk about this personally.

He's someone who was a inspiration to me and a lot of people, you know, for anyone who's unfamiliar.

Yeah, RIP.

He just passed away in August and I think, or July, he was 77.

But he devoted his life to the study of entheogens.

And he actually coined that term right as he helped coin the term entheogen, God containing plant.

And so in Mexico, there's a tradition of mushroom use.

But psychedelic is a Western word.

They're very disconnected.

Psychedelic was coined, I think, by Humphrey Osmond in the 1950s, as most people probably know.

So even like thinking about the psychedelic 1st or the 1st wave in the West with like Tim Leary.

Tim Leary had his first psychedelic experience in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and it was with psilocybin mushrooms and maybe 1955 somewhere around there.

And they have a multi millennia year tradition around that.

So like the whole like hype of psychedelics and all that.

And granted, there are a lot of really interesting lab born psychedelics in the West and I'm a proponent or you know, a student if you will, of Shogun.

So I also see the value of like a lot of these other research chemicals, some would call them, and things like 2 CB and MDMA and LSD, but those are very, very different than a lot of these traditions around mushrooms.

Or like with the Taino people in the Caribbean region, apparently there's a rich history of DMT use of different snuffs.

It's called Yopo, I believe in parts of South America, but I've been following some of the work of Manny Torres.

I believe his name is Manny Torres and he studies the ancient use of DMT snuffs and it's Pan Caribbean tradition.

But I think you kind of hear these things all over the world.

There's different sacraments, different people.

So how that gets squared away, I think with the whole idea of this psychedelic renaissance is very disconnected from a lot of the folk traditions.

Of course there's overlap with it, but like I was mentioning earlier about the in Serbia, I was there last year and apparently there's healers or visionaries in the hills and remote areas of Serbia who still employ psilocybin mushrooms and there's a silocity Cerbica.

It's like, where does that tradition come from?

You know, So and then, you know, we can get into it.

But the whole idea of like framing this in a very individualized, pathologized way, which is very much what this kind of psychedelic renaissance tries to do is say like psilocybin and DMT for PTSD and depression.

To me, that's just such a modern construct and it's really pathologizing something a little bit more broad and a lot more broad, honestly.

But that's where we are.

So that's where the satire comes in is because I also get to have a foot in that world.

You know, I, I had no idea about this whole psychedelic industry.

And then all the sudden I started getting invited to things and I started getting invited.

Like, you know, there's been people who say, Hey, we want you on the board of directors for this company.

And I'm like, you're probably not going to like what I have to say, but that's what I have a podcast, you know, you guys go ahead.

And everyone's fired.

I guess my question would be to, to follow up on that is, do you think since like the US is this big cultural melting pot and we don't really have this like anchored history other than the Native Americans, that the indigenous people that live in North America, Do you think that it it, it comes off as cheesy because there isn't those roots and it's not taken from a historical standpoint.

Like does that make sense?

Like, there's no planted roots of Western society within psychedelia.

This is kind of like the closest we've been right now.

But there's a cheese cheesiness to it, if that makes sense.

And I'm not trying to like, disparage anybody, but it's just, do you?

Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah, I get it in a big way.

And what I say is that there's a fair amount of people trying to build a culture on top of an old culture.

Like it's something that goes back many, many years as the use of visionary plants and tools.

But I've noticed this since getting inducted into this kind of psychedelic industry or conference circuit or whatever, where it's natural for the first part that people have an experience and then they want to be outspoken about it.

I get that.

Like, I mean, I, I start a fucking, I start a podcast because I want to share about my experiences, but.

Well bro, you are allowed to swear.

Great.

I've just noticed people trying to build this culture on top of a much more ancient culture without really having the let's say like devotion or awareness of the through lines and a lot of the history.

So that's what I'm trying to do is kind of like keep alive these different traditions.

And it's part of why I've travelled all over the world to connect with people.

Cuz I think people need to hear this broader context of how these traditions actually show up in different cultures versus this brand new thing that comes out with like where hey, I had a mushroom experience and then I hired APR team and now I have a six week program.

I think, okay, there's value in people sharing the experiences, but I don't know if you were to come into music and then just completely disregard the last 10,000 years of music and have no idea how to play an instrument and then say that you are like the peak of musical culture.

I think there's a hubris in that.

And I think it actually potentially does more of a disservice than a good.

Is this idea of like, I don't care about the traditions or the giants whose shoulders I stand on.

All I know is that I microdosed and now, you know, I, I pivoted in, I have some capital and we're going to launch this company.

Like, first of all, put me on the board, I'll take some of your money.

But second of all, like, I, I think that we really do need to pay homage and respect the different traditions.

Doesn't mean that we have to just like borrow from them.

Because for example, I've heard this analogy, which makes sense to me is like, and some indigenous cultures like Nawatol, I believe there was like human sacrifice with, with mushrooms.

And so like we can evolve from that.

I don't think we need to bring that in the 21st century.

But at the same time, we don't need to completely disregard the fact that so many different cultures have really hard won and, and important and reverent tones about how they approach psychedelics or ethno medicines, if you will.

So I'm very into the hybrid approach personally.

And that's part of what I've been trying to do is like, I'm going to, you know, get different stakeholders at the table.

I'll listen to the CEO and the guy who has the hedge fund or whatever.

That's one perspective.

But is that perspective more important than the 7th generation shaman or Taita who's been working with these for many generations?

Like, I think there has to be some form of hybridization or else you just have this endless culture war.

It's sort of where I'm at.

Yeah, No, thanks for your take on that.

You know, for me, I guess my real quick, my take is it's almost just like it's an obvious lack of knowledge.

And for me, I'm trying to balance like, how do I come off when I'm talking to people about it?

Not like a know it all or like a stuffy about it.

But at the same time, it's like there should be a reverence.

There should be, you know, if you want to do like you said, create a course or a podcast or whatever, like you have to be passionate about investigating the origins and the knowledge and everything.

And I think it comes off pretty obvious to people that do put in the work and do know about these things when somebody doesn't and not necessarily grifting per SE, but like you said, it's just new and it's exciting and maybe they're not really thinking clearly long term about it kind of a thing.

So I guess that's where I'm at with it.

My thing is, I've, I've checked my own biases on these things and it's just as long as you get there.

For me, it's like, I don't how, how long does it take or whatever.

As long as you get there, as long as you're trying.

If you're not, then what conversation are we even having on this topic?

Right.

So.

Yeah, there's so many emerging categories around psychedelia that I'm very interested in, like DMTX.

That's fascinating, right?

The fact that you can go into these extended state DMT experiences and I've heard a few of the different people talk about him, like I was in Hungary 2 years in a row at Ozora and saw Carl, maybe Hayden is his name, I can't remember, but he's really into the DMT extended states.

And so I gobbled that up and I'm like wow, that's fascinating.

So also I think.

It's really important to have a sense of humility, and that's where I try to come out this with and that's where the satire works really well.

It's like, I'll often be like, I honestly have no idea.

I'll say that I have my experiences, I have my biases.

I think as much as people try to say that I'm I'm open minded, like we're all culturally conditioned and programmed.

And I found that satire can be a great way of sort of taking the piss out of yourself, you know?

And that's something I saw a lot and still see in psychedelia.

Is this like, need to be right?

Like I need to be right.

I'm right.

But it's like, what if there's a multiplicity of right answers?

Like how do you square with that?

What if you find out something on your next trip that just tells you you were wrong about everything else?

And it's ironic to me that there's so much, there's a fair amount of close mindedness, I think, and psychedelia of like, this is the way to do it and this is how you do it.

We're going to train people to do this.

So I'm like, you should leave some room for the fact that like, maybe you're wrong.

Maybe.

I'm wrong.

Yeah, that just comes across.

I mean, that's just dog dogmatism regard like so as long as you're, I mean, my philosophy is always to have an evolving philosophy, meaning that if I tie myself to one thing that doesn't make any sense.

We know science evolves, we know philosophy evolves.

We know the mind and consciousness and our knowledge of what's going on is always evolving.

So if you're going to die in a hill at this point, I guess you're not really thinking too deeply about things.

However, I will say that there's a difference between like experiential stuff like gnosis, like first hand knowledge of these things and like you said, doing these compounds and experiencing these things yourself.

But then also like historical context or scientific knowledge.

And you know what I'm saying?

Like there is a difference there where I would agree with you that each person's different.

Let's keep some humility in terms of, you know, experiences and what people are experiencing.

However, we know what this compound is and what it does to the human mind.

And we know, you know, where it grows.

We know what people have used it over.

However, you know, roughly.

We'll always learn more, but you get what I'm saying.

Yeah, and I'm pretty interested in a lot of these lab chemicals, you know, like I have some, I think it's called Ald 52.

That's a analog of LSD and it's fascinating.

And you know, I, I used to be a little bit more on the side of like natural versus synthetic, but I've kind of come around that Ben, you know, like I think DMT is a fascinating chemical.

Some of it's naturally extracted.

You know, I'm not a, a neuropsychopharmacologist here, but having tried different things, like it's, it's a broader conversation now too.

I mean, it's ever broadening about all of these emergent molecules and like I've been gifted some three MMC and things like that, you know, and some of these are becoming very popular, like 2 CB has become very popular.

I'm so old school, I2 CB is the only one I recognize that you just said so.

There's quite a few other ones and.

I'm sure there are.

Yeah.

And I like I said, I am open minded.

I'm interested but have to kind of pick my battles, if you will, because yeah, like LSD is awesome, but I can't be doing like 12 hour, 15 hour plus trips all the time, you know, So I'm sure somebody out there.

Yeah, dude, you're a pops now.

You don't have time for that one day when the the chickens flown the coop, you know that's the time to.

Actually, you know, I get to travel like I mentioned.

That's true.

I forgot.

Yeah.

That's how it's, you know, like for example, I was like never interested in ketamine.

And I always, always have to preface this by saying like do your own homework and be careful and know that.

And I know myself.

So like I haven't really done much ketamine, but I hit AK hole last year and I was, I was gifted some ketamine in Europe.

It's really popular over in like England and Germany and places like that.

And it was awesome, you know, so I get it.

But also it's nice to be like, oh man, that was awesome.

I probably should probably take a year off from doing it, you know, cuz it's really easy to get sucked into the other side of that.

I've seen it happen too often.

And at the end of the day, like I'm just stoked on the life I have.

So you know, there's always a new thing.

People wanting to mail me.

Check out this product.

Everybody has the best product.

Have you ever noticed that this is 99.7% pure MDMA?

It's pharmaceutical grade.

It's like that's what the last guy said too.

But you know, I usually find a good source and stick with it when I can.

Nice.

Yeah, I, I mean, I'm out of I'm out of the the game and that trying all the sorts of different stuff.

There's just too much going out of my life right now.

However, you know, there's always the future, you know, and old silly will always be there.

You can always rely on old silly my.

Favorite definitely my favorite and just works the best for me personally.

Like some of the other things are just like, well, polypharmacy and all this.

I'm just like, I'm not really tapped into the OR, I'm not really that interested in being part of the whole like festival polypharmacy culture and all that was like mushrooms.

If I do them, I usually wake up feeling awesome the next day and I have a sense of purpose and motivation.

That's enough for me if.

You do a real macrodose too.

To your point, you said you wanted to take a year off after the.

If you have a real experience and from my 20 years of plus, you know, whatever doing this, if you have a real experience, you do not want to do it anytime soon because you want to process everything that just happened.

And you know, I think if you do it too much, you lose that.

I used to get this feeling not as much, you know, I haven't been as active lately, but like in the past, you know, my late 20s and early 30s especially, you took a macrodose.

You're like, what did I just do right after you do it?

And then you're, you know, then becomes great after.

But there's that like initial feeling like after you do it.

I always felt, I don't know if it was psychological or if other people feel that, but it's always this like instant dread or regret, but then it like fades off as you kind of come up and start having the experience.

Well, I think that's also where running a business, having a family comes in because like those are so utterly fulfilling, as many people can attest to.

And you really don't have time to be sleeping in.

You can't be like, oh, I'm just

going to sleep in till 2:00 PM today.

It's like, no, the baby needs to wake up and he needs diapers changed and all that.

So same thing with like I put out the podcast every Friday.

I host an incubator every Thursday for the community, which is mushroom entrepreneurs to come together and connect and level up together.

I do the newsletter on Thursday, and now I've, I did one on Tuesday.

And sort of having that flow causes me and forces me to be like, you know what?

I probably shouldn't do that tonight.

You know, like I need to get a good night's sleep.

I like to get up early.

I like to get work done.

And then there's your pockets, You know, there's times and places for everything.

But like, I think you get to a certain point where you're just like, yeah, I'm good on that.

Like I, I'm.

Yeah, there's I've never gotten that vibe from you either.

Like, and I like, I can tell you're very, you know, have your wits about everything and like there's some people you're talk to, like in these spaces, you know, like this person's degenerate.

Like.

You know, like, no offense, but like, I don't know how they're living life, you know, that way.

But it's like the people you see on TV with all these reality shows, they're drinking, you know, they're in their 40s and they're hammering beers and alcohol like it's going out of style, you know, so, and actually I had to, I just read something alcohol uses way down, which is an interesting given cannabis and and psychedelics and everything like that.

You have to wonder how much of that's kind of interfered with that.

But I do want to touch it because we have mentioned satire a few times since it's like so important to kind of do what you do and it's so central.

Do you think that humor is kind of like a powerful way to to talk about psychedelics and kind of disarm people and also bring, you know, awareness to these topics?

Almost like making fun of something kind of takes its power away from being this like ostracized thing.

Definitely, 100%.

And I think that erring on the side of humor or satire is always gonna be the right way to do it because there's something about it, like what makes a good joke, what makes good satire?

And there's so many cultural touch points that you have to have a familiarity with and being able to communicate about those in some ways, I think is like the what is the tribe?

There's one the the weeks Carita, sorry, I live in Mexico.

I don't know them.

But the people who do the peyote pilgrimage, right, They talk about twisted words.

They use twisted language and it's a way to communicate the ineffable, basically.

So like if you go on the peyote pilgrimage, then you, for example, you're in the desert.

They'll say the desert is now the ocean and you'll see cars and let's say cars are now ships.

And essentially it's a way of reprogramming your mind linguistically to think about things paradoxically, metaphorically, kind of.

And that's kind of how a trip goes for a lot of people is you're like, how do you explain this?

You can't explain it in normal words.

It's like, good luck with that.

Good luck talking to someone about ADMT trip and try to explain it.

As Terence McKenna said, it's unenglishable.

Well, I think that the the missing piece there is with something like satire or humor, you know, you can find a way to make a joke about it and people can understand it and they'll be like, Oh yeah, I get that.

And somebody mentioned that to me recently where they were like, you know, being able to do psychedelic comedy and do jokes about things like DMT and psilocybin.

It shows how mature the ecosystem and the culture has gotten.

Because if you were trying to do a stand up routine 15 years ago, 20 years ago and you start talking about things like ibogaine or whatever and research with the military and DMT, people really aren't going to get it.

But now the culture has evolved where people are like, oh, I know what micro dosing is.

Oh, I've heard of iboga, I get it.

And so I think like in terms of being able to communicate, the ineffable comedy and satire can do a great job at that.

And like, I've heard even with the Boiti that there have been people saying that the role of a Iboga initiation is to be able to tell better jokes.

You know, and you, you look at these different cultures, like my grandfather was a Christian pastor.

He was a very devout, very on the other side of the psychedelic or drug culture divide.

And he was someone who had a great sense of humor and an appreciation for that.

And like, so you could be from anywhere.

And if you can sit at the table with someone like that and have a a sense of jokes about it, like you can bridge the cultural divide.

So I think that's what's happening or the potential exists there with something like satire and comedy to be like, OK, you know, like, I always think about people I've met on my travels, and some of them were just very funny and I hardly understood a word they said.

There was a guy in northern Thailand who spoke super broken English, but he would laugh so much and he would just just had that way of cutting through all of the cultural familiarity or whatever where it's like, I don't understand this culture.

Oh, I understand this guy.

He's funny as hell.

I'll take a shot with you.

And then, you know, I in Saudi Arabia meeting people like that where if you can lean into humor and, and so as far as humor and satire, I think they're a little different, like stand up comedy versus satire.

And, and what I like about satire is it's very vitriolic.

It's very dark.

And I think that's important.

So like, it's something that sort of makes subject matter that's hard to broach.

Are you really taking the piss out of it?

You got to man, I look at someone like Anthony Bourdain like he's a satirist to me.

You know, like you, you read Anthony's prose and his writing, It's like, oh, he's scathing.

Like he's simultaneously at the peak of the restaurant industry and, and food culture and also just like so critical and taking the piss out of it and all this stuff like the celebrity of the cation of, of food, etcetera.

And I think about like Hunter S Thompson, you know, like he's a satirist, right?

Someone who you're like, if they're singular, they're able to bring this lens to the experience that makes you relatable, but they're also being incredibly critical of it.

And I think there's a fair amount also, we live in a hyperpolarized society in time.

So there's something about like when you're not actually pissed off at this person, it's like South Park style or whatever.

There's a lot of value there.

And I like that I've had to navigate that and be like, oh man, how do I approach this scenario?

And especially as you kind of get more recognition, there's a lot of times when I'm like, man, I wanna say so much about this subject matter, but like you really have to nail it or else is bad.

So like one of the first things that really put me on the radar more broadly speaking, honestly in 2022 is I went to Israel and Palestine and I was making like really far out over the top satire on the border and both sides of those countries.

And and it was all very honest and it landed very well.

And now I'm like, I wish I could kind of do that again, but like the there's that old saying like.

The temperature's a little too hot right now.

Well, you can't stand in the same river twice, you know, It's either a different river.

Or Heraclitus.

Yeah, you'll get Heraclitus.

I mean, I think we need to use satire to really broach these hard to talk about subjects.

And I have to a degree.

And I, I have really, there was a point where I was just like, I'm just going to push this as far as it can go.

And kind of the tagline I had was like, I mean, they're going to get cancelled.

They're suicided by the globalists.

And then, you know, it ended up becoming popular.

So I'm like, what am I going to do now, Man?

My, my life's too cushy.

I can't be just taking blind gambles anymore.

I get paid too much.

Yeah, dude, you're you do do take some risks, especially in that Speedo of yours that that might get you in more trouble than your words one day.

Especially once I get into flags dude I got like different flags speedos and they're just talking.

About that's like a double, that's a double way, I mean.

It, it is.

And I was thinking about having like 1 flag on the front and one flag on the back.

Like, you know, it's just like people are animals at the end of the day.

Like there's definitely the whole spiritual component, but it's so easy to capture attention and.

But I don't want to be pandered to the lowest common denominator.

Like honestly, that's the other thing as a content creator, you know, it'd be so easy just to go into the most provocative thing you can do.

But that's not my brand, dude.

Like I think, yeah.

People are doing that and people hate those people that that do do that.

So and that's not even funny.

It's just like, yeah, like you said, pandering to the lowest common or trolling to the highest, you know, degree or whatever.

So have you ever gotten pushback from the psychedelic community for any of your satirical takes, whether it was over the top or somebody you offended somebody personally?

You know, I, I, cuz I, I had this other guy on, he's a comedian, Dave Yates.

And he does, he's out West, I think he's in LA and he does like fish and jam band jokes and stuff like that.

And most of the jam band fans get it and they laugh along cuz it's like, you know, makes fun of the like wooks in the community and everything like that.

And people like the Goose fans and they're so touchy and you know, stuff like that.

But.

Do you ever?

Experience anything like that?

Because I, I think I've seen some stuff on Twitter maybe in the past or Axe or whatever we're calling it now, but I was just curious if anybody ever came at you with some heat for anything that you made.

I have had that happen before and I think it's totally natural, But I guess the difference between me and like, let's say other people is I'll, I'll stand on it and I'll talk to people one-on-one.

Like I that I'm a community builder.

You know, I'm not interested in beefs.

Like people always try to come to me with this person said this and this person did that.

And I just feel like, especially with something like satire, like it should be protected speech and I make stuff every day.

That's the thing people don't get is like it's improv.

I've made a 1000 plus videos, you know, so like if someone's gonna cherry pick and be like William, like this one, it's be like great.

I didn't hear you say anything about the 500 that everybody liked.

You did.

You sat on the sidelines for those.

But as soon as something crossed the line, you had a lot to say about it.

And that's worked very well for me.

I'm like, I'll just text people.

I'll be like, here's my number, dude.

Like so I ran into some stuff with symposia.

You know who hasn't with their organization?

And I'm like, I'm good.

Friends, they still around?

I feel like they've disappeared.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not going to comment on it too broadly, but I will say that I'll stand on it whenever, you know, because at the end of the day, it's your intent and what you're doing.

And if we're going to start like picking out microaggressions over something or interpretations, it's like, great.

You know, like I, I host a incubator every Thursday.

I've been doing it for over a year at this point, and we've built a community in the thousands.

And like, it's shocking.

That's people, you know, who have these fake screen names.

And I'm not addressing symposia specifically here, but like some of the other organizations, like there were all of these faceless accounts.

And I'm like, you're gonna hide behind a keyboard and like, parrot things that I said six months ago or whatever.

Be my guest.

Let me ask you this though with the symposia stuff.

So without getting too weird, it seemed like they were around until they accomplished this mission of tanking those trials and then it just disappeared.

I mean, what do you think or do?

You there's a lot, there's a lot to be said for all of that.

But like I mentioned, like someone like Mache, you know, she's probably the focal point, a big voice there.

And like, I know her personally and I've spent time with her in at least three countries.

And I will communicate directly with anybody.

Somebody has a criticism like bring it publicly A and then be ready to stand on it.

And then also I'll text you and we'll, we'll call, we'll figure this out, dude, because I think, you know, people have these high gloss sense of exactly who they are and where they stand and all that.

And it's like, great, Well, why don't we talk about this one-on-one diplomatically?

And I think that's what's been lost with a lot of the public sphere as diplomacy.

And I've always said like, great, like, why don't we just talk about this one-on-one, whoever it is and, and then we handle it and we move on.

And sometimes am I perfect?

No, sometimes, dude, I had so much going on.

Like I said, I just had a kid, you know, I'm running my own business, dude.

I don't have a cushy academic salary.

I don't have a funder, you know, I I run all my deals one-on-one with people like yourself and people like.

So if somebody it just to me, there's there's a sense of hubris of like that the ideology.

It's like this is how things should be.

There's sort of like idealism and then a pragmatism.

And I live in a pragmatic world, dude.

I live in a world like, you know, I mentioned this earlier, like I've worked all over the world.

I've traveled all over the world and I do that constantly.

Like I this year I've got, you know, I'm headed out to Switzerland and then I've got Tunisia, I've got Uganda.

I spend most of my time in Mexico.

I'm producing a huge event here.

It's like somebody wants to be critical about some take I had.

It's like, well, great, you didn't say anything about the event.

I financed and worked from the ground roots at their request here in Chiapas, Mexico, which is the most abjectly impoverished state of Mexico.

So, you know, I'm willing, I'm willing to take that on wherever and I'm not seeking any altercation.

And I actually have grown and learned a lot from those experiences because what I learned.

Is that the more public you are, the more your work is received?

Whatever you're doing, you're going to have criticism, you're going to have haters, you're going to have push back.

And that's actually natural.

So like, I just did a whole video ripping burners.

You know, I think Burning Man personally, I've never been, I've been invited.

It just seems very pretentious to me and I've you know when.

Somebody died this year, right?

Or was found.

I, I, OK, great.

I would love to go if somebody wants to pay for me to go out there.

And but even then it's just, to me, it seems like the spirit of what it was formed as and this whole idea of like a social experiment and we don't have capital and all that.

It's completely mutated away from that.

And I, I think Silicon Valley, the same thing happened.

Like the origins of a lot of Silicon Valley was about innovation, connecting people, helping people.

It's turned into like SAS platform Bros trying to cash out and like here, you know, it's not about innovation anymore.

It's about trying to get acquired and trying to build for money.

And a lot of the architects of Web 2.0 or earlier and the whole electronic link, it's the same thing.

Going back to what I said about psychedelics, it's like people are uninterested in the broader potential social agendas and the decentralization and the the, the personable connections with your community and more interested in like, how can I make a trillion dollars right now?

So point being that I just like, I love to satirize Burning Man.

I would go.

I'm not like I don't have a vendetta against Burning Man dude, it looks it.

Looks terrible bro.

It looks.

It's such low hanging fruit to make fun of and then a bunch of burners get super butt hurt over this thing that I don't even script them is the other thing.

It's like I literally do improv.

I'll I'll get up.

I'll be like I'm gonna make a one.

It looks like psychedelic health to me if I had to like I'm.

Not personally interested in it at all.

If I had to think about like what, like like Mad Max psychedelic hell, that's kind of like beyond the Thunderdome or people are just riding these spiked mobiles in in the desert, you know, on psychedelics.

And I don't know, man.

I'm not trying to.

I'm not trying to touch it.

Like.

Do whatever makes you happy, but to me, yeah, to me it looks terrible.

So.

Well, that's, that's it.

It's like, I don't actually think about Burning Man ever.

But when it's Burning Man, it's like, oh, this is such easy material to satirize right now And, and I do and it, it always lands and people like it.

But then inevitably you get the pushback would be like, you, you don't understand Burning Man.

We have 10 principles.

I'm like, it sounds culty, bro, but all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna not stop making fun of.

You, I don't know anything about that.

I'm just saying specifically aesthetics and what I like to experience when I'm trying, you know, whatever.

I like to meditate, I like to learn things, I like to dig deep within myself.

I don't know how any of that's happening there, but whatever.

To each their own.

If that works for somebody, kudos.

Let's pivot here.

Moving.

So like, what do you think is the most misunderstood idea about psychedelics and in like the mainstream culture and purview right now?

A lot of.

New culture building on top of these kind of ancient cultures, if you will.

And so like, I see it all the time and I love to satirize.

And again, I'm friends with a lot of these people and I also benefit a lot from this emergent psychedelic industry.

Like I get tons of sponsorships and stuff and I'm thankful for those.

That's great.

But like, I'm gonna also speak my mind, I think, which is why ironically, it's like people people say like man, can you do a satirical video roasting my company and I'll pay for you.

I'm like, well, that's not the spirit, but yes, of course, yes.

So I think there's a lot happening right now with the globalization of psychedelics and it it becomes again, a diplomacy initiative for me because there's definitely people invested in trying to gatekeep and patent.

And there's an argument to be made for that for sure.

Like about do you just want like rampant psychedelic use among everyone?

Like I think in most cultures, it's not something that's normalized.

Like it's not a normal thing to be promoting.

Like you should just be doing all these psychedelic drugs all the time.

At the same time, I'm a cognitive libertarian.

So I think like people should be open to that.

If if you want to do that, that's great.

But I'm kind of over this endless spiritualization and searching.

You know, like I mentioned, I came around full circle.

I was fortunate to be from a very middle class family to go to school and all that.

And I got to a point where I was like, do I really need to go to Peru and do another 5 ayahuasca ceremonies?

I went three years in a row and I just saw like this.

It's like a revolt.

Yes I do.

No, that's.

You great.

That's but like I.

Got to a point where I'm like, you know, I have just so many substances I mentioned that people want to share with me and like there's a time and a place.

So I'd be like, this is fun.

We're at The Flaming Lips concert.

Like I'll definitely do.

That's really good MDMA and I know you awesome, but like there's this, it's sort of a I've heard it compared to which is an analogy that makes sense to me.

That's like a video game where the more you go out, it's just like self generating.

So it's like, are you like on an infinite side quest right now or are you like accomplishing what you set out to do and you're and if you're enjoying, yeah, what is that?

Is that no man's land or what's that called?

There's a, there is a video game, but there is a video game where it's like supposedly like infinite where you can like there's infinite worlds you can discover or whatever.

I literally think I mean I there was a.

He called himself a shaman.

He probably wasn't a shaman, but maybe he was.

But a guy in South America that I had been to the the retreat center he owned back in like 2010.

And this was prior to any knowledge I had whatsoever about like that.

There was potentially a dark side to some of this stuff and I just saw this individual and his circle get just like progressively more unhinged.

And then he ended up dying in 2012 under very mysterious circumstances.

But then all these allegations came out.

So there is very much like a, you know, the cult potential of these things, which is obvious in hindsight, but I goody 2 shoes over here approach.

This is like everybody's happy and I want to make everybody happy and this is so good.

And I think, you know, it's all about your disposition and your complexion.

But we can't be naive that there are the potential for like abuse and cult like God like figures and all that to emerge well and it amplifies.

So if you're already into the.

Occult stuff or cult or whatever, it's just going to amplify that even further.

So maybe that even pushes somebody to take it to the next level, you know, or gives them some sort of God complex sort of a thing.

I could totally see that happening and obviously it has happened.

So yeah, I mean, that makes total sense.

Micro preneur ship suggests blending mushrooms in business.

Do you think psychedelics are changing the way people think about business models and ethics and innovation?

Obviously you mentioned tech, CE, OS and obviously people have been experimenting and stuff like that, but as it becomes more mainstream, do you think it affects things in a positive way?

Let's say people are starting to microdose, whatever.

Where do you see?

What do you what do you see from that standpoint?

Of things.

Yeah.

So I think.

Mycopreneur is a portmanteau, which is like Myco for mushrooms and preneur for building and making things.

And like, you know, I went to school, as I mentioned, in San Francisco and was very connected to the whole startup culture, Silicon Valley.

This was like 2007 to 2012.

So I saw both sides of this coin.

I saw the side of like people making really interesting valuable contributions to society.

And then I saw the other side of like people just trying to capitalize and rent seek, I guess is one word for things like that.

But I think in a lot of the world, entrepreneurship is the only way.

You literally don't have an option.

Like if you are born in certain parts of the world and societies, like you kind of have to be very entrepreneurial and hustle.

So I think the idea of a mycopreneur to me is it can be a lot of things, but I'm really interested in how abjectly impoverished, like marginalized communities can embrace mushroom entrepreneurship to significantly and tangibly up level their own lives individually and as a community.

So I mentioned I'm going out to Uganda and Hoima HOIMA, Uganda, there's a community that has leaned into growing mushrooms.

It has nothing to do with psychedelic mushrooms.

You know, there are hundreds, I think thousands of medicinal and edible mushrooms beyond, above and beyond psychedelics.

So if you learn how to grow oyster mushrooms, all the sudden you have an affordable, clean and bankable source of protein that you can share.

It's almost like mana.

And there have been some speculations of that like mana in the Bible.

MANNA actually has the desert truffle because there's a lot of both the Kalahari truffle and sub-Saharan Africa.

And then also there's a Turfisiachi and North Africa and it goes all across the Arabian Peninsula.

And I believe even over in the kind of Levant area that there are these truffles that people can, yeah, they just grow and you eat them and the rains come and all of a sudden you're in the middle of the desert and you have a viable food source.

And it's the same with mushrooms Everywhere there's it's a sustainable micro economy.

So like if you're on the roadside in India and Kerala or rural India, Goa, you'll see people selling mushrooms that grew like the termiticitis mushrooms that grow over the termite hills, they're edible.

And you go to parts of Africa, the same thing.

You go to Mexico, the same thing.

I go to the open air markets here and people are selling wild mushrooms.

So all the sudden it's like you have a sustainable micro economy.

What you don't sell, you can eat, you can trade.

And that's really to me the whole object of mycopreneurship.

And then you can level that up and you'd be like, wait a minute, you can build a moon habitat, something in 0 gravity out of mushrooms.

You can you can build the you can clean up plastic and cigarette butts with mushrooms.

There's 400 species of mushrooms that eat plastic like hero diapers.

Hiro, that's a diaper that for sigmatic founder ESO the finish guy.

He is one of the Co founders of this.

And after the baby uses the diaper, you throw this mushroom packet on it, a packet and it will decompose right there.

So something like mushroom or sorry, diapers, 300,000 diapers per minute get put into landfills.

And these people have figured out how to erase that trend essentially.

So like the Sky's the limit as far as I could, not even the limit.

And then we're just scratching the surface on a lot of other things that can be done with these.

Can you see the screen right now?

Yeah, dude.

And I've spent time.

In Egypt, and I've seen those out there.

What?

Do you, what do you think about that?

Doesn't that look like?

Away and I, I think actually I've mentioned this many times in Mind escape over the years, we've done episodes on this like ancient psychedelic use and speculation and things like that.

But I, I think Paul Stamets, the last time he was on Joe Rogan actually had him pick pull up this picture.

What do you think?

They're the one on the right.

That definitely looks like some sort of cultivation there.

Yeah, I'm a fan of Kalindi Iggy.

And he talked a lot.

About like Kemet and the ancient civilizations of Africa, There's no question that selosity mushrooms grow all over the planet.

And I think we've really just started to scratch the surface of that.

So have they been used by different cultures throughout time?

There's a lot of anecdotal and some hard science emerging about that.

Anecdotal evidence and hard science.

And I think what Paul actually said on that podcast, if I'm not mistaken, is we really can't know currently about a lot of these hypotheses.

But we do have the hard science now where we can substantiate things like there was a Johns Hopkins religious study recently, right, 2016 or so, where like imams, rabbis and priests were all given mushrooms.

And that something like 22 out of 25 said that it amplified their ability to connect with God.

So like when you start putting those things together, you're like, wait a minute, these things are found and all over Africa, all over Australia, all over Mexico, South America, pretty much the whole planet except for Antarctica.

Well, the early, yeah, the earliest and kind of in that region.

Would be the Algerian to seal glyphs.

That's that's where you get that that mushroom bee looking shaman guy that Terence McKenna or Terence McKenna use where you know, do you get, you know what I'm saying?

I think I might have an image of that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know the exact figure.

Yeah.

I actually will be adjacent to Algeria, so I might.

Try to go, I don't even know if you can go to see this figure, but like I mentioned, I'll be in Tunisia in December and I've already looked at me like how hard would it be to go see this thing?

I think it'd be really cool, yeah.

There's also a cave.

In Spain called Salva Pasquala, I've pulled it up many times before too.

And there's clearly an image of a cave painting of a bowl and then what's known as Philosophy Hispanica down below.

So I mean, you know, it's like you said, it's been.

Used all over the world.

Thousands and thousands of years.

I think the Algerian one's like 9000 years old and I think the Spanish one's like 6000 years old or something like that.

And so to me it's.

Ridiculous to think about like we're.

Going to ignore all of that we're not going to focus on those things and we're just going to do patented micro doses from a 4A CODMT.

It's like OK, that has its place for sure.

I, I definitely I know people who like research chemicals more than mushrooms.

They think they're more predictable or controllable, but it's like I'm personally really interested in these ancient through lines to Lord knows what they actually are.

But in my life they've been pretty beneficial honestly over the last 20 years or so.

Here's real quick, just so people have reference, this is the other.

One I was talking about in Spain, you see the bull up there in the left hand corner and the Salosa be down there in the right corner.

Well, and since you're bringing up the images, I got a shout out.

Colin Clark, who's ecnomycologist in South Africa and he's been on the podcast Mycopreneur and he's contributed a few new species, quote UN quote, to science.

They're old to indigenous, but new to science.

But he has analyzed over 300 cave paintings across South Africa and Lesotho, Lesotho, who and has been able to just like the one you showed, they're very clearly mushrooms, like it's people dancing around mushrooms.

It's it's like the bee figure in The Cave.

And that's his hypothesis.

But not just that they have The Cave paintings, but that there are these different diviners and healers who have shared in South Africa that they have knowledge about this and that now is when they want to share it with people.

And like this is a well documented, academically substantiated, for whatever it's worth, emerging science because for years people would be like, there's no record of use.

It's like, yeah, well, who's really asking?

You know, like you went down to the Mazitex and look what happened there.

Like Maria Sabina had her home burned down and there, you know, was an influx of foreigners.

And then it wasn't even her consent that she shared to share that whole story.

And it was all done under false pretenses to for Gordon Wasson to share that story with Life magazine.

So I do think there, there's a fair amount of gatekeeping for probably pretty good reasons, because people don't want their, they don't want to be have their cultures ripped off and they don't wanna be subjected to unnecessary harassment and random people coming in.

And this is something actually I've seen come up with some of the ethnographic research around mushrooms is like Juliana Furchi, who I'm a big fan of.

She runs Fungi Foundation and Chili.

She goes all over the world and documents Indigenous knowledge around mushrooms and she shared that in some of the cultures, people don't want that knowledge outside of their tight knit community because they say we're not comfortable with.

Next thing you know, we're gonna be treated like these museum specimens and then the government's gonna come in and then they're gonna do this, that and the other.

So it is that time I always trace that back to that's where diplomacy comes in.

And I grew up in the kind of citizen diplomat community hosting exchange students all over the world.

I found mushrooms then I found all over the world they have traditions with mushrooms and psychedelics.

And I'm like, well, I don't have to be like a rocket scientist explaining the academic and physiological aspects of these things.

Like, I can just make sure that these different people feel comfortable and valued and that I can contribute something here and connect.

Mushrooms grow everywhere.

I mean like they literally grow.

Everywhere.

So like to think that most cultures haven't dabbled in what's around them for food sources and maybe stumbled upon it or whatever, you know, is kind of naive.

There's like Gordon Wasson actually did research all over.

The world and he's primarily known for kind of blowing the cover off Maria Sabina and the Mazatecs and all that.

But like, what I find interesting is he has writings where he went to Borneo and Papua New Guinea and he talks about mushroom traditions in Borneo, but there's not a lot of elaboration on that.

And I, I've been to Borneo, I've not been to Papua New Guinea, but it's high on my list.

But there are native saucy species that grow there.

Of course, there's some tradition.

Maybe not every single tribe has one.

But if you look at the thousands or 10s of thousands of ethnographic and indigenous groups around the world, people have figured this out, as you say, like they, they know literally every plant, every animal, every fruit.

How do they not know the mushrooms?

It's pretty obvious to me.

But whether or not they want to share that knowledge is a different story.

I mean, there is kind of a balance though too I think.

That apophenia and, you know, bias and things like that kind of come into play.

Pareidolia, when you're looking at these things is I, while I think that there's something with these older ones, there's this like push for like Christian and sacred mushroom in the cross and Amanita muscaria.

I personally have read that book.

I've looked into all that stuff.

I know Joe Rogan repeats it like all the time.

I'm, I don't think that those are mushrooms and those Christian reliefs that's they look like trees that were, you know, and I think that who's, is it Tom Hatsis or somebody's written about that kind of stuff too and actually doing the research into it.

So I think that while there is roots in a lot of these ancient traditions and cave art and things like that, I think that people are trying to now fit it into other places where it's maybe not really there.

So I don't know if that makes sense.

It makes a lot of sense and I don't really have a strong opinion.

On all that, you know, I've not even read John Allen or the Allegro book about sacred mushroom in the cross.

Like I grew up very Christian.

I think there's certainly some potential that there were different plants used throughout history, but like I that's not where I like hang my hat up.

You know, I think if more evidence or compelling stories emerges, great.

But again, I just well, it all hinges too.

I like not to cut you off, sorry, but it all kind.

Of hinges on this idea that like there's some lost amanita that does something special that it doesn't do anymore.

Almost like this idea that Jesus was a special person and nobody else has lived that same way since.

You get what I'm saying?

It's like it's all dependent on something that has happened but it will never happen again for us to experience it kind of a thing, you know what I'm saying?

Like I've tried amanita, it definitely does something, but not nearly what Solocity does in my opinion.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Yeah, that's a really interesting one.

And for me I've.

Just kind of embraced Amanita over the last year and part of it was a a sponsor shout out Minnesota nice ethno botanicals and they have a bunch of Amanita and they're like, we want you to try this.

Let us know what you think.

And I had specifically for dreams.

I had some really enchanting intense dreams.

So but I've never like taken Amanita in the daytime and even like philosophies.

When I take them, it's usually a night time thing.

I've definitely done them in the day before, but like, I think there's a reason why philosophies have caught on in a big way.

I do think that there's some value, of course, with Amanita and that people should learn about them and check them out.

But I've become wary of anything where you try to like promise the moon to people, you know, I think that, OK, you should learn about these, have an experience, and as many probably spiritual people or traditions will tell you, there's lots of ways to get to this point.

I haven't personally found something that can really get to you to like a macrodose of possibly yet.

And to be fair, I haven't even taken a macro dose of Amanita.

I've heard people talk about taking like 20 grams.

That's pretty crazy to me.

And like maybe there's that in my future.

I don't know.

I've taken up to like 2 1/2 grams or so and again for sleep.

And I think, what's Stamitz?

Described.

His.

Amanita Panthera or is it Panthera pantherina?

I don't know.

And that didn't sound pleasant to me.

I mean, I don't know, you know, this repeating, you know, kind of a weird thing happening just didn't sound like my cup of tea.

But what I'll say is it just psychedelics in general.

I think the the important thing here is I don't know of anything else in mind.

Escape.

Over the last eight years we've investigated meditation and basically your near death experience is any way to alter your consciousness.

Psychedelics is literally the only thing you can do that alters your consciousness in a waking state and allows you to interact with reality in the world around you.

No, no other altered state of consciousness can really do that.

If you're meditating, you're pretty much sitting there still with your eyes closed or breathing or whatever.

If you're lucid dreaming, you're obviously dreaming or dreaming you're dreaming and near death experience I, which I've had to, you're pretty much dying at that time, you know what I'm saying?

So it's like all these things where people have these visionary or transcended experiences all happen either like in an incapacitated state where psychedelics allow you to interact with the world around you, you know, in a, in a real time way, if that makes sense.

There's so many different dimensions.

As probably most people can attest to, and there's things I'm interested in trying and there's things that I just don't really see a need for them.

And I've sort of even come under, let's say criticism occasionally.

But I think that why do you need to go through 55 different routes to get to the same potential open minded state?

So I think like, okay, DMT, super interested.

I've smoked DMT on three hits of LSD before and had incredible breakthroughs.

And I've tried macro doses of this, that and the other.

I've been invited through now the work that I do and all that to basically all kinds of retreat centers.

And I'm just like, I don't really want to do Iboga, like maybe I will one day, I don't know.

But like again, like I found something that works for me and my culture and like I've I heard that's intelligence.

But he nods on my bro.

Same thing with five meo.

DMT it's like I don't really feel called to like go smoke the toad.

Like maybe I'm sure it's amazing and it's great.

But like, again, I love the things that I do and I'm happy with them and I've tried a lot of things and I'll probably try some more later.

But like, you know, you got to make sense in your own world, in your own life.

And I feel like that's the conundrum a lot of spiritual seekers find themselves in as they shop the spiritual supermarket.

It's like, I'm gonna be a Buddhist and then I'm gonna get into Tantra and then I'm gonna get really into 5 meo DMT.

Well, have you?

And I hear this all the time, bro.

I go, you know, I work with these different companies where I end up at parties and shit and I'm in LA and they're like, here's a whole lineup of sprays and we've got the MDMA, but we personally like to do the MDMA with the Iboga and then we feel that after that the five meo comes in.

I'm just like, I don't know about any of that, bro.

Like good.

And again, I'm a cognitive libertarian.

I will die on that hill, I guess if I had to.

Where you do you, bro?

But like, what if, what if just like, you know, taking some mushrooms gets you there and that's cool and maybe you don't need to do it anymore.

I still like doing psychedelics, but I often will be like, you know, I'll take like 6 months or a year off or whatever.

Literally, I'll be like, yeah, I got my thing going on.

You know, I, I think people get really infatuated with the honeymoon phase of stuff.

And I think you could live your whole life going from one honeymoon to the next.

You can be like, oh man, like I'm really, I've connected with the spirit of the Iboga.

It's like, yeah, but I bet you if I see you in two years, you're going to be really into like MDMA or something.

And that's cool if that's you, but like, just be honest with yourself.

No, no, that's and I think you have a great approach like your outlook.

On it's amazing and to be honest with you, I've been that.

So pre me having OCD, which kind of came out in my early 20s, like your OCD, like clinical, not like oh, I clean too much or whatever people like to throw out there like actual real OCD.

Pre OCD was what you just said like once in a while macro dose amazing time or go to a show or whatever, having a transcendent experience and then not have to want to do it for a while.

Post OCD.

There's been times where literally that's the only thing that would break me out of like like a psychotic funk or like some sort of crazy psychological thing, you know, like this mind loop that won't stop, you know.

So again, I think that speaks to the power of being able to escape your day-to-day consciousness via these compounds.

And I think that if you have reverence for them, whether you know you're trying to use them medicinally or you're trying to just have a good time and chill or whatever, as long as you respect the compound, I think that's the most important part, right?

Like, I don't, you don't have to think that God's inside this thing or whatever, but I think you do have to respect the fact that this is a powerful transformative compound and you interacting with it will take you somewhere.

And I think that you have to own that.

And your life story and all that and that there's this sense of like, again, you could really get lost in the endless seeking.

And I think a lot of people do.

And I'm speaking as someone who thought for a while, like maybe I should get an apprenticeship as ayahuasca shaman.

You know, like I was invited to invest in opening a center in like 2012.

And I've been working in Saudi Arabia and as people I've met drinking ayahuasca and Peru and they're like, we're going to open a center and we want you to be one of the Co founders.

And I have the pitch deck and I would like the money and everything else.

Like, this is going to be my life, man.

I'm going to open Ayahuasca Center.

And then I pretty quickly realized I was like, just probably sit on this idea for a while.

I probably don't need to be going down there.

And they're like, here, you're missing out, man.

We just did a bunch of blow last night.

It's great.

But the center is going good.

And I'm like, all right, cool.

Those are those, you know.

Again, not your typical Iowa scarrows there.

Yeah, but you know what?

Like we're all figuring it out so.

I think that empathy is really important, like, and that's again bringing it back to the satire, Like satire, you can create this fantasy mock world where it's sort of like the rules are intentionally bent and people are intentionally cartoonishly distorted.

And then you can, and I think that you can create that and then send it off on its way and you can create another world tomorrow.

You don't have to be stuck in it.

And you can hopefully learn something from it because, man, yeah.

I have seen like one of the first characters I did that became popular was this Don Chad.

And Chad is like the idea of the Chad and the cannabis industry.

But it's like the same character who discovers ayahuasca and then he gets a big ayahuasca tattoo and then he wears it.

And I have like a hat from Nepal, a rogue from Japan, a belt from Tanzania.

And it's sort of, I've seen the robe, you do the.

Speedo with the robe.

I've got a whole robe collection.

Dude.

I got them from China.

Japan and the Orient all over the world.

But I would run into these characters, and I probably had them and me to some degree where it's like, I figured this out and now I'm gonna move down to Peru and I'm going to change my name.

And so that's like one of the characters I have too, is like an Amethyst Jaguar, which apparently was like a real name.

Somebody they named themselves Amethyst, and then they took on Jaguar.

But it's like Amethyst Jaguar runs a retreat in Costa Rica, and he's an expert on ayahuasca, but he's actually from Michigan, and his family makes fudge on Mackinac Island.

And like, he thinks that by changing his name and having this cool story around him that it gives him power.

But it's like, what?

What if Todd, his name is Todd Baker from Michigan?

What if he's also a cool, important dude and we don't have to dress up and have the Jaguar claws and the tattoo and all that?

I think Westerners, myself included, really have gone through this growing pain of like, we kind of rejected our culture.

We found out these, these cool ancient stories and then we wanted to play dress up, you know, and we shop the spiritual supermarket.

It's like, oh, wait, there's like an ancient Indian secret in the Amazon.

And I'm going to go down there and I'm going to figure it out.

But it's like I, I went down to the Amazon.

Like I mentioned three times, I've been to Peru five times and I was in the Amazon.

I did like 21 ayahuasca ceremony spread out over three years.

And like I would meet these shaman or indigenous people in Shipibo who were wearing Nikes listening to Michael Jackson and they wanted to come to LA.

And I was like, isn't that funny?

Like all the people from LA are trying to go down and like go deep into the ayahuasca trance and the shaman's like, bro, why don't you stay here?

I'll go stay at your house in Silver Lake.

I really like.

I want my kids to get an exchange for an exchange program that's a 90.

Day the other way.

Well, that, that's.

A satire bit I've done that's like endlessly gift.

That keeps on giving.

It's like, what would it be like, you know, all of our American and Western European people went down to go find God in the Amazon or they went to India to do yoga.

It's like, what if we reversed that?

What would they?

They'd go to Waffle House, like have the Shipibos go to Waffle, go to the sphere and see the dead play at the sphere.

They'd get good at and Jerry's like, you know, we should have a shamanic exchange program.

Yeah, I love that.

Shit, keep making that.

When you're so like, obviously we both make content, different styles, different things.

Now I'm doing the master's of rhetoric, which is more purely academic and focused on the origins of Western philosophy and thought and everything.

But as I do that, you know, I do think about what you're doing and I've definitely learn some things from you and what you're doing, which you know, is a, is a high compliment because I consider you to be kind of like, I don't know anybody that's as good of a networker as you in terms of these topics and things like that.

But do you feel like platforms like YouTube or Tiktok or Instagram are helping shape the psychedelic conversation?

And I know you've had like certain pages taken down or whatever.

Do you also feel like certain narratives are being silenced or certain algorithms are kind of being shadow banned or whatever, Something along those lines?

100 and I think that.

That's part of where your strategy comes in of like just build one-on-one.

I think people get really preoccupied with the idea of like, I'm going to have all these metrics and you get lucky.

It's almost like gambling.

Like it is like gambling where it's like, and I think the algorithms are often built that way where like you'll get a hit of a viral video on TikTok.

You're like, oh, I got a million views.

And then you spend the next five years chasing trying to get a million and you spend all your time there.

So I think that they are shaping not just the conversation around psychedelics, but like a lot of the conversation globally.

And like you'll see different political and social topics, etcetera.

Just get shut out.

So before you would burn books or you would like censor or ban.

And now it's just the algorithm will tell you what you can see and what you can say.

And it's tough for real because like I mentioned, I mean, I'm often confronted with like, do I really want to like make this stand on this particular subject matter?

And once you get an account taken down and all that, like it's, it's dispiriting.

It's demoralizing because you know how much work it takes to like be heard and be seen into network and things like that.

And I think everybody who says they don't care about it is probably lying.

If you didn't care about it, you wouldn't be on the platforms in the 1st place.

So, you know, I've had to try to figure out how to be diplomatic about it and it's changed my approach.

And that's part of why double down on the thing like a newsletter and building the incubator.

Cuz, you know, I also think that there's a false sense of confidence that comes with virality where it's just like when and certain content will go viral.

So then people are incentivized to do that.

So it'd be like if I were to go dump on one like ethnic group right now on Twitter, like it would probably catch on.

Like I think there's a lot of that going on.

Look at Twitter because X is insane right now, but I'm not going to do that.

It's like not that, but I think that people do, they want to get seen and they want to get heard.

And if they're like, oh, this content like this same thing on TikTok, it's a little bit different, but it's like, oh, this dumb content, it gets amplified and I think there's a social design there.

Honestly, it's like if you were trying to trying to social engineer people, I've you would have them one last TikTok challenges and not be sharing about macro doses and doing your own mushrooms.

I've taken breaks over that shit honestly, like.

When I see somebody's like, yeah, dude, like I wasn't even trying.

I just made some videos and then it like took off and now I'm the most popular podcast, bro.

Like it's like a dagger to my heart.

It's like, oh, this person's such an idiot.

But I have to then you know, like you said it, it is kind of luck.

It is kind of, you could put everything into it and still not make it because there's a so many people B, let's say you're very well read on a certain topic and maybe it's niche.

There's not a lot of people that will even understand half the shit that you're saying.

So like you had kind of have the, you know, you start riffing on mushrooms, you know, a shit load more about mushrooms than the average person.

While I would find that interesting, I could see where a lot of people be like, what is he talking about kind of a thing?

And unfortunately, we live in a society, as you pointed out, that like low bearing fruit or easy takes or fast food knowledge is kind of where it's at right now, unfortunately.

And that's why I do that masters of rhetoric thing or started doing it to try and change the the topic like epistemology, theory of knowledge.

How do we know what we know about something?

Where did you get that information?

What was the origin of it?

Teleology?

What is our purpose?

What is the purpose and ontology?

What does it mean to be or to be a person?

You know, those kinds of things.

So I think that it's important to recognize that no matter how hard you put into something, sometimes they're always just be people that get selected or resonate more or whatever the case may be.

And it's unfortunate, but you know, it's a lonely, it's a lonely path, that path of knowledge.

Well, dude, I think a couple of things there as one.

Is that the whole idea of like virality and like quick friends and fast success?

Like where has that ever been true?

You know, like, certainly some people can have a 10 year overnight sensation.

You hear about that in the music industry where they're like, this person took off.

It's like, yeah, but they've been doing shows for 10 years that no one was out.

So it's not like, you know, Kenny Loggins personally, one-on-one told me luck smells like sweat.

And I've always taken that.

It's like, oh, that makes sense, you know, But again, people get really swindled by this sense of like fast growth, growth hacking.

There's always something going on there.

It's like there's so many people truthfully, like in psychedelics and other industries that are paying for followers, paying for likes, paying for AI development.

It's like, OK, but we see you, bro.

We see you.

And so from the approach I want to take is just like slow, steady, long game building one-on-one, like these conversations, you know, we did this.

I think tonight I'll talk to you again in another year or two or whenever and just keep building.

We're gonna have Gray beards.

But by the time we finally hit.

The algorithm, dude.

That's dude.

It's just like if it looks too good to be.

I should say me you've entered at different points.

I've yet to launch off.

I make that clear to people though that like.

I, I got really in as many people did to psychedelics, but at a young age and it was very niche.

Like it wasn't a big community, as most people can attest to.

And so at least that I was connected to.

And then I studied media.

So it's like the whole, to me, the idea that like I have a successful media property around psychedelics, like I started this in like 2007, you know what I mean?

And then people will hit me up and they'll be like, I just got into this.

I started a podcast in 2024 and I haven't made any money.

And I'm just like, bro, just chill out man.

Just take some time.

Don't with social media makes you keep up with the Joneses.

It's like I need to be.

And you have to think too if you started a podcast.

I mean, I've been.

Doing mind escape for over 8 years when I started there.

Really.

I mean there was definitely a few 100,000, but there definitely wasn't a million and I remember when it hit a million and then now way over and everybody has a podcast, which is totally cool.

I I'm not like one of these people that's like, Oh, you so many podcasts out there these days, you know, like I'm not like that at all.

I I think that I like listening to a lot of different podcasts.

So when I see something cool that's like new and righteous, you know, I'll check it out for sure.

But I do think that you can get lost like anybody else, like anybody can make music now if you have a MacBook and an interface, you know what I'm saying?

Or or a MIDI controller.

So there's like a lot of things now that you kind of have access to that anybody can do that.

So it's, I don't want to say competitive, but that's kind of what it is because you're competing for people to see you.

Let's be honest about what all this is, you know, and we might have the integrity of like, we're not doing it just for that.

And I'm not saying that that's the case, but at the end of the day, you do want people to see your philosophies or your work or your thoughts or what you have to offer on a certain topic.

I I mean, that's just what it is.

I'm a firm believer and if you build.

It they will come.

And that there's the whole like equal and opposite reaction or whatever where if you put something out, you're going to get something back.

I think that's the laws of the universe.

But when you feel entitled to things like I have tons of episodes I've done that.

I get like 200 downloads, you know, and like, but I'm not willing to go on the other side and be like, I want to pay for this and that and the other and I'm going to have a million metrics.

It's like to me, I do a lot of what I'm doing because it's one-on-one network building.

And then that's literally no matter what you do, if it's in psychedelics, if it's you're owning a restaurant, if it's, you're an athlete, like it's that network man that overtime and like people don't want to be a node that's just part of your network that you don't that you don't care about.

Like people want to feel like you know their names, you know, about their families.

And I always hear that too, about like different successful people.

Like there was a politician whose name's escaping me at the moment, but he's someone everybody would have heard of.

And I, I heard an interview with someone from The Tonight Show who was like, this guy came on seven years ago and he came back and like, he kind of knew everybody's name who was there and it was cool.

And like, maybe he had a briefing, but like you, you make people feel like they account.

And I feel like we've lost that now.

People they supposedly Tom Cruise remembers everybody's names on movies.

And shit, people talk all sorts of shit about Tom Cruise, but apparently this dude remembers everything.

And I think that's a special skill.

And it just shows that like.

You actually care about people.

So that's kind of where I'd stack my chips.

And it's also I I see a lot of like elitism for sure.

There's elitism and business world and psychedelics and it's like I lived in Malibu for a while and that's like peak of the Creme de la Creme of the there's a row and I've been to these garden parties where it's like nobody.

I remember one specific example, like I'm an includer.

You know, I'll see people in a group or whatever, be like I'll go talk to them or whatever.

And I was at this super nice garden party and point doom.

You know, it's like tons of billionaires and business people there and all that.

And this woman was by herself.

And I just like, I'm going to go talk to her.

And I went and talked, and then people heard, overheard us talk and they're like, she's like, oh, I live in Carbon Beach, which is like billionaire's row.

And then everybody took an interest in her.

And that's to me, like what a lot of these things are be like, they didn't actually care about this person.

That story encapsulates what I think about California.

In general, unfortunately, and I'm not saying that to like talk shit or, but like when people from like the Midwest or somewhere more down to earth, usually when we think about like LA or California, I know there's real people there.

Obviously people like you and other people I've met definitely and I have friends that have moved out there.

But there is definitely like a social climbing aspect to the culture there in in general.

In general, Yeah.

And I think, just as I've always tried.

To approach things is like.

I was at South by Southwest.

I've got to do it a few years, which is super fun.

But like, again, I've never even like heard of half of these things until I, you know, over many years got invited to do them.

And there was a woman who was speaking there the first year I was there.

And I saw her walk up to the janitor and like talk to the janitor.

And literally like all of these people have just walked by and not paid attention to this person.

And it just moved me so deeply that that's like the main thing I remember from that whole South by Southwest is that this this person went and talked to the janitor and like made them feel seen when everybody else was just like walking by on their phone throwing trash in.

And but that's how I tried to like approach everything is to be like, you don't need to social climb like and honestly, like that usually works out in your favor where you're like, Oh man, I got this cool opportunity.

It's like I heard a saying that I I like a lot and Edward Crowe shout out.

He's one of my colleagues and friends, a great artist and music industry professional.

And first time he came on the podcast, he's a big mushroom guy.

He, he shared this saying with me, it's like, sweep the parking lot until you own the building.

And I really think that's an important way, like with whatever you're doing, there's so many people who think that they deserve to be the CEO or they deserve to be the rock star or whatever, but it's like, bro, you gotta go sweep that parking lot.

You gotta like wake up and take care of your people and all that.

You don't, you don't put the cart before the horse.

Like you do your thing, you focus and, and again, you know, like I said, like I know with my family, my circle of friends and all that, like that's hard won and over time.

And that's something that's like, regardless of if I'm successful or not, there's going to be hangers on, bro.

I see it all the time.

You see the people kissing your ass and wanting something from you.

And I'm just like, that's not what got me here A&B.

That's not why I'm here.

Like it's cool.

I'll hang out.

I like to fraternize and have fun, but like, you know, you hear this from people who have been successful and it inspires me a lot.

Like Dave Portnoy, regardless of what you feel about him, the Barstool Sports guy, he's talked about like his ex-wife still has access to his bank account even though he has a $500 million business now.

Plus, yeah, I see.

She was, she was there when nobody else was.

And I think like loyalty is in such short supply because when you're hot, everybody wants a piece.

I think that's a Jerry Maguire bit too.

Everybody wants a piece.

But like when you're on the come up or when you're, and so why can't you do that for other people?

You know, like you don't need to.

And I just see that so much in psychedelics too, to be like, oh, I'm going to go to the conference.

I'm going to get Andrew Huberman's ball sweat on my fingers or whatever.

Like, dude, it's got some dude, it's got nootropics in it, bro.

No, I mean look.

As as.

The old schools used to say real recognize real, you know, like you're right.

And like, you know, even for this podcast, like I could have sent you like some weird social media DM, but I text, I had your number.

I'm like, I'm going to text this dude.

Let's let's get this set up, you know, and we've had cool conversations in the past, so I didn't feel like weird about it or whatever.

But like, you're right, like, you know, and that's something I've always tried to cultivate is like kind of make friends with people on the that you have on, not necessarily like every guest that comes on.

But if there's some sort of common thread there, why not, You know, if you have a lot of commonalities or, you know, you share some sort of kinship there.

Let's let's let's make it happen kind of a thing.

And, you know, there's what I call friends of the show or people that I talk to regularly or will bounce ideas off me.

I'll bounce ideas off them, you know, say what's up, you know, see how you doing.

And I, and I think that that's, that is important.

And whether you're doing a podcast or running a TikTok account or whatever, I think that creating those bonds are important.

And I do think that I've been lucky enough for 90% of the people, maybe 85, it's been reciprocal.

And then you'll get somebody, as I mentioned, off air, they'll come on and be like, I'm trying to sell my book and they'll just repeat the same talking points that they repeated on five other previous podcasts.

It's like, I'm not interested in that.

If that's what you're going to do.

I can't really control that.

But I would rather have a real conversation and, and have a little bit of a back and forth and, and build some rapport then have some sort of like, you know, stale talking point podcast or whatever.

Yeah.

And I do my best to be as authentic as.

Possible, you know.

Like I'm just kind of sharing, like even this week I do the incubator I mentioned and there's somebody who's been coming on and they're like, look, I have a very similar business to yours that I'm launching.

And what do you think about this?

And I'm like, great, here's three leads.

I don't have time for this, you know, so like you could take.

But that's how I feel that about life in general is like, I'm not too focused on the critics.

Like it's certainly it's hurt in the past.

And there's time when I'm like, oh, that's stung.

But like, you get to a point where like, I just got bigger fish to fry, dude.

Like I'm not out there trying to take anyone down.

Like I got way more going on and I'll deal with the things as they come.

You know, life comes at you.

And, and that's something I've learned from life in general now, is that like that shit hits you when you are not ready for it, Bro, Dude, I got this gnarly satirical hit piece, bro, it's ready.

To roll.

I'm ready.

I've been kind of like disheartened that nobody's.

Taken like that public swipe in a like a hit piece in a major publication for me.

Yeah, you know, hopefully one day.

Well, you're authentic and you're like it.

You're a likable dude.

I mean, it would take a real.

Piece of shit to do that in my opinion, because it would take somebody that doesn't even know what they're doing to do that, which is I guess what a lot of hit pieces are, right?

It's surface, you know, gossip or whatever that they have to sell clicks or whatever.

But I mean, it would be very hard.

That's why when you're authentic and you put your real self out there and you do build true, real community and you do things like you said, you put, you put good vibes out there, you, you know, invest in your community and share and everything like that.

I think it's hard to critique and criticize.

I mean, cause what are they going to say?

You know, you're, you're, you're a real 1.

And I mean, that's it's a tough, it's a tough thing.

It's a long road I think is important.

And like I wake.

Up just super grateful to be on the road.

I think there's also there's AI love, like anecdotes and stories and there's a great Jerry Seinfeld story and that's someone actually I've never really even like watched his stuff.

Like of course I'm aware of Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld, but it's a story I heard about him that I really like where he was already super successful with Seinfeld doing stand up comedy all over the world and he was backstage in New York and there was a comic going up.

He's like Jerry, He's like, man, I've been doing comedy for 12 years and I haven't made it yet.

And I need to know, like, how do I make it?

Like, when do I give up?

And then Jerry goes, you missed the whole point.

You're doing comedy tonight.

You made it.

You know, there's this.

And I think there's this sense again of entitlement of like, I need to get to the next thing.

But like, if you can walk that back and be like, dude, I'm just in the game.

As you know, as cliche as it sounds, I'm in the arena.

That's where you got to be, bro.

Like this sense of the external motivation of like the award or the money or the fame, That's what validated me.

I think you missed the whole boat.

And most people are looking for that.

It's like, no, no, no.

The whole point is like, you get to do this.

You get to learn from your craft and you get to do it again tomorrow.

And again, just bring it back to that Kenny Loggins.

But it's like, look, smells like sweat, dude.

Like you're, you know, 10 years, 20 years, whenever it is.

And maybe you never get that like Joe Rogan level fame.

That's an anomaly for sure.

Or that Huberman ball sweat.

Yeah dude.

And shout out.

I would love to go on, you know, their podcast.

I don't think they'll ever.

Invite me because I don't have a canned political talking point, you know, so it would be cool to do it.

I'm I'm on board.

I mean, I've seen some pretty big grifters on both, so I.

Wouldn't rule it out if you really are interested.

So this is.

You're the second person to do.

This this is a Nuke segment.

And here we go.

Are you ready?

Are you ready for Mike's mind melters?

Help me bro, All right?

And just so, everybody.

Knows I initially had it at 4 questions.

I've changed it.

It's 5 pretty, you know, out there philosophical questions, except for the last one, which will hopefully brighten up at the end.

But here we go.

Number one, What is something you believe in that you?

Know is probably.

Wrong or illogical, but you are just not being honest with yourself.

Something that I.

Believe in that.

Is wrong.

Or illogical.

I believe in the benevolence and the goodness of the human spirit and race, and that's being challenged every day right now.

And I fundamentally have always believed that people are good and that humanity has a moral center.

And I hope that's true because it's looking pretty hairy these days in a lot of different ways.

OK.

#2.

Do you think there is an objective purpose for humanity, and if So, what?

So I had a.

Vision, once that.

Said that humanity is the medium between like biology and technology.

So maybe there's something to one of these visions I had with ayahuasca years ago, which was Michelin Man like Homer Simpson looking white Michelin Man being poked by Bender from Futurama and kind of like prodded.

And so I think what is our objective as a species?

Maybe it's to usherin our own extinction.

Honestly, Bender's unbelievable.

#3 Do you think humans are special or separate from the rest of nature?

If your answer is yes, please give me your best example or explanation of why humans are special.

I think that we have.

A form that.

Is really important, but are we separate from nature?

I don't think so.

I don't think we're particularly special.

I think there's a lot of overlap between something like a mushroom and a person, and I think that we are not that separate at the end of the day from the rest of nature.

I like that answer.

#4.

What do you think happens when we die?

Wow, so my.

Christian programming and.

Growing up would tell me that there's a heaven, and also my life experience would tell me that maybe that's a way of framing and oversimplifying something that's ineffable that we can't understand.

And I would like to think that maybe we never die.

I think that I've often thought this, like, what if I am in the hereafter right now?

How would that change things?

Because how would we even know so?

And there's been lots of experiences in my life and other people's lives that they've shared with me that defy logic.

So I like to suspend my disbelief a little bit.

And what happens when we die?

I don't really have a clear frame of that.

But I also want to introduce the possibility of like, what if we don't?

And what if we already have?

And who would be the one to tell us that we have to piggyback on that?

This is the.

Last question this.

Is more of like a speculation or a hopeful speculation.

What do you hope it happens when we die?

Like, you know, we talked about what do you think happens, but what do you hope happens when we die?

I hope that my life.

And the people.

That I've touched, can live on and echo into eternity.

And I really appreciate the here and now and again, I don't spend too much time thinking about that.

I did have, and I have had some ego death.

Seems cheap to call it that because it's such a widely used term.

But like points where I like feel like I had died for sure.

And then just being able to come back here, my real sense of purpose.

And the last one I had was that my son is here now and that it's really just my job to be of service to him and to other people.

So I, there's a woman here where I live that I used to buy vegetables from and she's like 90 years old.

She's very old small woman.

And she said to me randomly one day I came and like bought 2 potatoes from her.

And she's like, just so you know, one day you'll come and I won't be here, but I will be in the trees and in the birdsong and you will be able to connect with me and you'll ask where I am and I will be there.

And I was like, wow, that was the coolest potato purchase I've ever made right now.

And I think there's some value to that too as well.

Recognize yourself.

I was like, I'm here to serve, I'm here to enjoy and to connect with you.

And when I'm gone, hopefully that's what lives on is that memory of me being of service and being upbeat and happy and, and, and wherever I am, there I am as well.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Dennis.

For answering the questions.

wrap it up here.

I want to ask you one last question and then we can talk about anything else or not and we can just wrap it up.

But what is next for Micropreneur and for what you think is psychedelic culture in general and what shifts do you see coming in the next five years or so?

So big one I'm working on right now which?

So Mycopreneur will always, as far as I can tell, be going on and is in a pocket right now.

So every Thursday we do the incubator.

Anyone's welcome to join.

Just drop in for 10 minutes if you want.

And that's all through the newsletter.

I put the link in there so I'll keep covering that because there's so much happening in the mushroom entrepreneurial space globally.

I've got stories from like sub-Saharan Africa and China and Chile all this week, every week I have them.

So that'll keep going.

But the big kind of next project is Global Psychedelic Week, which I've been looped into.

I'm a Co founder of it.

It was an invitation last year that came and it's to connect all these pockets and siloed off communities all over the world.

There's people and I mentioned in Serbia, South Africa, Australia, Russia, you name it, there's a psychedelic community there and they're all pretty much operating underground or independently.

So we're really working to connect people who are open to that and that's November 3rd through 9th.

We've got some of the big names and psychedelic industry renaissance.

We've got Rick Doblin speaking, Robin Carhartt Harris, but then also a ton of other people many folks will have never heard of.

We've got people from Zimbabwe and Argentina and United Arab Emirates because again, if you build it, they will come.

And we, we put it out there and then people started hitting us up and they told, hey, my friend posted about this and we want our community to be a part of it.

So it's online.

And we also have in person satellite events all over the planet.

So we've got like 50 plus confirmed in places like Goa, India, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and we're really getting cooking with it right now.

And we do have a very professional event production team behind it as well.

So I feel like my role is really as an ambassador and a evangelist and a community builder, if you will.

The logistics are not my my bag, but I'm learning how to do an event.

So that's November 3rd to 9th Global Psychedelic week.

You can find that anywhere if you Google that or just follow my work.

And then what else?

Yeah, dude, I'm pumped.

I'm, I'm headed out to Switzerland.

Well, first I'm going to be in Turkey in October.

So October 8th, I think I take off for Turkey, going to spend a week and 1/2 or two weeks in Greece with a very good friend of mine.

And then Switzerland, Italy, Uganda, Tunisia, France.

So like quite a run.

And all of those are kind of like separate mini chapters.

And I'll be doing mushroom stuff the whole way through, keeping the platform running.

So I guess those are some of the big immediate things.

And then as far as like what's coming up in the by the way, 2026 is already like stacked.

Like I've got cool invites all over the place.

And at this point I just say, yeah, you know, I'm a big like, yes, am like, you got a thing going on.

I'll do my best to be there.

And then we'll figure it out.

And then we'll see what happens after that.

So it's looking to be interesting.

And then next five years.

Dude, it's gonna be a a struggle in some ways.

There's gonna be like, let's say Babylon gonna do what Babylon does.

It's one one of my friends shout out Travis who grows mushrooms there in Colorado.

People probably know Travis Who?

Who?

Yeah, he grows awesome.

Travis Birkenstock.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah, it's.

From the movie From the movie Clueless if nobody got the oh.

Yeah, no Travis the man, but anyways.

He, he says like Babylon going to do what Babylon's going to do.

So anybody who thinks that like they're going to, we're going to override Babylon.

It's like, bro, just figure out how to contend with it if you can and keep 1 foot in each world if you can.

Because I, I maintain that like that's part of the whole business.

Entrepreneurship stuff is like, they're not going to take you seriously.

Like you think that you're going to have your worldview overcome another worldview that has billions of dollars and connections behind it.

Like so you either have the Tim Leary approach is like TuneIn turn on drop out, or you can try to be diplomatic.

So that's where I see things heading.

It's like, am I under any false pretenses that like, we're gonna defeat the corporate psychedelic overlords?

Not really.

Is that even a fair framing of it?

I don't know.

But you know, I'm going to do my damnedest to be there and and use satire to kind of critique and challenge some of the.

Dominant.

Hierarchical narrative, because just to wrap that thought up, I think the main thing that's happening right now is hierarchy.

Hierarchy versus decentralization.

I think psychedelics are very inherently decentralized.

How do people get into psychedelics?

They've been prohibited forever.

It's your friend tells you about it.

I learned about it on this website.

And then my friend grows mushrooms.

And now there's a push to be like, well, you have to get it from your friend, the government, you know, it has to be patented and you got to make sure that you get it from this license supply.

And that's going to happen, bro.

That's like, so how do we push back against that?

I think that lawful disobedient, sorry, yeah, civil disobedience is one way, Serving your community is one way.

And then just having a sense of humor about it and being like, all right, dude, I don't need to be part of the psychedelic imperial overlord hierarchy.

But also, if they want to invite me to their dinner party, they usually have pretty good hors d'oeuvres.

So I'll show up for sure.

But I'll be showing up with the mushrooms that my homie grew or that I grew, dude.

Maybe it'll go the way of the dank and the heady nugs bro.

I mean, look at the whole cannabis industry like it's.

A It's a mess, so.

Again, I just everything here in Michigan is so much better and.

Cheaper than Chicago.

Dude, the Chicago cannabis, you know, dispensary scene is ridiculous price wise.

Like what?

Like I would have to imagine, Yeah, I would have to imagine.

Most people in Chicago are still doing black market stuff big time.

Shout out Wolfpack, Great Michigan band.

You know, there's there's plenty of Oh, I love Wolfpack, dude.

Yeah, I figured you would.

I've I've seen.

Theo Katzman, I don't think.

I've actually seen Wolfpack, but I've seen Theo a few times, but I've been listening to them for a minute.

Yeah, dude, like the world is awesome.

People are awesome.

And there's a saying I also like, there's always rabbit shit mixed in with the Jelly beans.

So like, just be aware of that.

And I think regardless of if you're into psychedelics or whatever you're into, bro, now is the perfect time to cultivate a healthy sense of humor.

Because I think that is like the Achilles heel of inhumanity is humor.

Like, you think about the way that there's a lot of what seems to me like social programming and conditioning going on.

It's trying to rob people of their sense of humor and humility.

It's US versus them, this person, this, that and the other is wrong.

And you see this all over the place and it's awash on our social media timelines.

If you can cultivate that sense of humor, have a sense of humor about it, like it's going to be very hard to fuck with those types of people.

Because I also think, man, look at where everything's heading with AI and the post truth world facts that are up for debate.

Like we, we have just an absolute circus that's unfolding.

So why, if you're going to take everything super serious, bro, that is going to be a real tough, tough cookie to to to tangle with.

But like, if you have a sense of humor about it, then hopefully we can we can at least have a good time while we're here.

So that's where I see the next five years going.

Nice.

Yeah.

That actually kind of plays into this.

Philosophical thought experiment kind of thing I've been doing deep in meditation called the I'm, I'm calling it the humanity paradox.

Like how are we here?

Because literally we would stab each other in the back for no reason if it meant whatever we needed.

Yet we'd like to think of the When we think of the word humanity, we think of it as, you know, like goodwill or whatever, but in reality, like the history of us has been so bloody and so disgusting, it's a shock to me that we are here in the capacity that we are right now.

Well, I want to close with one bit.

I heard from Paul Stamets.

Recently, which you know, he's a fascinating character and I was in Telluride, Co for the Mushroom Festival a couple weeks ago.

I think I know where you're going, but not but I like it.

I think it's really important to amplify this.

Because his whole talk was about what separates humanity from AI and machines.

And it's random acts of kindness.

And most people are only here and you're you're only doing as well as you are because someone was kind to you in a way that wasn't transactional.

And that's how I try to approach everything to be like, if it's cold clinical transactionality, which a lot of people are pushing for, then we've lost our humanity there because that's inefficient.

And if you were to ask a machine, as Paul Stammons had said in this talk, be like, what if I was just like randomly nice to this person to be like, well, what do you get out of that?

Where's the, you know, where's the efficiency, the clinical precision there?

But can we take that spirit and and move it to the next chapter of humanity?

It remains to be seen.

But if you can just be kind for no reason, especially the people who can't pay you back, like you're going to be fine.

And I see that with ironically, like some of the most successful companies.

I see the coolest people.

They're just like, oh, yeah, we're not worried about it here.

How can we help you out?

And obviously you can't always do that without a sense of business acumen.

But I think that if you approach life that way where it's not all about transactionality, it's it's more be like, hey, can I just do a cool thing for you for no reason?

You're going to actually ironically get way further ahead than if you take like the, you know, quickest route from A to B clinical efficiency.

So don't do that, bro.

Don't be a machine.

Be a random act of kindness person, human.

Yeah, I I heard that on Rogan and I would, I would love to pick.

His braid on that because you know part of kind of what I just mentioned this humanity paradox does does he think you know he.

Might I'd have to go?

Back and watch, but does he think that he said that's the only reason why we here so is it the snowball effect and they like the like we're here because there's the this accumulation of all these random acts of kindness throughout history.

But if that's the case, you know there's been like bottlenecks from like super volcanoes and diseases and different things and obviously that brings people together.

So is there like periods where these things come and go or is it really just random as in like there's no algorithm set to pick this thing up kind of a thing?

I would be curious to speak more about that.

With him.

But you know, I think that's just one way of framing it and I that's it's not rocket science.

They there's the old trope or a joke about like white guys will do mushrooms and then discover a basic sense of empathy and think it's like a breakthrough or whatever.

But it's true.

I mean, that was kind of like what got me into and fascinated and all this stuff.

It wasn't about never, never, never, never was about like healing mental health or total addressable market.

You know, now it's framed again pathologically to be like, there's this patented O52H receptor thing that's gonna, it's gonna potentially be worth $2 billion.

It's a blockbuster drug.

It's like, OK, well, that's a very separate conversation then like, oh dude, I had a mushroom experience and then I wanted to call my friend I haven't talked to in three years.

We're like, I wanted to go give a bunch of money to a charity.

I'm not even sure why I just wanted to do it.

I think that that's where I want to live, man.

And and again, like I love having resources and having opportunities, but like, I hope that years from now I'll still be that dude that will just say yes for no reason.

Like somebody hits me up, they want to work on a project.

I'll try to find a way to do it and to accommodate it.

And if I can't, I'll try to add some value and amplify in some way rather than just that cold clinical precision transactionality.

Because also there's a sense since we're getting into it about like seeing the end goal of capitalism and kind of rejecting it.

And I feel like I got to see that living in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Malibu.

I see and have seen people who are like crazy wealthy who have these like, kind of like self degenerative conditions and issues.

Like, you know, I've been exposed to people who live in mansions by themselves who have just like boxes of stuff they order from Amazon because they're trying to replace the sense of community and connection.

It's like they, they, I saw a video recently which resonated with me and I've seen this in Malibu about like people in the Hamptons have everything.

They've won capitalism.

And then they put up these big hedges and walls and they don't want anyone to see them.

And then they, you know, then you end up having kids who like get into opiates and, you know, they're trying to fill this spiritual vacuum.

And so there's obviously rabbit holes we could tug out there.

It's probably for a different.

Well, I mean you that's a dichotomy too, because you have one of the.

Richest real estate markets in the country and people are taking dumps on the street everywhere.

So like, it's kind of, it's wild, but I mean, hopefully $1,000,000 apartments with like homeless employments around them.

And then, yeah, people need to find a way to kind of keep up with the illusion that they're they're healthy and happy.

And that's what we've been programmed to do is like buy more do.

And and I think a lot of people have kind of seen that end goal be like, oh, man, like having billions of dollars is almost kind of like a mental illness in some way.

Like what I love plenty of resources for sure.

But like, once it gets to this point where it's like I have to have a bigger yacht, you know, I have to have a bigger plane, to me that's like such a misguided use of our time and resources and all that.

Like, am I saying I want to eat out of a dumpster?

No, bro.

Like I like caviar.

I like boats and shit like that.

But like, that's not the end all be all for me.

Is that I need to have more, bigger, better.

It's not really.

And that's yeah, it doesn't really care about where the podcast goes.

I'm just going to keep doing it.

I mean, I grew up in one of the, you know, nicer.

Suburbs of Detroit, Grosse Pointe and you know, I know people that had their whole life handed on a silver platter.

They take over the parents business.

They've got the mansion, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, then they overdose because they have too much time, you know, or they're, they squander the business or they're gambling addicts or whatever the case may be.

I've grown up with tons of fortunate people that you know, are no longer with us or squandered everything or unfortunate and it's it is unfortunate, but it I think that there is there is a lesson there, which is no matter what you do, you have to put you have to put some sort of energy out there.

You know, you can't just be content if you will, if that makes sense.

Dude my last bit y'all say is I I've often.

Being like why me God or why me universe like my roommate had a trust fund and then this person has this and now I feel like I'm like rushing it.

And part of that is because I wasn't entitled and because I had to work shitty jobs and I had to take out people's trash.

And like there's something about just being like, you earned it and when you earn it, no one can take it away from you.

And that's also why I'm like, dude, don't buy your followers, don't flatter, don't make fake friends.

Like one good friend, 1 long term relationship, etcetera.

It's worth 100 of the other variety because the other ones are going to come and go.

And especially in this era, people are just like, they want the fast, quick success.

It's like that's not success, bro.

That is the illusion of success.

Success again, is when you sweep the parking lot and then you own the building and they're like, wait, why is this person still waking up at 6:00 AM?

And they're still devoted to, it's like, cuz that's who they are, bro.

Why do you think like some of the wealthiest people I know are still doing all their, they're trimming the trees themselves and all that, while the other people are like, I need to outsource my whole life for a million reasons.

And so, you know, it gets long winded and philosophical, but hey, we're on the mind Escape podcast is the place for that, you know?

Yeah, man, New Telos, this is this is what it's.

For and.

I really appreciate what you're doing.

And yeah, man, I mean, next time you're in the Michigan area, I mean, I, I can't be traveling too much these days, but if you're ever in the the zone here and give me a, a ring of damn about once a year, bro, we'll do that.

Because my wife went to Hope college.

In Holland, MI, OK, yeah, we've got laws in Chicago, so we usually will.

Drive up I'd go.

To the lakes we have a friend with a lake house so stay tuned bro but let's do a podcast in person next time I'm out yeah man I I have all the gear actually no let's.

Let's do it.

Well, yeah, man, I really love what you're doing.

I love the satire.

I love the community building.

You know, you are definitely a real one.

Where can people find your stuff if they're interested in the podcast or what you're doing with these incubators and all that stuff?

Yeah, Michael Preneur MYCOPR.

ENEUR, any, anywhere.

I've got the podcast, the newsletter, the social media.

Is this, that and the other.

Just hit me up michaelpreneur@gmail.com.

If you see me out and about, you know, I get around say what's up to me.

I'd love to connect with people and hear your story and all that.

So yeah, thanks for having me on, dude.

Really appreciate if you see him in Antarctica growing mushrooms.

Just say what's up bro.

No, but seriously, dude, keep doing what you're doing.

You know, I've been following you and you know, I get more active and less active on social media.

But whenever I see something, I try and, you know, retweet it or repost it or whatever.

And I do think a lot of what you do is hilarious because it is just, you know, taking the piss out of stuff.

So keep doing that.

And yeah, we'll link back up sometime here in the near future.

But I really appreciate you doing this.

This was a a great conversation and a great way to kick off this new Telos, this this mind escape new Telos.

So thank you so much.

Well, thanks for having me.

I hope everyone has a a great day.

Afternoon, evening, wherever you are in the in the world, don't be a stranger and random acts of kindness.

Pay it forward.

Just do it.

Come on, guys.

All right, well, we love everybody.

Stay safe out.

There, and we'll catch you next time.

Peace.