The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #551 - Graham Hancock

00:00:02.000 Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

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00:01:52.000 Oh, she sent me another one.

00:01:55.000 The MeUndies one, which I'm wearing MeUndies right now, by the way.

00:01:59.000 Not that you needed to know, but there's a new underwear sponsor. 0.99

00:02:05.000 Where's the fucking MeUndies thing, man? 0.99

00:02:08.000 See, that's what I hate when she sends me separate ones. 0.99

00:02:12.000 Hold on a second, let me find it.

00:02:15.000 MeUndies. 0.58

00:02:17.000 They're the best underwear I've ever had.

00:02:19.000 I can give you one without any preparation.

00:02:23.000 But I'll tell you what, I didn't think anything of it.

00:02:25.000 I used to buy cheap underwear.

00:02:26.000 I used to buy underwear in like a package, those little plastic packages that you get at like Walmart or something like that.

00:02:31.000 Just throw it in the cart and keep moving.

00:02:33.000 But when they started sending me these MeUndies, I was like, what is it, just underwear?

00:02:38.000 Like, what's the big deal?

00:02:39.000 Well, this is one big deal.

00:02:41.000 The average man doesn't change his underwear more often than every seven years. 0.97

00:02:47.000 That's ridiculous. 0.99

00:02:49.000 Like, the average male buys a pair of underwear and keeps that rotten butt filter for seven years. 1.00

00:02:55.000 That's terrible.

00:02:56.000 And they're not that comfortable.

00:02:58.000 They also have that weird hole in the front that no one understands. 0.99

00:03:02.000 That shit was made, like, during the Depression. 0.99

00:03:04.000 When people didn't understand how to really pee out of your undies. 1.00

00:03:07.000 What is that hole? 1.00

00:03:08.000 Nobody uses that goddamn hole. 1.00

00:03:09.000 I do. 1.00

00:03:10.000 Okay?

00:03:10.000 Do you use that hole?

00:03:11.000 Yeah, sometimes. 1.00

00:03:11.000 Shut up. 1.00

00:03:15.000 Anyway, meundies.com is seriously the most comfortable underwear you have ever tried on. 0.99

00:03:21.000 You will try these on and you will say, oh, they actually wick moisture away from your body.

00:03:26.000 They feel perfect.

00:03:27.000 They don't ride up on you.

00:03:29.000 They pull moisture away from your skin so that you're cool all day long.

00:03:33.000 I have them right now.

00:03:34.000 I wear them every day now.

00:03:35.000 It's the only underwear I wear now.

00:03:37.000 I know that sounds ridiculous, but if you try meundies.com, just give it a shot.

00:03:42.000 Listen to me.

00:03:43.000 Try it, and you will see that there are underwear that are better.

00:03:47.000 It's like everything else.

00:03:49.000 Like someone came along and they figured out the better mousetrap.

00:03:52.000 They figured out how to make underwear better.

00:03:54.000 Go to MeUndies.com forward slash Rogan and get 20% off of your first order.

00:03:59.000 That's 20% off your first order when you go to MeUndies.com forward slash Rogan and you'll even get free shipping in the United States and our friends to the north in Canada.

00:04:09.000 Free shipping up there as well.

00:04:10.000 I guarantee you're going to be happy with them.

00:04:12.000 They're the best underwear seriously I've ever bought.

00:04:15.000 Get that 20% off.

00:04:16.000 Go to MeUndies.com forward slash Rogan.

00:04:19.000 And last but not least, we are brought to you by Ting. 0.85

00:04:22.000 If you go to rogan.ting.com, you can save 25 bucks off of any of the new Ting devices that they sell at Ting.

00:04:33.000 Ting is a mobile service that uses the Sprint backbone and they buy time on the network, on the Sprint network.

00:04:44.000 So if you are on Ting, you're actually on the Sprint network, but you do it by Ting's rules, and Ting's rules will save you money.

00:04:51.000 My bill last month was 18 bucks.

00:04:54.000 Excuse me.

00:04:56.000 Now, I don't do a lot of phone calls. 0.95

00:04:57.000 I mostly text, but that's fucking ridiculously cheap. 0.96

00:05:00.000 $18. 0.95

00:05:01.000 And I go online all the time with it.

00:05:02.000 $21 is the average monthly bill per device for 10 customers.

00:05:07.000 $440 is the average annual savings per device for a business with 1 to 20 employees.

00:05:15.000 That's pretty interesting.

00:05:17.000 What's interesting to me is that companies are starting to...

00:05:21.000 It's actually 11 to 20 employees.

00:05:23.000 A business with 11 to 20 employees.

00:05:25.000 $440 is the average annual savings.

00:05:28.000 What they've done is they've figured out a way to make you feel better about your relationship with your cell phone provider.

00:05:35.000 Like, for a lot of people...

00:05:36.000 Cell phone provider is just this big company and they have their rules and if you go over, it costs you money. 0.96

00:05:45.000 There's a bunch of weird shit that goes on.

00:05:48.000 Like if you want to cancel, you have to pay some sort of an early termination fee.

00:05:53.000 Ting has removed all that.

00:05:54.000 No early termination fees.

00:05:56.000 No cancellation fees.

00:05:57.000 You just cancel.

00:05:58.000 That's it.

00:05:58.000 If you don't want to be a part of them anymore, you're gone.

00:06:00.000 You don't have contracts.

00:06:02.000 You don't have any of that stuff.

00:06:03.000 You use what you use and that's what you pay for.

00:06:06.000 You don't have like X amount of minutes per month.

00:06:09.000 It used to be that you would buy a certain amount of minutes a month, like 100 minutes a month.

00:06:13.000 And if you only use 70 of those minutes, you never got credited for those other 30 minutes.

00:06:18.000 So, Ting, the first way they did it was to credit people.

00:06:21.000 They decided to give people the money back and credit their next bill.

00:06:24.000 And then they decided, like, why are we charging them for stuff they're not using anyway?

00:06:28.000 Let's just set it up so that we charge people for what they use.

00:06:32.000 And in doing so, you will most certainly save money.

00:06:36.000 And it's the most logical and reasonable way to provide cell phone service, in my opinion.

00:06:40.000 I don't see why anybody would not want to just do it that way.

00:06:44.000 The only reason is...

00:06:45.000 It benefits the cell phone providers to charge you a fixed rate.

00:06:49.000 Then when you go over that fixed rate, they hit you with an overage charge.

00:06:52.000 And if you go under that fixed rate, it's to their benefit.

00:06:55.000 So Ting cut all that stuff out.

00:06:57.000 And they provide you with an awesome service with a great company using the Sprint backbone, and they do it completely ethically.

00:07:04.000 And I like doing business with them.

00:07:07.000 They're the official cell phone provider for this podcast.

00:07:09.000 The phone that we use when I coordinate guests and make calls and stuff, all that stuff is all through Ting.

00:07:16.000 If you go to rogan.ting.com, you will save 25 bucks off of any of their devices.

00:07:21.000 And they have all the finest Android devices in stock.

00:07:25.000 Like the one that I have is the Samsung Galaxy S5, which is pretty awesome.

00:07:30.000 It has a lot of features that, like, even with the new iPhones that are coming out doesn't have, like, it's water-resistant, which I don't understand why these people are making electronic devices that aren't water-resistant when they can make ones that are water-resistant.

00:07:44.000 It just seems logical.

00:07:45.000 If you go to rogan.ting.com, you can find all the various devices.

00:07:50.000 And if you're a cheap person or frugal, or you're just one of those people that realizes, like, most... 0.99

00:07:56.000 Most of the time, you don't really fucking need the latest and greatest in all this shit. 0.99

00:08:00.000 It's just a fetish in a lot of ways. 0.99

00:08:03.000 And if you're a weirdo and you like flip phones, they have those too.

00:08:06.000 You can buy one of those Samsung M400s for $72.

00:08:09.000 You can buy one of the older iPhones.

00:08:12.000 You get an iPhone 4 for $112.

00:08:14.000 Yeah.

00:08:15.000 Or you can get an iPhone 5. They have iPhone 5s.

00:08:18.000 iPhone 5s is coming.

00:08:20.000 They have the Galaxy Note 3, the HTC One M8, which is an awesome phone as well.

00:08:27.000 Anyway, rogan.ting.com.

00:08:29.000 Go there.

00:08:29.000 Save money.

00:08:30.000 Be happy.

00:08:31.000 Alright, Graham Hancock is here. 1.00

00:08:32.000 Why fuck around? 1.00

00:08:33.000 Young Jamie, cue the music. 1.00

00:08:37.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:08:39.000 Train by day.

00:08:40.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.

00:08:42.000 All day.

00:08:44.000 My friend, Graham Hancock.

00:08:47.000 I'll take these off since you're not wearing them.

00:08:49.000 Good to see you, buddy.

00:08:49.000 Nice to see you, Joe.

00:08:50.000 Good to be back.

00:08:51.000 Good to see you returning from floating.

00:08:53.000 I saw your tweet which showed a picture of what looked like someone was in space.

00:08:58.000 Yeah, because that's how it felt to me.

00:09:00.000 Now, I have to thank you for this because you're the guy who turned me on to floating.

00:09:04.000 I never did it before.

00:09:05.000 You spoke to me about it last year.

00:09:07.000 I was so harassed and so rushed.

00:09:08.000 I never got a chance to do it.

00:09:10.000 I thought I'd do it when I got back to England.

00:09:12.000 It didn't happen.

00:09:13.000 So I got in touch with your friend, Crash, a few weeks before I came out here, and he very kindly fitted me in.

00:09:21.000 And I think his place is called Float Labs Technologies.

00:09:24.000 They're in Venice Beach.

00:09:26.000 So it's a totally new experience for me.

00:09:28.000 And what made the experience even more surreal and special, because I'd asked for an appointment fairly late in the day, was that...

00:09:35.000 I mean, he needed more notice.

00:09:37.000 He's constantly booked up.

00:09:39.000 Yeah, isn't that amazing?

00:09:39.000 So what he could give me...

00:09:41.000 It was the two rooms, one for myself, one for my wife, Santa, at midnight.

00:09:45.000 At midnight, two nights in a row.

00:09:48.000 And actually, there's something about floating at midnight, which I think is really special.

00:09:53.000 I don't do any floating during the day.

00:09:55.000 Right, right.

00:09:56.000 It's a really good time to do it.

00:09:59.000 So we went along to Venice Beach and parked the car and crash came out and took us in.

00:10:05.000 First of all...

00:10:06.000 He showed us his collection of African masks.

00:10:09.000 And he has got the most amazing, slightly fearsome collection of African masks up there. 1.00

00:10:14.000 It's really incredible, actually.

00:10:15.000 This is a deep guy.

00:10:17.000 He's thinking about a lot of stuff.

00:10:21.000 I've spent a lot of time in Africa.

00:10:23.000 I've never seen a collection like that.

00:10:24.000 It's just amazing.

00:10:25.000 Dogon, you know, some of the really fascinating peoples and their masks. 0.99

00:10:29.000 Then he takes us down.

00:10:30.000 He talks us through what it is.

00:10:38.000 I've seen in some places they have like a pod where you close a lid over yourself, but that's not what he's got.

00:10:44.000 He's got a bigger room than that, and there's a big full-size, feels like a huge metal safe.

00:10:50.000 If you have trust issues, it's a little bit, you're going to close yourself up in a huge metal safe in the darkness.

00:10:56.000 It takes a little bit, you know, a little bit of courage, I would say, is required to do that at midnight on Venice Beach.

00:11:02.000 LAUGHTER We did it.

00:11:05.000 At certain warnings, you don't want to get the salty water in your eyes.

00:11:09.000 If you do, it's a big distraction.

00:11:11.000 You don't want to get it in your ears, so you wear earplugs.

00:11:15.000 It doesn't bother me.

00:11:16.000 I just go in with my ears.

00:11:18.000 I don't wear earplugs.

00:11:19.000 I think I would prefer to because being completely deaf was slightly alarming for me, although I realize that sensory deprivation is part of the deal.

00:11:28.000 Yeah.

00:11:29.000 And so you close the door.

00:11:32.000 There's a towel hanging off the back of the door in case you do get salty water in your eyes.

00:11:37.000 And then you just lie down in this, I guess, body temperature saline solution in which it's impossible to sink.

00:11:44.000 And there you are in the darkness.

00:11:48.000 Yeah.

00:12:00.000 In total darkness, suspended in that amniotic fluid, that strange saline solution with no sensations coming in, no sounds, no light.

00:12:13.000 It's an extraordinary opportunity to meditate, to reflect, to just drift away into another place and not...

00:12:26.000 I find it difficult to shut down my mind.

00:12:29.000 My mind is always running.

00:12:32.000 And a few times when I was just wanting to let everything go, everyday concerns and worries came back in and started annoying me.

00:12:41.000 But most of the time I was able to let go and it felt like I was weightless and I was floating in space.

00:12:48.000 That's why I posted that picture on Facebook today.

00:12:51.000 That's what it felt like.

00:12:52.000 And sometimes I didn't know whether I was horizontal or vertical.

00:12:56.000 I felt sometimes like I was vertically, floating vertically.

00:13:00.000 It was a very odd sensation.

00:13:02.000 I wouldn't say that I got into deeply trippy space, but I did have fundamental visions, patterns, lights started to generate purple.

00:13:14.000 Purple strips of light started to appear, which certainly were not there in the darkness with me.

00:13:19.000 And that was And that was interesting.

00:13:21.000 But most of all, it was just very relaxing.

00:13:24.000 Just very relaxing to let go, be completely supported by this soft, gentle water and drift away into the realms of the mind.

00:13:35.000 It was a wonderful experience.

00:13:36.000 And I felt much better about it the second day than I did the first.

00:13:40.000 The first day was some unfamiliarity.

00:13:41.000 The second night, last night, was just amazing.

00:13:45.000 Yeah, that's what it's all about.

00:13:46.000 It's all about getting used to the experience, and the more you get used to the experience, the easier it is to slip into the deeper and deeper states.

00:13:52.000 Yes.

00:13:53.000 But the first time, it's very alien.

00:13:55.000 It's so odd, and you also kind of bump against the sides, and you have to center yourself.

00:13:59.000 And I've just seen Crash's African masks as well, you know. 0.84

00:14:02.000 Yeah, he probably shouldn't show you those before you go into total darkness in a meat locker.

00:14:06.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:09.000 But, yeah, the second day is so much better.

00:14:12.000 And so much so, it's made me think, maybe I should get myself a float thing.

00:14:18.000 Oh, you definitely should.

00:14:19.000 It's huge.

00:14:19.000 I love having one.

00:14:21.000 I love knowing that any time I want to go in there, I could just go in there.

00:14:24.000 Are they loads and loads of money, or are they okay?

00:14:26.000 Yeah.

00:14:26.000 They're loads and loads of money.

00:14:28.000 Like thousands and thousands of dollars?

00:14:30.000 Yeah.

00:14:30.000 Especially the flash ones.

00:14:32.000 The crash ones, rather.

00:14:33.000 The original one that I got, which was a Samadhi tank, I think that was like $6,000 or $7,000.

00:14:41.000 But crashes are more like $30,000.

00:14:43.000 Okay, because his is like a car.

00:14:44.000 Yeah, it's like buying a car.

00:14:47.000 And it's also, it has these incredible filters that it's set up through.

00:14:52.000 He has it set up, like the one that I have in my house, I'm the only one who goes in it, but it's a commercial-grade filtration system.

00:15:01.000 He filters things through ozone, there's all these different various steps that it takes.

00:15:06.000 He's written an entire, I don't know how many pages, probably like 50 or 60 page He's an obsessive guy.

00:15:19.000 And his obsession with tanks has made...

00:15:22.000 There's a guy in Austin that has some really amazing tanks, too, that does it a little bit differently.

00:15:28.000 He does it through a company that makes boats.

00:15:34.000 And his are really excellent, too.

00:15:35.000 But Crash is, like, the leader of the pack.

00:15:38.000 He's the master of the game.

00:15:41.000 There was nothing like his stuff when his stuff came out.

00:15:43.000 Now there's guys like the guy in Austin that is elevating his.

00:15:48.000 I spent some time there and checked out his facility.

00:15:50.000 It's beautiful.

00:15:51.000 He's friends with my friend Aubrey.

00:15:53.000 But what Crash did was there was no innovation.

00:15:59.000 Yeah.

00:16:19.000 More sound deadening, more insulation, better filtration system, stronger reinforced sides, because the Samadhi ones would kind of bow out on the sides a little bit from the water, and sometimes they would rot, and you had to get things replaced.

00:16:34.000 He fixed everything.

00:16:35.000 He fixed, there was an issue with the linings would burn out sometimes because of the heat pads.

00:16:43.000 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:16:43.000 Heat pads would short out, it would burn through the linings, and it would leak water everywhere.

00:16:47.000 He fixed that by, first of all, by setting this redundant system and having two heat pads too, so if one burns out, you have a second one ready to go.

00:16:56.000 And then secondly, he put these thick pond filters.

00:16:59.000 He doesn't use the same kind of filters that a lot of people do.

00:17:02.000 Not filters, rather, liners.

00:17:04.000 His liners are very thick.

00:17:05.000 They're like koi ponds.

00:17:07.000 So he's done a lot of innovation.

00:17:09.000 He's really figured out a lot of different things.

00:17:10.000 It's the place to go if you're lucky enough to live in L.A., Well, also if you're lucky enough to be able to get in now, because now he's booked way in advance.

00:17:18.000 Well, that's what I found.

00:17:18.000 I mean, I wrote to him at least four weeks ago, and there were just no slots available during the day.

00:17:25.000 That's why he gave me the two midnight slots, although actually I'm really glad he gave me the midnight slots.

00:17:29.000 That's the way to do it.

00:17:30.000 Late at night's the way to do it.

00:17:32.000 But I understand he's opening a new unit in Westwood.

00:17:35.000 Yes.

00:17:35.000 Where there'll be seven.

00:17:36.000 Yeah.

00:17:37.000 That's not enough.

00:17:38.000 No, it's not.

00:17:38.000 Even seven's not enough.

00:17:40.000 I mean, you could open up one somewhere that has 50, and that sucker would be filled all day. 0.75

00:17:45.000 It would be filled.

00:17:46.000 There's 20 million people in L.A. So there's not so many other people doing this in LA right now?

00:17:50.000 There's a few.

00:17:51.000 I think people are starting to become aware of it now.

00:17:56.000 It's a fabulous experience.

00:17:57.000 We all need this experience.

00:17:59.000 One question I have and wonder about, what about if you have a joint before you get in or take some psilocybin?

00:18:07.000 What would that do?

00:18:08.000 I don't know what it's like to not do that before you go in.

00:18:10.000 You do that every time.

00:18:14.000 Not psilocybin, but I have.

00:18:16.000 But the pot is the, edibles are the way to go for me.

00:18:20.000 Okay, so you eat about an hour before?

00:18:23.000 Yeah, a terrifying supply of edibles.

00:18:25.000 A terrifying dose.

00:18:26.000 You're just like, oh, what did I do?

00:18:28.000 And then I get in there.

00:18:29.000 That's what I like to do.

00:18:30.000 Okay.

00:18:32.000 That's what I'd like to do as well if I hadn't given up pot three years ago.

00:18:35.000 Makes me very humble.

00:18:37.000 There's something about getting in there.

00:18:39.000 And because I've done it so many times, because I have the tank in my house, I'm super comfortable.

00:18:46.000 I can get relaxed with floating.

00:18:49.000 It's a normal thing to me.

00:18:50.000 So when you're on the edibles too, it just takes you to these really, really, really bizarre places.

00:18:56.000 No moments of paranoia or fear?

00:18:58.000 You're just calm there?

00:19:00.000 I mean, I wouldn't say that.

00:19:02.000 I'm pretty good with that, though.

00:19:04.000 I mean, if I had real problems with paranoia and fear, I wouldn't be able to do everything I do for a living.

00:19:11.000 Sure.

00:19:12.000 You know what I mean?

00:19:12.000 Everything I do, this is live.

00:19:14.000 Yeah.

00:19:15.000 Everything I do when I do commentary for the UFC, that's live.

00:19:19.000 Stand-up is live.

00:19:20.000 Very edgy.

00:19:21.000 Yeah.

00:19:21.000 All these things are all live, and they all depend on maintaining your sanity under sometimes pretty intense pressure.

00:19:31.000 So I don't have those paranoia or fear issues, but I certainly feel the thoughts.

00:19:40.000 I just don't indulge them.

00:19:42.000 I feel the thoughts, but...

00:19:44.000 That's a good way to go.

00:19:46.000 Not indulge them.

00:20:04.000 You could just go every day to the worst possible websites and see the most horrific videos and the most horrific photographs and see the world in the worst possible light if you chose to just immerse yourself.

00:20:18.000 Or just watch the news.

00:20:20.000 Even worse than the news.

00:20:21.000 I mean, if you really wanted to really change the way you saw the world.

00:20:25.000 I mean, you could live on a beautiful tree-lined street with the nicest neighbors and the cutest little dogs barking, and the life looks beautiful.

00:20:34.000 But through the portal that is the internet, you can immerse yourself in the most twisted, sadistic minds.

00:20:40.000 And it's like you have this decision to not do that.

00:20:44.000 That's, in sort of reinforcing that decision and making those choices, you build up your resistance to doing things that are negative.

00:20:57.000 You build up your resistance to indulging in negative thoughts.

00:21:01.000 Mm-hmm.

00:21:01.000 And in that sense, I think it's good.

00:21:03.000 Like, one of the weirdest things is, if you've ever seen someone who's never been in any sort of a conflict-type situation, but they get thrown into one and they have a panic attack.

00:21:12.000 Yeah.

00:21:12.000 And they hyperventilate and they don't know what to do.

00:21:14.000 It's very weird.

00:21:15.000 I've seen it happen many times.

00:21:17.000 I've seen it happen.

00:21:17.000 And then I've seen other people that are in panic situations or rather high-stress situations a lot, and they know how to stay calm and keep cool.

00:21:25.000 And I think...

00:21:26.000 Sometimes your life can depend on it.

00:21:28.000 Sure, very much so.

00:21:29.000 Panic is a killer.

00:21:30.000 Scuba diving, which I did a lot of, panic will kill you.

00:21:33.000 Oh, I would imagine.

00:21:34.000 I'm terrified of scuba diving.

00:21:36.000 I've never done it.

00:21:37.000 But I would imagine that being 100 feet down in the ocean while the winds are moving, the currents banging you against rocks and stuff.

00:21:44.000 Absolutely.

00:21:45.000 That's got to be...

00:21:46.000 You lose it down there and you're really gone.

00:21:48.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:49.000 That's a whole other world.

00:21:50.000 I did some snorkeling recently with dolphins.

00:21:53.000 Right.

00:21:54.000 I was in Hawaii and I actually did it with my four-year-old too.

00:21:59.000 I took her with me into the water and she had the mask on and everything and she's looking down and we're seeing the dolphins swimming under us.

00:22:06.000 It was amazing.

00:22:07.000 Really incredibly rewarding.

00:22:09.000 Did they come and scan you?

00:22:10.000 No, they didn't...

00:22:12.000 But they just swam underneath us.

00:22:14.000 Right. 0.99

00:22:15.000 You know, they really didn't give a shit about us. 0.98

00:22:16.000 No. 0.98

00:22:17.000 It was really kind of...

00:22:17.000 What are those weird-looking things up there?

00:22:19.000 They just, you know, it's kind of...

00:22:21.000 It's an eye-opener. 0.99

00:22:23.000 Like, how little of a shit dolphins care. 1.00

00:22:26.000 Yes. 1.00

00:22:26.000 They don't care about you, man. 1.00

00:22:28.000 As long as you're not trying to capture them, they're like, more people, whatever.

00:22:32.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:32.000 Avoid the boat, you know?

00:22:34.000 They came near the boat.

00:22:35.000 I've been around them, though, when they're very playful, too.

00:22:38.000 Mm-hmm.

00:22:39.000 We were fishing once and they were jumping by the boat and being really playful with us.

00:22:43.000 This was a totally different experience.

00:22:45.000 This was pretty much indifferent, but so beautiful.

00:22:49.000 Just being around them, hundreds of dolphins.

00:22:52.000 And you're just looking at them swimming underneath you.

00:22:54.000 But yeah, I can imagine that panic in that world...

00:22:58.000 Well, something goes wrong, you know, at depth in a current.

00:23:02.000 If you panic, you literally are dead.

00:23:04.000 That's when you have to stay steady.

00:23:06.000 And that's the power of the mind.

00:23:08.000 It's mind over matter.

00:23:09.000 You have to...

00:23:12.000 Impose your mind on that situation, because I don't know why, actually, if we have all this evolution, why we panic.

00:23:20.000 I mean, they would have thought millions of years of evolution would have got rid of that terrible, dangerous thing called panic, but actually it's there.

00:23:27.000 Well, fight or flight, though, is so necessary.

00:23:30.000 It sharpens your reflexes.

00:23:32.000 It's one of the things about fighters, is that a fighter going into a fight and not being nervous can be incredibly dangerous.

00:23:39.000 Yes.

00:23:39.000 And when I was competing, there were moments that I was too confident, and I went in and I couldn't compete right.

00:23:45.000 I also couldn't snap myself out of it.

00:23:49.000 There's a level that you achieve when you're really nervous, and you're not sure of what the outcome is going to be.

00:23:54.000 There's a level of reaction and of intensity that you achieve when you go into a competition where you're scared, where you perform so much better.

00:24:03.000 Right.

00:24:04.000 And then there's like, when you're super confident, there's something that happens where you're not nervous at all.

00:24:10.000 You can't get up for it.

00:24:11.000 It's a weird thing that happens.

00:24:13.000 So that adrenaline is, I think it's a necessary component.

00:24:17.000 It gives you that extra charge.

00:24:18.000 It's just about managing that, and managing it is very difficult.

00:24:22.000 It was interesting.

00:24:22.000 I watched...

00:24:23.000 I told you a few moments ago, I watched this Hicks and Gracie movie called Choke.

00:24:29.000 And that's one of the things that he said quite early on in the movie.

00:24:32.000 He said, actually, he's always afraid.

00:24:34.000 He doesn't say, I am a fearless person.

00:24:37.000 He says, I'm always afraid.

00:24:39.000 And yeah, it's managing that.

00:24:43.000 What a formidable fighter, that guy.

00:24:45.000 Yeah, he's an amazing guy, too.

00:24:47.000 We had him on the podcast recently, him and my friend Eddie Bravo together.

00:24:52.000 It was just a huge treat for me as a martial arts, lifelong martial arts practitioner and fan, because he's a real master.

00:25:01.000 Fascinating, fascinating guy.

00:25:02.000 That documentary, I recommend that to everybody, even people that don't do martial arts, like yourself.

00:25:07.000 How did you hear about it?

00:25:09.000 Okay, well, my son-in-law...

00:25:10.000 Jason Saris does mixed martial arts.

00:25:13.000 He does particularly Brazilian jiu-jitsu at a place called the MMA Clinic in London.

00:25:19.000 And he does it three, four times a week.

00:25:21.000 He's very, very, very devoted to it.

00:25:24.000 And he's been talking me through a lot of these issues over the last year.

00:25:28.000 And I get it.

00:25:30.000 I get why he loves it.

00:25:32.000 And I think it's been a really great thing for him.

00:25:35.000 And I think it's a really...

00:25:37.000 It's a really great thing for anybody.

00:25:38.000 There was a time in my life when I did do a martial art.

00:25:41.000 I did Aikido.

00:25:43.000 I got to Brown Belt in my very early 20s and then I quit.

00:25:48.000 I'm not quite sure why.

00:25:49.000 I had traveled.

00:25:50.000 I went away.

00:25:50.000 I'd lost the practice.

00:25:51.000 And then in my 40s, I went back to it and I went my way back up to...

00:25:55.000 I think?

00:26:14.000 I understand that it's a kind of meditative thing also, that if you actually start thinking, I imagine, because I don't do it, but this is what my son-in-law tells me, if you start thinking while you're in there, in that grapple with that other very strong,

00:26:30.000 very dangerous person, I don't think that's really good.

00:26:33.000 I think you have to not be thinking.

00:26:34.000 You have to be acting somehow on muscle, memory, on instinct, on experience.

00:26:39.000 You're not really thinking through your next move, or are you?

00:26:41.000 I don't know.

00:26:42.000 Sometimes you're thinking, but a lot of times you are reacting in what you try to do is achieve sort of a zen state, a flow state.

00:26:51.000 And when you're at your best, you're in that flow state where sometimes you'll be in a position where you don't even realize how you achieve the position.

00:26:59.000 You just...

00:27:00.000 You instinctively did it.

00:27:02.000 And it's instinctive based on thousands of repetitions.

00:27:06.000 Many, many hours of mat time.

00:27:08.000 Mat time is very important.

00:27:10.000 Mat time being the actual sparring itself.

00:27:13.000 Because the rolling, the grappling, sparring, you understand the language of human interaction.

00:27:20.000 There's an interaction between a person attacking, a person defending, and there's this thing that goes on where you kind of figure out...

00:27:29.000 And this is something that in daily life, in our modern technological society, most people have no experience of at all.

00:27:35.000 They're never in a fight situation.

00:27:40.000 They're never ever having to deal with that.

00:27:42.000 So if they suddenly find themselves, Hopefully not, but it does sometimes.

00:28:32.000 I think?

00:28:36.000 It makes the regular stress that people go through, the stress of bills and of relationships, it alleviates and mitigates a lot of the issues that people have.

00:28:48.000 Because the life or death struggle of someone trying to choke you and you battling it out and you're tired, you're exhausted, and you're trying to remain calm and catch your breath and defend and trying to stay cool and trying to figure out what's the proper defense for this situation.

00:29:03.000 And how to turn this around and how to get back to a better spot.

00:29:07.000 It's so harrowing.

00:29:09.000 And it's so stressful.

00:29:12.000 But in a good way.

00:29:13.000 So you're totally in the moment.

00:29:14.000 Yes.

00:29:15.000 Oh, yeah.

00:29:16.000 Totally in the moment. 1.00

00:29:16.000 There's no time for any other shit. 1.00

00:29:18.000 Some girl you dated when you were in high school. 0.99

00:29:20.000 Where is she now? 0.93

00:29:20.000 You're not thinking about that. 0.93

00:29:22.000 Or the bills you've got to pay, aren't you?

00:29:23.000 No, you're not thinking about any of those things.

00:29:25.000 And in that sense, it is very meditative.

00:29:27.000 It alleviates a lot of the stress of life.

00:29:29.000 And then when it's over, you just kind of feel very relaxed because you've spent all this excess energy that I believe people...

00:29:39.000 I mean, it's not a scientific way of looking at the human body, but I think of the human body in a lot of ways as sort of like a battery.

00:29:44.000 And a lot of people's batteries are overflowing with juice because you don't use them.

00:29:49.000 You sit down in a sedentary state in front of a computer all day, which is pretty bad for your back, and you stare at a screen, and you do your work, and then you sit in your car or on the train or whatever to get home, and then you sit in front of the television.

00:30:02.000 That's a lot of people's lives.

00:30:03.000 Absolutely.

00:30:04.000 That's not normal for a body.

00:30:06.000 No.

00:30:06.000 The body is supposed to be moving.

00:30:08.000 While you're young and alive and while you have energy, your body wants to be involved in activities.

00:30:15.000 Your body wants to go hiking and do things.

00:30:17.000 And if it doesn't, it atrophies and shrivels up and it stops being functional.

00:30:21.000 Mm-hmm.

00:30:22.000 When you can get all that energy out in a training session, it does a couple things.

00:30:28.000 One, it strengthens your body so that if you ever do have to use it for something, even if something as simple as picking things up or just strength to help move something, you have that.

00:30:39.000 But two, you alleviate all the excess energy.

00:30:43.000 You drain the battery a bit.

00:30:45.000 And by draining the battery, you put more juice in the battery for the future.

00:30:49.000 Like the battery has like a higher threshold.

00:30:51.000 And then you also like, you can deal with stuff easier.

00:30:54.000 Like when I don't train, if I don't exercise, if I don't do some sort of rigorous physical exercise, like at least a few days a week, I react differently to stress.

00:31:03.000 Right.

00:31:03.000 You start getting snappish and Well, I get more irritated than I should.

00:31:08.000 It affects me more than it should.

00:31:10.000 But when I train, like if I train a lot, everything is pretty easy.

00:31:15.000 Yeah.

00:31:16.000 I've seen this effect on my son-in-law.

00:31:18.000 His couple of years now of doing this, he's been, it's really transformed him.

00:31:21.000 It's a really, really great thing.

00:31:22.000 A lot of people could benefit from it.

00:31:24.000 I mean, I'm 64 years old.

00:31:25.000 I don't know.

00:31:26.000 I don't think I can go and do that stuff now.

00:31:28.000 You could if you found another 64-year-old.

00:31:30.000 Yeah, okay.

00:31:31.000 Or I could work with one personal teacher, you know, who would understand my level.

00:31:39.000 I see huge advantages in doing it.

00:31:42.000 I think I've got more and more interested in it over the last couple of years.

00:31:44.000 It's a really fascinating thing.

00:31:45.000 And also, tell me about this.

00:31:47.000 I mean, in a way, you're being a warrior in there.

00:31:51.000 In a way, it's a warrior thing.

00:31:54.000 I mean, this is a contentious issue.

00:31:56.000 The human race, we've been around in anatomically modern form for the last 200,000 years.

00:32:03.000 For a lot of that time, our young men...

00:32:08.000 In many societies have been called to warfare in one form or another.

00:32:14.000 I would say that it's gone on long enough for it to be a fundamental part of the human experience, actually.

00:32:24.000 In our society today, a lot has worked to I think?

00:32:50.000 Hand-to-hand with edged weapons.

00:32:53.000 That kind of experience of battle and warfare doesn't happen, I think, much in modern warfare today.

00:32:59.000 It's more the guy remotely piloting a drone and shooting people from a distance.

00:33:06.000 But maybe there is a warrior need in us which can be met in a harmless and positive way on the mat in something like mixed martial arts.

00:33:18.000 That's what I'm coming to.

00:33:19.000 Would you agree with that?

00:33:20.000 It's very possible that there's something to that.

00:33:22.000 I think it's very possible that there's something to the idea that we have ingrained in us a certain amount of experiences based on the genetics of all the people that have lived before us.

00:33:32.000 And that whatever fight or flight is inside of us, whatever...

00:33:37.000 I mean, throughout history...

00:33:40.000 Like, I've been discussing this with friends, like how fascinating this time is, because throughout history, in the past, if a boat of strangers showed up, it was very dangerous.

00:33:50.000 Yeah. 0.95

00:33:50.000 A boat showed up, and you're like, holy shit, it's gonna get crazy. 0.95

00:33:54.000 A bunch of men climb off the boat, you gotta hide women and children, and now when a boat shows up, it's tourism. 0.95

00:33:59.000 And everybody gets excited.

00:34:01.000 Like, oh, we need their money.

00:34:02.000 Come on, come to this island, come to this place, bring your family.

00:34:07.000 It's a completely different world that we live in.

00:34:09.000 It is.

00:34:12.000 Those experiences that led us to, that led the human race to 2014, these experiences of people, pirates showing up and Vikings showing up and all those dangerous people showing up in these different places, you know, people coming over the hill, oh, an army's coming.

00:34:25.000 That was just a part of being a human being for the longest time.

00:34:29.000 For a very long time, yeah.

00:34:29.000 Have you seen this new thing that was going on about the autopsy of which king of England was it?

00:34:37.000 Richard II or Richard III. Yeah, they found his bones, which is really amazing, man.

00:34:43.000 They found his bones, like, they found it under, like, a parking lot or something like that?

00:34:48.000 In a car park, yeah, a parking lot.

00:34:49.000 How crazy is that, man?

00:34:51.000 I know, I know.

00:34:51.000 How do they know it's him?

00:34:53.000 I think that there's a long tradition regarding him and the battle that he was killed in.

00:34:58.000 There's even a Shakespeare play where he's at the end of the battle saying famously, my horse, my horse, a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse, so that he can flee.

00:35:07.000 But it seems that he died in face-to-face combat and was hacked to pieces as far as I can.

00:35:11.000 One of the last of the kings to die like that, too, right?

00:35:17.000 To die in combat, yeah.

00:35:18.000 We're in the sort of late 1400s there, I would say so.

00:35:23.000 I mean, combat went on.

00:35:25.000 The period I'm writing about, early 1500s, was brutal and bloody.

00:35:29.000 Brutal and bloody period. 0.96

00:35:30.000 A man like Hernán Cortés is a leader, but he's a killer. 1.00

00:35:35.000 He's a cold-blooded killer. 0.99

00:35:37.000 I think that kind of...

00:35:39.000 That kind of experience is rare today.

00:35:42.000 Does it freak you out when you read stuff about these days and realize that that all could happen today?

00:35:49.000 We just need the wrong set of events to take place.

00:35:53.000 We're not far removed as a species from that time.

00:35:57.000 In terms of actual history, it's the blink of an eye between then and now.

00:36:03.000 Absolute blink of an eye.

00:36:04.000 We are the same people.

00:36:06.000 Nothing's changed.

00:36:08.000 There's been some social changes.

00:36:10.000 But look, we're still slaughtering people on large-scale levels.

00:36:14.000 It's just that that hand-to-hand, face-to-face thing, technology has intervened.

00:36:18.000 A little bit in that.

00:36:20.000 If our society were to go into a radical collapse, people could find themselves facing those contingencies very quickly, very, very, very rapidly.

00:36:32.000 And it is in fact a radical collapse in other parts of the world.

00:36:35.000 I've been talking about this on stage a lot lately.

00:36:38.000 Because there's a lot of these...

00:36:40.000 There's this Duck Dynasty guy.

00:36:42.000 It's hilarious. 0.97

00:36:43.000 Duck Dynasty is this ridiculous American reality show. 0.53

00:36:46.000 But one of the main guys on Duck Dynasty, he gave this speech, this video speech, where he was talking about the impending apocalypse... 0.57

00:36:57.000 And what they call the rapture, where Christians think that Jesus is going to come and he's going to take away everybody that's Christian and bring them to heaven and everybody else is going to be stuck on earth.

00:37:07.000 I believe there's a very elite group are going to go.

00:37:09.000 144,000 of them are going to be floated up in the clouds.

00:37:12.000 Is that what the idea is?

00:37:13.000 Apparently so, yeah, with the rapture.

00:37:14.000 And he told people that they should watch this Nicolas Cage movie that's about to come out, called Left Behind, that's based on this very famous series of books amongst the Christians, Left Behind.

00:37:29.000 And these people have this...

00:37:31.000 You mean he's somebody who doesn't get raptured?

00:37:32.000 Is that the idea?

00:37:33.000 I guess.

00:37:34.000 I don't know. 1.00

00:37:35.000 It's so fucking stupid. 1.00

00:37:36.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:37:37.000 It hurts my brain to talk about it. 1.00

00:37:39.000 But what's fascinating is that they're all worried about...

00:37:42.000 Everyone's worried about the apocalypse.

00:37:44.000 The apocalypse, the apocalypse, the end, the end.

00:37:46.000 But...

00:37:47.000 The apocalypse, if you go to certain parts of the world, it's there.

00:37:51.000 It's there.

00:37:52.000 It's in Liberia right now.

00:37:54.000 It's in Somalia right now.

00:37:55.000 Right now.

00:37:55.000 Listen, back in the 1970s, I lived in Mogadishu.

00:37:59.000 I lived in Somalia.

00:38:00.000 I lived in that failed state.

00:38:02.000 It was a fine place then.

00:38:04.000 Back then it was fine.

00:38:05.000 Yeah, it was fine.

00:38:06.000 Why was it fine?

00:38:07.000 I mean, this is not politically correct, but it was run by a dictator.

00:38:10.000 And he kept things calm, you know?

00:38:12.000 Well, that has been the case in many unfortunate scenarios.

00:38:17.000 I mean, that's what's argued about Iraq.

00:38:20.000 If you looked at Iraq before the US invasion, it was largely superior to what it is now. 0.98

00:38:25.000 Vastly superior to what it is now.

00:38:26.000 Again, I mean, we're not, you know, kind of not supposed to say these things.

00:38:29.000 Right.

00:38:33.000 Things were a whole lot better under Saddam Hussein. 1.00

00:38:35.000 It was peaceful.

00:38:36.000 There was not a lot of inter-religious conflict.

00:38:41.000 It was a secular state.

00:38:42.000 It was a secular state.

00:38:43.000 In fact, quite tolerant.

00:38:44.000 And all you had to do was not get in the face of Saddam Hussein.

00:38:47.000 That was the simple rule of life.

00:38:51.000 Just don't get in the face of Saddam Hussein. 0.77

00:38:52.000 And that was a simple rule of life in Somalia in the 1970s.

00:38:55.000 Don't get in the face of Siad Bahre if you do.

00:38:58.000 I'll tell you a story.

00:38:59.000 Siad Barre, Mohamed Siad Barre, who was the president of Somalia when I went there in 1975, he did a number of interesting things.

00:39:07.000 For example, the Somali language was not written.

00:39:09.000 This was a nomadic society, 70% nomadic.

00:39:12.000 He introduced a written script for the Somali language based on the Latin alphabet.

00:39:17.000 This had not been possible before because religious leaders had said they had to have it in the Arabic script because they were Muslims.

00:39:23.000 He just forced that through.

00:39:25.000 Then he introduced a family law which allowed women to divorce their husbands.

00:39:28.000 At that point, 11 religious leaders, 11 sheikhs, mobilized the public and said they had to rebel against Siad Bari.

00:39:35.000 Well, what he did, he hauled those guys out of the mosque the very same day and shot them all.

00:39:38.000 And that was the end of that argument, and suddenly women could divorce their husbands, and the society was very free and very open.

00:39:45.000 One can't imagine today, from the scenes of horror that we see from Mogadishu, actually how peaceful it was.

00:39:51.000 So, you know, it may be the case that in some situations, an Iraq is definitely another example. 1.00

00:39:57.000 We in the West are constantly saying we must have democracy.

00:40:00.000 Democracy is a great thing.

00:40:01.000 Well, maybe it is a great thing at a certain point, at a certain level.

00:40:04.000 When you're in a society that's very sectarian, very divided into tribal interests, very divided into different religious groups, maybe it's actually more comfortable if you have a dictator.

00:40:12.000 Well, there's a power vacuum issue.

00:40:15.000 I think the issue is civilizations largely operate on momentum.

00:40:20.000 And when things have been set up in the way that they have been in Iraq or the way they have been, obviously, in Somalia, Where there's one guy who's calling all the shots, and they've got this whole thing established, when that guy's not there anymore.

00:40:35.000 And then everyone's scrambling to be the new guy.

00:40:38.000 Everyone's scrambling.

00:40:39.000 It creates chaos.

00:40:40.000 Absolute chaos.

00:40:41.000 It's horrific.

00:40:42.000 And hell.

00:40:42.000 And it creates this intense violence amongst the people.

00:40:47.000 Iraq, the people that are in that civil war state that they're at now, where...

00:40:54.000 Various sections of their population are vying for control of this failed state.

00:41:00.000 It's horrific.

00:41:01.000 It's horrific.

00:41:01.000 You have this hideous death cult called the Islamic State, which may or may not have been initially funded and set up by the United States of America and its allies.

00:41:10.000 Who knows? 0.98

00:41:11.000 But it's a death cult, and it's horrible. 0.96

00:41:14.000 Frankly, I would rather have Saddam Hussein than the Islamic State. 0.99

00:41:17.000 Yeah.

00:41:17.000 It's a crazy thing to say, right?

00:41:19.000 The one evil is better than the other evil.

00:41:22.000 Obviously, we're only talking in objective reality terms here.

00:41:26.000 We're not like saying, hey, it's okay to be a dictator.

00:41:29.000 No, not at all.

00:41:30.000 It's evil to be a dictator, clearly.

00:41:31.000 It's evil and wrong.

00:41:34.000 Ideally, we move to a situation where we have no governments and where people run their own lives and peacefully negotiate with one another.

00:41:41.000 But that isn't the way it's going down in Iraq, and it's not the way it's gone down in the southern part of Somalia.

00:41:46.000 Yeah, I mean, that would be ideal, right?

00:41:48.000 But it's really hard to run a bunch of people.

00:41:52.000 Like, the idea of a society, the idea of taking a million people, 500 million people, whatever the number is, and having a group of people that Adhere to the best interests of all the folks that are in that society.

00:42:06.000 Their needs are so varied.

00:42:09.000 Their resources are so varied.

00:42:11.000 Their fortune in what situation they find themselves born into is so varied.

00:42:17.000 And then you have the people that are fortunate sons and daughters that are trying to keep the unfortunate from getting into their gated community of life.

00:42:24.000 There's so much crazier.

00:42:25.000 And you can be sure that dictators, sons and daughters, are all very well looked after in a dictatorship.

00:42:29.000 That always happens, like Saddam's kids, like Siad Barry's kids. 0.97

00:42:32.000 It's always the case, you know, that they are.

00:42:34.000 And that then generates feelings of anger and fury that that is happening.

00:42:38.000 But a situation where just bullets are flying down the street constantly and you live in permanent fear of your life, that's not good either.

00:42:48.000 Yeah, the arguments that the United States has funded ISIS in order to build up support for an invasion of Saudi Arabia, or of Syria, rather, are really terrifying.

00:43:00.000 And more terrifying because I don't want to look into it, because I don't want to know.

00:43:04.000 It's a horrible thought, yeah.

00:43:05.000 It's like, I don't even want to know. 0.99

00:43:07.000 I know that that kind of shit has happened before. 1.00

00:43:10.000 So when you see that it's happening now, you're like, oh, fuck. 1.00

00:43:13.000 Is this really going on? 0.99

00:43:14.000 Is that really what's causing all this?

00:43:16.000 It's profoundly depressing.

00:43:18.000 And the problem is that we can't really believe anything that our political leaders in the West say.

00:43:25.000 I mean, they have been proven to be. 1.00

00:43:29.000 Absolute crooks, thieves and liars. 0.98

00:43:31.000 They lie by instinct all the time and the problem with constant lying at the top levels of politics is that it pollutes the debate completely. 0.99

00:43:40.000 You suddenly can't believe anything that's said and that leads to suspicion of all kinds of horrendous possibilities including the funding and setting in motion of this ISIS horror. 0.61

00:43:52.000 Yeah, it doesn't help when someone like Julian Assange comes along and exposes all these things that a lot of people disagree with, and what do they do?

00:43:59.000 They try to get him locked up on some trumped-up charges and export him, as if they were really trying to export him to Sweden and eventually to the United States because of some sexual thing that wasn't even violent, or it wasn't even rape.

00:44:15.000 It was consensual.

00:44:15.000 It was some weird sexual charge.

00:44:17.000 I think they call it surprise sex or something like that.

00:44:20.000 They're not even calling it rape.

00:44:21.000 Right. 1.00

00:44:22.000 There's one thing, like, if there was a woman who was saying, hey, Julian Assange, she's a piece of shit, he drugged me, he raped me, you know, okay, yeah, send that guy to Sweden. 1.00

00:44:31.000 But they're not even saying that. 1.00

00:44:33.000 This isn't a charge that makes any sense.

00:44:35.000 And the fact that this guy's been locked up in the embassy in London for all these years...

00:44:40.000 It's crazy.

00:44:41.000 It's a very crazy situation.

00:44:43.000 It's really weird to see, man.

00:44:45.000 It's really weird to see him on television doing these Skype interviews and knowing that he's in this embassy.

00:44:50.000 And the moment he steps out of that, they're going to snatch him up.

00:44:53.000 It's like he's just being protected by some weird loophole.

00:44:57.000 Yes.

00:44:57.000 Well, you could take sanctuary in an embassy.

00:45:00.000 It's an old law.

00:45:01.000 But you can't leave. 1.00

00:45:03.000 He's going to have to dig a hole underneath that motherfucker. 1.00

00:45:06.000 A mile out. 1.00

00:45:08.000 Yeah.

00:45:09.000 Out of the street and then pop out of a manhole and then scoop him up in a car and take him to Costa Rica or somewhere where they're going to honor.

00:45:17.000 No, we live in a time when they're just constant conspiracy theories.

00:45:21.000 I mean, there's even conspiracy theories about him, you know, that he is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

00:45:27.000 Of course.

00:45:28.000 All of that happens.

00:45:29.000 Nothing is believed anymore.

00:45:31.000 And that comes from the proven fact that our political leaders are... 0.99

00:45:38.000 Actually, liars. 0.99

00:45:39.000 Absolutely. 0.95

00:45:39.000 Lied to us again and again. 0.95

00:45:41.000 And how can we trust them?

00:45:43.000 How can we entrust ourselves to them when they behave in that way?

00:45:48.000 What's needed is transparency.

00:45:50.000 What's needed is openness.

00:45:51.000 Do you think that transparency is going to be an eventuality because of the internet?

00:45:55.000 It's happening, yeah.

00:45:56.000 I think it is, right?

00:45:57.000 Everything gets blown wide open.

00:45:59.000 It's very difficult to keep secrets.

00:46:00.000 And it also erodes faith in the leadership when like, is this a democracy?

00:46:06.000 Is this a representative government?

00:46:08.000 Or is it some sort of a weird dictatorship? 0.99

00:46:10.000 Because if it is a democracy, how the fuck are you keeping that guy locked up? 0.95

00:46:14.000 How is Julian Assange still locked up? 0.92

00:46:16.000 I need to know, please tell me, what exactly he did that you need to export him to the United States.

00:46:22.000 Oh, he released some information.

00:46:25.000 Which is our information, we the citizens.

00:46:28.000 This is not, you know, information that should be kept secret.

00:46:32.000 It's not from a king. 0.98

00:46:33.000 It's information that someone who was being paid with taxpayer dollars did a bunch of shit that the United States doesn't agree with. 0.99

00:46:42.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:47:04.000 It's completely contrary to I think we're good to go.

00:47:37.000 So it ceases to be democracy when the voting public are fed lies on the basis of which they make their decisions and vote.

00:47:47.000 That isn't democracy anymore.

00:47:50.000 And in a way, democracies are the worst kind of dictatorship because they have this appearance of freedom.

00:47:55.000 I have this illusion of freedom.

00:47:58.000 And everybody can say, well, it's great because I live in a democracy.

00:48:01.000 At least if you live in a dictatorship, you know you live in a dictatorship.

00:48:04.000 And there are certain parameters that you have to work your way around.

00:48:07.000 But when you live in a dictatorship that is posing as a democracy, it's more complicated to do.

00:48:13.000 And it's where a lot of people truly believe and act as if it is a democracy, but at the very top, there's fuckery and manipulation and coercion and money and corporate greed and interests and the military-industrial complex that is funding all of these maneuvers,

00:48:31.000 and it's people profiting wildly.

00:48:34.000 Not to forget all the big corporations, big pharmaceutical corporations.

00:48:38.000 All of this is about management of information that we are given.

00:48:43.000 What the internet offers is the opportunity for ordinary people who are not part of a power structure, not running a big corporation, to take power back to themselves.

00:48:52.000 And that is happening.

00:48:54.000 And it's happening in a big way.

00:48:56.000 And it's very disturbing to the powers that be.

00:48:58.000 Yeah, people want like an instant change, but it is almost instant.

00:49:02.000 The amount of time that we've actually spent having the internet has been pretty brief.

00:49:08.000 1993-ish, 4-ish is when it gave birth.

00:49:11.000 Yes.

00:49:12.000 And then like...

00:49:13.000 2014, where we're at now, it's really only been around in this form for the last decade, like 2004, 2005, and then social media allowing people to exchange information in the heat of political crisis, where they've been able to expose things that are happening in real time that ordinarily would be protected by the media.

00:49:35.000 They would shelter and filter the information.

00:49:37.000 Now it's all just coming out and they can't... 0.98

00:49:39.000 So they'd have to shut down the whole fucking internet in some of these countries. 0.95

00:49:42.000 Which is a very difficult thing to do. 0.98

00:49:46.000 Now, I've seen the huge shift in power that this has introduced.

00:49:51.000 There was a time, just at my own small level, as an author...

00:49:55.000 Where I would have depended on the goodwill of the big media in order to get my ideas out there.

00:50:02.000 And since my ideas have sometimes been radical and contradictory to the established order of things, it was very difficult to do that.

00:50:09.000 Well, I don't need the big media anymore.

00:50:11.000 I absolutely don't need them.

00:50:13.000 They're not required at all.

00:50:14.000 They're redundant as far as I'm concerned.

00:50:16.000 What is important...

00:50:18.000 Is the community of like-minded people that I am reaching through social media, through Facebook, through my website.

00:50:25.000 Not to say that Facebook is perfect because Facebook is very problematic and is itself a large corporation which is filtering and controlling information.

00:50:33.000 But at least it's there.

00:50:34.000 It's something.

00:50:35.000 There's some excellent things with Facebook, though.

00:50:36.000 One of the excellent things is that everyone is themselves.

00:50:39.000 Yes.

00:50:39.000 Like that is your Facebook account.

00:50:41.000 This is when you're posting.

00:50:42.000 This is who you are.

00:50:43.000 Yeah.

00:50:43.000 For the most part.

00:50:44.000 I mean, obviously, there's some frauds out there.

00:50:45.000 But a lot of when people are commenting, they're commenting using their Facebook identity. 0.98

00:50:51.000 So that's a real person, as opposed to Twitter or a lot of message boards where you're getting trolls and a lot of assholes that are posting under fake names. 0.95

00:50:59.000 There's a lot of people out there that it's like a sport to them to be shitty or to rile people up. 0.87

00:51:05.000 Yeah, it always puzzles me.

00:51:06.000 I get relatively little of it on my Facebook pages.

00:51:09.000 I have an author Facebook page.

00:51:10.000 I have a personal Facebook page.

00:51:12.000 I run them both parallel, put the same stuff on both of them.

00:51:14.000 There's one or two people who kind of haunt me there and just always want to say negative and unpleasant things.

00:51:22.000 And my view is go for it, Guy.

00:51:23.000 Say those things if you want to.

00:51:25.000 Well, you're always going to get that if you're in the public eye.

00:51:28.000 And the thing to be aware of...

00:51:31.000 It's a tremendous waste of, unless you're actually doing something evil and someone's trying to expose something, which you're clearly not.

00:51:36.000 But if you were, then that kind of makes sense.

00:51:39.000 Like, these people are crusaders.

00:51:40.000 But a lot of them are just what you call haters in the United States. 0.99

00:51:44.000 And the thing about haters is they're all losers. 1.00

00:51:48.000 Yes. 0.94

00:51:48.000 There's no one that lives a fulfilled, successful life with an awesome family, a great relationship. 0.94

00:51:54.000 They're doing what they want to do for a living.

00:51:56.000 They're happy and at peace.

00:51:57.000 And they also go online and they're very...

00:52:00.000 And say hateful things. 1.00

00:52:01.000 And shit on people. 1.00

00:52:02.000 No, it's a mess of wasted energy. 1.00

00:52:06.000 Yes.

00:52:06.000 Like, they're...

00:52:07.000 And some people are really good at it. 0.99

00:52:09.000 And it's like, damn, if you put that energy into something productive, instead of stalking Graham Hancock, you know, and fucking with him all day, you could get a lot of shit done. 0.99

00:52:18.000 You could probably be a happier person. 1.00

00:52:20.000 Exactly.

00:52:20.000 So the only answer at the receiving end of that is not to feed it.

00:52:24.000 Yes.

00:52:25.000 You know, it's not to nourish it with angry or hurt responses.

00:52:31.000 Well, that's what they're trying to do. 1.00

00:52:32.000 You know, when someone's saying, you research your shit, your fucking book's... 1.00

00:52:35.000 I wipe my ass with your book. 1.00

00:52:36.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:52:36.000 They're trying to fuck with you. 1.00

00:52:38.000 Absolutely. 1.00

00:52:38.000 And the answer is, somehow, what I try to do sometimes is to just respond with love, you know? 1.00

00:52:47.000 It's nice if it's true, if it's real.

00:52:48.000 And I try to do the same if I can.

00:52:51.000 Sometimes it's really hard.

00:52:52.000 Yeah, it's hard.

00:52:53.000 But do you also agree, I definitely feel this about myself, that some of the criticism that I've received, even extreme criticism, even if it's unbalanced, I've benefited from.

00:53:06.000 Always.

00:53:06.000 Yes.

00:53:07.000 Always.

00:53:07.000 It's useful.

00:53:08.000 Yes.

00:53:09.000 It's useful.

00:53:10.000 There's something to learn from that.

00:53:12.000 It's like I was saying, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

00:53:14.000 I mean, you have to learn from this.

00:53:16.000 It's out there.

00:53:17.000 We have to engage in some way with criticism.

00:53:21.000 I've received an enormous amount of criticism from my work.

00:53:30.000 Thank you.

00:53:35.000 Thank you for criticizing me.

00:53:37.000 I appreciate it.

00:53:38.000 If there are holes in what I'm saying, if my argument is weak in a particular area and you're helping me to see that… The right response is gratitude to that.

00:53:47.000 They really are, in a sense, working for you in some way, because, I mean, there's been unwarranted criticism that I've received that have made me rethink a lot of things I do.

00:53:58.000 Even if it's unwarranted, they've made me rethink, like, what is causing this reaction?

00:54:03.000 Like, is there anything that I could have done differently that could have avoided that?

00:54:08.000 Or is this a necessary evil that just comes with the business?

00:54:13.000 Yes.

00:54:13.000 And it makes you think about things in a more complex way.

00:54:16.000 And although that might be uncomfortable, I think there's some great benefit of it.

00:54:20.000 There's some great benefit from it.

00:54:21.000 And once again, it's putting us into a real social situation.

00:54:25.000 As you say, these people are real.

00:54:28.000 It's like being back in the village in the old days where...

00:54:32.000 You might be directly criticized by one or other of your fellow villagers.

00:54:36.000 Well, now our village is the whole world, and it crosses all national boundaries and all religious interests.

00:54:43.000 It can be anybody, anywhere, who's taking an interest in you.

00:54:48.000 I'm constantly receiving information, some of it critical, some of it positive, through Facebook, in particular through Facebook, which is very helpful to me.

00:54:57.000 And I really appreciate it.

00:54:59.000 And I try the best I can.

00:55:00.000 I try as much as I can do.

00:55:02.000 I don't want to spend my entire day Morning to night on Facebook.

00:55:08.000 But I try to engage with it.

00:55:09.000 I try to respond because I realize that people are giving me their time.

00:55:13.000 Somebody sends me a link to a story I haven't ever seen before.

00:55:16.000 It's really important for my research.

00:55:17.000 Thank you.

00:55:18.000 That's really great.

00:55:19.000 Twitter's giant for that for me.

00:55:20.000 Just absolutely gigantic.

00:55:22.000 I've gotten more information from Twitter, more interesting websites that people have sent me to, more interesting articles that people have sent me to than any other resource that I've ever been in contact with.

00:55:32.000 And it's just...

00:55:33.000 Directly because of interacting with people, and when they send me interesting things, I retweet them, and then those retweets get seen by a large number of people, so people see that I do that, and so they send me more interesting stuff.

00:55:45.000 It's really cool in that way.

00:55:46.000 I like that.

00:55:48.000 It's establishing a network in that sense.

00:55:51.000 It's a whole new situation, which we've not faced before, done on a gigantic scale, and What it means is that information which used to be strictly controlled and in the hands of elites is now changing.

00:56:09.000 The power structure of information is changing entirely and that's potentially a very exciting new time to live in and great things are coming out of it.

00:56:17.000 It's easy to say this, but I think a new consciousness is dawning in the world, actually.

00:56:22.000 I don't think it's very big yet.

00:56:24.000 I think the old way of doing things is still extremely strong, but people are waking up to their power and saying, you know, I am not simply to be pushed around and told what to do by people.

00:56:38.000 An expert or a government official or a corporation.

00:56:43.000 And that's great.

00:56:43.000 Yeah, I believe you're correct.

00:56:45.000 And I think that it's hard to see while you're in the middle of it.

00:56:49.000 Yeah.

00:56:49.000 Because it's all happening while we're participating in it.

00:56:53.000 We are living in a time of extraordinary, rapid, unbelievable change.

00:56:59.000 And when the history of this time...

00:57:00.000 Maybe things will settle down.

00:57:02.000 Maybe they won't.

00:57:02.000 I don't know.

00:57:03.000 But when the history of this time comes to be written...

00:57:05.000 There'll have to be some perspective on it 200-300 years from now.

00:57:08.000 It will be seen as one of the most extraordinary moments in the whole human story.

00:57:13.000 My friend Amber Lyon has an interesting way of talking about certain events and one of the things she talks about when it comes to corporate control of information and things along the lines of the Julian Assange situation She talks about being on the wrong side of history,

00:57:29.000 and I think that's a very good point.

00:57:32.000 The people that are trying to suppress information in that way, and the information that would directly affect the lives, but the consciousness of the entire culture.

00:57:46.000 Yeah.

00:58:11.000 It's clear that Galileo was on the right side of history.

00:58:13.000 We know that now.

00:58:14.000 We've got perspective on it.

00:58:15.000 We can look back with hindsight.

00:58:16.000 And it's the same thing that's happening today in different ways.

00:58:21.000 Yeah, it really is.

00:58:22.000 It's just more intense because it's happening worldwide.

00:58:29.000 And it's all happening at the same time.

00:58:31.000 And we're seeing positive and negative repercussions of it.

00:58:34.000 Like these failed states that come about because of Arab Spring. 1.00

00:58:37.000 Like everybody says, let's get rid of the dictator. 0.76

00:58:39.000 And then, you know, Muammar Gaddafi gets killed.

00:58:41.000 Pandora's box is open.

00:58:42.000 Yeah.

00:58:43.000 And now Libya is like this insane place. 0.99

00:58:45.000 Hell world. 0.99

00:58:46.000 Libya is a hell world. 1.00

00:58:47.000 Syria is a hell world. 1.00

00:58:49.000 Iraq is a hell world. 1.00

00:58:51.000 In every case, Pandora's box has been opened and the immediate result has been that things got way worse than they were before.

00:58:59.000 And then, you know, if we're talking about the dark side, the negative side of things as well, there is this horrible problem of bigoted religious fundamentalism, which is not confined to the Islamic world by any means.

00:59:16.000 I mean, there are many Christian bigots as well.

00:59:19.000 There's a tendency for people to cling on to old and devalued ideas and to have an almost religious, fanatical commitment to them and be willing.

00:59:31.000 I mean, what idea is worth killing another fellow human being for because they don't share your idea?

00:59:36.000 I mean, this is demonic.

00:59:37.000 It's a horrendous, horrendous situation that this happens.

01:00:09.000 I followed a few guys There was this thing that was going on with his interaction with the other people.

01:00:16.000 There was this intense camaraderie, this intense camaraderie with his other Islamic warriors, you know, that they all looked at it.

01:00:24.000 Everyone was brothers and sisters and everyone was, you know, it was all, there was great intensity to all of the decisions that were being made and great intensity to the bonds they all had, you know, fighting against what they thought was the evil United States government.

01:00:38.000 And, unfortunately, there was also some things that he said that, you know, they were talking about how everybody's freaking out, that one head got cut off, one body part got cut off of this one guy, but what about the thousands of people that are blown to bits by these drones that no one's talking about?

01:00:56.000 That's undeniable.

01:00:57.000 That is undeniable.

01:00:58.000 That is absolutely true.

01:01:01.000 Two wrongs never make a right.

01:01:03.000 They do not.

01:01:04.000 The fact that that happens does not excuse the cold-blooded slicing off of a fellow human being's head.

01:01:10.000 But nevertheless, it happens.

01:01:12.000 We should not condemn the one without condemning the other as well.

01:01:16.000 Absolutely.

01:01:16.000 And in fact, the one...

01:01:19.000 You're talking about one individual as opposed to thousands of people that have been killed by drones that are innocent.

01:01:25.000 Completely innocent people who are so-called collateral damage, who are just ripped apart by our high-tech weapons, which will behead a person in an instant, slice body parts off just completely broken.

01:01:40.000 If you're lucky.

01:01:41.000 Or if you're not lucky, they only break off a few things, and then you suffer for the rest of your life in agonizing pain.

01:01:47.000 So we have to own this.

01:01:48.000 We have to accept that this is something we do.

01:01:52.000 We in the West are not innocent of this barbarity.

01:01:55.000 We're also part of it.

01:01:56.000 Yeah.

01:01:57.000 Is it we?

01:01:58.000 You know, that's the real thing.

01:01:59.000 Well, that's the real thing, because then you come back to the question of the manipulation of public opinion by very small interest groups who have...

01:02:08.000 A very unbalanced control of information.

01:02:12.000 Right.

01:02:12.000 And then what does we mean?

01:02:15.000 If it's not you and it's not I, do we take responsibility for people we don't even know, doing things that are under the orders of people we also don't know, and under the influence of corporations, we're not really exactly sure who's pulling the strings or how it's getting done or what politicians are moving what pieces into place. 0.99

01:02:32.000 The whole thing's a fucking mess. 0.98

01:02:33.000 We take responsibility for standing by and letting bad shit happen and not doing anything about it. 1.00

01:02:37.000 Somehow or other, to fail to act when we know that something really wrong is being done in our name, that is as bad as doing it ourselves.

01:02:47.000 Have you ever seen the interview?

01:02:48.000 There's an interview that's out there of one of the guys that's a...

01:02:50.000 He was a drone pilot, and he was responsible for, I don't know, a large number of deaths.

01:02:56.000 But he would describe what it was like to be a drone pilot and what it's like to...

01:03:02.000 You know, to operate these death machines that fly through the sky and just launch rockets and how crazy it was.

01:03:09.000 And this is a new thing that didn't exist decades ago.

01:03:13.000 Didn't exist during the first Gulf War.

01:03:16.000 There was no drones.

01:03:17.000 I mean, this idea of precision attacks by automated machines that fly around the air and launch Hellfire missiles. 0.99

01:03:25.000 I mean, what a fucking crazy name. 0.98

01:03:27.000 They call them Hellfire. 1.00

01:03:28.000 Hellfire, yeah.

01:03:29.000 And it becomes like a computer game.

01:03:32.000 Oh yeah.

01:03:32.000 You're looking at it on a screen.

01:03:34.000 Completely detached.

01:03:35.000 Completely detached from the mass murder that you are in fact inflicting.

01:03:41.000 What a dark world.

01:03:42.000 Dark. 0.73

01:03:43.000 We live in a dark time and the only thing is that there is this light which is growing.

01:03:50.000 There is the capacity for love.

01:03:52.000 Human beings, we are capable of love.

01:03:55.000 It involves detaching ourselves from controlling orders and actually thinking As human beings, thinking for ourselves.

01:04:03.000 Very difficult to do, but I think it's happening.

01:04:05.000 I also think that that conflict, the conflict of battling against the negative, builds up the positive in some strange way.

01:04:13.000 I mean, the anti-war movement was really a big part of what made the hippie movement of the 60s.

01:04:19.000 Like, a lot of it was in response to the Vietnam War.

01:04:22.000 There's this war that people knew to be unjust, and so this flower power, love power movement LSD and marijuana and all that came out of that.

01:04:33.000 That very resistance to killing people that didn't do anything bad to us.

01:04:39.000 To produce this very positive thing.

01:04:40.000 But then, of course, there was then a counter-reaction to that, which we call the war on drugs, which slapped down on that and shut it all down again.

01:04:48.000 I mean, I know you're not big into supernatural issues, but when I look at all of this, I have to say the Gnostics who... 1.00

01:04:59.000 If I simplify the Gnostic ideas, we know about Gnostic ideas because a batch of texts were found buried at a place called Nakamadi in Upper Egypt near the Temple of Dendera in Upper Egypt, and they'd been buried for 1,600 years.

01:05:15.000 And they were found in 1945, and they contain a complete corpus of ideas of a people who call themselves the Gnostics.

01:05:23.000 And they see a dark force at work in the universe, which is seeking to snuff out the divine spark in humanity.

01:05:33.000 And it's a supernatural force.

01:05:35.000 And what they say is that the entity who we've been taught for the last 2,000-plus years to believe is God, The God of Abraham, who may be called Yahweh or who may be called Allah, that from the Gnostic point of view,

01:05:52.000 that's not a God at all.

01:05:53.000 That's a demon. 0.90

01:05:54.000 That's a lower-level supernatural who's got this huge inflated ego, who wants to be praised and worshipped, who's constantly urging his followers on to acts of violence and war.

01:06:06.000 And I think we cannot say there are any facts in this area.

01:06:11.000 Maybe it's just the dark side of the human psyche, and maybe it's all generated by our brains, or maybe there is a supernatural realm.

01:06:18.000 But I think Gnosticism is a very useful tool to look at the society we live in today.

01:06:26.000 They believed that there were entities called archons who are evil angels who disguise themselves as human beings and mingle with us to drive us into all manner of That's why the serpent in the Garden of Eden Is the good guy in the Gnostic frame of reference. 0.97

01:06:54.000 That's very bizarre, the serpent being the good guy.

01:06:56.000 He's the good guy because he's saying to Adam and Eve, you have to know the difference between good and evil.

01:07:02.000 You can't just be these thoughtless meat creatures, you know, who are wandering around in a happy daze in the garden.

01:07:10.000 If you're going to grow and develop, you have to make choices between good and evil.

01:07:14.000 And it's the tree of knowledge of good and evil that the serpent introduces Adam and Eve to.

01:07:20.000 And says you need to eat from that.

01:07:22.000 And actually, I would say this is true.

01:07:25.000 We are defined by our choices.

01:07:28.000 It's through our choices that we grow.

01:07:29.000 And if we're ignorant of the context, how can we hope to grow?

01:07:33.000 Yeah, and the stories of Adam and Eve and all that stuff, It's allegorical, right?

01:07:39.000 I mean, it's supposed to be...

01:07:40.000 There's an allegory to...

01:07:42.000 There's certainly an allegory.

01:07:44.000 There's certainly an allegory there.

01:07:46.000 It's not a real serpent.

01:07:47.000 You know, it's not a real apple.

01:07:48.000 No, I don't read it as a real serpent or a real apple.

01:07:51.000 I mean, actually, for the Gnostics, very clearly and definitely it was a psychedelic mushroom. 0.73

01:07:56.000 When the Gnostics portray... 0.99

01:07:58.000 The tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden.

01:08:02.000 It is Amanita muscaria.

01:08:04.000 It's the phyagoric.

01:08:06.000 Sometimes it's a psilocybe.

01:08:08.000 It is a visionary substance, which they are depicting.

01:08:13.000 And that, in a way, from the Gnostic point of view...

01:08:16.000 Is a necessary part of the liberation of the spirit, that it's an agent for awakening.

01:08:22.000 That's what the serpent was giving.

01:08:24.000 Now, I know that all the fundamentalist Christians out there are going to say Hancock is a devil worshipper because he's saying that the serpent is the good guy.

01:08:30.000 But that's what the Gnostics said, and there was a deep and ancient study of the mystery of life and the mystery of reality.

01:08:36.000 I've read somewhere, I don't remember the source, but I read somewhere where they were talking about the interpretations of ancient languages and the translations from, you know, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, all to Greek, Latin, that a lot of things got lost along the way in the confusion,

01:08:51.000 and that one of the confusions was that the word apple, It could be interpreted also as red.

01:09:01.000 And that it wasn't an apple, but that it was a red.

01:09:04.000 And that red being the color of the Amanita Muscaria.

01:09:07.000 That was why.

01:09:08.000 Absolutely.

01:09:09.000 I mean, folks have to understand, if they've never tried to pay attention to how people translate ancient languages, And then try to translate them several times, not just into, you know, from ancient Hebrew to Latin, but also from Latin to Greek,

01:09:25.000 from Greek to English.

01:09:27.000 There's so much that gets weirded out along the way.

01:09:30.000 Like, if you've ever taken a phrase from, like, a Russian website where you don't know what they're saying and then put it into, like, Google Translate and you see the English version of what they're saying, like, Oh my God, it's so convoluted and confusing because of the way the structure of their language is very different.

01:09:46.000 The grammar that they use is very different.

01:09:48.000 And it's nothing in comparison to how different it was in ancient times.

01:09:52.000 A lot get lost in translation, and a lot the translator imposes his or her idea of how things should be on the material.

01:10:01.000 And many of the texts that come down to us are...

01:10:04.000 I think we're good to go.

01:10:12.000 I think we're good to go.

01:10:17.000 I think we're good to go.

01:10:29.000 And became the state religion of the most powerful militaristic empire of the ancient world.

01:10:34.000 It set about destroying all competitors.

01:10:37.000 And amongst those it destroyed were the Gnostics. 0.99

01:10:39.000 And they were burnt at the stake from a very early date.

01:10:42.000 But some Gnostic sects survived and they have left us images.

01:10:46.000 And there are a number of Gnostic churches.

01:10:48.000 These guys saw themselves as Christians.

01:10:50.000 There are a number of Gnostic churches where they painted the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil quite specifically as Amanita Muscaria.

01:10:58.000 Yeah, and even in French frescoes, what is that fresco from like, it was, I don't remember the year, but it was an Adam and Eve portrayal that showed several different types of mushrooms.

01:11:11.000 Several different types of mushrooms, I know the one you mean.

01:11:13.000 Including psilocybin, and it's Adam and Eve clearly standing.

01:11:16.000 Absolutely.

01:11:16.000 And it makes you wonder, like, this was in, not modern times, but not 5,000 years.

01:11:22.000 No, this was like 1200 AD. It was like 800 years ago, something like that.

01:11:27.000 We were at the tail end of the last surviving Gnostic sects.

01:11:31.000 The Cathars in the southwest of France are an example of a Gnostic sect who survived through until the Catholic Church wiped them out with the so-called Albigensian Crusades, a truly horrendous act of ethnic murder that took place in the 1200s.

01:11:48.000 So we're actually not that long ago, and things have survived from that time.

01:11:53.000 And it's very interesting that they are clearly indicating that the psychedelic experience is of crucial importance, that it's a liberating experience, that it allows us to wake up Right.

01:12:28.000 And the intent with which you go into it.

01:12:32.000 And what we're seeing now, again, history has been obscured from us, but recent research is showing, for example, the famous Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece.

01:12:41.000 2,000 years at the Temple of Eleusis.

01:12:45.000 Pilgrims came from all over Greece once a year to undergo an experience, and that experience involved drinking a brew.

01:12:51.000 We can now say with absolute certainty that that was a brew closely, that there were elements in it closely related to LSD. How do we know that with absolute certainty?

01:13:01.000 Because the work has been done by Hoffman, by Gordon Wasson, and others.

01:13:07.000 There's a very detailed study of what was in that brew.

01:13:11.000 It was called the Kaikion.

01:13:12.000 And growing on the barley that was used in the brew was a form of ergot.

01:13:19.000 Which contained LSD amides and which was soluble in water.

01:13:23.000 They've really done the science in great depth.

01:13:25.000 And when you read the accounts, you know, of great figures from the ancient world, people like Plato or Socrates, who went and had the experience at the Eleusinian Mysteries, they drink this, they enter a darkened series of corridors and passageways and chambers in this huge temple, and this light appears and they start seeing visions.

01:13:44.000 It's pretty obvious what's going on.

01:13:46.000 Yeah, pretty obvious that they were tripping in some way, shape or form.

01:13:49.000 And they saw it as nurturing.

01:13:51.000 They saw it as nurturing.

01:13:52.000 They felt that there were several of the ancients who had this experience and who said that after having had this experience, they lost their fear of death, that they understood.

01:14:01.000 That it was not the end.

01:14:03.000 Now, we could argue about that, but that was the experience that they had.

01:14:07.000 Yeah, that's the experience that a lot of people have when they take acid.

01:14:10.000 One of the things that Larry Hagman said, who is a popular American actor, he did this interview when he was on CNN, and they were talking to him about death, and he said that LSD completely took away his fear of death.

01:14:24.000 He just didn't mean what it meant before.

01:14:28.000 Because you realize you're part of something larger.

01:14:30.000 You're part of something.

01:14:32.000 It is important to have a sense of self because it's important to brush your teeth.

01:14:39.000 It's important to pay attention when you're driving.

01:14:41.000 It's important to take care of your health while you're alive or you'll suffer some ill consequences.

01:14:47.000 But it's also important to recognize that a lot of your need to take care of yourself can overwhelm your greater perspective.

01:14:55.000 The greater perspective of being a part of everything.

01:14:57.000 Right.

01:14:58.000 Yeah.

01:14:58.000 And that it's not just about you.

01:15:01.000 And the worst cases of human beings are the egos run amok, like the dictator, like the Saddam Hussein, or anyone who controls.

01:15:11.000 It's all them.

01:15:12.000 It's all about them. 0.98

01:15:14.000 Huge, insane egos. 0.86

01:15:15.000 Yes. 0.99

01:15:15.000 And they cut people down and smash... 0.99

01:15:18.000 You know, and destroy and kill and leave horrible, horrible lives in the wake of their ridiculous detachment from these universal ideas. 0.98

01:15:30.000 We are a part of a giant collective consciousness.

01:15:34.000 And that's almost impossible to get to that without something.

01:15:38.000 Whether it's yoga, whether it's DMT, whether it's something that you ingest that gets you to that understanding.

01:15:46.000 That understanding is very difficult to realize.

01:15:49.000 With our normal conditioning, the normal alpha male primate behavior that we have in bed.

01:16:06.000 Our friend in many ways and it's a good state of consciousness but there are so many other states of consciousness that are of value and that need to be sought out.

01:16:14.000 Now some people are very lucky and they can get into deeply altered states of consciousness and see reality in a different way without needing to take any substance.

01:16:24.000 It's fine, you know.

01:16:25.000 Or they can get there through meditation or they can get there through floating in a flotation tank.

01:16:31.000 But for a lot of people a very powerful vehicle For changing our perspective on the nature of reality has been, for thousands of years, the psychedelic experience.

01:16:42.000 And it's time that we rehabilitated that and gave it a place in our society.

01:16:46.000 Well, I think, as you were talking about earlier, that this is a time of great change.

01:16:49.000 I think this is a time of great awakening when it comes to psychedelics.

01:16:53.000 I was listening to this guy, Sturgill Simpson.

01:16:55.000 I tweeted it today.

01:16:57.000 He's just a country music singer who sings about DMT. Oh, really?

01:17:02.000 I haven't come across the show.

01:17:03.000 I mean, there's country music, like old school Waylon Jennings style country music.

01:17:07.000 If you're into that, and I am, I like that kind of old music.

01:17:09.000 I've been really into that the last couple of years I've gotten in.

01:17:11.000 I've always been a Johnny Cash fan.

01:17:13.000 I've always liked Dwight Yoakam and some country singers, but I've gotten into a bunch of other stuff recently, but...

01:17:19.000 This guy, Sturgill Simpson, is like a big part of what he's singing about is psychedelics.

01:17:24.000 And in a country song.

01:17:26.000 I mean, incredible stuff.

01:17:27.000 And I think that that, to me, just sort of highlights that this is spreading through a bunch of different genres, different art forms.

01:17:36.000 You see a lot of psychedelic art now.

01:17:38.000 Not just Alex Gray, who's the master, but you see others that are coming along.

01:17:43.000 A lot of psychedelic artwork.

01:17:45.000 I see it all the time when I go and speak at events, at conferences.

01:17:47.000 People come to me with their art, and I'm seeing this huge explosion of visionary creativity taking place.

01:17:56.000 And I'm constantly meeting people whose lives have been transformed by these experiences.

01:18:03.000 And I think a lot of people are getting informed by guys like you who have written books on these experiences, from Supernatural to your own discussions, including the one that got banned from TED. The whole TED thing has kind of been exposed as being this really bizarre,

01:18:21.000 almost cultish thing.

01:18:23.000 Thing that's done a lot of great good.

01:18:24.000 I mean, I'm a big fan of a lot of the speakers that have come on TED. But I had Eddie Huang on the show where he talked about his experience in TED, where they kicked him out because he left there to do my podcast.

01:18:37.000 They wanted him to be a part of this whole thing all day where you had to hang out.

01:18:40.000 He had to stay in a hotel room with someone else.

01:18:43.000 Like, they made him.

01:18:44.000 He's like, can I get my own hotel room? 0.92

01:18:45.000 They're like, no, the TED experience, you have to shack up with some fucking random dude who's talking about physics or whatever it is. 0.96

01:18:51.000 How extremely bizarre. 0.91

01:18:52.000 It's very cult-like.

01:18:54.000 It's a cult, yeah.

01:18:55.000 It's like Scientology.

01:18:56.000 Well, it's also become intensely profitable.

01:18:58.000 And when things become intensely profitable, they become this giant business that's part of why your talk got banned from TED instead of having an open discourse about agreeing or disagreeing about what you're saying.

01:19:12.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

01:19:13.000 But your talk got banned because of pressure from a bunch of people.

01:19:18.000 They start using the word pseudoscience.

01:19:21.000 Pseudoscience!

01:19:22.000 Stop the pseudoscience!

01:19:23.000 There's almost a cult of people that are afraid of debating ideas that are very controversial and very difficult to nail down, especially when you're talking about the emergence of consciousness in early man. 0.95

01:19:36.000 Okay, no one knows how the fuck people got from hunting things to drawing on cave walls to experiencing visionary psychedelic states, but we do know that happened.

01:19:48.000 It happened. 0.98

01:19:49.000 It happened.

01:19:50.000 And it's worth talking about.

01:19:51.000 Yeah, we're not... 0.97

01:19:52.000 It's not like 1940, whatever the fuck it was, when people figured out ayahuasca, whatever year it was. 0.93

01:19:58.000 What year it was? 0.98

01:19:58.000 Oh, ayahuasca goes back a very long way. 0.98

01:20:01.000 No, but I mean, Western world.

01:20:03.000 McKenna talked about how they first, when they found harming, they wanted to call it...

01:20:09.000 Telepathy.

01:20:10.000 Yeah, telepathy.

01:20:11.000 That's right.

01:20:11.000 But they realized that it had already been scientifically defined as harming.

01:20:16.000 Yeah.

01:20:16.000 So that was like, what year was that?

01:20:18.000 That would probably be in the 1930s somewhere.

01:20:21.000 And then Wasson, Gordon Wasson was in like the 50s, is that what it was?

01:20:25.000 Yeah, 50s, goes down to Mexico, encounters Maria Sabina has a mushroom experience and that's the beginning of the mushroom story in the West actually.

01:20:34.000 So that's like modern Western culture and civilization.

01:20:39.000 This is our introduction to it. 0.99

01:20:40.000 But the shit had been going on for thousands of years. 1.00

01:20:43.000 Thousands of years. 1.00

01:20:43.000 Thousands and thousands of years. 1.00

01:20:44.000 So for us to assume that these, you, especially you and I, who have had these psychedelic experiences.

01:20:50.000 I've never had an ayahuasca experience, but I've had a dozen DMT trips and mushroom trips.

01:20:55.000 Yeah.

01:20:56.000 There's something there.

01:20:58.000 There's something there that's unbelievably intense, and to deny that that had an effect on consciousness of emerging people?

01:21:06.000 It's just crazy. 0.99

01:21:06.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

01:21:07.000 It's just crazy. 0.99

01:21:07.000 That's, in my opinion, very anti-scientific. 0.99

01:21:11.000 It's extremely anti-scientific.

01:21:12.000 It is like the modern Inquisition.

01:21:14.000 But it's a weird thing where people are ignoring that aspect and concentrating on all the other potential aspects which I think probably worked in some sort of a symbiotic fashion.

01:21:23.000 The introduction of meat into the diet, the experimenting with different food sources because of the changing of the climate.

01:21:30.000 There was a lot of factors that We're good to go.

01:21:54.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:21:54.000 I mean, there was a lot of things had to take place.

01:21:56.000 A lot.

01:21:57.000 It was a very complicated process, but I'm absolutely sure that psychedelics were a key part of it.

01:22:04.000 Everyone who's taken psychedelics is pretty sure that it was a key part.

01:22:09.000 You know why?

01:22:10.000 Because you've had the experience.

01:22:11.000 You've had the experience.

01:22:11.000 And everyone who doesn't...

01:22:13.000 If you haven't had a psychedelic experience, and you're talking about psychedelic experiences being not a factor or non-effective, you're crazy. 0.99

01:22:21.000 Yeah, you'd be better to shut up. 0.99

01:22:23.000 Well, it's just nonsense.

01:22:24.000 Because people who've not had the experience at all, they don't, even in my view, need to come to the table, because they've got nothing to bring to the discussion.

01:22:33.000 I don't mind if they come to the table, but I find their arguments to be almost hilarious.

01:22:38.000 I have a very good friend who's a very intelligent guy, and he's never taken any drugs.

01:22:43.000 And his take on it is, and he's a brilliant guy, I love talking to him, but his take on it is simply, all the work's been done.

01:22:51.000 I'm not going to learn anything new from that.

01:22:54.000 And I'm like, well, that's so crazy.

01:22:56.000 I'll just say his name, Penn Jillette.

01:22:58.000 Right.

01:22:58.000 I love that guy.

01:22:59.000 Well, it was the same.

01:23:00.000 But he doesn't do any drugs.

01:23:01.000 He doesn't do anything.

01:23:01.000 Right.

01:23:02.000 And he feels that there's no need for him to have that experience.

01:23:04.000 He said it's all been figured out.

01:23:05.000 All the work's been done.

01:23:06.000 I'm like, oh, God, dude.

01:23:07.000 Yeah.

01:23:07.000 Let me get you high on DMT. It lasts 15 minutes.

01:23:10.000 And you tell me what work's been done.

01:23:12.000 See, that's what's so special about DMT in particular is that there is no negotiation with the experience.

01:23:21.000 There are very few people who can resist it once you hit the requisite dose.

01:23:26.000 The threshold.

01:23:26.000 And it's going to take you where it takes you.

01:23:28.000 And then you are confronted by one of the most intense and extraordinary experiences that it is possible for any human being to have.

01:23:37.000 Yes, we can jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet.

01:23:39.000 Yes, we can scale a sheer cliff.

01:23:42.000 That's also very intense and very, very extraordinary.

01:23:45.000 Yes, we can go scuba diving to the depths.

01:23:47.000 But if we look at the whole range of human experiences and say, what is one of the most intense and potentially most transformative experiences as possible to have, I would say DMT done with the right intention in the right context is right up there with anything else.

01:24:02.000 It's the most intense thing I've ever experienced.

01:24:04.000 Me too.

01:24:04.000 I mean, I've experienced everything, obviously.

01:24:07.000 I've never been scuba diving.

01:24:08.000 I've never been skydiving.

01:24:09.000 And it doesn't mean that those things aren't intense as well.

01:24:12.000 But to deny the impact of those things, it seems silly.

01:24:16.000 And the people that are arguing against the efficacy of these experiences, or against the influence of these experiences, to have those people actually have never had taken these experiences arguing against It seems so silly. 0.80

01:24:33.000 It's crazy.

01:24:34.000 People are scared of them, though.

01:24:35.000 But it's those people who are running the rules in our society still.

01:24:39.000 Yeah.

01:24:40.000 Well, if they weren't, that would be really terrifying. 1.00

01:24:42.000 If our society was run in the way it is now by a bunch of people doing DMT, you'd be like, what the fuck? 0.99

01:24:47.000 Yeah, but that's one thing we can be quite sure. 0.98

01:24:50.000 If our society was run by a bunch of people doing DMT, it wouldn't be run in the way that it's run now.

01:24:54.000 No, it wouldn't.

01:24:54.000 Well, you know, McKenna found out about DMT by a friend who was a scientist who worked at the Army Research Lab, and they had like a barrel of the stuff.

01:25:02.000 They had a fucking barrel of DMT. DMT is very small doses that are transformative. 0.96

01:25:12.000 These tiny little doses that you smoke take you into these incredible realms.

01:25:16.000 So the idea of a barrel...

01:25:18.000 Or LSD. I mean, McKenna described LSD in the best way I've ever heard, is that the amount of LSD you need for it to be effective is like an ant that can break down the Empire State Building in 30 minutes.

01:25:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:25:32.000 Like, it's literally that little.

01:25:34.000 He was a great genius, and it's very fortunate, again, we have the internet, and Terence McKenna is...

01:25:52.000 He spoke in such a compelling way.

01:25:56.000 I love listening to Terrence McKenna.

01:25:58.000 I do too.

01:25:59.000 And Bill Hicks, you know, the two of them together.

01:26:01.000 Sure.

01:26:01.000 Just amazing.

01:26:01.000 And Hicks was a huge fan of McKenna and became – I found out about McKenna because of Hicks.

01:26:06.000 Right.

01:26:06.000 Because there was a joke where Hicks said something about leaving mushrooms under the table of all these people.

01:26:15.000 Take it.

01:26:16.000 And he said what Terrence McKenna would describe as a heroic dose. 0.99

01:26:20.000 And I remember saying, who the fuck is Terrence McKenna? 0.98

01:26:22.000 And so then I, it wasn't even a Google back then, I searched Terrence McKenna because of hearing about it on Bill Hicks. 0.98

01:26:29.000 And then I got a hold of some of the audio recordings.

01:26:34.000 And then you listen to the guy's voice and it's like, wow, what a weird guy.

01:26:38.000 A weird, interesting, compelling way of communicating.

01:26:42.000 Incredible use of language, which just makes you think all the time.

01:26:47.000 That's the service he's providing for all of us still.

01:26:50.000 Yeah, I mean, he missed the mark on that December 21st, 2012 thing, but everybody did.

01:26:54.000 Sure he did.

01:26:55.000 Everybody's going to miss the mark.

01:26:56.000 Well, he was also a guy who used to get high a lot and come up with cool theories and things to think about.

01:27:01.000 And when you're postulating and thinking about the future, here's the thing about thinking about the future.

01:27:07.000 No one's ever got it right.

01:27:08.000 No.

01:27:08.000 No one's ever figured out the future.

01:27:10.000 There's not a single fucking person who's ever sat down. 0.89

01:27:12.000 For anybody to get it right. 0.99

01:27:13.000 Nobody got it right.

01:27:14.000 The future is indeterminate.

01:27:17.000 Yeah.

01:27:18.000 It's interesting.

01:27:19.000 I mean, talking about psychedelics, what's happening with cannabis in the United States right now is very interesting to me coming from Britain where nobody is ever even willing to contemplate the legalization or the de-restriction of cannabis.

01:27:36.000 But in America, state by state, I think?

01:27:57.000 I think?

01:28:17.000 Again, there's all kinds of conspiracy theories like how Monsanto is going to take it over and so on and so forth.

01:28:21.000 But I see it as a really good thing that these barriers in the heartland of the war of drugs are being broken down by the American people themselves.

01:28:30.000 And I say kudos to the American people for getting on and making that happen because it's going to be a benefit to the whole world.

01:28:36.000 Yeah, Warren Buffet is starting to get into the marijuana trade.

01:28:39.000 Oh, yeah?

01:28:39.000 That's when things are going to get freaky.

01:28:41.000 Yeah.

01:28:41.000 Because when you've got a guy who's worth $90 billion or whatever the hell he's worth, that's when things are going to get very interesting.

01:28:48.000 Well, sure.

01:28:48.000 I mean, people are going to make commercial advantage of this.

01:28:52.000 But at the end of the day, I just come back to this is something that I've said again and again as the years have gone by.

01:28:57.000 For me, the fundamental issue is the right of the adult to to make sovereign decisions about their own consciousness and one of those sovereign decisions has to be the right to use cannabis or not to use it but one must be free to make that decision and not controlled by society and once that is recognized once all the scare stories about cannabis go away and we find that in fact state by state it's a positive rather than a harmful thing I think

01:29:27.000 that the question marks are going to begin to arise over the psychedelics too, and we're going to see all those barriers breaking down in the years to come.

01:29:36.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

01:29:37.000 I think bringing up Warren Buffett and Warren Buffett's company, specifically, what's happening is he's a part of this company.

01:29:46.000 He's a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, has this company called Cubic Designs, and they sell, they maximize usable floor space in warehouses,

01:30:01.000 and they send 1,000 flyers to weed dispensaries.

01:30:04.000 In recent weeks, and these flyers, they show these medical marijuana grow-ups, and it's like double your usable growing space.

01:30:12.000 This is intense stuff, because it's companies that are real estate holders that have giant amounts of money invested in this that are saying, you know what, we're going to dip our feet into this growing marijuana industry.

01:30:28.000 I have a friend who works at a dispensary in Colorado, and the dispensary is $5 Five acres indoor.

01:30:36.000 Wow.

01:30:37.000 Five acres.

01:30:38.000 That's great.

01:30:39.000 Five acres.

01:30:40.000 That's an enormous building.

01:30:42.000 And it's all pot.

01:30:43.000 It's just millions of dollars in marijuana.

01:30:46.000 And there's people that are there.

01:30:48.000 This has only been less than a year.

01:30:50.000 I mean, it was made legal last January.

01:30:52.000 And here we are.

01:30:53.000 We're talking right now.

01:30:54.000 It is September of 2014. This is a crazy thing.

01:30:59.000 I just did my comedy special in Denver, and I hadn't been to Denver in a while.

01:31:03.000 The place has changed, man.

01:31:05.000 It's like marijuana is a huge part of the culture now.

01:31:09.000 People are moving.

01:31:09.000 There's marijuana tourism.

01:31:11.000 People are moving there for marijuana. 0.97

01:31:13.000 They're moving there to be a part of the marijuana business because you can get really fucking rich right now.

01:31:17.000 Because there's a lot of people that are not sure what's going to happen federally, because it's still illegal, federally. 0.57

01:31:23.000 We're good to go.

01:31:39.000 So every marijuana joint that gets sold, if it's sold for a dollar, 39 cents, no one's selling it for a dollar, but if it's sold for $100, $39 is going to the government.

01:31:49.000 So they're making over $100 million this year in taxes, just in Colorado.

01:31:54.000 State government.

01:31:55.000 Yes, and so they're looking at this.

01:31:57.000 So the federal government is not reaping the revenues because it's...

01:31:59.000 No, because it's illegal.

01:32:01.000 It's illegal.

01:32:01.000 But they're finally allowing the people to put their money in banks, which was, for a long time, they had to do this weird shit where they had to Like, put it in safe deposit boxes, or they had to take the cash and then use it to buy bank notes and buy bank checks.

01:32:17.000 It was very strange.

01:32:18.000 They weren't allowing them to use credit cards or any of the normal ways that people do business that keep them from being robbed at gunpoint by criminals, untrackable bills.

01:32:28.000 So they had these kids that were driving around with stacks of cash.

01:32:33.000 It's really dangerous and scary.

01:32:34.000 Very dangerous and scary.

01:32:35.000 But it's very good that all of this is changing.

01:32:39.000 I can only see it as a good thing.

01:32:40.000 I don't see any downside in it.

01:32:42.000 It's a really positive development that's taking place.

01:32:46.000 I agree.

01:32:46.000 And I think it's also a part of this whole movement that you and I were talking about, where the world is just changing.

01:32:52.000 Information is out there. 1.00

01:32:53.000 People are just not prepared to put up with that fucking shit any longer. 1.00

01:32:57.000 They're not prepared to put up with it. 1.00

01:32:59.000 To be told what to think, to be told what to do with their own consciousness.

01:33:04.000 And it's great that it's Americans who are leading the way in this and the rest of the world is watching.

01:33:11.000 And all the lies we've been told about cannabis, they're going to just drift away and be wrecked and destroyed forever by what's happening in America.

01:33:20.000 So it's a great service that's being...

01:33:21.000 That's being done to the world.

01:33:23.000 As you know, I had my own long-term relationship with cannabis.

01:33:26.000 I smoked cannabis for 24 years.

01:33:28.000 I overindulged.

01:33:29.000 I undoubtedly abused my relationship with cannabis.

01:33:32.000 I don't blame the cannabis for that.

01:33:34.000 It was me.

01:33:35.000 I was... 0.56

01:33:37.000 You got crazy.

01:33:38.000 I was crazy. 0.97

01:33:38.000 You got a little crazy. 0.97

01:33:39.000 I mean, it's very crazy to smoke it from 9 in the morning until 2 o'clock the next morning, seven days a week, or rather vaporize it as I... As I did.

01:33:47.000 And I reached a point, thanks to a series of ayahuasca journeys, in October 2011, where I made the decision that I wouldn't smoke cannabis.

01:33:55.000 Now, three years have come since then.

01:33:56.000 But I want to live in a society where I and fellow adults are free to choose either to...

01:34:03.000 Use cannabis or not to use it without any state agent sticking their nose in our private business.

01:34:10.000 This is our private business, what we do with our own consciousness.

01:34:14.000 And it's incredibly encouraging to see that the Americans are taking that power back and showing the rest of the world how to do it.

01:34:23.000 And also, anti-pot doctors are being exposed.

01:34:27.000 It's really fascinating, all these doctors that are paid off by pharmaceutical companies.

01:34:32.000 There was an article recently about anti-pot doctors being paid off, and all of the leading anti-pot doctors, all of them, are paid off.

01:34:41.000 Are taking big pharma's money?

01:34:42.000 Oh yeah, all of them.

01:34:43.000 Why am I not surprised?

01:34:45.000 Well, it's interesting that guys like Sanjay Gupta, who used to do that, who used to be on board with that, now has stepped up, come out in a huge way.

01:34:53.000 And he's also starting to address psychedelics, starting to address what's going on with psilocybin, the new study that's shown these people that took psilocybin and quit smoking.

01:35:02.000 Six months later, 80% of them, some large number, 70 or 80% quit smoking and didn't go back to it because of just the clarity of those visions where you kind of understand, like, what am I doing?

01:35:15.000 Oh, I see.

01:35:16.000 You really get that perspective on yourself.

01:35:18.000 And that's the big news, you know, that these things are positive and beneficial.

01:35:24.000 And the way forward for society is to create...

01:35:28.000 Positive social environment and positive spaces in which we can explore these experiences, and the result for society as a whole will be very positive.

01:35:38.000 Very positive.

01:35:39.000 I'm convinced of that.

01:35:40.000 Yeah, Vice.com is the guys who broke this story.

01:35:43.000 It's incredible.

01:35:45.000 And it's all these different doctors that have been...

01:35:50.000 Like, here's one.

01:35:51.000 Dr. Herbert Keebler of Columbia University.

01:35:55.000 He's been...

01:35:57.000 Impeccable academic credentials.

01:35:58.000 He's been quoted in the press in academic publications warning against the use of marijuana, which he stresses may cause wide-ranging addiction.

01:36:06.000 That's my favorite.

01:36:07.000 Wide-ranging addiction.

01:36:09.000 And public health issues.

01:36:10.000 When he's writing his anti-pot opinion pieces for CBS News or being quoted by NBR and CNBC, what's left unsaid is that Clever has served as a paid consultant to leading prescription drug companies including Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin,

01:36:27.000 Reckitt Bankizer, the producer of painkiller called Neurofin, and Alkermes, the producer of a powerful new opiate...

01:36:40.000 Z-O-H-Y-D-R-O. How do you say that? 0.87

01:36:45.000 Zohydro?

01:36:46.000 Zohydro, I guess? 1.00

01:36:47.000 He's a cunt. 1.00

01:36:48.000 He's a professional cunt. 1.00

01:36:50.000 And what you say is, what he's been hiding and covering up is that all this stuff he's pushing, that's the real addictive drugs. 1.00

01:36:58.000 Well, Panko is called 16,000 deaths a year.

01:37:02.000 It's a multi-billion dollar business.

01:37:04.000 Absolutely.

01:37:04.000 It causes 16 deaths a year just in this country.

01:37:08.000 16,000 deaths a year.

01:37:09.000 16,000 deaths a year.

01:37:10.000 Stunning.

01:37:11.000 Yeah, 16,000.

01:37:12.000 And doctors are on the take to keep promoting that and to stop us exercising our free choice as adults to manage our pain in other ways, for example, with cannabis.

01:37:22.000 And even if it was just 16 deaths, obviously, 16,000.

01:37:25.000 If it was 16 deaths, that's 16 more than cannabis.

01:37:28.000 Cannabis is causing zero.

01:37:29.000 Cannabis doesn't kill anybody. 0.99

01:37:31.000 That's the most ridiculous thing ever. 0.99

01:37:33.000 You could die from aspirin. 1.00

01:37:34.000 A lot of people die every year from aspirin.

01:37:36.000 A lot of people die every year from salt.

01:37:37.000 They eat too much salt and they die.

01:37:39.000 Absolutely.

01:37:40.000 You drink too much water, you die.

01:37:40.000 Now, we have a painkiller.

01:37:41.000 I think you call it acetaminophen here in America.

01:37:44.000 We call it paracetamol in England. 0.90

01:37:46.000 It really fucks your liver.

01:37:48.000 It's a really, really dangerous, dangerous thing. 0.63

01:37:50.000 And once it reaches a certain level, there's no recovery from it.

01:37:54.000 And it kills thousands and thousands of people a year.

01:37:56.000 Well, I was reading this thing about bodybuilder, or watching a video, rather, about bodybuilding.

01:38:00.000 And this guy was being interviewed, who used to be this big competitive bodybuilder.

01:38:05.000 And they're talking about all the drugs that you have to take to get so big.

01:38:07.000 But one of the things he was talking about was that what really kills these guys is not the steroids.

01:38:13.000 It's painkillers.

01:38:14.000 Right.

01:38:14.000 They all get hooked on painkillers.

01:38:15.000 Right. 0.53

01:38:16.000 Because they're in pain all the time because they're lifting all this crazy weight and they're fucking up their body while they're doing it.

01:38:20.000 And they take acetaminophen, all these different Valiums, Percocets, and that stuff just destroys their kidneys.

01:38:29.000 Destroys their liver.

01:38:30.000 The kidneys, yeah. 0.51

01:38:31.000 And the withdrawal symptom from stopping taking the painkiller is a huge amount of pain.

01:38:35.000 So you then go and take more painkillers.

01:38:38.000 These are highly addictive, highly dangerous drugs.

01:38:41.000 Yeah, and state-sanctioned.

01:38:44.000 Government's looking out for you, kids.

01:38:45.000 Totally state-sanctioned.

01:38:46.000 Totally, totally state-sanctioned.

01:38:48.000 So I'm wondering now, three years after I gave up cannabis, whether the time has come to dip my toes back in the water in a respectful way, not do it every day, have some sacred moments.

01:39:02.000 I value the sensual side of it.

01:39:04.000 I don't know.

01:39:05.000 The next time I have an ayahuasca session, I'm going to I'm going to ask ayahuasca.

01:39:10.000 It's going to be my intent because it was ayahuasca that really interrupted my cannabis habit.

01:39:14.000 I'm going to ask, is there a way I can do this?

01:39:16.000 I don't know.

01:39:17.000 Maybe that's weak of me.

01:39:18.000 I wonder this.

01:39:19.000 I was talking with a friend last night and he said there's a true addict speaking when I said this because it sounds a bit like that.

01:39:25.000 But I did value cannabis.

01:39:27.000 It was an extraordinarily positive thing for me in many, many ways.

01:39:33.000 And what I feel is that I got out of balance with it.

01:39:36.000 And if I could...

01:39:37.000 If I could find that balance again and use it rarely at special times, then I think it would be okay.

01:39:43.000 But I'm a little afraid to go back there.

01:39:46.000 Well, you should be afraid, right?

01:39:47.000 You know, because you've had personal experience with addiction.

01:39:50.000 And I think that addiction is purely mental.

01:39:52.000 It's purely mental.

01:39:53.000 It was very easy to stop.

01:39:55.000 Once ayahuasca gave me the message, and I really got that.

01:39:57.000 I had a severe kicking.

01:39:59.000 First of all, a DMT trip.

01:40:01.000 Then immediately afterwards, five ayahuasca sessions.

01:40:03.000 I was psychologically busy.

01:40:06.000 And the message of that beating was you have to stop smoking cannabis.

01:40:10.000 And I did.

01:40:12.000 And looking back on it, it's absurd.

01:40:15.000 This is a very powerful plant agent.

01:40:18.000 And here I am, you know, vaporizing it 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

01:40:25.000 You went deep!

01:40:26.000 I went deep.

01:40:27.000 I went very deep.

01:40:29.000 And it got to the point where I actually wasn't enjoying it anymore, where I just felt that I couldn't live my life without it.

01:40:36.000 But I discovered I easily could live my life without it.

01:40:39.000 When I stopped, it wasn't a huge chore or problem to stop.

01:40:41.000 It wasn't actually difficult.

01:40:43.000 And in that sense, I definitely was not physically addicted to it.

01:40:47.000 Right.

01:40:48.000 Yeah.

01:40:48.000 That's the thing, is that I think there's some people that do get physically addicted.

01:40:53.000 I'm not...

01:40:55.000 You know, I used to say, marijuana is not addictive.

01:40:57.000 And I don't think it is with most people.

01:41:00.000 But I think biological diversity, biodiversity in human beings is such that, like, there's certain folks that have weird reactions to all kinds of different things.

01:41:11.000 Cats.

01:41:11.000 Some people around cats, like, my friend Gary, he can't even come over to my house.

01:41:15.000 Right.

01:41:15.000 Because I have two cats.

01:41:16.000 Okay.

01:41:16.000 If he walks in the door, he would start going, he would start wheezing.

01:41:20.000 He can't breathe.

01:41:21.000 Yeah.

01:41:21.000 Like, he has to get out of there.

01:41:22.000 You could kill him with a room of cats. 1.00

01:41:24.000 Yes. 0.97

01:41:24.000 But then I got my friend Joey Diaz, who has, what is he, 11? 0.97

01:41:27.000 I think he has 11 cats. 0.99

01:41:29.000 This motherfucker has 11 cats. 1.00

01:41:30.000 His house is a zoo. 1.00

01:41:32.000 But if my friend Gary went over to my friend Joey's house, he would die.

01:41:36.000 But Joey's having a party over there.

01:41:38.000 He's got cats on his lap, he's petting them, he's sitting on his shoulders.

01:41:42.000 So the message is, we're all different.

01:41:43.000 And what works for one person doesn't work for another.

01:41:47.000 And that's again why...

01:41:49.000 I think?

01:42:08.000 I think we're good to go.

01:42:19.000 I think we're good to go.

01:42:26.000 Yeah, in England, you guys don't have those commercials either. 0.99

01:42:30.000 Those commercials are so fucking insidious. 1.00

01:42:32.000 Ask your doctor about this drug that might cause you to shit yourself all day long and commit suicide. 1.00

01:42:40.000 That's the weirdest thing. 0.99

01:42:41.000 That's the big untold story about antidepressants.

01:42:43.000 Many antidepressants cause people to kill themselves.

01:42:45.000 How about antidepressants that supplement the antidepressants?

01:42:51.000 There's a certain antidepressant, I forget what it was called, that had insane side effects that they were promoting as a supplement to your regular antidepressant.

01:43:01.000 If your regular antidepressant isn't doing it, mix it up with this one. 1.00

01:43:04.000 But this one could cause fucking kidney failure, your dick might fly across the room like a mockingbird. 1.00

01:43:10.000 Anything could happen to you, but you might not be depressed, or you might. 1.00

01:43:15.000 I mean, fuck it. 1.00

01:43:15.000 Just take our pills. 1.00

01:43:16.000 Ask your doctor.

01:43:16.000 These are the world's biggest drug dealers.

01:43:18.000 These are the true mafia of drugs.

01:43:20.000 Well, it's also the idea of commercials.

01:43:22.000 Commercials are influential, and the influence of commercials is very insidious, because there's one thing if a commercial is influencing you to buy a particular vacuum cleaner.

01:43:31.000 That doesn't bother me, man.

01:43:33.000 This is the best. 0.97

01:43:34.000 Hey, look, if you're If you're too much of a knucklehead to go on Consumer Reports or to read reviews online by independent people that tell you, this vacuum cleaner is great, this vacuum cleaner sucks, if you're too much of a knucklehead to do that, I don't feel bad for you. 0.96

01:43:48.000 Exactly. 0.88

01:43:49.000 But when it comes to consciousness, when it comes to pills, especially when it comes to happiness, man, because that's the big one.

01:43:55.000 Antidepressants, they should be calling them happy pills.

01:43:57.000 I wrote an article a long time ago from my blog about happy pills.

01:44:01.000 I called it happy pills.

01:44:03.000 And it was about this girl who was taking these antidepressants. 0.84

01:44:10.000 And I think that the selling of happiness in pill form is the ultimate ridiculous American notion. 0.98

01:44:18.000 It's horrible. 0.99

01:44:21.000 It's suggesting that the answer does not lie within.

01:44:23.000 That it can be bought.

01:44:25.000 That happiness can be bought.

01:44:27.000 That's the ultimate illusion.

01:44:28.000 Also, what's insidious about it is selling it on television like that does a huge disservice to the actual people that could use antidepressants because they have a real mental imbalance.

01:44:39.000 There's people that do do that. 0.95

01:44:41.000 So, like, you're selling it as an antidote for a shit life, where there's other folks that might have a real issue. 0.99

01:44:48.000 They have an imbalance. 0.99

01:44:49.000 A huge chemical imbalance in the brain, and that can be adjusted.

01:44:53.000 Yeah.

01:44:53.000 Yes.

01:44:54.000 Adjust it and make their life wonderful.

01:44:56.000 People that have a miserable life, they can make their life wonderful. 0.97

01:44:58.000 But instead, people will trivialize it because you see a commercial where a chick's running around a field of wheat and spinning around with her baby, and then someone says, I want to live like that, and then they call her a fucking doctor, and next thing you know, you're on a pill that you didn't need.

01:45:11.000 If you just started eating vegetables and going jogging every day, you'd be a way happier person than you were on that pill.

01:45:17.000 And again, let me say outright that the psychedelics are very effective antidepressants.

01:45:23.000 Psilocybin, being trial tested in human communities for thousands and thousands of years.

01:45:29.000 Ayahuasca in the Amazon, at least 4,000 years of use.

01:45:32.000 And anybody who's worked with psilocybin or ayahuasca enough will know that they do help with mood.

01:45:39.000 They do help you take a more positive outlook on life.

01:45:43.000 And whether that's to do with altering the chemical balance in the brain, because they do work on the serotonin system in the brain chemically, or whether it's to do with the revelation that one has that life is an incredible gift and an incredible joy and a privilege to be alive.

01:46:00.000 This is what we forget.

01:46:02.000 We're immersed in the cares and woes of daily life, constantly struggling to pay the next bills, to get on in work, relentlessly driven by To produce and consume and we forget that it's a magical, enchanted Gorgeous,

01:46:19.000 glorious universe that we live in and we have this amazing bodies and we should just celebrate every minute of it.

01:46:25.000 Psychedelics help with that, too.

01:46:27.000 Yeah, it's hard.

01:46:28.000 It's hard to keep a balanced perspective, but I think it's also important to realize that perspective-shifting, consciousness-shifting experiences can also change the way you look at the world, and when you change the way you look at the world, it can adjust the way your brain functions.

01:46:44.000 And that it's not an either-or situation.

01:46:47.000 It's a combinatory situation.

01:46:48.000 It's like they might affect your brain in a very chemical way, but also just the altering of a perspective could enhance your mood.

01:46:55.000 And it could enhance the way your body and brain function.

01:46:59.000 Yeah, because the mind is what we are.

01:47:01.000 We are our minds.

01:47:02.000 The mind is the most powerful thing.

01:47:05.000 And that's where all healing, I believe, resides.

01:47:08.000 It resides in the mind.

01:47:09.000 If you can kick in the body's ability to heal itself, Through right mental attitude.

01:47:15.000 No medicine will do that for you.

01:47:17.000 That's why placebos actually work. 1.00

01:47:20.000 That's why they work better than the prescription drugs that they're being tested against.

01:47:24.000 Most of the time they don't work better than prescription drugs, but occasionally they do work.

01:47:28.000 Just the fact that they work at all.

01:47:30.000 The placebo effect is not nearly as effective as medicine in most cases, but just the fact that it does work at all.

01:47:37.000 That there's a way that you can tell your body to make itself better.

01:47:42.000 And the way is by tricking it to thinking it's taking medicine.

01:47:45.000 Look, you're going to be better.

01:47:46.000 I'm going to be better.

01:47:47.000 The alleviation of stress and anticipation of this horrible demise, this impending doom that you can't escape with a sugar pill.

01:47:56.000 Mm-hmm.

01:47:56.000 That's incredible.

01:47:57.000 It's incredible.

01:47:58.000 It says something about the mind.

01:47:59.000 And it's something, you know, really worth looking at.

01:48:01.000 And that is enhanced in psychedelic experiences.

01:48:04.000 The perspective enhancing aspects of that, I do believe, can change your overall health or change your overall consciousness, which can change your overall health.

01:48:12.000 Yeah, there's a lot going on, man.

01:48:14.000 And I think these conversations are super important for people that are uninitiated and that haven't...

01:48:19.000 They don't understand what's the hoopla all about.

01:48:22.000 Why is everybody... 0.94

01:48:23.000 Goddammit, that Rogan's going on about drugs again. 0.97

01:48:25.000 I know.

01:48:25.000 I have a constituency of my...

01:48:38.000 It's a really important conversation to have.

01:48:43.000 To the bottom of what it's about, it's about this whole issue of us taking back power over ourselves.

01:48:50.000 That's what it's really about, and it needs to be seen in that context, to make decisions about our own lives, right or wrong, and to learn from our mistakes and to grow and develop as a result.

01:49:02.000 I think it's also super important that you discussed your relationship with cannabis in an abusive way, too.

01:49:08.000 There's a balance to be achieved.

01:49:10.000 There's a balance to be achieved for all of us in sort of a strange way.

01:49:13.000 That's what I've learned.

01:49:15.000 In a way, I had to deny myself this wonderful sensual plant, which helped me to enjoy food and music and many other sensual places. 0.92

01:49:27.000 Sex. 0.98

01:49:27.000 Sex, absolutely. 0.98

01:49:28.000 You've never had That sucks on pot. 1.00

01:49:30.000 You don't even know what you're talking about. 0.97

01:49:31.000 You don't even know what Led Zeppelin sounds like.

01:49:34.000 Exactly.

01:49:35.000 It's a beautiful, sensual ally.

01:49:37.000 And I've had to deny myself that sensual ally for the last three years because I abused it.

01:49:44.000 Do you want to spark up a joint right now?

01:49:46.000 Of course I want to.

01:49:48.000 Do you want to dive in right now?

01:49:49.000 Of course, Joe, you're like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

01:49:55.000 Sure.

01:49:56.000 Yes?

01:49:57.000 You sure?

01:49:58.000 Why not?

01:49:58.000 I don't want to force you into anything.

01:49:59.000 You're not forcing me.

01:50:01.000 It's an interesting experiment.

01:50:02.000 No, no, no, no.

01:50:03.000 I'm going to go live on Joe Rogan.

01:50:07.000 Is that bad?

01:50:08.000 No, that's not bad.

01:50:09.000 That's not bad.

01:50:09.000 That's the way to do it, if you want to dive in.

01:50:11.000 We'll go with a little baby hit. 0.97

01:50:12.000 Little baby hit.

01:50:13.000 It'll be my first baby hit in three years.

01:50:16.000 Yeah, nothing crazy.

01:50:18.000 Nobody has to get hurt here.

01:50:19.000 You were showing some images from Lebanon to us before the podcast.

01:50:24.000 What have you gotten into?

01:50:26.000 Well, by the time I smoke this little baby hit, I'll probably have forgotten.

01:50:32.000 So what I was getting into was this fella here. 1.00

01:50:40.000 That's some American shit, too. 1.00

01:50:41.000 That's not that crap you get in England. 1.00

01:50:43.000 That's made by American scientists and botanists. 0.99

01:50:46.000 They all drive muscle cars and they do steroids.

01:50:49.000 Oh, that's so familiar.

01:50:50.000 That's such a nice feeling.

01:50:54.000 He's back.

01:50:54.000 Are we seeing that on the screen?

01:50:56.000 Yeah.

01:50:57.000 That is...

01:50:58.000 You're going in for another baby hit. 1.00

01:50:59.000 Look at you.

01:51:00.000 Jesus Christ, Joe.

01:51:01.000 Just a little more.

01:51:01.000 Just a tiny.

01:51:03.000 You're good.

01:51:04.000 That's it.

01:51:05.000 Stop right there.

01:51:06.000 Right.

01:51:06.000 You might need to get confused on the way back.

01:51:08.000 We will see.

01:51:08.000 So here it is.

01:51:09.000 Lebanon.

01:51:10.000 This is what is called the Stone of the Pregnant Woman. 1.00

01:51:14.000 Whoa.

01:51:15.000 At Baalbek.

01:51:16.000 And that's you on top of that.

01:51:17.000 And that is me on top of that.

01:51:19.000 Can we see that?

01:51:19.000 Unfortunately, this is a PowerPoint demonstration.

01:51:21.000 Can we see it?

01:51:22.000 But this little...

01:51:23.000 Tiny dot.

01:51:25.000 This little tiny dot up here on top of that, that's me.

01:51:29.000 In Lebanon.

01:51:30.000 And is this a recent?

01:51:31.000 In July, yes.

01:51:32.000 I was there in July.

01:51:34.000 People say that Lebanon is very dangerous, and that this place is right on the Syrian border, but I didn't see any danger there at all.

01:51:39.000 I had a magical experience in Lebanon.

01:51:42.000 It was great.

01:51:42.000 It was exciting.

01:51:43.000 It was joy.

01:51:44.000 Well, for you, it must be incredible, because that's the site of so many ancient, huge, monolithic structures that are unexplained, as far as their construction methods or...

01:51:52.000 So the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek Temple of Jupiter?

01:51:55.000 This is what they call it.

01:51:56.000 There's undoubtedly a Roman temple there, okay?

01:51:59.000 And that Roman temple dates from the known historical period, some two, three hundred years after Christ.

01:52:04.000 It's the Roman temple of Jupiter, and it's very extraordinary, but it stands on these huge foundations.

01:52:11.000 There's a group of stones, three stones, called the Trilithion, which are each weighing 840 tons.

01:52:21.000 840 tons. 0.99

01:52:23.000 What the fuck? 0.99

01:52:24.000 And they are lifted to 20 feet above the ground and built into a wall. 0.99

01:52:28.000 I've sat on top of one of those stones.

01:52:29.000 I've been down underneath it and looked up at it.

01:52:33.000 840 ton stones.

01:52:34.000 This is a gigantic achievement.

01:52:37.000 Now, the Orthodox view is...

01:52:40.000 That the Romans did everything.

01:52:41.000 That they built those foundations and they built the temple.

01:52:45.000 I think, and many researchers who've studied them in this field agree with me on this, that actually the Romans found a much more ancient site, which was just extraordinarily megalithic, gigantic stones, and they built their temple completely.

01:53:12.000 I got it.

01:53:16.000 You got it.

01:53:16.000 I'm trying to show it, you know, I'm trying to show it just now.

01:53:18.000 These stones stood in the quarry, okay?

01:53:21.000 Now, so what the historians say is that the Romans, okay, they found they could move the 840 ton stones.

01:53:29.000 That's 1,680,000 pounds for people who don't like the word ton.

01:53:35.000 You got your calculator going there?

01:53:36.000 Yeah, I had to.

01:53:37.000 Because it didn't make sense.

01:53:38.000 I was trying to double it, but it's not double.

01:53:41.000 No.

01:53:41.000 Like, it's 2 pounds.

01:53:43.000 Like, 2,000 pounds for every ton.

01:53:45.000 It's a fearsome number, whatever it is.

01:53:47.000 Right?

01:53:47.000 That's what it is.

01:53:47.000 It's just a fearsome number.

01:53:48.000 It's extraordinary.

01:53:48.000 2,000?

01:53:49.000 2,000 pounds for every ton.

01:53:50.000 So I was going, 2,000 for each, what?

01:53:53.000 840 times 2,000?

01:53:54.000 Yeah.

01:53:54.000 Is that real?

01:53:55.000 And then, that's what it is.

01:53:56.000 That's what it is.

01:53:57.000 1 million.

01:53:57.000 So here's the thing.

01:53:58.000 Those are the 840 ton blocks in the walls, in the foundation of the temple.

01:54:02.000 Then we go to the quarry and we find this humongous thing, which weighs over 1,000 tons.

01:54:09.000 And there's another one on the other side of the road which weighs 1,200 tons.

01:54:13.000 1,200 tons.

01:54:16.000 2,400,000 pounds.

01:54:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:54:19.000 What the fuck? 1.00

01:54:21.000 So here's the theory, okay? 1.00

01:54:22.000 The Romans found they could move the 840 tonne blocks, and they did. 0.68

01:54:28.000 This is the orthodox theory, and then they built their temple on top of it.

01:54:32.000 But they found they couldn't move these 1,200 plus tonne blocks, and by the way, this one is completely separated from the bedrock out of which it's been caught.

01:54:42.000 They couldn't move them, so they left them in the quarry.

01:54:45.000 I think that actually proves that the Romans didn't create the 840 ton megalith, because if the Romans had known that these gigantic blocks, if they had cut the blocks, okay, if they had cut them themselves, which we must say they did,

01:55:01.000 if we are saying that the Romans were responsible for these megaliths, if the Romans had cut these blocks themselves, they knew they were there.

01:55:08.000 And the very first thing they would have used for the smaller blocks that they put into place in the Temple of Jupiter was these large blocks.

01:55:16.000 They would have sliced them up like a loaf of bread into smaller blocks and moved those over to the temples.

01:55:21.000 The fact that these huge megaliths still stand in the quarry suggests to me that they were buried when the Romans came to that site because otherwise it would have been the very first thing they would have used for quarrying smaller blocks.

01:55:32.000 That they were buried and that the Romans found an existing prehistoric megalithic platform And on top of it, they built their Temple of Jupiter.

01:55:41.000 That's a fascinating theory.

01:55:44.000 It seems like open to interpretation to me.

01:55:47.000 Sure.

01:55:47.000 It's just a theory.

01:55:48.000 Yeah, because you're looking at...

01:55:50.000 Regardless of why they built the one...

01:55:54.000 What is it?

01:55:55.000 One million?

01:55:56.000 Jesus Christ.

01:55:57.000 Two million four hundred thousand.

01:55:58.000 It's freaky when you do it in pounds.

01:56:00.000 That's insane.

01:56:01.000 Yeah, when you do it in tons, it's abstract.

01:56:03.000 1,200 tons.

01:56:04.000 Okay, what's that mean?

01:56:06.000 You know, it's hard for my head.

01:56:07.000 Well, let's consider an average vehicle, which might weigh...

01:56:10.000 Let's push this weight up.

01:56:12.000 4,000 pounds.

01:56:12.000 So it's about two tons, right?

01:56:14.000 Is that about the weight of an average vehicle?

01:56:16.000 So two tons divide 1,000 by that.

01:56:18.000 So you're looking at 500 family-sized cars in a 1,000-ton block.

01:56:23.000 And a thousand tons!

01:56:25.000 Oh my god.

01:56:27.000 It's just the imagining a two million pound rock and a bunch of dudes are moving it.

01:56:32.000 And we know that someone at some time in history, they built that, they moved those stones.

01:56:39.000 I mean, it wasn't that one, right?

01:56:41.000 It wasn't, it was, what was the first calculation that we had?

01:56:44.000 What did we say it was?

01:56:45.000 640 tons?

01:56:46.000 No, the eight, there's three blocks.

01:56:47.000 A box of 840 tons each joined so closely that you can't slip a sheet of paper between them.

01:56:52.000 I mean, they've not been just roughly levered into place.

01:56:54.000 They've been set down with perfect precision.

01:56:57.000 So someone did that.

01:56:59.000 We know that.

01:56:59.000 Someone did that.

01:57:00.000 And there are plenty of people arguing that the Romans did it.

01:57:03.000 I feel, along with other researchers who've approached this subject, I feel I want to look at alternative possibilities for what these megaliths are all about.

01:57:10.000 And that's one of the things I've been doing for the last year is traveling around the world.

01:57:15.000 I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to do this.

01:57:18.000 I would imagine.

01:57:19.000 Looking at just amazing, amazing archaeological sites.

01:57:23.000 God!

01:57:24.000 And one of the countries that I visited, and I want to really mention this, is Armenia, where I have seen incredible stone circles, just wonderful buildings.

01:57:47.000 Wow.

01:57:48.000 Wow.

01:57:56.000 I think?

01:58:14.000 We're good to go.

01:58:35.000 You wouldn't notice it in ten lifetimes.

01:58:37.000 But if you stay long enough, you'll note that actually the sun isn't rising in the same place on the horizon anymore.

01:58:42.000 When did we confirm?

01:58:44.000 That's called the precession of the equinox, right?

01:58:45.000 Well, actually, no.

01:58:46.000 That's a second matter.

01:58:47.000 That's a different wobble?

01:58:48.000 That's the changing tilt of the Earth's axis.

01:58:52.000 Oh.

01:58:52.000 So there's a wobble and a tilt.

01:58:54.000 There's a wobble and there's a tilt, and then there's actually a tilt within the tilt.

01:58:59.000 No way.

01:59:00.000 Yeah, this is the view.

01:59:01.000 But the effect is, because the Earth is the viewing platform from which we observe the stars and which we observe the other celestial bodies, such as the moon and the sun, the Earth is our viewing platform.

01:59:10.000 If you change the orientation in space of that viewing platform, then the rising points of stars, the moon, the sun change, and the positions of the stars and the sky change.

01:59:21.000 Wow.

01:59:21.000 And it becomes a kind of language.

01:59:23.000 Once you...

01:59:24.000 Understand this, that it is universally available to us.

01:59:27.000 The calculations can be done.

01:59:28.000 We can do it.

01:59:29.000 Anybody can buy computer software today, which will show you the ancient skies over any point on the Earth's surface at any time in the last 30,000 years.

01:59:37.000 That's amazing.

01:59:38.000 And what's involved in those computer simulations is simply calculations that had been done in previous centuries by astronomers.

01:59:46.000 And we understand these processes.

01:59:48.000 We can measure them and set them up.

01:59:49.000 But there you have...

01:59:50.000 A regularity, a changing patterns in the sky.

01:59:54.000 If you tie that into architecture on the ground, then actually you have a way free of all language of dating, of actually speaking.

02:00:03.000 You can use this universal language of the stars and architecture to make a statement to the future.

02:00:08.000 You can say that this particular time was very important to me, to our culture.

02:00:13.000 It mattered to us.

02:00:15.000 It mattered to us so much.

02:00:16.000 That we've created this huge monument to freeze the skies over a particular point.

02:00:21.000 I wonder why those particular constellations, if at all, were important to them.

02:00:26.000 That's where things get really strange.

02:00:27.000 And if I wanted to play devil's advocate, I would say, well, these holes, they're pointing up towards the sky. 0.96

02:00:32.000 There's a lot of fucking stars up there. 0.97

02:00:34.000 Sure there are. 1.00

02:00:34.000 How do we know? 1.00

02:00:36.000 Just because they line up with this from 12,000 years. 0.99

02:00:39.000 And years ago, it doesn't mean I weren't looking at some other shit. 0.99

02:00:41.000 It's very complicated. 0.96

02:00:42.000 So what you want is multiple locks.

02:00:44.000 I mean, take the Pyramids of Giza.

02:00:47.000 Right.

02:00:47.000 And here I cite the work of my close friend and colleague, Robert Boval, in particular, in his book, The Orion Mystery.

02:00:55.000 You take the three great pyramids of Giza, and you look at the heavens overhead.

02:01:02.000 And you also look...

02:01:04.000 At the religious system of the ancient Egyptians.

02:01:08.000 What was important to them?

02:01:09.000 What did they believe?

02:01:10.000 You pretty soon discover that stars were incredibly important to them.

02:01:13.000 Stars cover the inside of the ceilings of all tombs, all the pharaoh's tombs, for example.

02:01:21.000 Monuments are lined up to particular places on the horizon where a star, perhaps it's Sirius, whose counterpart amongst the gods was the goddess Isis.

02:01:30.000 Perhaps it's Orion.

02:01:32.000 Whose counterpart amongst the gods was the god Osiris.

02:01:35.000 This is the thing.

02:01:36.000 You have a mythology that speaks of entities who are clearly stated to be connected to particular asterisms, particular constellations.

02:01:44.000 That's the first thing.

02:01:45.000 Are the constellations that are being said to have a reflection upon the ground in architecture, were they significant to the culture concerned?

02:01:51.000 Well, yes.

02:01:53.000 Absolutely.

02:01:54.000 The constellation of Orion was of enormous significance to the ancient Egyptians.

02:01:58.000 Therefore, It has to be a matter of interest that the three pyramids on the ground are laid out in a pattern that is temptingly similar to the pattern of the three belt stars of the constellation of Orion.

02:02:09.000 That's fascinating.

02:02:10.000 Temptingly similar, but there's something else.

02:02:13.000 Then you have shafts which run through the body of the Great Pyramid.

02:02:18.000 There's a place called the King's Chamber high up in the Great Pyramid.

02:02:21.000 It has a shaft in its north and south wall, which are about eight inches high and eight inches wide.

02:02:26.000 And those shafts cut all the way through the body of the pyramid, and they come out on the south and north sides of the pyramid.

02:02:31.000 You can actually, and it's been done in the past, you can drop a cannonball in at the outside entrance to those shafts, and that cannonball moments later will appear in the king's chamber.

02:02:40.000 The shafts are about 200 feet long.

02:02:42.000 Okay?

02:02:42.000 In the queen's chamber down below, there are also two shafts.

02:02:46.000 These shafts do not exit on the outside of the pyramid, which creates a mystery of its own, of great interest, what is at the other end of those shafts, but they do have very definite alignments.

02:02:56.000 Thank you very much.

02:03:11.000 All of those four shafts that shoot up out of the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber all targeted very significant stars in the sky at that time.

02:03:21.000 Like, for example, the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber targeted the star Sirius at exactly the moment that the star crosses the meridian.

02:03:28.000 That's the north-south line that divides the sky above our heads.

02:03:31.000 At exactly the moment that the star crosses that line The shaft targets it and you could fire a laser beam up and you'd hit that, in theory, you'd hit that star.

02:03:41.000 The alignment is that great.

02:03:42.000 So they're locking the pyramid in, in the epoch of 2500 BC, to four significant stars in the sky.

02:03:50.000 Another one of those stars is the lowest star of the belt of Orion.

02:03:54.000 That tells us that this is a dating mechanism of some kind.

02:03:59.000 And it can't be an accident that that's the case.

02:04:01.000 And once you understand precession, you understand that these alignments will change.

02:04:04.000 So it therefore becomes very interesting to discover that the orientation of the pyramids on the ground, which Robert argues are the terrestrial reflection of the three stars of the belt of Orion, that the orientation of the pyramids on the ground because of precession shifts very slowly down the ages.

02:04:22.000 And you can see this clearly on any good SkyMap program.

02:04:27.000 As you go back in time, you find that the constellation of Orion, at the moment it crosses the meridian, the same place that was targeting the star Sirius at the moment it crosses the meridian, that the perfect alignment between the belt stars of Orion and the three great pyramids of Giza is not in 2500 BC,

02:04:43.000 but in 10,500 BC, 8,000 years earlier.

02:04:46.000 So we have a very interesting problem here.

02:04:49.000 Either it's all coincidence...

02:04:51.000 Or the pyramids are monuments that speak both to the age of the ancient Egyptians, 2500 BC, and to a much earlier time.

02:04:58.000 Wasn't it also the same time where the Sphinx was pointing towards the constellation Leo?

02:05:03.000 Well, that's, again, the third part of the lock, and Robert and I looked at this in depth together in our book called The Message of the Sphinx.

02:05:09.000 And so we have the Giza Plateau, we have the three pyramids laid out on the ground in the pattern of the belt of Orion in 10,500 BC. That's looking south.

02:05:19.000 Now let's look east.

02:05:20.000 Let's look due east.

02:05:22.000 East, of course, is where the sun rises, but people who don't observe the sun don't realize that the sun tracks back and forth along the horizon during the solar year.

02:05:29.000 It reaches its northernmost point on the summer solstice, 21st of June, and its southernmost point on the winter solstice, 21st of December.

02:05:40.000 On the equinox, The day that night and day are of equal length, the sun rises directly perfectly due east.

02:05:48.000 That's actually how you define an equinox, because the sun is rising perfectly due east.

02:05:52.000 And looking at it is the Sphinx.

02:05:55.000 Aligned, gazing directly, perfectly at the point of sunrise.

02:06:01.000 Now we have to consider what's behind the sun then?

02:06:05.000 What is the constellation of the zodiac that the sun is rising in?

02:06:10.000 Because that's what the zodiac is.

02:06:11.000 It's a group of constellations that by chance the sun passes through during the course of the year.

02:06:18.000 But that The constellation that the sun rises against the background of is also affected by precession, the wobble on the axis of the earth, and that changes.

02:06:28.000 You have roughly 2,160 years in each house of the zodiac.

02:06:32.000 For the last 2,160 years, we've been in Pisces.

02:06:36.000 And as I often say, it's not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol. 0.89

02:06:41.000 Before that, it was the constellation of Aries.

02:06:44.000 The ram.

02:06:44.000 Rams were incredibly important in the years from 2000 down to the time of Christ.

02:06:49.000 Just look at the biblical stories.

02:06:51.000 Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Great Sphinx is a lion, admittedly with a human head, but that head is rather small and we think that the head almost certainly was re-carved in a later time.

02:07:02.000 Probably the whole statue was originally a lion, crouching there on the horizon, gazing due east, At the rising sun on the equinox and at the constellation behind the sun.

02:07:13.000 And that constellation is, in 10,500 BC, the constellation of Leo.

02:07:18.000 As above, so below.

02:07:19.000 Leo, speaking to the Sphinx.

02:07:22.000 Orion, speaking to the pyramids.

02:07:24.000 Locking in to a date that is far before any civilization began.

02:07:28.000 And I know I'm on a long rap here.

02:07:30.000 But it's awesome.

02:07:31.000 But just at that point, when the Egyptologists say, well, it's impossible for there to be any...

02:07:38.000 Right.

02:07:58.000 Gobekli Tepe pops up.

02:08:00.000 It's dated by the German Archaeological Institute.

02:08:02.000 They discover that this huge complex of stone circles has been deliberately buried 10,000 years ago.

02:08:09.000 And the carbon dating, because you can't date stones, you have to date organic materials, the carbon dating of organic materials found with...

02:08:17.000 Those stone circles puts their age back to 12,000 years and more.

02:08:21.000 For you, that must have been like Christmas.

02:08:23.000 It was like Christmas.

02:08:24.000 It was like Christmas.

02:08:25.000 It was like a gift.

02:08:27.000 I have to confess.

02:08:30.000 I mean, we all have egos.

02:08:32.000 Of course.

02:08:32.000 I have to confess that it was a nice moment for me when the New Scientist magazine in Britain...

02:08:40.000 Which, years ago, back in the 90s, when I published Fingerprints of the Gods, was amongst the magazines that attacked my work as, quote-unquote, pseudoscientific.

02:08:48.000 I don't know how my work can be pseudoscientific, because I don't claim to be a scientist. 0.92

02:08:51.000 I'm a fucking journalist, you know. 0.94

02:08:53.000 I'm not a scientist. 1.00

02:08:54.000 How can I be a pseudoscientist?

02:08:56.000 You're just a guy who's gotten obsessed with an idea.

02:08:58.000 Kind of.

02:08:58.000 A little bit.

02:08:59.000 A little weed-like.

02:09:02.000 So anyway, New Scientist magazine, back in the 1980s, 90s was saying that I was wrong.

02:09:11.000 The basic message of Fingerprints of the Gods is history is much older and much more mysterious than we've been told.

02:09:16.000 So it was great in October 2013 when New Scientist magazine came out with a headline saying history is much older and more mysterious than we thought.

02:09:23.000 It's funny.

02:09:24.000 You should say Graham Hancock was right.

02:09:27.000 That's what the title should have been.

02:09:28.000 In my next life.

02:09:29.000 We're sorry, dude.

02:09:30.000 In my next life. 0.99

02:09:31.000 We were fucking with you. 0.97

02:09:32.000 But there was Gobekli Tepe and that's what changes everything. 0.99

02:09:37.000 Yeah, that really does.

02:09:38.000 And by the way, I'll just say, I guess we may be running out of time, but I'll just say, are we good?

02:09:42.000 I'll just say also Indonesia, which is the other place that my wife, Santa, and I have done a lot of research in the last six or seven months, has been found what was thought to be a 2,500-year-old site on top of a hill,

02:09:58.000 a site made of blocks of columnar basalt, which forms naturally, but which can be used as a construction medium.

02:10:07.000 It's called Gunung Padang and on the top of a hill in a series of terraces is a rather extraordinary monument thought to be about 2,500 years old made of these blocks of columnar basalt.

02:10:18.000 No really thorough research was ever done by archaeologists.

02:10:21.000 A little bit of trenching down to about half a meter in depth was done and some carbon was brought up and dated.

02:10:27.000 But really the site, it was just kind of taken for granted that it was two and a half thousand years old.

02:10:31.000 Along comes Danny Natawajija, who is a Caltech-trained PhD geologist working out of the city of Bandung in a government agency of the Indonesian government.

02:10:43.000 In fact, he particularly focuses on earthquakes.

02:10:45.000 Earthquakes are his thing.

02:10:47.000 He comes along and he's intrigued by Gunung Padang.

02:10:50.000 First of all, that there's old traditions about it being a sacred place.

02:10:54.000 It seemed to go back a very, very, very long way.

02:10:56.000 And he starts to look at it as a geologist.

02:10:58.000 And what he realizes, suddenly it comes to him, he's not looking at a natural hill.

02:11:03.000 He's looking at a pyramid, on top of which is this relatively recent monument.

02:11:08.000 But somebody built a pyramid there.

02:11:10.000 So he begins work on this.

02:11:11.000 So it's covered in dirt.

02:11:12.000 It looks like a hill, but inside it's a man-made structure.

02:11:17.000 That was Danny's intuition, but then he had to prove it.

02:11:19.000 So he put together a team and they did a huge amount of remote sensing work and some core drilling down to depths of about 15 meters into the top of the hill.

02:11:29.000 And what they discovered was incredibly tempting.

02:11:32.000 It supports Danny's intuition that we are looking at a man-made pyramid here.

02:11:36.000 It produces dates that go back as much as 26,000 years, right into the last ice age.

02:11:44.000 And the remote sensing equipment shows rather regular cavities inside the monument, which look like chambers of some kind.

02:11:53.000 Well, naturally, Danny and his team were stopped working for quite a long while by the archaeological establishment in Indonesia, who said, we know that this structure is 2,500 years old, and there's no need for any further research on it, and it just disturbs the local villagers and, you know, go away.

02:12:08.000 And so they lobbied and they had him stopped.

02:12:10.000 But Danny took it to the highest level.

02:12:12.000 He got the support of the Indonesian government, and two and a half weeks ago, they started work excavating, thoroughly excavating Gunung Pada.

02:12:20.000 Wow.

02:12:21.000 And so far, the results look very interesting.

02:12:23.000 What if they get down to see a building?

02:12:24.000 26,000-year-old building.

02:12:26.000 26,000 years old.

02:12:27.000 And again, you know, I can't summon up a map magically, but if I were to do so, consider Indonesia, which is a long string of islands, I think?

02:12:58.000 That's so absolutely incredible. 0.97

02:13:00.000 I can't say fascinating anymore because people are starting giving me shit about it. 0.98

02:13:04.000 Last few podcasts I see. 0.97

02:13:05.000 I don't know.

02:13:06.000 When things are fascinating, I can't come up with anything.

02:13:08.000 It's my way of going, whoa.

02:13:11.000 There's interesting stuff happening in the world.

02:13:13.000 It's beautiful.

02:13:14.000 I've been lucky to spend some time exploring this.

02:13:16.000 I am writing a sequel to my best-known book, undoubtedly, is Fingerprints of the Gods, The Evidence for Earth's Lost Civilization.

02:13:23.000 What year was that?

02:13:24.000 1995. 1995. And now, you know, after being scorned and put down by the archaeological establishment, there is enough new evidence out there for me to produce a whole other book.

02:13:36.000 There's a whole other story to tell.

02:13:38.000 Not an update of Fingerprints of the Gospel, but a new book.

02:13:41.000 Which looks at all of this information.

02:13:42.000 How about what's going on in Stonehenge?

02:13:43.000 These most recent monuments they discovered.

02:13:46.000 Much bigger than the rest of Stonehenge.

02:13:48.000 Than the rest of Stonehenge.

02:13:49.000 That's the thing, you see.

02:13:50.000 That's why archaeologists need to be a little more humble.

02:13:53.000 Because the next turn of the spade can change everything.

02:13:55.000 Completely alter the story.

02:13:56.000 And we should always...

02:13:57.000 Remain open to that.

02:13:59.000 Yeah, just one discovery, like that one farmer finding this stone in Gobekli Tepe unearths this incredible structure that rewrites history.

02:14:07.000 And that piece of stone is seen by American archaeologists in the 1950s.

02:14:12.000 Really?

02:14:12.000 They ignored it.

02:14:14.000 And they decide not to look at it because it's so finely done that they think it belongs to the Ottoman period within the last four or five hundred years.

02:14:21.000 Actually, it turns out to be 12,000 years old. 0.98

02:14:23.000 What's good that they didn't fuck with it, they probably would have... 0.99

02:14:26.000 Yeah, well, you know... 0.99

02:14:27.000 It's cool that it happens this way.

02:14:30.000 We've got the German Archaeological Institute later.

02:14:32.000 Unfortunately, they've stuck a hideous roof over the top of Gobekli Tepe now.

02:14:35.000 They have?

02:14:36.000 Oh, it's so...

02:14:36.000 To try to keep it from decaying or something?

02:14:38.000 Look, it was 19 years it was exposed to the sun.

02:14:41.000 It was out there.

02:14:42.000 It was being...

02:14:43.000 They began the excavations in 1996, and it's fine for...

02:14:47.000 Fine.

02:14:47.000 And now that they've finished the excavations, they decide that in that particular area, they're excavating other areas, they decide to stick this horrendous roof over it, which cuts out the light, makes it impossible to see the stone pillars.

02:14:59.000 The roof is badly built, so there are platforms built inside it on which huge heaps of stones have been piled up.

02:15:05.000 That's to keep the roof on if there's any high winds.

02:15:08.000 So suddenly, yes.

02:15:09.000 So suddenly the possibility of any kind of magical experience at the world's most intriguing place.

02:15:13.000 And mysterious ancient site is completely written off by this hideous piece of so-called protective architecture, which in my view is just the worst kind of vandalism.

02:15:22.000 I'm really offended by it.

02:15:24.000 I was in Gobekli Tepe in 2013. I went back again this year, and I was just horrified.

02:15:31.000 It made me feel physically sick to see what had been done to it.

02:15:35.000 That's so bizarre.

02:15:36.000 The desire to...

02:15:38.000 Is it to sell tickets?

02:15:40.000 No.

02:15:40.000 So people have to pay to get in there?

02:15:42.000 Do they pay?

02:15:43.000 I think it's a kind of...

02:15:45.000 In this case, I think it's a kind of possession.

02:15:47.000 This is ours.

02:15:48.000 Really?

02:15:49.000 We've seen it.

02:15:50.000 We're the experts.

02:15:51.000 We're the authorities.

02:15:52.000 Wow.

02:15:52.000 That's so weird.

02:15:53.000 Nobody else will really get to form an opinion about it because we're going to damage its appearance so much in protecting it that it'll lose its essential mystery.

02:16:03.000 Well, it just seems bizarre that they're trying to protect stone.

02:16:06.000 That doesn't make any sense.

02:16:07.000 It's like, imagine if someone decided to put a giant canopy over the Sphinx.

02:16:10.000 You'd be like, what are you talking about? 0.86

02:16:11.000 It's been here forever, dummy.

02:16:12.000 You see, and this is being done at archaeological sites around the world.

02:16:15.000 It's been done at Manidra and Hagorim in Malta, which have profound astronomical alignments. 0.96

02:16:20.000 You stick a fucking great dome over the top of it, you know? 0.90

02:16:23.000 It's being done at Roslyn Chapel in Edinburgh. 1.00

02:16:26.000 We ruin everything!

02:16:28.000 We ruin everything.

02:16:29.000 The worst vandals are often the authorities, those who are in control.

02:16:33.000 Well, that Zawi Hawass guy is in the pokey now, right? 1.00

02:16:35.000 No, he's not.

02:16:36.000 Didn't he arrest him?

02:16:37.000 He did, but all the charges were dropped.

02:16:39.000 Oh, he came up with some shackles.

02:16:41.000 Yeah.

02:16:42.000 Situation.

02:16:43.000 He's a big front man for Egypt.

02:16:45.000 Is he still running everything over there?

02:16:47.000 No, he's not running everything, but he's got an official position in relation to the promotion of tourism.

02:16:51.000 It's so bizarre when you see those guys so vehemently opposed to new information, which is essentially what the ideas being proposed are.

02:16:59.000 There's new information.

02:17:00.000 There's certain pieces of new information that in my mind are just undeniable.

02:17:04.000 The Robert Schock stuff.

02:17:06.000 By the way, my first trip to Gobekli Tepe, Robert Schock and I traveled together.

02:17:12.000 You guys made a video, right?

02:17:14.000 There was some filming, yeah.

02:17:15.000 But we were at Gobekli Tepe in December.

02:17:19.000 Sorry, not Gobekli Tepe, at Gunung Padang in Indonesia.

02:17:22.000 Shok and I were there in December 2013. And then I went back again with...

02:17:28.000 What was his impression of it?

02:17:29.000 His impression was very much that this is an intriguing site.

02:17:32.000 He looked at the remote.

02:17:33.000 You see, as a geologist, he can understand what remote scanning paperwork looks like.

02:17:37.000 And he looked at what Danny's team had produced and said, this is absolutely fascinating.

02:17:41.000 It really deserves further research.

02:17:43.000 And that's now what it's getting, fortunately.

02:17:44.000 Well, it's just amazing when they uncover these things.

02:17:47.000 I love the ones they find in Mexico when they're building something and then they stumble upon some ancient Aztec temple.

02:17:54.000 Not many people who go to Chichen Itza and see the temple of Kukul Khan there, the pyramid of Kukul Khan, which is the famous monument of Chichen Itza, not many people realize that there's another pyramid inside it.

02:18:05.000 Inside?

02:18:06.000 Inside it.

02:18:06.000 There's a little door at the bottom of the northern stairway.

02:18:10.000 And I don't think it can be done now.

02:18:12.000 The place has been so tightly controlled.

02:18:14.000 I don't think people are even allowed to climb the pyramid of Kukulkan.

02:18:18.000 When did they stop that?

02:18:19.000 I believe that stopped in the last two or three years.

02:18:21.000 I was there...

02:18:23.000 No, it may be a little longer.

02:18:24.000 The last time I was there was in 2010, and then it was stopped.

02:18:27.000 Well, they say that they were seeing erosion.

02:18:30.000 By people's feet?

02:18:32.000 I don't know.

02:18:33.000 There may be all kinds of arguments, but the fact is it was possible to climb it.

02:18:38.000 Yeah, I used to.

02:18:38.000 I did it.

02:18:39.000 Back in the 90s.

02:18:40.000 Anyway, inside it is a whole second pyramid.

02:18:42.000 The pyramid that we see has been built on top of an earlier one, and there's a passageway that leads up to the top of it, and there's an altar, and there's a figure of a puma or a jaguar inside.

02:18:51.000 It's a very spooky place.

02:18:53.000 Wow.

02:18:54.000 Yeah, that whole complex is so incredible.

02:18:57.000 It's so amazing to think that, you know, I know you scuba dive.

02:19:01.000 Have you ever done those tunnels that they found?

02:19:03.000 In the cenotes?

02:19:04.000 Yeah.

02:19:04.000 No, I haven't.

02:19:06.000 Those are terrifying.

02:19:07.000 These people scuba dive, and there's these Mayan tunnels that they had found that are underwater.

02:19:13.000 Yeah.

02:19:13.000 But the people that are treasure hunters have gone into these things and found these incredible artifacts.

02:19:18.000 Yes.

02:19:19.000 But you've got to be willing to swim underwater with scuba gear in a dark tunnel for a long time.

02:19:25.000 They're long, like you can get a mile in.

02:19:28.000 It takes tremendous courage.

02:19:30.000 It also takes very special equipment.

02:19:34.000 You're having to carry a lot more air with you, and it would be a very complex mixture of gases.

02:19:40.000 And sometimes they have narrow passages you have to squeeze through.

02:19:43.000 One of the most...

02:19:44.000 Cave diving is one of the most dangerous things. 1.00

02:19:46.000 Fuck that, man. 1.00

02:19:47.000 Fuck all that. 1.00

02:19:48.000 I'll tell you why. 0.99

02:19:49.000 Because the entrance passage can be long and winding.

02:19:52.000 There can be several alternative routes through it.

02:19:54.000 And it's often heavily laden with silt, with sediment.

02:19:58.000 If the diver is not very experienced or if the diver panics and starts thrashing around...

02:20:05.000 Oh, my God.

02:20:18.000 That was one of the most legitimate freakouts I've ever had on a podcast, right there.

02:20:22.000 You saying that?

02:20:23.000 Yes.

02:20:23.000 Me thinking that was just a tremendous freakout.

02:20:27.000 Yeah.

02:20:27.000 Just the idea of knowing that you're going to run out of air before it settles, too.

02:20:31.000 Yes.

02:20:32.000 Oh, yes.

02:20:32.000 You're done for.

02:20:34.000 Unless you can find your way, unless by some miracle you can find your way through that fog, where the very first thing, if you're going to do that, that you have to do is you have to calm your mind.

02:20:44.000 You're freaking me out, man.

02:20:46.000 Yeah.

02:20:46.000 Well, let's talk about my novels then.

02:20:49.000 Well, listen, those people are just brave as fuck. 0.97

02:20:52.000 It's just amazing that people are willing to do that. 0.99

02:20:54.000 Yeah, it's guts.

02:20:55.000 It's courage.

02:20:56.000 It's courage.

02:20:57.000 Courage of the warrior, in a way.

02:20:59.000 So, how many novels have you written now?

02:21:02.000 So I've written three.

02:21:03.000 Is this the third?

02:21:04.000 Well, I've written Entangled, which is a whole other story, and then I've written Volume 1 and Volume 2 of War God.

02:21:11.000 The first volume was War God, Knights of the Witch.

02:21:13.000 It was published in 2013. There was a big support and take-up from your audience, which I'm extremely grateful for.

02:21:19.000 I heard a lot of positive reviews too.

02:21:21.000 People enjoyed it.

02:21:37.000 I would send them a signed, dedicated book plate.

02:21:41.000 In other words, I would sign a label, I would dedicate it to them, I would send it to them.

02:21:44.000 Little did I know that nearly 5,000 people would ask for those signed, dedicated book plates.

02:21:50.000 It became a massive labor of love for myself and my wife, Santa.

02:21:54.000 She's doing the enveloping, I'm dealing with the correspondence.

02:21:57.000 We're signing the book plates.

02:21:59.000 We're going to the post office.

02:22:01.000 We're spending thousands of pounds on postage.

02:22:03.000 But it was great.

02:22:04.000 It was a fantastic thing.

02:22:05.000 And it helped the book to get noticed because there was great skepticism about buying a second volume from my publishers unless the first volume worked.

02:22:15.000 And the first volume worked enough for me to be commissioned to write volume two of War God, which is called War God, Return of the Plumed Serpent.

02:22:23.000 And that is published on the 9th of October.

02:22:26.000 And I'm making the same special offer.

02:22:29.000 Very limited.

02:22:30.000 Don't do it.

02:22:31.000 But it's going to be a bit different.

02:22:33.000 First off, if you go to my website, go to www.gramhancock.com and go to the War God page.

02:22:40.000 It's very easy to get there.

02:22:43.000 Scroll down at the bottom of the page that shows the covers of all the editions and you will find a statement there and that is that if people write to me, if people pre-order, first of all they have to pre-order, either order Volume 1 or pre-order Volume 2. Amazon don't take your money until they actually send the book and I've got the links to Amazon.com there.

02:23:03.000 I will, when I finish my travels, and I'm going to be on the road until the 27th of October, but during November, I will send out those book plates again.

02:23:15.000 But what I can't do this time is I can't get into personal correspondence with people.

02:23:19.000 It was very interesting.

02:23:21.000 It was very touching and heartwarming thing that so many people wrote to me.

02:23:25.000 And so many of them, I wanted to speak back to them.

02:23:28.000 It's very cold, you know, to receive a letter and not to reply.

02:23:31.000 So I did.

02:23:32.000 But the problem this year is that I've got to write the sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods.

02:23:37.000 And I really need to start that during November because my research travels will be over at that point.

02:23:42.000 I've got to write that, and I can't spend two months or three months corresponding in detail.

02:23:48.000 So my offer is, write to me.

02:23:50.000 Show me that you've bought the book or pre-ordered Volume 2, and above all, please give me your postal address, because you can't imagine how many times people write to me Asking for the book plates, and don't give me their postal address.

02:24:01.000 Please give me your postal address.

02:24:02.000 And when I get back from my travels, I will sign the book plates.

02:24:06.000 I will send you a signed book plate, which is simply a label that you can stick inside your copy of the book.

02:24:11.000 And if that results in a bit more uptake for War God II, it'll be good for me, because it's very difficult to start a sort of new career as a novelist at the age of 64. But you seem to be really enjoying it.

02:24:25.000 I love it.

02:24:26.000 I love writing novels.

02:24:28.000 This is why I was talking about warriors earlier.

02:24:30.000 I love getting into the spirit of the warrior.

02:24:33.000 I don't know why.

02:24:34.000 It's fascinating.

02:24:35.000 It's just absolutely fascinating.

02:24:37.000 What would drive a man like Cortez to take 490 men and face them against the might of the Aztec Empire?

02:24:44.000 Hundreds of thousands of men under arms who will kill you in the most awful way if they...

02:24:48.000 If they catch you, what kind of will does it take to do that?

02:24:52.000 And it's been interesting for me to get inside the heads of these people and also to consider, because I'm interested in them, supernatural elements.

02:24:59.000 Were they being misled by demonic forces in some way?

02:25:03.000 That's something that I examine there.

02:25:04.000 So I love doing it, but I'm known as a nonfiction author, and that's mainly what I do.

02:25:10.000 People buy nonfiction because they're interested in the subject very often.

02:25:14.000 People buy a novelist because they trust that novelist and know that his next book will be good.

02:25:18.000 And I need to build up that leadership.

02:25:20.000 What is your fascination with demons?

02:25:22.000 What's your fascination with supernatural influences and the concept of demons?

02:25:27.000 At the same time, I didn't believe in any spiritual element to life.

02:25:31.000 I didn't see any of that at all.

02:25:33.000 It was only really when I started drinking ayahuasca in 2003. I suppose for a decade before that, I'd been immersed in the ancient Egyptian texts.

02:25:47.000 And the ancient Egyptians are all about the quest for immortal life.

02:25:53.000 They're all about how you live this life to continue on as a spirit and ultimately to live the life of millions of years.

02:26:02.000 And they very clearly indicate that Dark forces are at work in the universe which can mislead us, as well as there are light and positive forces that we can choose to follow which will lead us into very nurturing and worthwhile and excellent directions.

02:26:16.000 All those influences are there.

02:26:17.000 So that's there in ancient Egypt.

02:26:19.000 Then I start drinking ayahuasca in 2003 and I encounter...

02:26:26.000 We're good to go.

02:26:44.000 A projection or a creation of my own mind that there is no exterior reality to it whatsoever.

02:26:50.000 It's just that's all there is.

02:26:52.000 But I don't think it's that way.

02:26:54.000 I think that what happens in a deeply altered state of consciousness is that we retune the receiver wavelength of the brain and encounter other levels of reality that are normally closed off to our senses.

02:27:06.000 And the first thing I would say to any...

02:27:08.000 I know that a number of people who've worked with psychedelics in depth haven't come to that conclusion.

02:27:13.000 I know that, but the conclusion that I come to, the little offering that I bring to the table and that many others have brought, is that there is a separate freestanding reality of some kind which we don't fully understand yet, and that in altered states of consciousness we can encounter,

02:27:30.000 interact with that reality.

02:27:33.000 That's the view that I have now.

02:27:35.000 In that reality are spiritual forces.

02:27:38.000 We're good to go.

02:28:08.000 Thank you.

02:28:13.000 Thank you.

02:28:23.000 It's unfolding over four hours, not four or five minutes.

02:28:26.000 And that is a huge effect.

02:28:29.000 And it had a huge effect on me.

02:28:31.000 And I'm not adamant about this.

02:28:34.000 I accept I could be fantasizing it all.

02:28:36.000 It's interesting that other people encounter pretty much the same beings and the same sort of drive to do something better than they've done before.

02:28:45.000 Right.

02:28:46.000 It's interesting that there's that transpersonal side of it.

02:28:48.000 I choose to believe that there are freestanding parallel dimensions and that we are encountering them in altered states of consciousness and that therefore there's interesting scientific work to be done because in theory we could actually begin the targeted exploration of those dimensions by using volunteers and psychedelics.

02:29:05.000 I choose to believe that that's what's going on.

02:29:06.000 I could be completely wrong.

02:29:07.000 It could just be the majesty of the human mind and we just invent all these worlds.

02:29:11.000 That's what I was going to ask you.

02:29:12.000 What's the most compelling argument against it?

02:29:14.000 What's the most compelling argument from a neurological standpoint?

02:29:19.000 Has anybody ever explained to you what's going on?

02:29:21.000 There isn't a compelling argument.

02:29:23.000 They don't know?

02:29:23.000 There isn't a compelling argument.

02:29:25.000 There's a reference frame.

02:29:26.000 And the reference frame, and this is again where I got myself into so much trouble with Ted.

02:29:31.000 The reference frame is the reference frame of materialist science, and that reference frame says that all consciousness is a kind of accidental epiphenomenon of brain activity.

02:29:43.000 There's actually no reality to consciousness.

02:29:46.000 That is not something that's been proven scientifically and experimentally.

02:29:50.000 It is just the way that a large and influential group of scientists see the world, that everything can be reduced to material causes.

02:29:57.000 So the changes in brain activity that accompany visions, you can observe those changes on an MRI scanner, those changes in brain activity Are the experience you're having according to this reference frame.

02:30:11.000 Your experience can just be reduced to that and there's nothing else to it.

02:30:14.000 But that's not a fact.

02:30:15.000 That is a philosophical view about how reality works.

02:30:20.000 We don't know for sure.

02:30:22.000 It could easily be the other way around.

02:30:25.000 That the brain activity is simply necessary in order for us to see something that was always there, but that was normally closed off to our senses.

02:30:34.000 So, the compelling argument as far as, like, what's happening when you're having these extreme visual experiences, what is the argument?

02:30:46.000 Has anybody ever tried to explain it?

02:30:47.000 Is it just supposed to be some chemical reaction with your cerebral cortex?

02:30:50.000 Yes, that is the materialist reductionist view, that it's just that and nothing more.

02:30:58.000 But there's a whole other view on it.

02:31:00.000 Rick Strassman at the University of New Mexico, you're very familiar with his work because you presented the spirit molecule.

02:31:06.000 Rick Strassman does entertain the possibility that what is going on is not merely in and of our brains, but does represent stable freestanding spirit.

02:31:16.000 Dimensions of reality.

02:31:17.000 We have no facts in this, but we have an incredibly intriguing area to inquire into.

02:31:22.000 Yeah, and it's also one of those things where I feel like when you've experienced it yourself, you get a really better frame of reference as to why is this compelling at all.

02:31:30.000 Because it sounds preposterous to someone who has no experience.

02:31:32.000 I know, I know. 0.68

02:31:34.000 And I'm going to have loads of people saying Hancock's a druggy.

02:31:37.000 Of course.

02:31:38.000 Too late.

02:31:39.000 But, you know, there's that thing that people, when you want to define certain aspects of whatever the psychedelic experience is, where they seem to be almost impossible to define for people who have actually experienced it.

02:31:54.000 The real problem is when someone who hasn't experienced it tries to define it.

02:31:58.000 And it's like, man, you can come up with a bunch of really...

02:32:10.000 We're good to go.

02:32:18.000 But it's bad science.

02:32:21.000 It's bad science to present it as fact when it isn't.

02:32:25.000 Many times, given this very simple analogy of the telescope, which I think explains the logical problem in the materialist view, if you want to look at a distant star with your telescope, you're going to point it at the right area of the sky, first of all, and then you're going to focus it.

02:32:40.000 And as you focus it, physical changes will take place in the relationship between the lenses inside the barrel of the telescope.

02:32:47.000 Yeah?

02:32:48.000 Right.

02:32:48.000 Okay.

02:32:49.000 Eventually the star will come into view and you can see it clearly.

02:32:52.000 You'd be completely wrong to say that the star is the physical changes inside the barrel of the telescope.

02:32:57.000 Those physical changes have simply allowed you to see the star.

02:33:01.000 Whoa. 1.00

02:33:01.000 You just blew my fucking mind. 1.00

02:33:04.000 And that's the same idea with DMT, that it's changing brain function to allow you to see something that you couldn't – it's refocusing the brain, in other words. 0.99

02:33:11.000 Wow, that's very possible.

02:33:13.000 That's possible.

02:33:14.000 It's an interesting inquiry.

02:33:15.000 I never thought about it that way, I don't think.

02:33:17.000 Not entirely.

02:33:19.000 And interesting experiments could be done to test that.

02:33:22.000 With human volunteers, you could begin to investigate.

02:33:25.000 If there is a freestanding reality, then we ought to be able to get certain information out of it.

02:33:29.000 There should be possibilities.

02:33:32.000 I always had just thought of it as a chemical gateway, but I think this is a way better way of explaining it.

02:33:40.000 The idea of a telescope having to focus in to see something.

02:33:44.000 And then the chemicals focusing you in.

02:33:47.000 A chemical your own brain makes.

02:33:49.000 Your own brain makes it.

02:33:50.000 Focusing you in.

02:33:51.000 And perhaps for some very good reason.

02:33:52.000 Wow, that's amazing.

02:33:53.000 I never thought about it that way before. 0.91

02:33:56.000 But whatever it is, it's pretty fucking profound. 0.98

02:34:00.000 And for someone to comment on it that hasn't taken, it seems kind of silly. 0.97

02:34:04.000 Especially because it's only 15 minutes.

02:34:06.000 It's disrespectful to speak of it.

02:34:08.000 It's fine to speak of it, but it's disrespectful to put it down without having had the guts, actually, to have the experience yourself.

02:34:16.000 Don't you think it's becoming more and more accepted, though?

02:34:19.000 Because I think for a long time, academics resisted taking it, or if they did take it, talking about it, because they didn't want to be labelled.

02:34:25.000 Because there's a lot of people that will label you if you talk about psychedelic drugs.

02:34:30.000 Until very recently, it's been considered a career-ruining move, you know, for any academic to speak positively to psychedelics.

02:34:34.000 Even though they all knew the news, they all knew the positive side of this.

02:34:38.000 But this is, again, gradually changing.

02:34:40.000 And again, I think the American role, the role of the American people in changing the legal status of cannabis state by state is also going to feed into this and allow us to have a more rational dialogue regarding psychedelics.

02:34:55.000 Of course, I'm not saying to people, go out and take psychedelics.

02:34:59.000 What I'm saying is that these are very powerful agents and that they can be extremely healing, used in the right way, and they can change our whole view of reality.

02:35:10.000 Why should we be forbidden to explore that if, as responsible adults, we choose to do so? 0.99

02:35:16.000 Yeah, the argument is stupid, and I think the argument is eventually going away, and I think it'll be replaced by a new argument, and then the new argument is, what the fuck is really happening? 0.99

02:35:26.000 Yeah, that's it. 0.99

02:35:27.000 And your question about it, or your proposal, is a very fascinating one.

02:35:32.000 But whatever it is, those things are there, and you can benefit from them, or not.

02:35:38.000 It's up to you.

02:35:39.000 Yeah, it's up to you.

02:35:39.000 The fact that we live in a world where those are illegal...

02:35:42.000 It's crazy.

02:35:43.000 It's bizarre.

02:35:44.000 And if people are having very bad experiences from time to time with psychedelics, part of the reason for that is the world we've created where these are illegal and where it's impossible for people to get good advice that they can trust and where there's this atmosphere of danger and threat that surrounds it.

02:35:58.000 Take all that away and this very powerful instrument can be managed much more effectively.

02:36:04.000 No doubt, and I equate it in a lot of ways, this idea of it being bad and negative.

02:36:11.000 I equate it in a lot of ways to vaccinations, and here's why.

02:36:14.000 There's this anti-vaccination movement in this country, and a lot of people feel like vaccinations are unnecessary, and they may have some good arguments. 0.98

02:36:23.000 They may have some good arguments, especially about certain vaccinations for things that are sexually transmitted diseases and things along those lines, like hepatitis shots and shit you're giving to little kids. 0.85

02:36:33.000 There's a real good argument against that. 0.92

02:36:36.000 And there's definitely an argument that there's a lot of medication that kids are taking, and is it the right amount?

02:36:43.000 But there's no argument that vaccinations haven't saved a fuckton of lives, because they have.

02:36:49.000 They've stopped a lot of diseases dead in their tracks.

02:36:52.000 Absolutely.

02:36:53.000 They also, much like we talked about, some people are allergic to cats.

02:36:57.000 Some people have very different biological reactions to all sorts of different chemicals.

02:37:01.000 And there's going to be some adverse reactions to anything you put in your body.

02:37:05.000 I absolutely agree that vaccination is an incredibly effective medical tool in many ways.

02:37:09.000 But there also is a kind of vaccination mafia.

02:37:12.000 Yes.

02:37:12.000 Because they're the ultimate mass medication.

02:37:14.000 And people are making money.

02:37:16.000 There's no doubt. 0.98

02:37:17.000 Whenever there's profits, there's fuckery. 0.98

02:37:20.000 There's no getting around it. 0.96

02:37:21.000 It's just the way human beings are.

02:37:23.000 So, it's one of those scenarios, very much like psychedelics, in a way that there are going to be some rare cases if we make psychedelics legal across the board.

02:37:34.000 There's going to be some rare cases of a person in a bad state of mind or a bad...

02:37:38.000 Mental makeup or, you know, what have you, bad psychological makeup, fill in the blanks, where they take it and it's detrimental to them.

02:37:45.000 It's going to happen.

02:37:46.000 And that'll be highly publicized and used as an argument to stop all of these freedoms.

02:37:51.000 And Bill Hicks had the very best answer to that, as I'm sure you remember, you know, the lunatic who leaps out of the window imagine he can fly on LSD. Why didn't the fucker try and take off from the ground, you know? 0.99

02:38:04.000 Yeah, he goes, we lost a moron, the world got lighter. 1.00

02:38:09.000 The World Got Lighter is one of my favorite lines. 0.99

02:38:11.000 Beautiful.

02:38:12.000 Yeah, but that's, um, that is, uh, you know...

02:38:17.000 It's just a strange argument to keep people from doing it because, especially this doctor that we were talking about earlier that's talking about cannabis and the addictive properties of cannabis.

02:38:26.000 This isn't even talking to someone who was addicted to cannabis than you.

02:38:30.000 It's still, it's a silly, like there's a lot going on when someone's addicted.

02:38:35.000 It's not all necessarily chemical.

02:38:36.000 And the ones that are chemical, you're getting paid for.

02:38:39.000 So that doesn't even make any sense.

02:38:41.000 The ones that chemically make you addicted is the ones you're getting money from. 0.99

02:38:44.000 And that's why people have We're fed up with all of this shit because it's so corrupt and it's so wrong and it's time that a new direction was taken. 0.98

02:38:51.000 And there are people who are on the wrong side of history on this. 0.99

02:38:53.000 And there will be.

02:38:54.000 But we are moving forward.

02:38:56.000 I think we are as well.

02:38:57.000 I think it's pretty cool to see too.

02:39:01.000 But, you know, I think it's also important that a guy like you, who smoked pot from 9am to 2am every day...

02:39:08.000 Seven days a week.

02:39:08.000 Seven days a week?

02:39:09.000 365 days a year.

02:39:10.000 Going to enormous lengths to be able to obtain it when I was traveling.

02:39:14.000 How did you do that?

02:39:15.000 Well, it's complicated.

02:39:16.000 You have to have a network.

02:39:17.000 But, you know, it is...

02:39:20.000 I do know what I'm talking about.

02:39:22.000 I had a long relationship with it, and I understand how...

02:39:26.000 How do you feel now, having dipped back in the water a little bit?

02:39:29.000 I feel good, but I don't feel any urge to become an all-day cannabis smoker again.

02:39:33.000 I like my clarity.

02:39:36.000 I was able to write with cannabis, but since I stopped smoking cannabis, I've been clear.

02:39:41.000 My...

02:39:42.000 My mind, there's been a clarity.

02:39:43.000 There's a certain fog we lifted.

02:39:45.000 That fog wouldn't have been there if I'd had one joint at the weekend and that was all.

02:39:48.000 But since I was smoking all day long, that's why it was there.

02:39:51.000 It's nice not to have that fog.

02:39:52.000 I feel good about it.

02:39:53.000 I feel more productive.

02:39:54.000 On my novels, I can write 5,000 words a day sometimes.

02:39:57.000 I get so into the zone, so into the flow.

02:40:00.000 All that is good and I feel good about it.

02:40:03.000 I feel probably...

02:40:04.000 In the long run, my right choice would not be to have a big relationship with cannabis.

02:40:10.000 I think I've done that.

02:40:11.000 I've been there.

02:40:11.000 I've done that.

02:40:13.000 I've got the t-shirt.

02:40:14.000 Yeah, for me, it's a tool.

02:40:16.000 I don't use the same tool every day.

02:40:18.000 Sometimes I don't use any tools.

02:40:19.000 I don't need it.

02:40:20.000 But it has a pretty profound effect in a lot of ways.

02:40:23.000 You know one of my favorite things to do is?

02:40:25.000 At night, get high and go down to the beach and stare at the ocean.

02:40:30.000 Oh, I used to love doing that.

02:40:31.000 Oh my god, that thing freaks me out when I'm high.

02:40:34.000 It's a goddess. 0.95

02:40:36.000 It's a monster. 0.51

02:40:38.000 It's a living thing almost.

02:40:40.000 It's a force. 0.97

02:40:41.000 It's a nature force that doesn't give a fuck about you. 0.81

02:40:45.000 I think there's one reason why people that live by the beach are so mellow. 0.98

02:40:51.000 Beach communities are notoriously mellow.

02:40:53.000 That's true. 1.00

02:40:53.000 And I think one of the reasons why they're notoriously mellow is because they're faced with overwhelming evidence that they ain't shit. 1.00

02:41:00.000 You're sitting there looking out at the greatest natural force that you could imagine. 0.98

02:41:08.000 It's an entire different world.

02:41:10.000 You're out there.

02:41:11.000 Literally, it's like...

02:41:12.000 If we had explained it in a galactic term, it would be like you're parking yourself next to the membrane between dimensions.

02:41:20.000 I mean, you are literally in this world over here, and right next to your face is a whole other world. 0.97

02:41:26.000 We couldn't even imagine that, but that's the fuck exactly what it is. 0.95

02:41:29.000 If you go to Santa Monica, and you go over by where that pier is, and you just walk along that sand, and just start walking out into that water, you're in another world in like 20 steps. 0.99

02:41:40.000 Absolutely.

02:41:40.000 You're over your head, and you're in another dimension that you can't survive in.

02:41:44.000 You better get the fuck back. 1.00

02:41:45.000 It doesn't feel like you went to another planet, but you might as well have gone to another planet. 1.00

02:41:50.000 Definitely.

02:41:51.000 And it's right there.

02:41:52.000 One of my strongest experiences of diving was, just to tell a little story, was diving off Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

02:42:00.000 And I was down at a good 20 meters underwater, let's say 70 feet.

02:42:06.000 But there was a storm that day, and the huge swell on the surface was so powerful that it was smashing me against the bottom of the sea.

02:42:14.000 Oh my god.

02:42:15.000 Bang, bang, bang. 0.89

02:42:18.000 Just that moment, I realized I'm in the hands of a gigantic force that I can do absolutely nothing about.

02:42:25.000 There's nothing you can do.

02:42:26.000 The sea, for me, is a goddess.

02:42:30.000 Fortunately, I got over a lip and down into deeper water, and it was okay.

02:42:34.000 Deeper water?

02:42:35.000 Yeah, another 10 meters. 1.00

02:42:36.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

02:42:37.000 How long did you have to wait it out? 1.00

02:42:40.000 That was another story.

02:42:42.000 We stayed down for about 20-25 minutes.

02:42:45.000 We then had to come up.

02:42:47.000 We'd been working quite hard at depth and you get through your air.

02:42:51.000 But what we hadn't done was recce the exit point.

02:42:55.000 And when we surfaced in this heavy swell, it was extremely difficult to get out of the sea.

02:43:02.000 The rocks came down quite steep and sheer.

02:43:04.000 I think we discussed this before.

02:43:05.000 You came up at a different spot, right?

02:43:07.000 Yeah, and it was bad.

02:43:08.000 But anyway, here I am to tell the tale, an older and wiser man.

02:43:13.000 Greg Fitzsimmons is a terrifying, he's a good buddy of mine, very funny stand-up comedian, has a terrifying story.

02:43:17.000 He was on vacation, he saw a woman drowning.

02:43:19.000 And he went out to save her.

02:43:21.000 And he realized that he was hanging on to this woman, swinging back while his kids and his wife and everyone was on the shore. 0.99

02:43:26.000 And he was like, holy shit. 0.99

02:43:27.000 Like, I'm trying to save someone here. 0.99

02:43:29.000 And sometimes when people try to save people, they get drowned.

02:43:31.000 I know.

02:43:32.000 It happens often.

02:43:33.000 Yeah.

02:43:33.000 It happens often.

02:43:33.000 Yeah.

02:43:34.000 And he said that the tide was a little bit too strong.

02:43:37.000 He was always spooked by the riptide.

02:43:39.000 The sea is something to respect. 0.99

02:43:41.000 Fuck yeah, it is. 0.99

02:43:41.000 You know, something... 0.99

02:43:43.000 Fuck yeah, it is. 1.00

02:43:43.000 That's a terrifying thing. 1.00

02:43:45.000 But that's my favorite thing.

02:43:46.000 One of my favorite things to do when I... To walk the beach late at night.

02:43:49.000 Yeah.

02:43:49.000 By myself.

02:43:50.000 Smug a spliff. 1.00

02:43:51.000 Just stand out there and stare by myself.

02:43:53.000 Puts everything in perspective.

02:43:55.000 Yeah.

02:43:55.000 It's just...

02:43:56.000 It's like the ultimate...

02:43:57.000 It's very psych...

02:43:59.000 Not just psychedelic, but it's very isolation tank-esque in a way.

02:44:03.000 It's an overwhelming amount of information.

02:44:05.000 But there's like solitude in the sound and the noise that sort of drowns out the rest of Yeah.

02:44:17.000 Yeah.

02:44:19.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:44:30.000 The gallons of water that's just so in front of you, so you can't see past this fucking thing, and it's dark. 0.98

02:44:36.000 So then there's the unknown. 0.99

02:44:38.000 The unknown, which is the big freaker. 0.99

02:44:39.000 You know, you're looking at this black monster, and sometimes when it's this black monster, you get a better sense of it than when it's this beautiful blue thing during the day, when the sun's hitting it, it's reflecting, because then you get all this visual stuff that's distracting you from the fact, that's how fuck It's a giant fuckload of water. 0.99

02:44:53.000 It's a giant fuckload of water and it's right there. 0.99

02:44:56.000 And it could just go whoosh. 0.94

02:44:58.000 Just come in like this.

02:45:00.000 Whoosh.

02:45:00.000 And you're gone.

02:45:01.000 And everything's gone. 0.99

02:45:02.000 Like a thousand fucking feet high waves. 0.97

02:45:05.000 That's happened before. 0.99

02:45:06.000 It has happened before.

02:45:09.000 That's also part of the new research that I'm doing.

02:45:12.000 And I'm about to do a trip with Randall Carlson, who's been on your show.

02:45:17.000 Love him.

02:45:18.000 You know, Randall was so far ahead of the curve in recognizing that the gigantic flooding that came off the North American ice cap...

02:45:24.000 It wasn't just caused by what I used to think it was caused by, which is that lakes of meltwater develop on the surface of the ice cap and finally the ice dam breaks and the meltwater pours out.

02:45:36.000 Randall has been pointing out for years that the water flows were much too radical for that.

02:45:41.000 Something much bigger had to be involved.

02:45:44.000 So he was well ahead of the evidence when scientists began to realize that the North American ice cap had been hit by a comet.

02:45:52.000 12,980 years ago, set in motion the epoch that geologists called the Younger Dryas.

02:45:57.000 So Randall is a great expert in this area.

02:46:01.000 My wife, Santa, is traveling with us as well, and a friend of Randall's who's worked with him for many years called Bradley, and we're going to do a road trip from Portland, Oregon, all the way to Minneapolis, following the...

02:46:13.000 It's about 2,000 miles, I believe, following the southern edge of the former ice cap, and Randall's going to show us the Good Lord!

02:46:36.000 Well, most of America, by road.

02:46:38.000 I've always wanted to do that.

02:46:40.000 There's certain spots you shouldn't stop.

02:46:42.000 If you feel like you're in danger, you're in danger.

02:46:44.000 Just get in the car and hit the gas.

02:46:46.000 Do you know what country music is?

02:46:48.000 You've got to listen to some of that.

02:46:49.000 Get a hold of some country music.

02:46:51.000 You've got to fit in.

02:46:51.000 You've got to blend in.

02:46:52.000 Can you fake a southern accent?

02:46:54.000 Because if they think you're from the England...

02:46:55.000 I can do my best.

02:46:57.000 Are you from the England?

02:46:58.000 They won't like you, man.

02:46:59.000 They won't.

02:46:59.000 They'll get very upset at you.

02:47:00.000 It'll go down badly.

02:47:01.000 You think you're better than us.

02:47:02.000 What are you, Doctor Who?

02:47:03.000 The funny thing is, in England, I often get mistaken for an American.

02:47:07.000 Do you really?

02:47:08.000 It's weird.

02:47:08.000 Here, nobody's in any doubt what I am.

02:47:11.000 They think you're American?

02:47:13.000 Yeah, or sometimes Canadian.

02:47:15.000 Whoa! 0.71

02:47:16.000 Canada has a bit of that.

02:47:18.000 There's like a certain amount of English, it sounds like, in the way they talk about things.

02:47:23.000 There's a certain clear variation between them and us.

02:47:27.000 Yeah, there is.

02:47:27.000 Definitely.

02:47:28.000 Even I can hear that, and I've got a tin ear.

02:47:30.000 I can hear that, too.

02:47:32.000 Yeah, I can totally tell a Canadian after a while. 0.97

02:47:35.000 But so similar.

02:47:37.000 Yeah, very similar.

02:47:37.000 Yeah.

02:47:38.000 Very similar.

02:47:38.000 That's hilarious that anybody would ever think you're an American, though.

02:47:41.000 I know, I know.

02:47:42.000 Anyway, it's going to be great.

02:47:43.000 I'm really looking forward to this.

02:47:44.000 That sounds fantastic.

02:47:45.000 I'm going to take loads and loads of pictures, and we're going to go up in an airplane a few times and look at the land underneath us, and it's going to be a great, exciting research trip.

02:47:53.000 And it's the last research trip for this sequel that I'm writing to Facebook.

02:47:56.000 I'm sure you've seen this most recent discovery about microdiamonds.

02:48:00.000 Yeah, that's exactly it.

02:48:01.000 That's precisely...

02:48:02.000 That has finally settled it.

02:48:05.000 Any scientists who were attempting to argue that there wasn't a comet impact, now, with all the evidence that's come in over the last five or six years, it's just settled by the nanodiamonds, scattered in a huge swathe all over the world, which are a sure chemical imprint of a massive comet impact.

02:48:21.000 And they know...

02:48:23.000 A lot about it now.

02:48:24.000 It's really very, very clear.

02:48:26.000 And this was an episode that changed the world.

02:48:29.000 It killed off many of the megafauna that we've all heard of, the mammoths, the woody rhinos and so on and so forth.

02:48:35.000 And it got rid of what was called the Clovis culture, hunter-gatherer culture in the United States.

02:48:40.000 And I think it got rid of a whole civilization that we've only remembered in myth and memory.

02:48:45.000 At least that's the line that I'm investigating.

02:48:48.000 It's a fascinating line, especially when as each visit that you come back to the podcast, there's new information.

02:48:55.000 The last time it was the nuclear glass that they discovered when they were doing core samples again, which is about 12,000 years ago, right?

02:49:02.000 And then the new one is this microdiamonds.

02:49:03.000 It seems like over and over again, it becomes not a possibility but a reality that there was some sort of an impact.

02:49:10.000 Something gigantic happened.

02:49:11.000 But all over the world, right?

02:49:12.000 It wasn't just North America.

02:49:13.000 No, no, all over the world.

02:49:14.000 It was massive in America, but the effect was everywhere.

02:49:17.000 Both impacts, because this comment broke up into fragments like Shoemaker-Levy 9, both impacts, but also, very important, the gigantic cloud of dust that's thrown up into the upper atmosphere.

02:49:29.000 So you have this immediate reaction of flooding as the comet liquidizes part of the North American ice cap, and then a huge dust plume is up in the air all over the world, and the whole Earth is shrouded in dust.

02:49:41.000 And cooled.

02:49:41.000 And cooled, because it's reflecting back the sun's rays.

02:49:44.000 So we go into this 1,300, 1,400-year period called the Younger Dryas, where the Earth gets incredibly cold, even though previously it had been coming out of the...

02:49:54.000 It's truly a gigantic event.

02:49:56.000 And then, weirdly, all our history, everything we think of as our past, begins at the end of the Younger Dryas, kicks in 12,980 years ago, ends 11,600 years ago.

02:50:07.000 The earth begins to warm up again.

02:50:10.000 And everything we know about ourselves, or can claim we know, unfolds in that last 11,600 years.

02:50:15.000 And the period before the Younger Dryas, we really blank on so much of it.

02:50:19.000 It's so fascinating. 0.99

02:50:20.000 I said it again, shit. 0.99

02:50:22.000 It's amazing that all this information keeps coming up to support this, and it's amazing if we do consider the possibility that it is true, that everything can be essentially shut back down to zero with some rocks from the sky. 0.99

02:50:35.000 That's absolutely right.

02:50:36.000 And that's something that we really need to get in our head.

02:50:39.000 That could happen.

02:50:40.000 There is a very distinct possibility that we could be hit by something.

02:50:44.000 The NASA photographs of the, I think they call it the black diamond, the Earth at night, What you see is certain areas of the world are brightly lit up.

02:50:54.000 Europe, North America, for example.

02:50:57.000 On the other hand, Africa and large parts of South America are dark because there's no electrification in those areas.

02:51:06.000 And those photographs are often taken to speak of our achievement.

02:51:11.000 Look how we can light up the planet like a Christmas tree so that it can be viewed from space.

02:51:17.000 But I would say it also says another thing, that if we were to confront again the same sort of cataclysm that hit the Earth 12,980 years ago, Then the people who would survive and carry the human story forward would be those very people who live in the dark areas, 0.98

02:51:35.000 the areas that aren't electrified.

02:51:37.000 And we who live in the glowing lights that show up on those NASA photographs, who've become so specialized, who most of us are unable even to know how to plant a vegetable or hunt an animal, we're the ones who would be gone.

02:51:51.000 And the whole order of the world would be reversed.

02:51:54.000 Whoa! 0.71

02:51:55.000 So the world would become like an ayahuasca culture. 1.00

02:51:58.000 You'd have all these fucking people from the Amazon that would be fine. 1.00

02:52:00.000 Because they're fine. 1.00

02:52:02.000 They'd be absolutely fine.

02:52:03.000 They know how to survive.

02:52:04.000 They know how to do it.

02:52:06.000 So again, I think the message of this is we shouldn't be arrogant and complacent in the achievements of our civilization.

02:52:12.000 We have done wonderful and amazing things as well as terrible things.

02:52:15.000 But we shouldn't be arrogant or complacent about it.

02:52:18.000 We should recognize it's all very fragile.

02:52:20.000 It can be taken away from us at any time.

02:52:21.000 We can take it away from ourselves.

02:52:23.000 Without a doubt, the information is something to consider.

02:52:26.000 Just the information about these It's something to consider.

02:52:32.000 And it's also something to consider that if that's correct, boy, what a magical time it must have been back when they had developed some sort of technology that was enabling them to make structures like Gobekli Tepe.

02:52:46.000 That's why I'm calling the book Magicians of the Gods, because there's something magical, something about it that we would call magic, but perhaps was just another form of science.

02:52:57.000 Yeah, whatever they were able to do, I mean, it's amazing that we haven't figured it out yet, but we're so arrogant in our assumptions that it had to be all the ways that we've already figured out.

02:53:07.000 It's so silly. 0.98

02:53:08.000 Isn't there some shit we haven't figured out yet? 1.00

02:53:10.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.97

02:53:11.000 Like this new ability that they've just found out, that they've taken people and they've used the internet to send information from one person's mind to another person's mind 5,000 miles away.

02:53:21.000 It's incredible.

02:53:22.000 But nobody else did that before that, so we didn't really think that that was it.

02:53:25.000 We thought maybe it would be a possibility We're good to go.

02:53:47.000 And it's almost like the universe is giving us a puzzle that's so incredibly in your face with its most obvious results.

02:53:55.000 And because we have these preconceived notions, that we're not willing to accept that as a possibility.

02:54:04.000 Like when people look at the pyramids, they go, well, you know, the thing is they build ramps and they use stone rollers and like, There's a whole faction who will look for the most boring, meaningless possible explanation.

02:54:14.000 They might have done that.

02:54:16.000 But the fact that there are large groups of people whose mission is to look for the most boring rather than the most extraordinary possibility, it's good.

02:54:23.000 That's how we have balance in our society.

02:54:25.000 We do need to look with a skeptical eye and say that there could be mundane explanations for this.

02:54:30.000 But we also need to keep a tiny fraction of our research effort, perhaps a very small fraction indeed, To exploring alternative ideas.

02:54:39.000 Because if they do come out right, they change everything in the way that the mundane things don't.

02:54:45.000 And it's really worthwhile.

02:54:47.000 And the only thing, I understand why I've been subjected to so much criticism.

02:54:51.000 And I welcome it.

02:54:53.000 I've learned a great deal from that criticism.

02:55:22.000 I mean, and what he's done is done with very careful consideration.

02:55:25.000 Absolutely.

02:55:25.000 Randall, he's a real scholar, a real thorough researcher and investigator.

02:55:29.000 And he was awesome on the podcast.

02:55:30.000 He was one of my all-time favorites.

02:55:31.000 Yeah, these ideas are fascinating, but what I was going to say was that it's almost like the number is so large, like 2,300,000 stones in the Great Pyramid, which is so bizarre.

02:55:42.000 Six million tons, blocks of 50 to 70 tons, roofing the King's Chamber, elevated to heights of 300 feet above the ground.

02:55:51.000 It's almost perfectly aligned to true north, south, east, and west within a fraction of a single degree.

02:55:57.000 So crazy that if they could come back from the past and if they come to our time today and go, wait a minute, how did you guys think we did this?

02:56:06.000 You think we use slaves?

02:56:08.000 Oh my god, that's so funny.

02:56:11.000 Ahmad, come over here, man.

02:56:12.000 Tell them how you think we made the pyramids.

02:56:15.000 Slaves on wood? 1.00

02:56:16.000 Get the fuck out of here! 1.00

02:56:17.000 Are you really saying that? 0.99

02:56:18.000 They'd be like laughing, like, you guys haven't invented this Magneto thing yet?

02:56:22.000 Something that allows you to turn stone into foam?

02:56:23.000 You mean you don't know how to move things with sound?

02:56:26.000 Yeah, you don't know how to manifest things out of the air.

02:56:29.000 You don't know how to exercise the majestic and incredible power of your mind.

02:56:33.000 We're running out of time, unfortunately.

02:56:35.000 We are.

02:56:35.000 And if we're running out of time, can I say again?

02:56:37.000 Yes, please.

02:56:38.000 Because I am a better novelist.

02:56:40.000 Please.

02:56:41.000 If anybody out there would like to take me up on this offer, just go to grahamhancock.com, go to the War God page, which you'll find easily.

02:56:48.000 Scroll down and see where to write to me.

02:56:50.000 I have to repeat again, I will send you the book plates, but I can't correspond.

02:56:55.000 And it will be November before I'm in a position to send the book plates, because I'm on the road continuously until the 27th.

02:57:01.000 GrahamHancock.com.

02:57:02.000 GrahamHancock.com.

02:57:03.000 My goal is to make this so successful that you never make another offer ever again.

02:57:09.000 I want to ruin you.

02:57:12.000 You can't sign all these things.

02:57:14.000 You have too many coming in. 0.99

02:57:15.000 And you're like, what the fuck am I doing? 0.99

02:57:17.000 I can't do this. 0.98

02:57:18.000 This is my whole life now.

02:57:20.000 I know.

02:57:21.000 This will be the last one.

02:57:22.000 I think it'll probably be the last one.

02:57:23.000 By the way, there's chapters to read free online on the War God page as well, so I'm not asking people to buy Sight Unseen.

02:57:29.000 They can have a look.

02:57:29.000 Beautiful.

02:57:29.000 And your book, Fingerprints of the Gods, I've said it before when you've been on the podcast before, changed my single-handedly, changed my ideas about history.

02:57:37.000 Changed my ideas, not in any way discounting the amazing work that traditional historians have done, but just that these things exist that defy explanation and that I didn't know.

02:57:49.000 Just the fact that there is a guy from Boston University named Robert Schock, who's a prominent geologist, who said, this is clear erosion, and the last time there was erosion was 9000 BC. You're talking about an insane amount of time has passed since there was thousands of years of that rainfall,

02:58:05.000 by the way.

02:58:06.000 You needed thousands of years to do what we see on this.

02:58:08.000 This isn't wind. 1.00

02:58:09.000 This is some crazy shit. 0.99

02:58:11.000 That's what I tried to do in Fingerprints, was to bring together people like John Anthony West, who brought Robert Shock to the Sphinx, like Robert Boval, like Randon Rose Flemath. 0.99

02:58:19.000 A lot of researchers were working in the field and coming up with extraordinary information.

02:58:22.000 And part of what I did in that book was to bring all that information together into a kind of synthesis, I suppose.

02:58:27.000 It's such an interesting theory, and it's such an interesting subject, and now that it keeps getting substantiated by places like Gobekli Tepe or these micrometeors, it's sort of like piece the puzzle together slowly but surely.

02:58:39.000 I think as time goes on, we're going to find there's going to be a bunch of civilizations that we uncover.

02:58:43.000 Those ones that they're finding in Mexico, and then, of course, there's ones that they're finding in the Amazon, where they think, just like we were talking about with the other- Fascinating. 0.95

02:58:50.000 They find a hill, and they think it's a hill, and then someone realizes, like, holy shit, this is a building, guys.

02:58:55.000 Huge earthworks in the Amazon, stone circles. 0.95

02:58:58.000 You know, that's another place to look for a lost civilization.

02:59:01.000 We're out of time.

02:59:01.000 That's it, right?

02:59:03.000 We're dying.

02:59:04.000 We're dying?

02:59:04.000 How much time do we have?

02:59:05.000 It's counting down.

02:59:06.000 How much time?

02:59:07.000 Give me seconds.

02:59:08.000 Less than a minute.

02:59:09.000 All right.

02:59:09.000 Thank you.

02:59:09.000 Thank you, Graham Hancock.

02:59:10.000 Joe, it's been a pleasure.

02:59:11.000 Thanks to our sponsors.

02:59:12.000 Thanks to MeUndies.

02:59:13.000 Thanks to Ting.

02:59:14.000 And thanks to DraftKings.com.

02:59:18.000 Go there and do that.

02:59:19.000 And use those codes.

02:59:20.000 They were all earlier.

02:59:21.000 I said them earlier. 1.00

02:59:22.000 Just fucking rewind it, bitch. 1.00

02:59:24.000 But thank you also to everybody tuning in to this podcast. 0.99

02:59:27.000 And thanks for all the positive feedback and everything.

02:59:30.000 Go to GrahamHancock.com.

02:59:32.000 GrahamHancock.com.

02:59:33.000 And order the book.

02:59:34.000 Thank you, sir.

02:59:34.000 Appreciate it very much.

02:59:35.000 Thanks, Joe.

02:59:35.000 It's been fun.

02:59:37.000 Say bye.

02:59:38.000 That's it?

02:59:39.000 We're good?

02:59:39.000 You can say bye.

02:59:40.000 Bye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - September 18, 2014

Joe Rogan Experience #551 - Graham Hancock

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