Listener Mail: The Psychedelic Experience

It’s listener mail time again, this time devoted entirely to feedback on Stuff to Blow Your Mind’s five-part series on psychedelics. Join Robert and Joe as they read everyone’s submitted thoughts and experiences. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're coming at you with
some listener mail today. So Robert, is all of this
mail in today's episode going to be in response to

(00:26):
our five part series on psychedelics. Yes, our our five episodes,
a heroic dose of Stuff to Blow your Mind, if
you will, on the topic of psychedelics. That was a
really interesting thing to try. Now, we had never gone
to a five part series on the subject before. There
are certain subjects that we revisit over time in various ways.
I think in the past we'd gone to like two

(00:46):
or three parts on some specific subjects. Maybe four. Did
we go four on black Holes? I don't remember. I
think we went three parts of the Black Holes, but
I'm not positive. But anyway, so we've never gone that
long before. It was sort of an experiment, but it
felt necessary once we got into the topic because it
was something that we wanted to treat with thoroughness, but
also with care and even handedness, because it's a sensitive topic,

(01:10):
especially dealing with illegality and taboos and possible risks on
a you know, a substance that evidence shows may have
a lot of benefits but also is not without risks
and not without dangers, and that people should understand if
they're gonna experiment with. Of course, we're not advising people
to experiment with these substances, and that should be in

(01:31):
your minds throughout those episodes and today's episode is that
we're not recommending a course of action for you by
talking about the science or other people's experiences with psychedelics. Right,
these substances are almost certainly illegal wherever you're listening to
this show, and even if that were not the case,
they're powerful substances that should not be taken lightly. You know,
in certain individuals. As we discuss, psychological side effects can occur,

(01:53):
and even in the best cases of set and setting,
users often report challenging portions of the trip. Right, So
I mean, I would say the main takeaway is we're
not recommending people try psychedelics, but we do want to
fairly discuss what the science says about their possible benefits
and people's first hand experiences with them, for for good
and for ill, right, and of course, as always, we

(02:15):
reach out to the listeners and we'll reach out to
to other folks to to get their feedback, their experiences,
their first hand experiences on you know, any topic, and
this is certainly a topic that we wanted to hear
from everyone about. Also on our Facebook group on the
discussion module, we also heard some people talking back and
forth about just the nature of doing a five part episode.

(02:37):
And you know, to what extent people like that or
they don't. They don't like five part episodes. So you know,
if you're not a part of the discussion module and
you have thoughts on this, certainly right in and uh
and let us know, are you down for a five
part another five parts study of a particular topic or
do you prefer like one in two parts. I enjoyed it.

(02:58):
I mean, I really liked the ability to go in
depth and explore a topic, even though we couldn't do
everything about psychedelics. We couldn't even really It's frustrating how
no matter how deep you go, it seems like you
can't but scratch the surface on these big topics having
to do with the mind and you know, the human
experience and all that. But but I I did appreciate
being able to go into more depth than we usually

(03:20):
can in a single or two part episode on on
a big topic. And it seems to me like the
majority of responses we've gotten about it, we're positive. It
seems like most people liked it, though some people said
that they liked it better when we spend you know,
one or two parts on a subject and then move
on to something else, just in case it's not a
subject that captures their interest. And if psychedelics don't capture

(03:41):
your interest, that's okay, all right, So we're gonna bring
in the mail bot at this point. The mail bot
is very fractal looking today. I believe he has been
infected with machine elves. But still he's he's here to
do his job. He's here to present uh listener mail
for us. And we've we've changed addings just a little bit.
Normally we provide like the first name of an individual

(04:05):
who's written into us. In this case, given the nature
of the topic and given the fact that some people
asked to remain anonymous, we're just going to have everyone
be anonymous on this episode. Yeah. Oh, and just one
more thing also, obviously, since today's episode is going to
be frankly discussing people's first hand experiences to some extent
with psychedelics and and other drug use. Uh, you know, obviously,

(04:28):
just be warned that that subject matter is coming right.
All right, Well, I'm going to read the first one
here that Carney is handing me. In the psychedelic episodes,
there's mention of ridicality and encounters with God or something
that is best described as God. Given the limits of
human language to describe some of these things, I wanted
to share two experiences that I had along these lines,
One from my first and most powerful use of psilocybin mushrooms,

(04:51):
and the other from a much later savasana phase of
my yoga practice. In the psilocybin case, I experienced a deep,
closed eye internal experience. I wouldn't describe it as ego
lost because I was aware of myself, but it was
almost out of body in a way. Only instead of
pulling out of my physical form and seeing my physical
form from above, I saw my place in a much

(05:12):
grander chain of beings, like a link and a transdimensional tapestry.
It was fractal, genetic, and felt more like deep inner
space than outer space. There was a strong warm, organic
feel to it, swirling reds and orange, and in this state,
I felt, or was told that this reality was all
that mattered, that fears and concerns of the ego were irrelevant,

(05:33):
because all that mattered was that I loved and was
loved within this interconnected chain of souls. I would say
it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced.
I didn't really know much about psychedelics at the time,
but I attribute the intensity of the experience to simply
having never taken sol cybin before, and I attribute the
attribute the vibe in large part to excellent set and
setting on that particular trip. It's been a long time, though,

(05:55):
and I feel as if I need to remember the
lessons of this trip in my day to day life.
More than a decade later, the Savastana experience was rather different.
I occasionally experienced strong visions during Savasta, and on a
few occasions I feel that they resulted in what could
be described as ego loss. I've also seen, but never
communicated with, manifestations of the deceased in these cases. And

(06:16):
then during one session, I saw something that I knew
was God. Despite the lack of communication between myself and
the entity. It was a triangle amid the clouds, but
not the clouds of this world, more like some brilliant
sunset illuminated atmosphere on some distant gas giant. The triangle
itself was luminescent, but of no real color that I remember.
I was overcome by feelings of wonder and calm. I'm

(06:38):
not saying this wasn't just a mental image assemboled out
of various visuals floating around my subconscious It almost certainly
was just that, But I think it's a good example
of the sort of otherworldly experience that one can have
through meditative practice, even without psychedelic substances. Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, it certainly came up in our episode that
there are recognized neurological called parallels between uh, the meditative

(07:03):
practice that that some people do, and in the psychedelic experience.
One of the things we talked about was brain imaging
studies that at least make it seem like something that's
common to both the psychedelic experience with drugs like psilocybin
and the experience of at least master meditators, is that
there is some suppression of the brain regions we associate
with the default mode network, which we talked about having

(07:24):
to do with of course, you know, the kind of
rumination that enters people's minds when they're otherwise idol. So
you're just sitting there by yourself, you don't have anything
to do or think about. You start thinking about yourself
and your problems and your past and your future. And
that's another part of it, is mental time travel. And
then of course another part is like evaluations of the
self and of other people. Right, yeah, and and I

(07:46):
feel like, you know this this lines up with what
we've read from various commentators and and people who have
studied traditional practices that you know that there's there's the
domain of of a sort of psychedelic experience achievable through tradition,
non drug related practices, and then there's also like the
realm of dreams as well, that is often lumped into

(08:08):
the same you know, network of experiences, particularly in in
some you know, traditional Amazonian practices. Yeah, totally, all right,
here's the next one, and uh, how to catch for myself.
We're not using names, Okay, so this one begins. I
was an active member, says Hi, Robert and Joe. We
can use our names. It says I was an active

(08:28):
member of various message boards dedicated to psychedelic drugs from
Circle nine until about five years ago. I still participate
in some message boards, but not nearly as frequently. I
was a user on forums such as the shrew Maery
in the long defunct The Third Plateau, which are dedicated
to specific drugs such as psilocybin containing mushrooms and dextromethorphan

(08:49):
or d x M, respectively. I was also a member
of forums such as Drugs Forum dot com, which is
dedicated to psychoactive drugs in general. I'm a pretty critical person,
but I don't think my criticisms about ego death are invalid.
I think there is a lot of uncritical discussion on
these boards, especially when discussions start getting into the realm
of the mystical, supernatural, or spiritual. One thing that I

(09:11):
have seen is that a lot of people, often younger
people who are new to psychedelics, love to ask how
much LSD do I have to take to reach level
five or how many mushrooms do I need to take
to have ego loss or ego death? And the author
of this email explains that level five refers to what
was and may still be, a popular scheme for classifying

(09:32):
the intensity of psychedelic experiences, as laid out by Graham
Carl and included in the Psychedelic Experience fact, which appears
to be hosted on aerowid dot org, which is a
drug related information site. The writer continues, I've seen a
lot of discussions about this, and many people think the
ultimate aim of taking psychedelics is to experience ego loss.

(09:55):
But the writer here contends it is impossible to experience
ego loss. The ego is one sense of self. That
is to say that the ego is the model of
oneself which the brain constructs without any conception of self,
it is impossible to experience anything. Experiences are not things
that float around to be gathered. Experience has happened to

(10:16):
someone or something. I experience something. Experiences aren't the same
thing as raw sensory data, and experience is the result
of one's brain making the best sense of all that
raw sensory data in relation to the model of oneself.
Without the model of oneself, it's meaningless to talk about
experiencing ego death. I have never read a compelling description

(10:38):
of ego death. I do not believe that this is
simply because we don't have the words to describe what
it's like to experience things without any sense of self. Basically,
any trip report I've read that includes ego death says
nothing except for the same cliches. I generally found the
descriptions meaningless. Note that in this paragraph any quotations are
not actual quotations, their approximations for memory. Some would be

(11:00):
as brief as saying, and then I experience full ego death.
Others repeated cliches like I had ego death and experienced
raw sensory data, or then I had ego death and
it was pure experience with no ego. A few times
I shared my hypothesis about the impossibility of actually experiencing
ego death. If your ego dies, then you do not
experience anything because you do not exist, or at least

(11:24):
there is no model of you to experience anything. So
if you or the model of you which your brain
presents are absent, then what is experiencing ego loss? Don't misunderstand,
I do know that psychedelics can radically change change one's
sense of self to the point where ego loss is
almost the right word. If one's normal ego the default
mode ego is transformed radically, then sure you've lost your

(11:47):
old ego and been born into a new ego. I know.
Psychedelics can cause one sense of self to become so
tiny that it seems like you don't exist except as
some little dot and a human brain which has self awareness. Alternately,
the subject object distinctions can be so fuzzy that it
seems one has merged with the universe. It can seem
that one is just purely aware. It's just pure awareness

(12:10):
with no sense of self. However, even if your ego
has gotten to this point where it seems you either
don't exist because the ego is an illusion, or you're
so tiny as to be meaningless, or you see yourself
as being one with everything around you, there is no
experiencing pure awareness without a sense of self. I submit
to you that simply being aware must imply self awareness,

(12:32):
even if that self seems to be purely an observer. Uh,
there still must be a sense of self in order
to experience anything. Maybe I'm being nitpicky because ego death
isn't exactly inaccurate, but I don't believe that experiencing without
any ego without any sense of self whatsoever is possible.
Psychedelics can certainly annihilate one sense of self, but the
ego is transformed, not taken away entirely. I'm glad you

(12:54):
haven't focused too much on ego death in the episodes.
I do think it's mumbo jumbo, and there are a
lot of seeker is out there who are being misled
by uncritical psychedelic enthusiasts who think it's possible to take
LST or another classical psychedelic and experience nirvana and emerge
from the trip as a totally new person like a butterfly,
ego death and rebirth like the caterpillar. While psychedelics can

(13:16):
influence personality, I don't think that experiencing ego loss is meaningful.
I think psychedelic idealists are suggesting that there is an
ultimate goal that people should strive towards when taking psychedelics,
as though it will then turn them into the beautiful butterfly.
I've not seen anyone emerge from a cocoon to end.
I'd like to say that the four episodes so far
I guess this was after the fourth one, have been

(13:37):
very very good. Thank you for doing such good work.
I am so grateful best regards. So in a sense,
I guess I see what the writer here is saying,
but I'm not sure. I I accept this argument about
ego loss being an incoherent concept. So we have experiences,
and obviously you need to, as as far as we know,

(13:58):
have some kind of brain to have those experiences. So
I would certainly disagree with somebody who says that their
psychedelic experience proves that like their brain doesn't exist or something.
But the self, I think, as far as we know,
is an internal, subjective concept. The self is something that's
created by the brain. It's a series of impressions that

(14:19):
have to do with a sort of autobiographical narrative script
that's constantly running this relating sensory data and experiences back
to this idea of who I am, what I've been,
what I'm going to be, And I don't actually accept.
I think that it is necessary for all experience to
be routed through references to this autobiographical sense of self,

(14:43):
the the narrator running in the head. Uh. In fact,
I think one of the things about the psychedelic experience
that's so revealing to people is it reveals to them
that their sense of self is an impression and not
an objective reality, that that the elf is a series
of thoughts and thought patterns, not like an object in

(15:05):
the world. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Um, you know, I would
I would say that that my response to this would be, like,
on one hand, it seems like we are getting into
just a discussion of terminology. And I think I said
in the episodes that I don't particularly care for the
term eco death just you know, it's a little gram Yeah.
I like ego loss better. And I think my my

(15:26):
read on ego loss was was always not so much
an absolute loss, but more loss in the terms of
a depletion, like I and and that's exactly what this
particular listener like is saying, you know, is it is
occurring that you know, you're at least experiencing a depletion
of of the ego even if there is some you know,

(15:47):
they're arguing that there's some at least minuscule uh, sense
of the of the self remaining in your observations, right. Uh.
And a very good point I think they may actually
is they point out that you shouldn't have overly heroic
expectations for what's going to happen, even through a high
dose psychedelic experience that like you know that you're going
to emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, you know,

(16:08):
without your past self and and being an all new person.
I mean, people do report, uh, in some cases, very
profound and positive changes in their life and their sense
of self. But it's not a it's not a miracle drought,
it's not a cure all. You know, It's just a tool,
a powerful tool, but a tool nonetheless. And yeah, I
mean I've I've read some accounts of people, you know,

(16:30):
they were critical back in the sixties and are critical
today of say individuals who travel to South America in
order to have the ahuasca experience, but with like a
certain goal in mind, and then they you know, it
can be disappointing if you're if you're going to into
it expecting again, these these heroic results, if you're expecting
to be transformed purely by the experience. Um so, so yeah,

(16:54):
I think that's worth taken into account. But but then again,
another whole thing about this, you know we're talking about,
you know, the degree to which people are primed and
the degree to which the degree to which their expectations
might be uh, you know, unfairly elevated. As we discuss though,
like this, the psychedelic experience is highly susceptible to priming. Yeah,
and like that is that's it's part of the experience. Well,

(17:17):
it's one of the things that makes it a little
more difficult to study than a kind of kinds of
other things, because it's a drug that acts not necessarily
by like you know, changing levels of chemistry and your body,
that that have a direct mechanism of action outside your
your conscious control. It seems very much like to whatever extent,
psychedelics do have therapeutic and legitimate medical uses, and it

(17:38):
does seem like they probably do. It's by allowing you
to have an emotional cognitive experience that is meaningful to
you and perceived subjectively as meaningful and like motivates changes
in behavior. You know, It's not like it's not like
aspirin or something. And given that it very much appears
appears to be the case that you you do very

(18:00):
much want to intentionally bias people's expectations and stuff in
in a positive direction to have them get the most
out of the experience. Absolutely, but this is a great,
great bit of listener mail. I feel like this was
some you know, some some good good food for thought here. Uh.
You know, the listener was, you know, is kind of
disagreeing with some of the information out there about psychedelic

(18:22):
use and the effects. Uh, but they providing an interesting argument.
So um um, yeah, I really appreciate this, this bit
of listener feedback. Yeah. I appreciate somebody making a case
even and I think making some very good points, even
if I don't necessarily agree with the overall point being made.
All right, Well, we received another one. We received a
one bit of listener mail just asking if we had

(18:45):
enjoyed psychedelics and watched Avatar before. Um. But yeah, and
then they summarized it. But in the summary of of Avatar,
I was reminded like, yeah, this, like Avatar is a
very like psyched kind of psychedelic film in its own way.
You know, all these themes of you know, connecting with
nature and you know, transformed furring your consciousness into a

(19:06):
big blue cat creature leaving your body flying around. Yeah. So, um,
I will have to think of think about that that
read on Avatar the next time I see it, or
when I get to you know, CD sequels that are
in the works. Sorry, my mind is still just grinding
on this previous thing. There's another statement I want to make.
I just want to see if you agree with this
or not. I mean, basically, I think one of the

(19:28):
interesting things about psychedelic research to me is that it
yields the conclusion, at least to me, that saying the
self does not exist is not a spiritual or mystical statement.
Saying the self does not exist can be like a
purely material and mundane statement of fact in a way,

(19:48):
and that the psychedelic experience does tend to reveal to
people subjectively that this is the case. Without the use
of you know, brain imaging techniques and all that. It
just as you a different kind of subjective experience that
makes you realize, like, oh, this thing that I always
thought had to be there doesn't have to be there.
I know firsthand because I was there and it wasn't there. Right, Yeah,

(20:13):
And it's going to be interesting to see, you know what. Further, uh,
you know, breakthroughs we we see in this uh you
know now that we're seeing more and more research into psychedelics,
like one of the one of one of the points
that I see made again and again. Is that you know,
for for the most part, you know, Western Western science
has has been on one track, and this track has

(20:36):
been you know, completely parallel to uh to the psychedelic track.
And these two tracks have have converged, you know, for
a very short time, and and it's been kind of
touch and go. And now we're seeing more of a
true convergence where we're actually like leveraging more of our
our current scientific understanding of the world towards the psychedelic

(20:58):
experience and attempt to understand like what can be gained
from it, be it in the treatment of you know,
addiction or various psychological conditions, or simply an understanding like
what the mind is and how it works. All Right,
I guess we need to take a quick break, but
we'll be right back with more. Alright, we're back. So

(21:20):
here's another bit of listener mail related to our psychedelics episodes. Hi,
Robert and Joe. I've been listening to stuff to Blow
your mind for about two years now. It keeps my
mind occupied while I deal with the mundanity of my
day job. I apologize in advance if this gets long winded,
but I want to paint the whole picture of my
recent dealings with depression and magic mushrooms. Well, it does seem.
It seemed to be a theme that this that these

(21:42):
episodes resulted in long listener emails. All right, so they continue.
I suffered from chronic headaches for about five years and
that kept getting worse. Along with this, I developed migrains
that were triggered by travel anything more than fifty kilometers
in a car, and the next day my brain wants
to load. Once the pain goes away, suicidal depression would

(22:03):
kick in for about five days as the post drum
and so I saw my doc a few times, who
is a psychiatrist as well. After trying a bunch of
different meds and techniques and coming up empty, she suggested
that I try a mild S s R I and
just see what happens. My life changed from that day on,
which was in January this year. Turned out I had depression,

(22:23):
and only after being on S s R I was
able to see how depressed I was. Depression biases you
so much towards negativity that it's impossible to see that
you have a problem. My rage, road rage and anxiety
has basically disappeared. Completely along with the headaches and migraines,
gotten back to my hobbies and rebuilding relationships. And this
is where the shrooms come in. I've had shrims multiple

(22:44):
times long ago, about six years ago, and only three
weeks ago, decided to give it a go again as
my mindset is in a good place and I felt
like doing a mental reset. This was literally a week
before your Psychedelic series started on Stuff to Blow your mind.
I took about four rams, dried, got in bed under
a lot of blankets, and listened to prog metal for
a few hours. Yeah. Well, you know, no, I'm not mocking.

(23:08):
That's just it's funny what people do. I mean, it's
gonna it's it's gonna be subjective to your experience and taste.
You know. The music that is comforting to me isn't
necessarily going to be comforting to the next person. And
then I think is sometimes the case the music that
is comforting to you, the psilocybin user or what have you,

(23:28):
it might be different from the music that is comforting
to you in your like your normal day to day state.
Oh yeah, I mean I was just thinking, how you know,
I love me some electric Wizard in general doom metal
kind of stuff. But I don't I don't know, it
seems like that could be a bad recipe. Yeah, well
it's gonna vary right the anyway, the listening continues. The

(23:49):
experience was profound, to say the least. Other than the
colors and patterns, I was confronted by all my mental
baggage and given a choice of how to deal with it.
At a stage, I was in a black pit surrounded
by amorphous beings representing all the human connections in my life,
towering around me my ego, and they all said simultaneously,
you are no more. My sense of self kind of

(24:11):
just evaporated into everything, as if the universe was in
a high intropy state and all particles were homogeneously spread
over the universe and I just became part of that.
After this, the particles started to reconstitute into points of connection,
representing all the people in my life, with a connection
between all of them, including me. What I observed was

(24:31):
that life is a giant web of connections with mental energy,
not quacky pyramid b as, flowing between all these connections.
If a connection is faulty, it restricts flow in a
certain part of this cloud and drains the amount of
energy you have to keep the system in balance. So
the solution would be to either fix the connection or
sever it, allowing space for more positive experiences and connections

(24:55):
with people. I know it all sounds very subjective, and
honestly it is, but I find a lot of comfort
in the site you. Three weeks later, I still feel
like I've returned from a three month vacation. Things are
going a lot better than it used to. I realized
that if life consists of fifty fifty good and bad,
and you can see fifty of the bad things as
either neutral or good, then of your life will be good.

(25:17):
It's not about the arbitrary energy that you supposedly send
out into the universe that draws in good energy. It's
about your perspective on life. If your observation bias is
dial towards the positive, then your life will seem more positive.
Weird thing is my sense of self hasn't really returned,
which feels odd and fantastic at the same time. I'm
not religious or spiritual in any sense, and if you

(25:38):
stop worrying about the self, you have the capacity to
help others anyway. Love the podcast guys. I recommend it
to most of my friends and will keep listening as
long as you make it. Oh well, thank you so much.
That's a nice message. And I'm so interested in the
way that the brains generate these visual metaphors. It's extremely common,
I mean, not unique to this message. You know. It's

(26:00):
probably at least half of the trip reports out there
have something like this where people talk about their psychedelic
experience being not just a sort of abstract revelation about,
you know, their relationships and their emotions and all that,
but that they get a concrete visual metaphor through which
they picture these revelations. I remember in Michael Pollan's book

(26:23):
you Know, which we read for that series, he talks
about his experiences um having revelations about his relationships and
his family. In one case, he talks about like envisioning
this giant building made out of like beams of wood
and all that, and like that the structure somehow represented
to him these these feelings he was having about his

(26:44):
his parents and his children and all that. Uh. And
another one was like feeling this way about the images
of oak trees and a meadow. Why is it that
the brain doesn't just say like, oh, I should focus
more on having positive relationships with my parents or something
like that. Why is it that, like it gives you
a picture that shows that to you? Yeah, I mean
because because in a way, we're getting into some sort

(27:06):
of like a non linguistic communication, right or or what
what would be the description, like a translinguistic object in
your mind? Um. Terence McKenna, you know, talks about a
lot of things like this in his his writings. Uh uh, though,
I mean in a lot of those writings, it's going
beyond merely perceiving like a complex metaphor, but interacting with

(27:29):
the complex metaphor and sort of the course dissecting that
metaphor later on and with drawing conclusions from it. It
totally goes beyond. Yeah, if you're you're thinking like, Okay,
I'm not just perceiving in my imagination imagery that reveals
something to me, but actually, like I'm thinking that there
is some physical other thing out there that I'm just

(27:49):
perceiving as I would perceive objects in my environment, which
to some extent McKenna actually thought he did experience, right, Like, Yeah,
though I've been kind of I've been looking around at
people's different takes on that, Like basically the question to
what extent did did McKenna believe in some of these
reads that he discussed on, you know, psychedelic visions, And

(28:09):
you know, some argue that, well, you know, it's it's
not so much that he necessarily believed in all of
these things, but was encouraging people to you know, consider
alternate reason reality and also just sort of like pulling
the thread of a particular idea and just you know,
keep pulling it to see how much of it you
can get? What happens if you follow the rabbit hole
of this particular notion, where does it lead you? And

(28:32):
I think I do see that. And I'm currently reading
a collection of his um like interviews and writing titled
The Archaic Revival, And and you do see that, Like
it's you can't take all the ideas in the book
and line them up and like construct necessarily like the
Terrence Terence mckinna mythos, you know, because it's because it's
like he's exploring one idea here and he's talking about

(28:52):
another one here. Uh well, I guess that comes back
to the the interesting quality of a ridicality or or
the noetic quality, right, that there's this feeling that so
many people get about their psychedelic experiences that it wasn't
just an interesting experience, but that it revealed something objectively true,
which is such a strange and interesting quality. And one

(29:14):
way you could look at it is that maybe what
it does is it kind of it not that it
makes people believe that a hallucination they had on a
high dose of psilocybin was a literal, physical object that's
out there that they encountered, but it more sort of
like increases your willingness to suspend disbelief when entertaining metaphors

(29:35):
and stuff. Does that make sense, It's like allows you
to get into the story of a movie more without
stepping out and thinking this is just a movie. It
just sort of like opens you up to going with
an idea for longer than you normally would without without
getting embarrassed about it or thinking like, Okay, that's that's silly, yeah, yeah,
or be getting drawn back into the the egoic mind

(29:58):
and and thinking about this, pulling out the old toys,
you know, the toys of of the past and the
toys of the future. If to worry about and being
able to focus on this. You know what is often
and in so many of these cases, it's it's some
sort of metaphor that is that is bound up in
empathy and uh and uh, you know it's it's it's

(30:19):
not the necessarily the kind of of you know, ultimately
like positive imagery that one is going to dwell on,
because what we two, we tend to dwell on. We
tend to dwell on things, things from the past that
we're we're great and we wish we had again, or
things in the past that hurt us, and then likewise
gazing into the future and fantasizing about the things that

(30:39):
could hurt us or make us happy. Uh. And then
you know, it's in so often it's the metaphor in
play in our first message that we read in in
this one and also in the example from Michael Pollan's book,
it's based kind of in the present. It's like, what
do I have now that is important and of value? Yeah,
and and so many It also just seems funny that

(30:59):
so many of these revelations and metaphors that people have
during their experiences are about love. Yeah, it's always about love.
It's like statements that people might normally find kind of
embarrassingly trite or but now take on a new profundity. Yeah,
you don't see a lot of accounts where people are like, yeah,

(31:20):
I had a psychedelic experience and I realized they need
to kick people more. Why am I not kicking people?
I mean, I'm not ruling out that possibility that could
happen with some people. But you don't hear that kind
of thing much. Yeah, more often you hear stuff like
I realized that love is everything, and you know, you
not having the experience, might hear somebody say that and say, Okay, yeah,

(31:40):
you know I could have told you. You know, there's
you want to hear some more Beatles lyrics, But it is.
It's the stuff of lyrics. It's the stuff of of
of bumper stickers. But but but the actually felt is
the thing. It's truly felt. Is it for the first time?
Sometimes yes, totally. Okay, looks like we're going to move
on to the next one. Uh, this one starts. Hey, guys,

(32:04):
I just wanted to let you know that I really
enjoyed your series on psychedelics and wanted to share my experiences.
Each spring and fall, I and a few other guys
go up to my friend's cottage to open or close
it for the season. For the last few years we've
taken this opportunity to take magic mushrooms. His cottage is
located on a fairly small island, which makes it a
great place to go for a wander without a risk

(32:25):
of getting lost. But we always make sure to stick together,
even if one of us is lost in the shapes
of the clouds and someone else is pondering the moss
on a rock. We've always had good experiences, and for
the following weeks and months, the world seems like a
brighter place. As you said at the beginning of your series,
it's like someone opens a window, and even after the
window was closed, the air feels a little fresher. I've

(32:46):
had some very interesting experiences on my trips. Most of
the time the effects are fairly standard visual hallucinations and
a general feeling of euphoria. But on our last adventure,
we went for it and took Terence McKenna's heroic dose
of five brams. I should just throw in that this
is something he he mentioned in some of the writings
I'm reading now, and basically his argument was, look if

(33:07):
you're going to take psychedelics, don't play around. Take a
heroic dose so that you can like really experience the thing.
Uh you know, I agree or disagree with that as
you like. But that's that's what people were talking about
when they're talking about Terence McKenna's five grams. Uh So,
the writer here continues. This resulted in a much more
cerebral experience. I could see the surface of my mind

(33:30):
again this visual metaphor. I could see the surface of
my mind and had the feeling that small ten drils
were extending off and connecting to another level beyond regular consciousness.
In that time, I felt like I had a perfect
understanding of so many things, the origins of art, the
meaning of family, the intricacies of society, and even some
religious thoughts from a non religious person. Unfortunately, my descent

(33:53):
to reality was much harder than it had been on
lighter doses, and the fresh feeling didn't stick with me.
I'm looking forward to are closing this fall, and I
hope I can strike a balance in the dose and
get the best of both worlds. I also wanted to
thank you for your approach to the conversation. My wife
and I grew up the same way you did, with
the dangers of drugs being pushed on us at every turn,
so she has a bit of apprehension when it comes

(34:15):
to things like this. We listen to a few of
the episodes together, and I think it opened her mind
a little to the idea that mushrooms can be beneficial.
Maybe one day she will be ready and we can
go explore together. Thanks again, Well, I like that, But
then again, I mean I want to emphasize that every
everybody's got to make decisions for themselves and inform themselves
on these things. So we're not encouraging people to take psychedelics.

(34:36):
We're just trying to describe what, you know, what, what's
out there, what the literature says. Yeah, choosing to to
never try psychedelics, who is a perfectly valid choice. Um. Yeah,
We we don't advocate, you know, pressuring anybody or bore
dosing Richard Nixon with them right, all right, here's another one.
This listener rides Hi Joe, Hi, Robert. I'm an occasional

(34:57):
listener of your podcast, choosing the topics that inter me
most and saving the others for when I have more time,
because unlike other podcasts that I can listen to while
doing other stuff. Yours requires my complete attention in a
good way. Your recent Psychedelic series, though, had me drop
everything right at the second each episode was available. Your
research and personal insights were eye opening to a subject
that I hadn't really considered before. Your reports of several

(35:19):
studies where people described communicating with the gods had me
thinking about the three big monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism, Islam uh.
They all forbid the use of mind altering substances to
various degrees, the key probably being that one should always
be in control of one action one's actions and not
be able to to excuse one's shortcomings with being under

(35:41):
the influence of drugs. But I'm wondering if this could
also be interpreted as the religious leaders having had a
real experience of talking to God while on SI gets psychedelics,
and subsequently trying to prevent others from experiencing the same thing.
The motive could be oppression and less for power. But
then Jesus and later Mohammad were like, nah, I don't
care about that. About what Abraham and Moses said, I

(36:02):
want to have as much fun as that goat over
there that ate some weird looking mushroom and God talking
to them too. Another thought I had while listening was
Michael Pollen, huh like the cookbook guy. Weird case of
two people with the same name. But well he you know,
well maybe he did stuff about food. He's done a
lot about food, and is I think previous book was

(36:23):
about like you know, um, you know, he talked about
a lot about like culinary traditions, and well, our our
our producer Maya just chimed in and pointed out that
he did a Cooked series on Netflix. Unless I actually
watched this series, it's it's excellent anywhere, our listener continues.
But then I decided to look up the book you
reference so much, and it's the exact same guy. My

(36:45):
second favorite cookbook author ever, second only to Samine nos Frott,
who literally refers to to him as one of her
biggest mentors, inspirations, and supporters. His next Netflix series and book,
Cooked Heir sparked my interest into the more science e
side of cooking, why fermentation is so important, how nutrition works,

(37:05):
and why some modern foods make a sick spoiler, It's
most likely neither lactose nor gluten. He dives into different
cultures and cuisines with genuine curiosity and respect and not
elevating himself and his personal knowledge above the more traditional
ways of cooking. What I'm basically trying to say is
he would be a phenomenal guest on to your show,
whether you want to talk about food, psychedelics, or general

(37:25):
cultural developments. If you've actually made it this far, thank
you for reading through my whole rant about things you
probably already know, and thank you for making such a
phenomenal podcast. Have a great week. Uh well, thanks for
getting in touch. I would say that, um, there are
a lot of theories people have about the roles of
psychedelics in the origin of religions, and I think a

(37:46):
lot of these theories are obviously going to be difficult
to prove. So it's just kind of like people offering
speculations of that may to various extents conform or not
conformed to the evidence we already have, but it's hard
to prove these things right. But it's like the food
of the God's argument jas MCKINNI made, like it's it's
a very interesting argument, but ultimately it's nothing you could

(38:06):
ever actually prove, yeah, or at least not in any
way we can imagine now. I mean, who knows what
we could prove given evidence we don't know about, but
it seems unlikely at least. Um. But with these things,
I mean, one thing I would say is that I
think it's not hard to see why a lot of
religions would place limitations on the use of mind altering
substances of various kinds, even the kinds of radically different effects.

(38:30):
I mean that that they might have the same kind
of attitude towards alcohol that they have towards psilocybin mushrooms,
and these are extremely different compounds that are different things
to the brain. Um. But but yeah, I think there's
there's like a complex interplay of different pressures going on there.
I think one is just sort of like a social
orderliness pressure, with the idea that you sort of mentioned

(38:51):
in the email that like drugs can induce changes in behavior,
drugs can lower people's inhibitions and uh, and you just
generally don't want people having excuses for bad behavior that
are chemical in nature. Yea. Um. But another thing I
think I mentioned in the episodes, and I still pretty
firmly believe is that there is definitely a threat from

(39:12):
specifically psychedelics. There's a threat to organized religions that have
a set number of like doctrines and dogmas, because psychedelics
very often tend to cause people to believe they have
had new revelations, you know, like God has talked to
me now, and now I in fact see that here
are the new things we should believe. And of course
that's a challenge to the authority of the existing church,

(39:35):
which has like a doctrinal statement. Yeah. And of course
these types of revelations can occur without psychedelics and do
occur without psychedelics, And the history is full of individuals
who likely had obtained the revelation uh, you know, viet
non drug related means, and then end up posing a
problem to the established religion. You know, suddenly you have

(39:57):
a new heresy, and generally organized religions don't take kindly
to heresies, uh, and they have to be squashed, right.
Another I think thing to think to keep in mind
is that so many of these different substances. When we're
looking historically, we're dealing with with something very regional, and
we're dealing dealing with something that is tied to traditional
regional practices and then incomes a major religion. It's these

(40:20):
major religions tend to uh be you know, evangelical, they
tend to be They're expanding their domain, and in doing
so they are absorbing and crushing traditional practices. And and
part of that is is crushing whatever kind of you know,
medicinal practices they have in place. Yeah, and uh and

(40:41):
of course we don't mean that necessarily as an indictment
of people who believe in these religions, but all kind
of like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, even they all at various
points were expansionist religions that were sort of obliterating local,
regional religious practices that people had before them. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it's just the it's the nature of of
these of ideas. And you can look at it in

(41:03):
two ways. You can look at it is like, okay,
here's the big you know, dominant religion coming in and
just destroying everything in its path, and think of it
like a like a mold taking over something. But you
can also look at it if you want, you can say, well,
here are just some really good ideas that someone had
about how to live your life and so of course
they're going to expand of course they're going to be
adopted by people who can benefit from them. I think

(41:24):
ultimately you have a mix of these two factors in
the expansion of any religion. There are things that are
doing people good and therefore they expand, And then of
course there's just the inevitable conflict of different ideas, different cosmologies,
bump bumping heads, like something's there's gonna be a certain
amount of of synthesis that takes place, but something's gonna

(41:46):
gonna also be left, you know, on the cutting room floor,
and something is going to more or less win. Yeah. Now,
more directly to exactly what the writer here says, uh,
I don't necessarily assume or think that there's any good
evidence to assume that the founders of you know, more
recent revelatory religions were themselves taking psychedelics. I don't necessarily

(42:07):
see any evidence of that, especially because we know that
some people spontaneously have these types of mystical experiences without
the use of psychedelics, and also because a lot of
times the prohibitions that you're talking about against mind altering
substances are not spoken directly by the people who have
these revelations themselves. I mean, Jesus never said anywhere that

(42:29):
is recorded that one should not take psychedelic substances. That's
just not to be found in the Bible. All right, Well,
on that note, we're going to take one more break
when we come back. More listener mail. Thank alright, we're back. Okay.
The next message starts, Hey guys. Uh. The writer says
that we produce their favorite media and says some needlessly

(42:51):
flattering things and then says, anyways, I just finished your
five part mini series on psychedelics, listening to it and
being reminded of mushrooms and Mike's perience with them when
I was much younger, and it still has the power
to give me this feeling of ego dissolution. Just a
little background. When I was nineteen, I had been arrested
a ton of times for marijuana and drinking related crimes,

(43:12):
all culminating with my house being rated. I did a
short stint in County and then was released with one
point five years of probation and drug counseling. I was
never a violent or bad guy, or ever really felt
I had a problem with drugs. I just sort of
lacked purpose or had anything positive I cared about any who.
On my twentieth birthday, my best friend at the time
and I took mushrooms for the first time and walked

(43:34):
around town. I had this feeling of enlightenment, like I
was thinking on a much higher level and there was
just so much more meaning and truth to the world
than I had known. At that point. I decided I
wanted to study physics and understand this higher dimension. I
had never been successful in school. My high school g
p A was a one point seven, but I took
some classes at a local school, did well, matriculated, continued

(43:55):
to do well, applied to a solid physics program at
the u n H, got a degree, and on to graduate.
Went on to graduate school to study imaging science. I
sort of stopped looking for the higher dimensions and just
got excited about science. Also, there were other things going
on in my life that were positive, but what I
really wanted to get to the day after I guess

(44:15):
this is the day after the psilocybin experience. I hadn't
slept and I was in the best mood ever, not
tripping anymore, just feeling like I had learned something deep,
gained purpose, and perspective. Months later. I didn't feel that
way always, but I could remember the perspective and bring
myself there just tapping into the memory. To this day,
sometimes I think back to the time I tripped on

(44:36):
mushrooms and I can still sort of get the ego
dissolution just by making the connection in my memory. It
is sort of like meditation on demand. That being said,
I meditated before and a long while after with regularity
after I had tripped, and I think it brought a
whole other level to my meditation. It was like there
was a deeper well of being in the moment, or

(44:57):
maybe more apt being in the moment also aim with
a stronger feeling of being connected to the world. Shortly after,
I made up a meditation inspired by my trip. There
was this pulsing thing to it, where like your breath
and heartbeat were connected to the world around you. So
I would try to force that feeling. I would start
by using my mind's eye and imagining myself breathing in

(45:17):
the energy of my surroundings. That I would expand my region,
to my town, and then to my state, my country,
the world, the solar system, and then the universe, watching
with my mind's eye, this abstract universe is gaseous energy
coming into my lungs, following it the entire way than
breathing my energy into the universe. And then the writer

(45:39):
goes on to say a few more things, but I
think we'll cap it there. But I like this idea
of the the expanding consciousness exercise through meditation because it's
something that I don't know if there's a version exactly
like this that I've come across before, but there's certainly
the idea of expanding forms of consciousness in the compassion
meditation tradition, you know, where you uh, you're like, you

(46:02):
meditate on well wishes and compassion for yourself and for
people close to you, and you gradually, through the exercise
like expand that circle of people who you include in
your the circle of people who you wish well for,
And this just gets bigger and bigger until you wish
well for all of humanity. And that's like a way

(46:22):
of forcing yourself to experience compassion for people you would
not normally feel compassion for. Right. Yeah, I think that's
sometimes overlooked as as being you know, one of the
positive sides about prayer traditions and like Western Christian traditions,
you know, is that sometimes there's criticism level. They're like, oh,
if you're praying for somebody, you're not really helping them, uh,

(46:43):
you know, and so forth, you know, the whole sort
of thoughts and prayers counter argument. But but if you
think of it as like this, uh, this empathy building
meditative practice, uh, you know, I think it's a little
bit different. And of course the idea to being that,
like you know, first comes thought and then comes action,
that if it puts you in a more empathetic mind state,
then then hopefully you'll be in a better position to

(47:05):
take actions that are also empathetic. I think I've said
this on the podcast before, but I know there are
at least some This might sound like an oxymoron to
some people, but I've read about this that there are
like atheist Christians, you know, who are Christians, they don't
necessarily believe that there is a God that can physically
change things in the world or anything like that, and

(47:25):
yet they would still consider themselves in some way Christian
and pray and that the prayer uh is sometimes thought
of as a kind of internal psychological drama where you
are conditioning yourself to have, you know, well, wishes and
compassion for the people who you pray for, kind of
like the compassion meditation tradition in Buddhism. Yeah yeah, I

(47:46):
mean exactly, like if you're if you're doing a uh
you know, even like a blessing before a dinner, like
you're stopping for a second to appreciate, you know, the
fact that you do have food on the table and
maybe thinking about you know, other people that need help
and certain causes and whatnot. Like similar exercises and this
is one that we do in my house is to
have like a family meeting and there are certain like

(48:07):
questions that we all answered, like what was the best
party day? What was the worst part, what are you
thankful for? What are you looking forward to? That sort
of thing. Uh, animal of the day is also in
their animal of the day. Oh yeah, oh that's a
good that's a good tradition. It's frequently a squirrel for me.
But um yea yeah, I mean it's like like you say,
it's it's ultimately kind of this empathetic meditative practice. All right. Next,
I want to read a section one Like, like I said,

(48:29):
a lot of these were long because they're often describing,
you know, rather you know, complex emotional or perceptive experiences.
Uh so, I'm just gonna read a portion of this
one where this individual is talking about how how psychedelic
usage impacted their life. Quote. It definitely changed my perspective
on things At the time. I was really lonely, anxious

(48:51):
to have a girlfriend. You had not social enough to
get out there and then meet and mingle with new people.
After the trip, I relaxed a great deal. I realized
it didn't matter or so much at once. I became
more comfortable with my solitude and more open to trying
new things and meeting new people. I realized there was
so much more to do, and I was not doing
everything I could be doing to make my memories richer.

(49:12):
But that was just the beginning of my changes. The
last time my trip was about a year and a
half ago. I had one more insightful experience. I was
over at my brother's apartment, but instead of discussing anything
with him, I opted to lay down in silence for
the duration of the trip. I tried to focus inward,
but had a very difficult time because of the pain
I was feeling in my body. At first, I was
frustrated because I felt like I was just being distracted

(49:34):
by this pain. But eventually I realized that I was
supposed to be feeling this pain. I had been experiencing
chronic back and risk pains for about a year at
that point, and had not really done anything about them.
I realized that day that I was not treating my
body the way it needed to be treated. I had
a very sedentary life style as a computer jockey and
did a little exercise. The psychedelics made me focus on

(49:54):
how much it sucked to be in pain all the time,
and that I was still young enough to fix it.
Although I my not have enough time if I didn't
start soon. I still work from a computer. Uh, there
was no changing that aspect of my life, but I
decided to start having healthier exercise habits. I got a
gym membership and started swimming almost every day of the
week after work, and began practicing yoga almost every morning.

(50:15):
I was upset at first that I didn't have as
much time in the day to do what I wanted,
but as the week went by, I began to love
the exercise. I feel that my trip gave me a
healthier ability to communicate with my body and understand what
it wanted. I had been depriving it for so long,
and it was so happy that I was giving it
the movement it needed so badly. Uh yeah, and the
writer here has has some other great things to say.

(50:37):
This was also a long email, but thank you for
getting in touch. It's it's great to hear. I mean,
yet again, this is something we've we've seen at least
anecdotally over and over again in these reports, is the
ability of these substances to give people an experience that
leads to change in habits, which is such a precious
thing to come by, actually, like being able to change

(50:57):
your routines were In fact, I think so often we
are really just oblivious to how governed by routine we are,
how how subject it to habits and repetitive actions. I mean,
it's one of the things that it can be almost
kind of debilitating to think about life this way, but
it is sometimes worth realizing that every time you do something,

(51:20):
you're not just doing that thing, but you're making it
more likely that you'll do that thing again in the future.
Every time you say it, every time you think it,
every time you do it, you're sort of writing a
program in your brain to reinforce that thing. And so
like our actions, you know, your actions are never just
that one action in the moment. It's also changing your

(51:42):
future predisposition. But it seems like the one great thing
about psychedelics is they have at least some sort of power,
often reported anecdotally, to to to get in there and
mess with that code, to give you more ability to
overcome your habitual behaviors and try to do something different. Yeah,
to shake up the snow globe, and and again again.

(52:03):
The research this is it goes beyond just sort of
the subjective experience. But I mean we see the research
in uh, the ability to combat combat addiction addiction, and
like that is a that is certainly a more concrete
area of like here's the here's the coding, here's the
program that's been put in place, and then here we
are just we're seeing its disruption. Alright, So we have
just a few more. These are some short ones to

(52:25):
close it out. I'm gonna read this one listening rites
and it says I've been enjoying the five part series
on psychedelics. Great examination given to this topic. I particularly
enjoy the discussion of the other. At the end of
the first installment, the foray and gnostic belief was quite apt.
I experienced a similar feeling during a few psychedelic experiences,
and this detail lended more to a feeling I used

(52:45):
to think was unique. However, my whole gnostic experience happened
after reading way too much HP Lovecraft in my freshman
year of college, and that produced a monolithic Cyclopean fear
that I cannot describe of which is fitting. That's very okay, uh.
Over the less, I think that the other produced by psychedelics,
the disassociation from reality and the fallibility of perception, is

(53:07):
a real benefit from these substances. I look forward to
future research on psychedelics, especially the use of micro dosis.
Some of the best transcendent moments of my teens in
early adulthood were aided by consumption of small amounts of
psychedelics in the company of close friends. Taking some mushrooms
and hiking up a small mountain can really offer you
some perspective. I would like to see a time when

(53:27):
responsible and private use of psychedelics is more accepted. I
couldn't help but think of Roger from mad Men. When
I was listening to the series. Oh yeah, yeah, this happened.
Later on, he ends up taking I never finished mad Man.
I think I just watched the first season or something.
Oh it's I. I enjoyed the whole the whole journey.
But yeah, Roger ends up taking out. I want to say,

(53:47):
he ends up going over to an individual's house and
I can't remember what historic figure that may or may
not supposed to be like, but anyway, he goes, and
he's introduced to last Anyway, listen, the writer continues his
love of LSD and his habitual use in later in
the later seasons paints and image of how even successful
people in business could enjoy that kind of cleansing feeling

(54:10):
that psychedelics evoke. Great show. I love listening to this
podcast on my way to work. Oh well, thanks for
sharing with us. Wait a minute, what is this about
the Cyclopean fear that? Uh well, I I take that
to to mean that, yeah, that there was. The psychedelic
experience was initially influenced by reading too much HP Lovecraft,

(54:33):
which sounds like not a great bad story hearing, uh,
you know, but it's funny. HP Lovecraft also gets to
the ineffable much like the mystical experience as this quality
of ineffability one of the most common things, at least
in my you know, I'm not as deeply read on HP. Lovecraft,
I think as you were, as a lot of other
people are. But I recognize in that and in some
other horror writers of the period this very common thing

(54:55):
about just like not being able to describe the feeling
of horror experienced. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just a common
trope of of Lovecrafts writing. But then yeah, other writers
working at the time, and and writers have come and
you know, in the tradition to follow. Um. But but yeah,
at the same time, it's very like there's no empathy there,

(55:16):
Like it's kind of an anti psychedelic like well a
darkly psychedelic description of things, I guess. But anyway, I
guess part of the thing to think about is I
guess that the brain is going to build your experience
out of whatever you've been feeding in to a certain extent. So, um,
he was this individuals feeding at Lovecraft and this is

(55:36):
what they got. Well, I hope this has been informative.
After we uh, you know, explored the sort of historical
and scientific reports for a number of episodes now to
just hear these like first hand anecdotes and experiences from
all these listeners and and other people. Yeah, yeah, this
was This was great. So I appreciate everyone who wrote in.
If you wrote in or or you know somehow try

(55:56):
to communicate with us on this and we didn't respond
or read your your thoughts here, just you know, bear
in mind that we we we did read them. We
read everything that comes in, and we do appreciate you
sharing your thoughts with us. And likewise, if you didn't
you know, hit the deadline on this and you have
you have you have additional thoughts, well we'll send those in.
Anyway we may return to We won't do a dedicated

(56:20):
listener mail on this topic again, but you know, we
may carve out the in portion of a future listener
mail episode to consider future emails related to the psychedelic
experience totally. And for that matter, I mean, we may
do future episodes about psychedelics because again, the research is ongoing.
We may see some some really cool studies in the
next year or two and we'll have no choice but

(56:42):
to return to them. So I mean, hopefully that's the case.
I hope. So I don't think we'll do another five
part series, but but you know it's something. Yeah, we're
we're we're fascinating. New avenues of of inquiry will continuously
pop up. Yeah, and the ultimately, I think it would
be fun to like what we do come back to it,
have like a single study to focus in on, Like
here's a new study, here's what they did, here's what

(57:03):
their their findings are, and and and here's what we
can we can clean from that. Oh yeah, I think
I already mentioned. One that came up in the episode
we didn't get into in depth was like the research
on adult personality change. I imagine if more stuff comes
out about that, maybe we'll explore that in a future episode. Yeah,
all right. In the meantime, if you want to check
out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head
on over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(57:24):
And if you want to support us and support the show,
the really the best thing you can do, Rate and
review us wherever you have the power to do so,
and make sure you've subscribed not only to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, but also our other show, Invention, which
is uh his is a study of human history via
the various inventions that we have concocted. Yeah, if you're
not subscribed, why not subscribe to invention. Subscribe to Invention.

(57:47):
Subscribe to Invention. Robert, you're gonna join. Subscribe to invention.
Subscribe to invention. You have subscribe to Invention. Subscribe to Invention.
Subscribe to Invention. Okay, that's enough. Uh well, anyway, so
thanks to our excellent audio producer say Maya Cole. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, uh, to suggest

(58:07):
a topic for the future, or just to say hello
and all that kind of stuff, you can email us
at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios.
How stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio

(58:30):
is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.