Mike McBay: Navigating the External World

E406 Mike McBay remembers a young Martin Luther King, Jr. was a frequent family house guest when he was a kid. Mike had groundbreaking and barrier-breaking academic parents. He suffered childhood trauma and has memories of alien abduction. He had a career in medicine cut short by addiction (he’s sober now), is a karate practitioner, […]

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
- Hey humans.
How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey Human Podcast.
This is episode 406, andmy guest is Michael Mcbe.
Mike has quite a story.
His childhood wasintense to say the least.

(00:28):
Academic parents, anoverbearing father, abuse
and, uh, the PTSD and, andproblems that arose from that.
A frequent house guest wasDr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
His father was a tutor for Dr. King,
and that was a reallyinteresting part of the story.
Mike went on to have a career in medicine,

(00:50):
but it was cut short by hisaddiction stemming from a lot
of the trauma he suffered as a kid.
Uh, he learned how to center his mind
and self through karate
and is still a practitionerof that to this day.
He's sober. He has been for over a decade.
He's a bassist, a musician, a founder.

(01:11):
I shouldn't say bassist and musician,
every basis just rolled their eyes.
He's a bassist. His musician ship, uh,
has had him in many bands
and more specifically today,he is one of the founders
of Circle the Earth
and I'm gonna play alittle bit of their music
for you so you can hear.

(01:32):
Circle the Earth,
- Is that a train rail?
And recognize the coat she's wearing.
It once belonged to a girl, I loud,
and now the dirt is fallingand it comes without a warning.
It's raining down from the stars above,
but they just burn out pieces,ran out, faith and breathing.
Oh, that keeps some lady hat

(01:52):
another from Atlanta.
I fight the urge to answer

(02:19):
try.
I used to rev when the painstaying bad straight, kind
of missing this the way that take
when I'm looking in the mirror.
Wanna smash it with ahammer 'cause she's smiling
and I can't relate.

(02:40):
Ooh, another car from Atlanta.I fight the urge to answer
- Because- I'm in a,

(03:02):
- The,
- I don't feel anything hate way.
- I don't feel

(03:25):
hateful the way that
everything, but I

(03:46):
still try.
- And that was maniac on mute by circle,
the Earth Mic's band.

(04:07):
And they are touring,
they are doing all sortsof really fun stuff.
So I'll definitely put linkson the links page for you
to check out how to listento them and go see them live
and all that good stuff.
I really enjoyed the conversation.He is an fascinating guy.
I'm glad he is sober. That's, it's great.

(04:27):
And it sounds like heis really gotten to a,
a beautiful place in his life
and is on the upswing asthey say in other news.
I've got a Patreon now, it'sunder patreon.com/susan Ruth.
Please check that out.
I'm building a communitythere for he human
and all my other artistic endeavors.

(04:49):
I hope you'll be a part of it.
I'm going to keep this,hey, human ad free.
It helps to support that.
And I am going to havea book club on there
and do some musicalstuff and share writing
and just try to makethe Patreon family grow

(05:10):
and communicate with each other
and have it be a reallylovely artistic space.
So please check it out.
patreon.com/susan Ruth helpkeep this podcast going.
Help keep Art going for the independence.
Uh, so yeah, okay, uh, general stuff.
Check out hey human podcast.com for links.

(05:33):
And to learn more about my guests
and the show, check out susanruth.com to learn about me
and my other artistic endeavors.
Follow Susan Ruths and hey,human podcast on social media
and find my albums on Spotify,apple Music, Amazon music,
wherever you get your musicrate review and subscribe to.
Hey, human podcast on iTunes

(05:53):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And thank you. Thank you for listening.
Be kind, be well, be love.
We are in a crisis ofhumanity all over the world
and it is a harrowing time,
I guess maybe it's alwaysbeen a harrowing time,
but we need each other and weneed our voices to be strong

(06:18):
and to speak out
and speak up for the people
that don't have a voice and who need us.
We're in this together, this,this planet, this human thing.
And I love you. And yeah, here we go.
Mike McVay, welcome to Hey human.
- Thank you for having me.- We have a mutual friend Chris

(06:39):
who suggested we chat.
Tell me where, where are youfrom? Where'd you grow up?
What was growing up like?
- I was born in Atlanta, Georgia,
and um, both of my parentswere college professors.
I grew up in the sixtiesduring the civil rights era.
My father was the first black American
to get a PhD in a gamt
chemistry from the University of Chicago.
My mother was the first BlackAmerican or any ethnic person

(07:02):
or woman to get a PhD in mathematics
or University of Georgia.
Then she went on to becomethe first female dean
and Black American deanof students at MIT.
So I grew up on Morehouse college campus
that my father taught.
He trained more black chemists
and PhDs than anybody in the country, even
to this day, even though he is dead.
So my entire background was academic.

(07:22):
Uh, there was a lot ofpressure on me to perform.
They dressed me up like Urkel
and sent me to allblack elementary school.
I got beat up a lot. I got ascholarship to attend Atlanta.
Georgia's last private white high school
where I got beat up a lot
and my dad beat me if I getanything less than an A.
So I had a lot ofphysical abuse as a child
and that made me low, gaveme a very low self-esteem.

(07:43):
I felt it was as though I deserved this.
Like something was wrong withme. That's all was happening.
Martin Luther King was a student
of my dad used to cometo my house for dinner.
I went to elementary school with his kids.
They used to bring pieces of bombs to show
and tell pieces of artillery that was shot
through the window to show and tell.
That's the era that I grew up in.
- What was it like, uh, growingup with the civil rights

(08:05):
movement, literally in yourliving room, especially knowing
that you weren't feeling veryliberated in your own home
because you had all thispressure scholastically.
- Exactly. Mm mm-Hmm .
It was, uh, interesting.
I started to, um, compartmentalize
my true feelings and the external world

(08:28):
and academic demandsof the external world.
Uh, I was in second grade
and a girl sent me a ring
and a letter and asked me to marry her
and I left it at my books andmy dad found it and beat me.
And he said, this willdistract you from academics.
You must never, it was, itwas very confusing for me.
, I got a straight A's

(08:49):
though I tell you that .
- That's awful. I'm so sorry.
That happened to you before he died.
Were you able to talk to him about
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. I worked on that.
So later in my life Ibecame addicted to crack
and alcohol for quite a long time.
I'm sober for 14 years now.
But all of that had to do with, uh, PTSD

(09:09):
and sexual confusion
and all the things that,that I went through
as a child. I'm sure.
- Were you sexuallyassaulted as well as a kid?
- No, not, I was not sexually assaulted.
- Alright. Is it just you or only child?
- Uh, one younger brother.- Did he have the
same thing to endure?
'cause sometimes in thefamily, the parent, no.
- Yeah. Not at all.

(09:30):
'cause I was like, theexperiment, you know, so they,
they beat him a lot less
and he was a lot more normal than me.
I was pretty wild and hewas a lot more normal.
So he, by the time he wentto, he went to the same
exclusive white highschool that I went to,
but I already integratedit, so, so the opposition

(09:51):
to him was much less
that he start, I went to the high school.
He started there in elementary school.
So it was, they, they had,
those people had not learnedthe porosity of prejudice
to the extent that the highschool students had already.
So he didn't face it anywherenear the backlash that I did.
Have you ever seen show freshprincipal Bel Air? Yes. Okay.
I'm, I'm fresh Prince and he's Carlton.

(10:12):
It's exactly like that. Okay.
- . That'sa good reference point.
Did you have a sense of justice as a kid,
especially since you were being beaten?
Um, did you speak outfor justice as a child
or were you traumatized thepoint where you were quiet?
- I sought refuge in, um, in music as,

(10:35):
as I started playing musicin high school as an outlet.
And I started martial arts inhigh school as a way of, uh,
I first did it forrage, the wrong reasons,
but that was the reasonI, how I started it.
And, uh, I, my parents werereally dedicated to education
for minorities and Ilearned that from them.
And so I emulated them in that respect.

(10:57):
Uh, education is my opinion, the way out
and academic performance
and quality of educationto my point of view
or the absolute reasonfor the different, the,
for the continuing differentialin the accomplishments
of minorities in the United States.
- What do you think needsto be done for that?
- That's impossible to figure out. Man.

(11:17):
Thousands of dollars need to be
poured in the educational system.
Integration needs to happen.
They need to stop payingbasketball players millions
of dollars to throw a ball
and teachers hundreds ofthousand dollars to teach people.
I mean, the fundamental changes are so,
so deep it'll never happen.
I think every professional athlete should
sponsor 10 teachers. 20 teachers.
- That's a great idea. Crazy.- Millions of dollars to,

(11:39):
- There's a key in Peelsketch that's so great.
And it's the draft only, it's for teachers
and it's such a poignant sketch.
- That's, I like, I need to see that.
- Yeah, I'll send it toyou. It's quite good.
Do you have any fondmemories of, about Dr. King?
- Yeah. Yeah. He was havingdifficulty in organic
chemistry and .
I saw my dad would tutor him

(11:59):
and try to give him time off
to go do his, uh, demonstrations.
It was interesting he, to seea man in that stature have
to ask my dad for permissionto miss class so he could go
and save the world.
It was pretty cool.. Beautiful person.
- Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
What happened when youheaded off to college?
- Well, okay, let me tell you this.

(12:20):
So I'm 10 years old
and little beings of lightstart coming into my wall
and I'm like five actually.
And floating me out into a ship and back.
And I'm told my parents about it.
And they told me that thatwas just my brain forming
and they were justhallucinations that weren't real.
So I believed that. And thensometimes I would ask them
to let me sleep in between them

(12:40):
'cause I was so tired ofthese people taking me out.
And they come in the room,leave my parents asleep,
float me out the ship and back.
And that happened. Um, evenwhen my brother was in my room,
he would sleep and they'd float me out.
No one believed me. AndI assumed that none of
that was real until I went to Stanford.
Stanford was a radical changefrom the way I grew up.

(13:00):
I grew up with peoplewho were still trying
to figure out if evolution was real,
if black people werehuman, things like that.
And I walked into Stanford's campus
and was the complete opposite,uh, vastly integrated.
I saw Asians for the first time
and Stanford was doingresearch and remote viewing,
and they were teachingextraterrestrial civilizations like
its biology or mathwith the reality of it.

(13:22):
And all of that expanded my mind.
And I had some furtherparanormal experiences in college
that, uh, demonstratedto me the absolute truth
of some spiritual stuff that came later.
So it was a mind blowinglyexpansive experience going there.
- Do you have any recollections of
what would happen onceyou were taken from your
home into the ship?

(13:45):
- Just in just instruction.
Instruction and preparation
for some challenges later inlife is all I can remember.
And that they would be with me guiding me
and, uh, observing me the whole time.
- Do you feel that some
of your addiction issues hawere correlated with that?
Or is that something different?
- That's something I'vealways thought about.
I think that my addictionissues are correlated with my,

(14:08):
well, couple things.
My grandfather was a ComancheIndian who was an alcoholic,
so has some genetic predisposition.
And now that I look at it,I think that my parents
academic excellence was just a
socially acceptableexpression of addiction too.
So I think I have this strong genetic
component from both of them.

(14:31):
Actually, when I tookcare of my mom later,
she smoked obsessively.
I never seen her smokeduring her regular life,
but when I took care of her in dementia,
she smoked excessively.
So I think there's a genetic contribution.
There is a psychiatriccontribution from the
abuse that I had.
And some of the pressures
of the emergency room residencyI went in when I was in med
school at King also contributed to it.

(14:52):
And just rebellion and,
and wanting to experiencethe things of childhood
and adolescence thatdidn't get to experience.
And a strong componentreally of spiritual seeking,
just in the wrong direction.
- Did you feel that any ofthe information given to you
when you were taken, did thathelp you at all along the way?

(15:15):
Or was it too hard toremember in the moment?
- It didn't register with methat it could be a possibility
until I took the, I I justthought it was some childhood
fantasies until I took extra stressful
civilizations class at Stanford.
And they, it's taught byaward-winning physicists
who are actually doing research.
They can't tell you this,but they're actually doing

(15:36):
research on the recoverytechnology and all that.
And it was mind blowing.
And they, these are world tola physicists
with multiple patents and, and,
and electrical engineering and physics.
The class is very systematic.
It talked about the historyof abduction phenomenon,
the history of the visitations,

(15:57):
how they go back in history,how they're happening now.
And that over the nextfi this is the 1972,
and over the next 50to a hundred years, we,
we would see gradual disclosure.
The fact that you're takingthis class means you have some
serious interests in the topic.
So we can't teach it all to you now
'cause it's not beingdisclosed to the public yet.
But just keep reading, keep your eyes open
and you'll see a gradualdisclosure was how the class was,

(16:19):
uh, structured.
And when they talked aboutthe abduction phenomenon,
how it runs in families
and how it involves kids,um, thought back to my past
and oh, that maybe that really happened.
The life-changing event
for me spiritually occurred as follows.
They also teach a class,
they also teach a class called
ultra states of consciousness.
And they are doingresearch and remote viewing

(16:39):
and telekinesis with a regaland ingle swan and all that.
And they have a neutrino detector buried
underneath the ground, twomiles under ground, surrounded
by a tank of water to, uh,
detect neutrinos coming from the sun.
And it's buried underground and shielded.
So it's to minimize theeffective electromagnetic
signals sent by humans, by people.

(17:01):
So they said to Ingle Swan,
if you really have these abilities,
maybe you can try movingthe nutri detector.
And he did that. So thephysicists that are running that,
uh, part of the research,they, they have TAs.
And the TAs are, uh, theyhave, uh, research assistants.
Those research assistantsare the TAs in our classes.

(17:22):
So they're leaking to us as undergraduates
for what's reallyhappening in the research.
So the campus is above about
how this man moved the trino detector.
And so the government poureda couple million dollars
of mon uh, funding intoStanford Research Institute
and they generate that research forward.
Okay. So my very get to thepoint, my very best friend,
his name is Fred, he is superbrilliant, uh, white guy,

(17:44):
eventually became, uh, directorof the family practice, uh,
wing of, uh, Mayo Clinic.
He's taking off the station'sconsciousness class.
And I'm taking all, uh,
extra professional civilizations class.
And we always talk aboutall the crazy stuff we hear.
And my sophomore year, he goes to
study at Stanford inEngland for the summer.
I stay at Stanford to do karate

(18:06):
and work in the psych department.
And one night I had thisdream and here we go.
In this dream, I'm in a vapor form.
I emerged from the ground.
I see blades of grass andlike they're like trees.
And as I assume human height,grass comes underneath me,
I see the tire tracksof treads of a car as I
assume human form next to the car.
I look around, there's nighttime,

(18:28):
I see a house with lights on.
The moon is out, the starsare out, the wind is blowing.
I go into the house. Insidethe house is a party.
I look around in the party, I see a girl
staring at me intently.
I haven't met in my life yet.
I turned to the left andthey're spread in the bedroom.
And I'm like, what areyou doing in my dream?
And he said, I think I'm asleep at in
England having a dream.
And you are probably asleep at Stanford.

(18:49):
We're having a shared dream experience.
And I said, this is not possible.
I'm just having a vividdream and you're in it.
He goes, no, I think this is
what they talk about in the author states
of consciousness class,uh, astrals travel.
I'm like, no, this is just a dream.
He goes, wherever we are, realityis controlled by the mind.
He waves his hand, the stars disappear,
the ceiling disappears,the stars come out,

(19:10):
he waves his hand andmakes the ceiling reappear.
He says, you try it. I'mlike, okay, I'll try it.
I 6, 7, 8 times 13, 14 timeI get the ceiling disappear.
Stars come out and he says, look here.
He opens the Chester drawersin the bedroom inside
of tiny little peoplewalking around getting in
and out of bunk beds.
I'm like, that's reallyweird. He goes, yeah.

(19:30):
He says, when I wake up, I'm gonna
write you a letter about this dream.
'cause there's no internet in those days.
I'm like, you can't write mea letter about this dream.
It's just a dream I'm having.
He says, I promise I'llwrite the letter. Okay, fine.
We shake hands a verticalWhirlpool appears,
his hand slips off in the whirlpool.
My dream goes on with musicand all this kinda shit.
And two weeks later,
'cause it's in those daysthat I got a letter from him

(19:51):
with pictures of the house,pictures of the ceiling,
pictures of the stars, picturesof bunk beds, the whirlpool.
Did you have this dream?And that changed my life.
When that happened to me, I realized
that probably extra stress was real.
Probably all the shit they'reteaching me is absolutely
true and I better figure it out.
And it's just something thatscience has not taught me yet.
It's not, it doesn't have to be anything
scary, although I was frightened.

(20:12):
I just spent the rest of mytime trying to figure that out.
It didn't stop me from doing drugs,
but it did lead me to a spiritual teacher
to some wonderful spiritual experiences
that formed the foundationfor my recovery later in life.
- When I was in highschool in ninth grade,
my best friend Diana andI practiced every day
after school to, we would take a nap
and we would try to getinto each other's dreams.

(20:33):
Wow. And we practiced every single night.
'cause we had read about it inbooks. Mm-Hmm. .
And we, it worked once.
- That's amazing. We
- Did it and we worked once
and we both woke up from the dream,
we're like, oh my God, we did it.
It was so cool.
- Beautiful. And you both
remembered it when you,when you woke up? Oh
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah. That's amazing dude. Yeah.

(20:54):
I'm, I'm so happy tohear that from somebody.
- Yeah, it was really cool.
So I, I do believe in that kind of thing.
Have you been visited as an adult?
- I don't have any. Here's the deal.
After childhood, I started to
after project into the atmosphere
and they would, during dreams,
then they would meet me on a ship

(21:14):
and tell me that from now on out,
the experiences wouldbe in the dream state
and I would be observed.
There wouldn't be anymore physical visitation.
So as an adult, no more,
- Does that bum you outor are you okay with that?
- No, I'm, I, I've handled,I have had about as much
as I can handle .
I dunno if I'd be readyfor that. An adult.
- How old were you when you started using?

(21:35):
- Was about, see over 14 years.So I stopped when I was 55.
I used for like 25 years.
So around 35, 33 around there.
- And that was a responseof, of internalized PTSD.
- Yeah. That and, uh, sexual confusion.
And I was in a reallyhigh intensity, uh, neural

(21:57):
surgical trauma rotation atMartin Luther King Hospital
was a level one trauma center.
And obviously a lot of blood,
a lot of death, a lot of pressure.
And when I did a, I justwas smoking to study,
smoking cracks and study.
But, um, the immediate reliefit gave me from the pressures
of work led me into addiction over,
over about a six month period.

(22:17):
- Had you wanna be a doctor,
was neurosurgery somethingyou were interested in?
- It was just a rotation I had to take
as an emergency room, uh, training.
- And when did things start to fall apart?
- Oh, dude, I'm strong. I laughed.
you, you, onone hand, they started
to fall apart in six months
when I stopped going to residency.
But I had my licensealready, so I just went out
and moonlighted and got high.

(22:39):
I I lasted a good 20 years
before I came to the attentionof the medical board.
'cause I was, well, that's not true.
I I came to the attention ofthe medical board within three
or four years, but I survivedand kept getting high
and dodging bullets for 20 years.
- Wow. How did you manage that?
- Really creative. Yeah. Just,yeah, just, yeah. I'm, yeah.
Using my creativity in the wrong way.

(23:01):
- And you mentioned sexualconfusion. What does that mean?
- Uh, I'm bisexual and I, and,
and coming to grips
with the homosexual part was really tough
because I grew up in Georgia in
those days it was really tough.
- Mm-Hmm. . Andalso my understanding is in
the, in the black culture also,
homosexuality is a big No-No uhhuh.
.

(23:21):
- Yeah. Yeah, definitely.Mm-Hmm. .
Yeah, definitely. But
- Do you feel more centered in that
- Now?
Absolutely. Yeah. I'm in Los Angeles
now, so it's a whole loteasier. Yeah, definitely.
- Yeah. Let's talk aboutkarate. What got you into that?
- Started karate in high school
because, uh, white chick hada crush on, started the class,

(23:43):
but once I started takingit, uh, it was a way for me
to express the rage from all the
physical abuse that I had been having.
And when I gotta Stanford,I lucked into a class
that was taught by aJapanese master who was also
had grips with the philosophical
and the spiritual aspects ofit, not just a karate teacher.

(24:04):
So after the third month,he pulled me to the side
and he said, he's Japanese, right?
He says, I can't teach youanymore. I'm like, why?
I come all the time. I trainextra. I could work on the bag.
Why you? And he said, I'mnot from this country.
He said, but from what I cansee, you just need to get a gun
and shoot some white peopleand get her over with .
- Oh my God. So he saw your rage.

(24:25):
- Yeah, Uhhuh. So hesaid, I can't teach you.
I can't promote this. You have
to take a month off atleast, and read these books.
And he gave me some Buddhistbooks and some spiritual shit.
And, uh, I came back
and said, please teachme again, I'll change.
And he did. And, uh, he, hewas like a second father to me.
I really, uh, embracedthe Asian philosophy.
That sounds racist, but,

(24:46):
but the philosophy, youknow, ethics and morality
and spirituality and how it's,uh, an expression of love,
not trying to hurt people.
And anyway, it really,yeah, it really helped me.
- It's a defensive art, notan offensive art. Correct.
- Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
And then I guess I get justas much satisfaction out of it
as I did outta drugs.

(25:07):
So it, early on I wassmoking marijuana all day,
every day in college.
But I figured I, I discoveredI couldn't do it high.
And that put a check onmy marijuana consumption,
which is an early expressionof my upcoming, you know,
my later on addiction.
So I, I didn't smoke until
after karate at night instead
of all day like I previously did.

(25:27):
And even to this day now,karate is a foundation
of my recovery, uh,spirituality and something that,
and karate and music giveme, uh, gratification
and fulfillment that I wasseeking through drugs before.
- Did you go to rehab
or were you able to quiteverything on your own?
- Oh, I went to rehab.I went to, I've been
to rehab probably six or eight times,
but the last time they,uh, the government,

(25:48):
the court put me into six months
of mandatory inpatient treatment.
And that got through to me.
And I never, never wentback braced the program
and let go of my ego after that.
And I realized that I, I,they took me away from music
and all this shit and karateand the stuff I loved.
So I went back and,uh, just stuck with it.
So I've been sober alittle bit over 14 years.

(26:09):
- How'd you support your habit that long?
- I was a doctor, dude.I, yeah, I, I'm a doctor.
I'm making money and partying.
- DI saw a clip once.
It's professor talking to a group
of first year med students,
and basically said that the,
the most addicted people arethe dentists, the doctors
and the lawyers.

(26:30):
They, they have the highest instance
of drug and alcohol abuse.
- Yeah. And out of thedoctors, the highest instance
of abuse are emergencyroom physicians, uh,
anesthesiologists and psychiatrists.
- So a lot of heavy liftingthat they have to bear.
Uh, I don't know, having not gone
through the education, I don't know.
But I would hope thatthey also teach ways to,

(26:54):
uh, let that stuff out of the person
that's holding that space.
- Mm-Hmm. ,unfortunately, that's not a major
part of the education, andat least not in those days.
I think these days thereprobably is the awareness of the
medical aspects and the treatmentaspects of drug addiction.
And it not being a character defect
or character flaws, the way they used

(27:16):
to pass judgment on it,has progressed to the point
that there are probably more, uh, classes
and education time spentto handling issues like
that than there were beforewhen I was in school.
- Did you lose your license over all of
- This?
Oh, definitely. Uhhuh, I surrendered it.
I say I surrendered it once, got it back,

(27:37):
surrendered it again, and now I
gotta try to get it back again.
Now I've been, Isurrendered it 10 years ago,
and I work in the medicalfield right up to the point
of making medical decisions,so it's still legal.
And so I'm still in itand still fluent in it,
but I have to take an exam
and just that I haven't had time to do it
because, uh, music hasreally taken over right now.
- Yeah. Let's, let's get into that.

(27:58):
You started doing music at ayoung age and, and kept going,
and that was anotherform of refuge for you.
- Absolutely, yes. Uhhuh, there was a band,
uh, the kids in myneighborhood played in a band,
put a band together, and it was the,
I heard it, it was like, great.
And I, my parents, I tooka couple of piano lessons,

(28:19):
but they wouldn't support me doing music.
So I had to figure out what could I teach
myself that'd be the easiest.
So Bass had four strings. Ifigured that'd be the easiest.
So I got my mom to get me bassplayed in a high school band.
And when I got to college, Imet a black guy who was like,
incredible, this, that,the college was amazing.
This guy had, his name is John Ivy,
he's a federal judge now.
He had scholarship in acting,a scholarship in music,

(28:42):
scholarship in academics,this kind of guy, right.
He was a keyboard virtue, also incredible.
He could play, he was likeJimi Hendrix on keyboards.
And I met him and westarted playing the band,
and he just taught me howto, how to, how to run a band
and how to do, how to arrangesongs, how to write songs, how
to rehearse, all thestuff I had no idea about.
And we actually pursuedmusic in Los Angeles for 20,

(29:03):
20 years in a progressiverock band called Taliman.
And I learned everything about how
to do a band from him.
And then eventually hewent back to law school
and became a federal judge now.
But I learned, I learnedeverything from him.
- And when did you getinto Circle the Earth?
Did you, are you one of the founders?

(29:24):
- I'm the founder ofCircle the Earth. Yeah.
I've been playing musicoriginally in Los Angeles
since 1976.
When I got here. I had a bandcalled Talisman for 20 years.
Then I switched, I met a guynamed Phil Van Ha on guitar,
and we switched to Commercial Rock.
That band was called Icebreaker.
I had, I discovered EricSinger, the drummer for Kiss.
Now, when he first gotinto Los Angeles from Ohio,

(29:45):
we played together for a year or so
before we went on to, uh,leader Ford and, um, David Boy,
and finally in Kiss.
And I played with ChrisPoland, the guitar player
who was eventually ended up in Mega Death.
Oh, wow. So I've run, yeah,I run across some star,
some future stars back in those days.
And then I stopped and gotinto drugs for a while,

(30:05):
and I met a girl namedCandace Aragon, who was a
pop rock singer songwriter,put together a band behind her.
She took off, and that band just told me
to just get another single,we keep going there.
That became, I putIcebreaker together again.
And then that changed in the Soul Rising.
And then that changed inthe Circle of the Earth.

(30:26):
I found The Circle of the Earthcurrently has been together
in its current lineup, two or three years.
But I've been with thedrummer, Sandra Feliciano,
who toured the world with TinaMarie and, uh, Lauren Hill.
I've been with him 14 years.
Next person was, uh, Lee SingerKaiya, who sang with Prince
and Imagine Dragons.
And after that was Sandy, uh, Chinese, uh,

(30:50):
keyboardist who played witha lot of famous Chinese
artists, I don't know who they are.
And finally, Zuki to Tokaji
and Guitar Virtue also,
I've been with him for two or three years.
And that's the currentlineup at this point.
We're, as of yesterday,we're changing lead singers,
but that's the lineup that people know.
- Yeah. All right. Andwhat else are you up to?
What are you doing? Howdo you stay focused?

(31:10):
How do you channel your spirituality into
your daily life?
- The experience with the dream with Fred
was only the beginning 12
or 13 episodes of
wild spiritual activityexperiences occurred to me
as my life progressed.
When I got here in Los Angeles,I ran into a, eventually

(31:31):
to a spiritual s teachernamed John Rogers.
He's dead now, but I studiedwith him for 30 years.
And the experiences ofthat were indescribable.
And so I do everythingto the best of my ability
from a spiritual point of view.
Now, I, I work full-timein, in a medical office
as a medical quality assurance officer,
where I make sure thecharts are up to date

(31:51):
and the billing is correct,
and the medical information,
support the billing is done and all that.
So I'm intimately involvedin practice of medicine,
although I'm not practicingas a physician legally, uh,
or, or illegally.
I'm not, you know, I'mjust doing, and I also, um,
do karate every single day.
I've been practicing karate every day
for a long time in my life,

(32:11):
but absolutely every day
for the last 14 years of my sobriety.
And that keeps me, that's atremendous stress relieve.
And I practice in a band, andit's, that's a fulfillment.
My life now is flourishing
and fulfilling in ways thatI could, I can't describe you
and spirituality pin it all together.
- Can you tell me one of the other 13 or,
- Yeah.
Okay. So I come to Los Angeles

(32:33):
and I've had this dream at Stanford.
I'm like, okay, here's la. It's very wild.
And they have all these,uh, fringe spiritual groups.
So I get a book, I, I met a guy,
uh, who was a friend of mine.
I said, let's, I'm goingon a spiritual search.
You wanna go? He go,okay, I'm gonna, I said,
I'm from Stanford, Iknow how to do research.
So I got a fucking notebook.

(32:54):
I bought the whole lifetimes,
and I went to every singlespiritual organization, A
through Z in Los Angeles.
Over a two year period,90%, you know, normal.
A lot of bullshit, a lotof take your money, a lot
of this kind of stuff, a lot of fluff.
Or a third of the way through the study,
I go into a meeting onFairfax, on, sorry, on Melrose,

(33:16):
in Fairfax, in,
there's like 24 middleclass white people sitting
around, all middle aged.
And so there's three women.One is all dressed black robes.
One of 'em is, uh, older.
One of 'em is fat woman, andone of 'em is young woman.
They all, and they standup at a podium, point
to somebody in the room,and they go sell your car.
Oh, go ahead and get the new job.

(33:36):
Oh, call your sister inAlbuquerque, pass a hat,
put money in the hat and move on.
So me and my friend, well check,
this is another bullshit, right?
So the meeting ends, we get up to leave
and the young woman gets upand she says, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. Everybody sit down.
I need to talk to, I got inthe back and points at me.
And I never seen thisperson in my god damn life.
She said, you are here
because you are trying to decidebetween science and music.

(33:59):
She said, I see all thisphysical abuse in your life.
You're estranged from yourfather's side of the family.
I see him beating you. Isee him, uh, loving you,
but not expressing it in the right way,
causing you great pain.
She goes, you really wanna know whether
to do science or music?
She says, I'm looking.
Um, she says, I see all thishard work. I see all this.
She said, I see more musicthan I've ever seen than any

(34:22):
person I've ever givena reading for before.
You need to call your brother right now.
There's something wrong. Uh, someone
with the initial P isgonna come along and,
and help you on your search.
And I just see all this work.I just see all this music.
You just might get it.
I just, it's so far away, I can't tell.
And I hope that helps you.I went home, called my mom.

(34:43):
My brother had a nervousbreakdown that morning at Prince,
so that, that happened.
So we checked, okay,cool, let's keep going.
So we went on to the, andthere some more stuff after.
- Wow. That's intense. Didhe recover all right? Yeah.
Yeah, he did. Are youclose with your brother?
- He is dead now, but,and we were not close.
We were like, we're the opposite.
Like Carlton and Presh friends.

(35:04):
We tried to, I tried tomake amends with him as much
as I could, but to me, to, tohim, I'm insane doing music,
doing drugs, you know,
he's never had a tra never hada traffic ticket in his life.
Complete opposite. He loved me.
- How did he pass?- Uh, he,
dude was found dead in anextended stay hotel room
with blood, with blood on the bed, so,

(35:24):
and blood in the toilet.
So I think he probably had GI cancer.
Didn't tell anybody it, andbled out. That's my best guess.
- Oh, that's awful. What's his name?
- Ronald Mcbe. Ronald.
- Well, I'm so sorryabout that. About that.
It, it's hard, you know,when people pass away
and we don't get the chance to have that
connection and say, Mm-Hmm, .

(35:45):
Mm-Hmm. , I seeyou for everything you are,
and you see me for everything I am.
And we're all just doing the best we can.
- We had that on an unspokenlevel, semi but unspoken level.
- Mm mm-Hmm. .Is your mom still with us?
- No, no. My, okay.
So my mom started a com
after MIT she started acompany called Quality
Education for Minorities.

(36:06):
And they got money from Rockwell,nasa, the government, to
iso to identify minoritygeniuses in poverty situations
and with, with, uh, talentfor math and science.
Pull 'em out of there, stick'em in a dormitory, pay
for their educationand turn 'em into PhDs.
So she did. That was the, uh,crowning work of her life.
It was very successful,tremendously successful.

(36:29):
And, uh, then she developed dementia.
So she got, uh, she, she wasn'tgonna let go of the program
until she found somebody to take over.
So she found a qualified blackguy from the outgoing Obama
administration, installedhim as her successor,
and then came to, uh, Las Vegas
and then Los Angeles to, to,
to be, for me to take care of her.
My brother called me andsaid, you're sober now.

(36:50):
Uh, I trust you.
Do you wanna move back tothe condominium you used
to be in and live with mama?
Take care of her. So I said, sure.
So I, I went back to the condominium.
We had, I took care of my mom
for the last three years of her life.
I took her to karate, Itook her to rehearsals.
I let her, I took her to work.
She saw me, she got to seeme completely recovered. Oh,
- That's nice.
- Yeah. Yeah. She died in my arms.

(37:11):
Basically came back toearth just in time. .
- Yeah, I get that for sure.
, what do you believe in God?
- Here we go. There's my scientific,
there's not even belief.
My scientific data indicates
that there is a beautiful loving God.
It's the same one behind all religions.
We're just stupid peoplespeaking French and English

(37:34):
and turns to the eastand turns to the right.
Same exact God reincarnationand absolute fact spirituality
and absolute underpinning of everything.
And there are actually huge,
tremendously giftedspiritual masters walking
around like all the time.
Super rare. One out ofa million to 2 million.

(37:54):
But definitely ally giftedpeople with a mastership
exist, very rare, but they exist.
And, and for me, studyof guys like science
or anything else, you gotta be open to it.
Gotta pursue it, gotta readabout it, gotta look for it.
And for me, you know, it'sdifferent for different people.
For me, it came to methrough active search.

(38:16):
- Yeah. I see miracleseverywhere. . Mm-Hmm.
- . Mm-Hmm.- . Yeah.
That's really lovely.So what's next for you?
Where, where are you heading next?
- Okay. At this point,I've got a fair degree
of notoriety with Circle the Earth.
It's really, uh, beyond mywildest dreams coming together.

(38:36):
And I had to change lead singer.
I've been with her for eightyears. It was a beautiful ride.
It was really tough, but Ihave to change it's time for us
to, to her to move on and me to move on.
And we just came to thatagreement last night.
So now I am in this.
And the beautiful thing isthat when I, when I ask God
to fill these void, it'sdone in a very beautiful way.

(38:58):
So I'm nervous and scared,
but I'm also excited forwhat's gonna happen next.
So I'm looking for a, a stateof the art, uh, lead vocalist
who have a single, uh,new video coming out on
a couple weeks, just released a single,
we've recorded six singles,so three more coming out,
got an EP coming out
and working with top of, top of the

(39:21):
line videographer, Henry Lipitol,
producer Eric Ron, songwriter.
Lauren Christie did, uh, complicated
for Abel Levine, the whole .
I'm working with top fivepeople. It won't be a problem.
I just gotta find somebody, uh, incredible
and move and take the next step.
Very energetic, very intelligent,very melodic pop rock
with an underlying message of positivity,

(39:42):
but without mentioninganything spiritual at all.
So it's, uh, it's kind
of like Paramore heart,Starship too close to touch,
you know, I'm dated, so myreferences are older. Those
- Are good references for sure.
- Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's,it's, it's really good music.
- That's great. Well, I'm excitedfor you. That's wonderful.

(40:04):
Do you have, um, any kind of message
for the listening audiencethat you want to impart?
- Sure, absolutely.
If you are struggling withaddiction, there is a way out.
There is absolutely a way out.
And life after it is beautiful.
And if, if I can recover,anybody can recover.
'cause I was really badat really, really bad.
I wanna say that it's thesame God, the same, loving,

(40:26):
all knowing, merciful God
behind all religions, all of them same.
And that, uh, the human souls were united.
We just seem to be separated.
The analogy my spiritualteacher taught me was
that we're like islands in an ocean.
You drain the water. It'sall the same landmass.
It just looks like we're separate.
And, uh, that's basicallythe message I wanna get back.

(40:49):
Just, it's all about love and positivity
and karma and good intentions.
All the, you know, the basic common
sense stuff that, you know.
- Do you think that we, uh,
as a whole are gonna find our way again?
- Ultimately, yes. Butit is, you know, it's
with tremendous difficulty along the way.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you so much fortaking time to talk with me.

(41:12):
- Dude, this has been beautiful.
I really appreciate your time.Thank you, ma'am. Very much.
- I hope I get to meet youin, in person over at Chris's,
maybe, or Oh
- Yeah.
You're in Santa Monica. Yeah, sure.
I'm gonna train in SantaMonica at six o'clock.
- Uh, you train here?
- Yeah. Uh, I go to two karate schools.
One is called Avi Rochaon Pico and, uh, Roberton.
I do that Monday throughThursday for sparring.

(41:32):
And then I do, uh, technical
and cardio at, uh, if at JKA,
Santa Monica on Wilson fifth Street.
- Oh, lemme know. We'llgrab coffee or something.
- Oh, I'd love to. Sure.- Okay. Cool.
Thank you for listening everybody. Bye.
- Thank you.

(41:52):
- Rate review and subscribe toHey, human Podcast on iTunes,
Spotify, iHeart, whereveryou get your podcasts.
Thanks. Bye.