September 2, 2024 • 43 mins
Today’s episode of the Daily Bespoke Podcast features a special guest, Norman Ohler, the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter. Norman is renowned for his New York Times bestseller, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, and his latest book, Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. In this episode, Norman delves into the fascinating subjects of his books, shares how LSD is aiding his mother’s struggle with dementia, and explores the missteps society has made in its perception of certain drugs.
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yesh yet it is the third of September and the
year of Our Lord, twenty twenty four. Welcome all you
bespoke you Donkies the Daddy Bespoke Podcast. You'll notice that
I did that Let's get busy in German.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Is that what that was? Yeah, it's weird. I thought
it was Dutch. No, it was German.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I did that in German because we're going alive to
Berlin to talk to Norman Euler, who's the the writer,
the author of the New York Times best selling book
Blit's one of my favorite books of all time about
meth and petamine use and drug use and by Hitler
and the Nazis. It's great book. If you haven't read it,
(01:06):
it's really really interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It's one of those books that I bought and then
I read it, and then I recommended it to one
person and then I just haven't had that book back.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It's just kind of circulating through people.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
They were giving it to someone else, and they're giving
it to someone else, and it is it's very very interesting.
It's actually but it kind of makes everything makes sense
with the with how the Nazis behaved with theirs and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think it's also quite interesting, Jerry, you would have
found it fascinating as well, I suppose, but also outside
of the nazis just what Germany as the country was
up to in that time before the Third Richer.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
She was all on over there, oh ship, Yeah, everyone's
on what was the myth called? It was, yeah, perverting
storm storm purpose furtherton, I mean, and what the Purvertin
would do was basically myth, and all the army was
on it, and everyone was on it and helped them
(02:01):
march right through the night, and the pans of division
tanks could just roll on and roll on, and then
everyone arrived at the same time with the Luftwaffer, and
that became their strategy of arriving at the same time.
But it was kind of because they were all on
myth so they could travel very fast. And then I
think they named the strategy after it after the Panza
(02:21):
division had traveled all night on myth and arrived at
the same time as the planes.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And interestingly, like myth in modern terms, things went south
quite quickly and ended up completely having a poser by
the end of it. When you don't have it rough
on the people coming down off.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
It, well, they were fighting on the East and Front
against the Russians in the middle of winter.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Like I watched, I had the myth. Now, so were
they taking it in pill form? It was like a
little yeah, just kind of pills that people were popping.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
The book's really interesting. But he's got this new book
out called Tripped, and that's about acid use by the
Nazis and or their intention to use acid as a
truth serum and the CIA as well, and the dawn
of the psycholatolic age and a look into how acid
can help with Alzheimer's and depression anxiety in PTSD. And
(03:17):
there's a lot in there about microdosing.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
There's a lot of a lot about this and this
sort of stuff nowadays. Yeah, happening for a while at
Johns Hopkins University with yes, psilocybin studies and all sorts
of stuff. And there's one going on in New Zealand
as well.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah. Well, in this book Tripped, Norman Oiler talks about
how acid studies was completely shut down and that was
part of Nixon's attempt to discredit hippies in the wake
of their anti anti Vietnam War rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Really made acid the focus of that, you know, in slamming.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Them, just in terms of a logistical standpoint, Medie, I
see that it's your zoo that you've set up, so
you might have to crank that up on your phone
just quietly. One of those situations where the host has
got to be in the meeting before we can talk
to Norman Lappet homemade.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You saw how smoothly the Edmond went with my Ricky Morris.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And the other That wasn't that good?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
That was the smoothest admin of all time? One one
text coming this time all done, he arrived on time.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's credit. That's credits to Ricky Morris. That wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It was smoothest silk. That's how you do Edmunds. This
is classical.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
No, this is an absolute disaster.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
That's not a disaster. It's okay.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Why he shouldn't be doing edmund It's okay, it's it's
not okay, it's not okay. All right, you should be panicky.
What's past it's not going to work to be able
to talk to.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
One three.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
One two three four one two. That's just before we
do it. I just need to just double check that
I'm getting the pronunciession of this right, because the worst
thing you can ever do is pronounce some of his name.
So here we go, tope on how to pronounce o
h l e R holler in Germany? In German? Here
we are all ller, you said, voice? Who is that Norman?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Or oh that was a longer one are you spelling?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Orler h l e r.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Like that? Or because there's a bit more of an
oiler in there, or if you go quickly, or yeah,
this is getting dangerous. I can feel it. There's too
much pressure on the name already. I can feel it.
You have much luck over the many.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh my god, Zoom is trying to double check me.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Oh this is as so it should is it double authenticating?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Sorry, guys, that would be sorry.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Okay, like just fucking kill me.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
This is why.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
This is why Skype shipped the bed, because Scott started
doing thing. So that's what it was too difficult to
sign in. Just let me sign on, Just let me
father bitch up.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You really, by the way, we could come through it
any point now, okay, all right, at any.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Point the normans Norman Orler. Okay, here we go, Here
we go, Here we go. We're coming up.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We got Okay, here we go one time code one
five six five one five and we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Okay, we're in. That's good. Hopefully we can connect here.
Oh god, I'm Norman.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh no, no, starting starting the meeting. I'm absolutely the meeting.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I'm loving this. This is so good. Okay, there's another
problem on the way through here. No, you don't hope
that there's another problem.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Come on join?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Why won't not let me join? Okay?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay, so the meeting started? Has the meaning started for you?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Hosters joined, We've let them know that you're here, and
Matt's twirly wheel joined with computer audio.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
How are you sorry, Norman? That that was completely an
absolute organizational mess up from me, and so sorry for
the delay getting through to you.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It's classic Matt Norman. Obviously you have met Matt before,
but that's just classic Matt Edmund right there. Where do
we find you this morning? Well, nighttime, your time? I imagine.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
In a small town in Germany called spy Blucoln.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
What part of Germany is that?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
In southwest French border south.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I went to a place called Freiburg once, which is
maybe not too far away from where you are.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Oh three hours, but also in the southwest of Germany.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Beautiful goodness me, that's a wonderful part of the world.
Did you know when you'd finished writing Blitz that it
was going to be such a massive success, it was
going to be a MESSI.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Is this pre pre interview?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
We were sorry, we're already interviewing.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You, all right, okay, well, actually sorry. While I was
sitting While I was sitting in the most boring room
in Germany, which is the reading room of the Federal
Archives in a town called Koblin, because Germany is the
decentralized country, so the federal archive is actually not in
Berlin's and some small towns. I was sitting there and
(08:32):
I was looking at the actual notes of Hitler's personal physician,
Theo Morrel, and no one had looked at his notes
before for some strange reason, because Hitler is like the
most examined person in German history. While I was reading
these notes and they was so interesting, I realized that
(08:53):
this book actually is going to be of interest to
other people as well. So it was not a lead
the price because it was kind of interesting for me
to research it. So I thought, if it's so interesting
for me to research. It's probably also interesting for people
to actually read it.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You know, you say it's the most boring room in
the entire world, but there must be moments when you
come across notes like that, and and also there's a
bit and tripped as well. When you're going through these
archives and seeing these things. It must be incredible to
see these documents and read it. That must be a
huge buzz.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I mean, the room is boring, so that the architecture
of the room and the design of the it's a
very These archives are very uninsuming. But obviously the big
contrast is what you find in the documents if you
are lucky enough to find something, so that that contrast
is quite thrilling. That's why I actually like archives. They're
(09:52):
one of my favorite places because they're really they bring
you very close to the to the truth in a way,
because you're handling the original. You're not just reading what
some other person has written down. You know, you're not
you're not recycling stuff. You're actually looking at at sources
and then you know, come up with your own narratives.
(10:15):
So our archives are great.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Actually, well that's interesting, isn't it, Because most history books
are just people reading other history books and then pulling
together other history books and writing a book based on
other books, as opposed to what you do, which was
go to the source.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Well, I'm not a historian, not a trained historian in
any case. I'm I'm a writer. I'm a novelist. Actually,
I invent things. So when I decided to write my
first non fiction book, which is Blissed, I thought that,
you know, the proper ways to go to the archives.
I thought every historian does that. And then after spending
weeks and weeks and weeks in the archives, never meeting
(10:52):
a history and I realized that actually historians don't do
that because it's very time consuming. So my my out
of the box of approach was was kind of fruitful
in this in this in this case at least, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Let's you discuss the huge amount of myth the Nazis
were on. What's the Nazi connection to Acid?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Well, the Nazis were very paranoid people, and that paranoia
that everyone is against them and that the enemy is everywhere.
That feeling got stronger as the war went on. Because
the war, you know, obviously it didn't go well for
the Nazis, so they suspected that, you know, they're more traders,
(11:40):
like in their own ranks. And then they had the idea,
the the Gestapo and the SS had the idea to
develop what they call the truth drug. They were they
were very interesting drugs from the beginning. And when when
the tag was burning in nineteen thirty three and then
it was a suspect, a Communist suspect, they already gave
(12:03):
this person drugs to kind of get all the secrets
out of him. So they tried to perfect that that
that third that they try to actually find the truth drug,
like a drug you give to someone and then that
someone will tell you everything he or she knows without
you know, being able to hold anything back. So that
in nineteen forty three when also the assassination attempts again
(12:27):
sit there were on the rise. I mean it wasn't
just one, it was like many attempts on his life.
So he especially became extremely paranoid and saw great as everywhere.
So the search for the truth drug was coming all
the way from you know, the order was coming all
the way from the top. So what could be the
(12:47):
truth drug? Masculine was a candidate they started and they
as started to do tests with masculine in the concentration
camp of Daha. They gave they that put a little
they put drops of masculine and coffee and then gave
that to inmates and then when you know, the drugs
(13:09):
started to work, they would then the AS officer would
then say things like, I think, you know, I know
that you are having very strange thoughts right now because
I can actually be into your mind right now, and
I think it's better if you reveal everything you know.
So they were trying to develop kind of brainwashing techniques
(13:32):
like that. The problem with masculine was that it's it's bitter,
so it's not so easy to give it to someone
without that person knowing. So they were on the look
for better truth truth drugs. And then forty three, as
we all know, LSD was discovered in Switzerland, which is,
you know, quite close to Germany. And what I found
(13:54):
in the archives of the pharmaceutical company that discovered LSD
would his sounds a Swiss company. They'll see all was
best friends with the leading Nazi biochemist Richard Kuhn, So,
the Swiss CEO Artwa Stoler, and the German biochemist Richard Kuhn.
(14:14):
They had been friends for in since the twenties. They
had been exchanging all their research because they had had
the same teacher, which was Richard bridge At, a Jewish
German biochemist who won the Nobel Prize, and he had
these two, these two students that were outstanding. One was Stole,
who became pharmaceutical CEO in Switzerland and the other one
(14:36):
became Hitler's favorite biochemists. So, you know, they changed in
the twenties and early thirties. Was harmless, I mean, it
was just exchange between scientists. But in forty three when
Stole you know, messaged to Kuhn that in Battle they
had found this mysterious substance that they call LSD lazergic
(14:58):
acid the ethylmite, which working very intensely on the mind.
But they don't really know what it is because the
company didn't know in the beginning what LSD was good for.
They had Cood in Heidelberg in charge of developing a
truth drug for Pitler became very interested in it, and
he actually got sent material from Basil. And then the
(15:21):
Nazis had LSD, and because the Nazis had LSD and
became interested in it and testing it. Then also in Dakhau.
The Americans became interested in LSD when they liberated Dakhau
and found the SS reports on these tests and inmates
with psychedelic molecules.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Did it work?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Is there any truth serum? Does any truth smer serum exist?
And did LSD work as a truth serum at all?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
The Nazis weren't sure because they had just started the
tests and then you know, they lost the war and
they couldn't continue with the research. So these these initial
reports but that s S did, were then evaluated by
the Americans by a Harvard professor who was the advisor
(16:14):
to the American military. Beacher was his name, Professor Beecher,
and he wrote that LSD could very well become such
a truth drug if applied properly, you know, to unwitting unwittingly,
and with the uh you know, proper questionings and interrogation,
(16:35):
you know techniques. So he wrote reports that he called
h reports on ego depressant drugs, because that is what
LC actually does. It depresses the ego, which means the
place in the brain that kind of creates our reality
and kind of lets us function in day to day life.
(16:57):
Receives less energy when a person is on all the
and other parts of the brain actually become more active.
This is this is actually the beauty of LSD. But
if you want to use lstin in a negative way,
you could. The Americans thought it depresses the egos of
the person becomes less secure in his or her thinking,
and that is actually true, you know, because your brain
(17:19):
opens up to other possibilities, and if someone would be
very skilled, like a policeman or an intelligence officer, he
or she could try to, you know, use that situation
to his or her advantage. But you know, LSD is
it's not really a fool proof truth serum at all
(17:39):
because usually it's just you know, people can't really be
interrogated anymore like they do to develop their own thoughts.
They you know, they they realize what situation they are in.
So it never really worked. It was promising for the
intelligence uh services, first the Nazis and then the Americans,
(18:00):
but it's never really worked as a truth theorem because
it's actually quite the opposite. I mean, it is a
truth theorem in the way that it actually lets you
the more, lets you see your own situation more clearly.
But it's not a truth theorem in a sense that
someone can give it to you and then manipulate you.
(18:20):
That never really worked with LSD, and it actually took
the Americans like ten years to find that out.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So what happened after that in terms of the therapeutic
research of eliots day.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
When Sanders first discovered in forty three, they were very
curious about how they could use it. And the first
thing they did was they created an intoxication room within
the company and they invited everyone working for the company, bookkeepers, chemists,
the CEO, managers, you know, everyone who worked for this
(18:57):
big company could go into the intoxication room, take and
then kind of talk about the experiences to a secretary
who was typing everything up. And these reports that I
all read and that I that I quote in tripped.
They were very positive, like people really loved the experience.
They said, for the first time, I feel very connected
(19:22):
with nature, with myself, I realized my position in life.
And I mean all these things that we also experienced today,
they were experienced for the first time in nineteen forty three.
So the company thought there's a I mean, the company
was thinking that maybe they have a game changer. In
their hands in terms of mental health, because this was
(19:45):
World War Two, millions of people were traumatized. There were
no medicines available at the time. There were no anti depressants,
antipsychotics like we unfortunately, I say, but I mean we
have them today, but at the time that was not so.
They thought maybe LSD is that is that thing. And
there was very serious LSD research until basically the mid sixties,
(20:12):
when when LSD was most made illegal by the US government.
There was there was the negative or the CIA research
which was trying to utilize it for the for the
good of the CIA or the good of the military
abusing LSD, I would say. And on the other hand,
(20:33):
that was always until the mid sixties, the research that
was trying to figure out could this be turned into
a medicine? Is this actually healthy to take LSD? Is
this a brain food? Is this good for our brain?
Because it does reduce neuroinflammation, which is the chief cause
for mental illness and dementia, And neuroinflammation is reduced by LSD.
(20:57):
It increases neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain
to reorganize itself according to the situation it finds itself
in so there was always a lot of very hopeful
LSD research until that was blocked by the American President Johnson,
(21:18):
and only recently LSD research has been allowed again. So
we're basically back at the back at square one, trying
to figure out how we can actually use this for
mental health and not for some manipulation or brainwashing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Why was that a banned by the American government? What
were they trying to do with banning it.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
I mean, if we look at why drugs are banned,
especially in the United States, we don't see a lot
of scientific reasons for banning drugs because they might be dangerous.
Obviously a lot of substances are dangerous or are difficult
to use. But the reasons for a drug prohibition in
America have been have been very different. They actually quite
(22:06):
the reason that actually is actually racism. The first anti
drug person, Antling at the head of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, was a racist, and he was he was
going against what he called marijuana, which was before known
as cannabis. He gave it a foreign name, a Spanish
sounding name, marijuana, and he claimed that Mexican immigrants, uh
(22:30):
and Afro Americans were using mostly marijuana to you know,
improve their sexual skill, to lure white women into bed.
So he was that that that that was the beginning
of making cannabis uh illegal. And the reason to make
LSD illegal about thirty years later was not because it
(22:50):
was proven that LSD was dangerous to people's health, but
it was just a tool, and this was actually quite
important at the time. It was a tool to fight
the peace movement in the United States. In the United States,
which was growing exponentially during the Vietnam War, and the
(23:12):
peace movement was fueled by massive consumption of LSD. It
was the famous you know, tune in, uh turn on,
tune in, drop out, a thing that that learly propagated.
So you take LSD and you you become a peace
nick basically, which is kind of a ridiculous statement, but
(23:32):
it is a fact that the peace movement was using
a lot of LEDD. And one of the advisers to
the president later said, was it possible for us to
make demonstrations against the war illegal? Not really, we couldn't.
We couldn't do that because we are a democracy. But
could we make drugs illegal? Yes, we could, and we
(23:53):
could make led illegal, and that way we could go
against you know, anybody basically going onto the streets and
demonstrating against the Vietnam War. So it was, it was
it was a political move. It was not a move
to protect people's health.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Norman obviously in Blitz, do you talk about Perverton and
metamine use and amongst Germany Nazi Germany and something nowadays? Obviously,
certainly in this country anyway, we've got a lot of
mythm phetamine use and trips. You're talking about lisd obviously
both too. Drugs. Have you thought in terms of your
(24:35):
research did you think at the time that you needed
to take those drugs as part of your research as well?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
To be quite honest, while I was writing about Hitlers
drug abuse, a friend of mine suggested that we make
an art installation. He's quite a known artist at Dargess Gordon.
He said, we we we put someone into a gallery
and give that per all the drugs that Hitler has taken.
But then we realized this would really be inhumane, you know,
(25:05):
it would be it would it could It would not
be a nice experiment for that person. And I don't
like I don't take all the drugs that I write about.
It would be quite suicidal to take everything that Hitler took,
especially the crazy mix that he took, absolutely absolutely insane.
But I was curious about methon phetamine. I thought, I
(25:28):
thought of Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, who
said that he always carried a pistol. He always had
a pistol in the draw of his writing desk when
he was writing the movie Taxi Driver because he felt,
you know, he felt closer to the subject he was
writing about that. I wanted to have one gram of
mathon phetamine at least in my in my on my
(25:49):
writing desk, to be closer to the to the material.
I asked a woman, she's a she's a wheat dealer,
cannabis dealer, uh in Berlin. I said, can you also
get crystal meth? And she was like totally against it.
She didn't no, I don't want to get into that.
But eventually she said, I know someone actually has it.
(26:10):
So she brought me one gram of crystal meth, and
the guy who delivered it to her put a zerox
copy of the German patent of nineteen thirty eight of
methamphetamine with the graham of crystal meth, which I thought
was amazing because that guy didn't even know that I
was writing about it, so he was a crystal meth
(26:32):
dealer who had like a historical knowledge that this at
one point actually had been a legal German product. In
regards to LSD, I tried LSD for the first time
when I was twenty two. My girlfriend at the time
gave it to me in New York. I had no
idea what it was. My brain functioned completely differently for
(26:53):
eight hours, and me being an artist, I thought that
was quite fascinating. I also didn't have any hangover or
any bad physical feeling afterwards. So I tried it again.
And I mean the book tripped in at first was
called LEDD for Mom because I have read during the
(27:14):
research on LSD that an American startup company he lose
it I had had to, had produced a white paper
which showed that clinical trials of alzheimer patients using low,
very low dosages of LSD had cognitive improvements. And since
(27:35):
my mother is suffering from alzema, we discussed it in
our family. Should we not use LSD, should we not
give should my mother not take LSD in low dosages
against her dementia? And she did she wanted to try
it and the effects were quite good, so we stuck
to it because for her it was I mean, she
(27:55):
took LSD and she was Her cognitive abilities in proved tremendously.
She was able to communicate much better to us than before,
she was in a better mood. And this happens whenever
she takes it. She doesn't take it all the time,
but whenever she takes the drop of microdosed LSD once
(28:15):
a week or something like that, she has a definite
improvement of her condition. So unlike methamphetamine, which I think
is a very unhealthy substance, I think LSD is actually
a brain food is completely misunderstood by our society and
should be completely reevaluated to combat diseases like depression, dementia, trauma.
(28:41):
So I personally think, and I'm not encouraging people to
use it, but for me, I think it's I'm very
happy that I discovered it.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
To be quite honest, when training you talk about marcrotizing,
so your mum's having little bits. But some of these
studies around depression, so just a I guess you'd call
it a macro dose. Like they've had some studies that
say just one big trip. Can you know that's monitored
and done safely can have a huge effect on depression.
(29:14):
So with Alzheimer's is a micro dolcing, and depression is
it macro dolsing.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
I mean, the problem is that the research did get
stopped in the sixties and only picked up again, mostly
after twenty fifteen, when at John Hopkins University in the
United States, Professor Griffith made the first clinical tests that
showed that philosdybin, which is the molecule in so called
(29:46):
magic mushrooms, which psilocybin B is quite similar to LED
they're like cousins, is effective in high dosages against depression
that cannot be treated otherwise. But we don't know enough yet,
like we need another ten years of research, and there's
(30:06):
still because these substances are still illegalized in many countries,
it's very hard for researchers to go ahead. So I
don't know. Maybe large dosages are even better against alzheimer
but we don't do that in the family because we
don't have any scientific proof for that. And you know,
my mother is an old lady. She's not into like
(30:29):
experimenting with drugs basically, but she's fine with the microdose.
With the microdosing, I have no problem taking high dosages myself,
and I'm not depressed at all. I don't know if
that comes from the LC. I think we just need
(30:49):
a lot more research. But everything we know so far
about the psychedelic molecules seems to point in the direction
that many diseases could be cure it either in the
high or low dosages with these with these substances.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Now, going back to Blutz, we have always this is
a question that I was asking all the way through
the book to myself. We've always celebrated in New Zealand
as a member of the ANZACs and helping with the
Allied forces. We have celebrated long and hard our victory
against the Nazis as a you know, underdog victory. I
come back, but would it be true to say to
(31:27):
a certain extent that the Nazis defeated themselves with their
massive myth intake as much as we defeated them.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
I mean, certainly the Nazers defeated themselves, because it's a
self destructive regime that that uh attack the whole world.
It's it's kind of ridiculous to I mean, that is
actually the underdog, like one country attacking every other country
on the planet. Yeah, I mean that country has to
(32:00):
was basically, But I would I would say that the
Allied forces were fighting quite bravely and quite they were
quite determined, and they had to be determined, because the
problem with the Nazis was they were so determined, like
they were really going at it. So especially the British
resistance and and and the and the other countries that
(32:24):
fought together with with Britain and the United States, just
like New Zealand for example, or Australia. I mean they
they did a great job. I mean they liberated also
US in Germany from from from this UH disease called
national socialism, the meta phetamine. It really had decisive effects
(32:48):
early on in the war. It enabled the Nazis to
beat Poland and France very quickly. They would never have
been able to do that without metham phetamine. So these
early successes also led Hitler into believing that he's basically unbeatable.
It also led into UH the attack against the Soviet Union.
(33:11):
And if I just praised the Western Allies, we certainly
have to praise the Red Army for really, you know,
fighting the German Army on the on the on the
you know, horrific Eastern Front. So I mean, it's it's
it's just to attack the Soviet Union. It's not rational,
(33:34):
you know, it's it's it's it can only come out
of a of a of a of a drugged mind,
or like a paranoid mind, or you know, it's it
doesn't make sense. You know, the Germany was still fighting
in the West, hadn't beat a great Britain yet, uh,
and then attacking the Soviet Union, so many many mistakes
(33:56):
were done on the German side. Obviously, the whole thing
was was was horrible and could never have succeeded. And
I think the methamphetamine was just a small aspect of
the German defeat. The big aspect of the German defeat
is you know, is you know, the hybrids of fascism
(34:20):
and of national socialism.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
A new book is called Tripped Nazi Germany, the CIA
and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. Norman, it's been
a great pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so
much for your time and best of luck with everything.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Thank you, it was a pleasure. It was a great one.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Thanks Norman. That was awesome.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
All right, And is that going to be everywhere in
New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Yeah, this will be out everywhere in New Zealand at
eleven am today our time, which is in a couple
of hours, and then and then we'll cut up but
because this is our podcast, will cut up butts for
our nationwide radio show for tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Is there like a link you're going to send me
or shall I somehow find it?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
We can see you alone, not every grade.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
I would be interested.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
You can experience our unique technique of just going through
all the admin of trying to get the zoom call
up whilst we're recording. It's a revolutionary, utterly unprofessional technique
that we use.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
You might be quite shocked when you listen to the
podcast and be like, oh my god, what a load
of crap. And then you'll hear the actual interview. But
and you'll be like, Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I want to come to New Zealand. I hope it's
going to work out next year for the I think
that's like a book, a books thing in a reader.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
There's the Writer's Festival.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Oh you've got to come you. You wouldn't believe how
how popular your book is down here. Yeah, you know
Bloodstone then and now tripped.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Well that's cool.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, well if you if you come down, look us up.
We're quite easy to find as a very very small country,
but look us up and.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
It'd be great to meet in your studio.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, we'll take you out somewhere somewhere cool. Thank you, Hi,
Thanks Apes Norman, thanks for your time there.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
He is interesting, isn't it. That's so incredible.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I love hearing also Germans talk about Nazi Germany. I
think that's always a question.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I felt like because I felt bad because it's so
late for him, but there was another question. I was interested.
I'm always interested in how they celebrate there. You know,
we have our Anzac Day and we have our Dawn service,
and you know, you have all these soldiers that fought
in World War two and unlesla of them around now.
But those people, I mean, they went through a lot
as well, and not all of them. Wasn't all of
(36:45):
their fault that that Hitler is a crazy person. And
you know they've done some studies and not everyone was
supporting the Nazis, so you know, you didn't really have
a choice. I mean everyone everyone thinks now that if
it was that situation, then they'd be rebelling against the situation.
They everyone thinks, and particularly people that seem to be
following exactly the line of thinking today are the people
(37:07):
that are most likely to think that they would have rebelled.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But that was very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
If your family would be threatened and and your whole life,
I mean, you took a huge amount of bravery. So
there were people that were fighting in that in the
in those wars that were they had no choice, you know,
and so they were they were they were victims in
the same way that that our a lot of our
our soldiers were. And but even the people that were
(37:34):
supporting the Nazi cause, I mean, how do you celebrate them?
You know, how do you have you do you have
your dawn services, do you have your statues, do you
have your memorials.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, there's times. Having a look here at the German
public holidays and there's New Year's Day, there's Epiphany which
is on the sixth of January. Then there's International Women's
there's Easter, and then on the eighth of August is
Augsburg High Peace Festival. Then there's a sum Day which
is on the fifteenth of August. There's will children to say,
(38:03):
there's German Unity Day, there's Reformation.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Day, so they don't do Inzact Day.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
There's no repentance and preor day, Christmas Day day, there's
no there's no Anzi.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, there's you celebrate the alloyed troops the Axis.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean Reformation Day. That must be that's a reformation
between East and West Germany. Yeah, right, because I imagine what's.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Really interesting in the start of his new book Tripped,
when it's talking about just the state of Berlin after
and all of Germany, but it's particularly talking about the
state of Berlin after the war when the entire government
had been destroyed obviously by the Allied forces and the
Russians coming in from the east. So they had no law,
no they were trying to There was just cues of
(38:47):
people like picking up rubble, just actually a lot of
women just picking up rubble and moving the rubble just
to try and create a life. Again, there's no police force,
there's no government, there's no laws, and there's this huge
black market going on everything. Every one's trading everything. There's
incredible amount of drug use that's going going down because
what do you do, like you wouln't even able to
see a future at that point. You've just absolutely and
(39:09):
rubble everything was destroyed.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And also all of your industry was pretty much wiped out. Yeah,
so there wasn't much being manufactured I imagine by that
stage because the Allies were just bombing the absolute Bejesus
out of everything. I mean some of these cities.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
And you've got to say credit to the Germans for
pulling the record time, pulling it round to being, you know,
especially West Germany. East Germany had its own sort of
challenges with the being part of behind the Iron Curtain
or whatever, but Germany quickly became an absolute economic powerhouse
(39:42):
from absolutely nothing just through the fifties and sixties, seventies
starting again.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
But I mean the whole of Europe as well. So
much of Europe was completely decimated. I mean not so
much of England was last year.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Well, interestingly, post war England, the UK had really struggled financially,
and they won the war.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
It wasn't until this what wasn't until the eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, when they came back.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Took them thirty years.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Because America was like, hey, you borrowed a bunch of
money to the Americans really screwed them on the.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
They did well out of it, didn't they. And also
they had no rebuilding to do in America, so they
just they just kept going.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
That's the reason why New Zealand got so rich because
we fought in the war, but we had to do
no rebuilding because we were never We just we just
got to sell products to England and heaps a wall. Yeah, yeah,
so the game, give me a taste the Kiwi but yeah,
his box fantastic.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I fink that was interesting.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, okay, thanks everyone. Okay, I'm sorry about the zoom call.
I'm not sure his fault. That was at the start,
but someone hadn't organized it properly, So apologies from from
me to for whoever it was that that that cocked
that up.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
And Norman, if you are listening, like you said you
might be, thanks for coming on. And impressive English as well,
I should say that.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I'm sure he writes a lot for a while.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I went to school in America as.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Well, rights and English supposed as well. Doesn't he.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Judge, Well, there's another really interesting thing and tripped when
he has to like so his dad as a judge,
a very very successful German judge who's put people in
prison for. And then he has to convince his dad.
The hardest thing he has to do is convince his
dad that to give his mom LSD, to prove that
(41:19):
he's a very logical man his dad and go through
and say this is why LSD is morally okay to
give to.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Mom, right, you know, and interesting dynamic.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah. Well, his dad was born in nineteen forty three,
so right at the end of the war. I mean
right right, right at the end of the war. I
mean he was born as the Allies were invading. So
his nineteen forty four German he's surrendered, one.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Of the last babies before the boomers. I suppose is
he the generation then before the baby?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
But if you're forty three, I think you are.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, that's the same age as my dad. He's a boomer.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah. She said, when your dad was born and my
dad born into a world of uncertainty, wasn't it. Oh yeah, yeah,
for the parents having a child in the middle of
World War.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, although, but then growing up in the nineteen fifties
in New Zealand and my dad telling me that things
were very certain, Yeah, very wealthy New Zealand and the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Most wealthy country in the world. Through the fifties and sixties,
very well fell off a cluff about seventy.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
The world shocked and it really share. The EU was
not going to trust.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, the EU fucked us. Right, okay, right, it's not
slipping in New Zealand history. Okay, all right then, okay,
all right, seem basill.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Let you go.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Okay, then, hello.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'm Matt Heath. You have been listening to the Matt
and Jerry Daily Bespoke podcast. Right now you can listen
to our Radio Highlights podcast, which you will absolutely get
barred up about anyway. Set to download, like subscribe, wright
review all those great things. It really helps myself and
Jerry and to a lesser extent, Mash and Ruder. If
you want to discuss anything raised in this pod, check
(42:54):
out the Conclave, a Matt and Jerry Facebook discussion group.
And while I'm plugging stuff, my book A Life is
Punishing Thirty Ways to Love the Life You've Got is
out now get it wherever you get your box or
just google the bastard. Anyway you seem busy, I'll let
you go. Bless blessed, blessed, give them a taste of
keiw from me.
Yesh yet it is the third of September and the
year of Our Lord, twenty twenty four. Welcome all you
bespoke you Donkies the Daddy Bespoke Podcast. You'll notice that
I did that Let's get busy in German.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Is that what that was? Yeah, it's weird. I thought
it was Dutch. No, it was German.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I did that in German because we're going alive to
Berlin to talk to Norman Euler, who's the the writer,
the author of the New York Times best selling book
Blit's one of my favorite books of all time about
meth and petamine use and drug use and by Hitler
and the Nazis. It's great book. If you haven't read it,
(01:06):
it's really really interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It's one of those books that I bought and then
I read it, and then I recommended it to one
person and then I just haven't had that book back.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It's just kind of circulating through people.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
They were giving it to someone else, and they're giving
it to someone else, and it is it's very very interesting.
It's actually but it kind of makes everything makes sense
with the with how the Nazis behaved with theirs and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think it's also quite interesting, Jerry, you would have
found it fascinating as well, I suppose, but also outside
of the nazis just what Germany as the country was
up to in that time before the Third Richer.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
She was all on over there, oh ship, Yeah, everyone's
on what was the myth called? It was, yeah, perverting
storm storm purpose furtherton, I mean, and what the Purvertin
would do was basically myth, and all the army was
on it, and everyone was on it and helped them
(02:01):
march right through the night, and the pans of division
tanks could just roll on and roll on, and then
everyone arrived at the same time with the Luftwaffer, and
that became their strategy of arriving at the same time.
But it was kind of because they were all on
myth so they could travel very fast. And then I
think they named the strategy after it after the Panza
(02:21):
division had traveled all night on myth and arrived at
the same time as the planes.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And interestingly, like myth in modern terms, things went south
quite quickly and ended up completely having a poser by
the end of it. When you don't have it rough
on the people coming down off.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
It, well, they were fighting on the East and Front
against the Russians in the middle of winter.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Like I watched, I had the myth. Now, so were
they taking it in pill form? It was like a
little yeah, just kind of pills that people were popping.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
The book's really interesting. But he's got this new book
out called Tripped, and that's about acid use by the
Nazis and or their intention to use acid as a
truth serum and the CIA as well, and the dawn
of the psycholatolic age and a look into how acid
can help with Alzheimer's and depression anxiety in PTSD. And
(03:17):
there's a lot in there about microdosing.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
There's a lot of a lot about this and this
sort of stuff nowadays. Yeah, happening for a while at
Johns Hopkins University with yes, psilocybin studies and all sorts
of stuff. And there's one going on in New Zealand
as well.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah. Well, in this book Tripped, Norman Oiler talks about
how acid studies was completely shut down and that was
part of Nixon's attempt to discredit hippies in the wake
of their anti anti Vietnam War rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Really made acid the focus of that, you know, in slamming.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Them, just in terms of a logistical standpoint, Medie, I
see that it's your zoo that you've set up, so
you might have to crank that up on your phone
just quietly. One of those situations where the host has
got to be in the meeting before we can talk
to Norman Lappet homemade.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You saw how smoothly the Edmond went with my Ricky Morris.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And the other That wasn't that good?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
That was the smoothest admin of all time? One one
text coming this time all done, he arrived on time.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's credit. That's credits to Ricky Morris. That wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It was smoothest silk. That's how you do Edmunds. This
is classical.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
No, this is an absolute disaster.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
That's not a disaster. It's okay.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Why he shouldn't be doing edmund It's okay, it's it's
not okay, it's not okay. All right, you should be panicky.
What's past it's not going to work to be able
to talk to.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
One three.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
One two three four one two. That's just before we
do it. I just need to just double check that
I'm getting the pronunciession of this right, because the worst
thing you can ever do is pronounce some of his name.
So here we go, tope on how to pronounce o
h l e R holler in Germany? In German? Here
we are all ller, you said, voice? Who is that Norman?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Or oh that was a longer one are you spelling?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Orler h l e r.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Like that? Or because there's a bit more of an
oiler in there, or if you go quickly, or yeah,
this is getting dangerous. I can feel it. There's too
much pressure on the name already. I can feel it.
You have much luck over the many.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh my god, Zoom is trying to double check me.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Oh this is as so it should is it double authenticating?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Sorry, guys, that would be sorry.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Okay, like just fucking kill me.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
This is why.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
This is why Skype shipped the bed, because Scott started
doing thing. So that's what it was too difficult to
sign in. Just let me sign on, Just let me
father bitch up.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
You really, by the way, we could come through it
any point now, okay, all right, at any.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Point the normans Norman Orler. Okay, here we go, Here
we go, Here we go. We're coming up.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We got Okay, here we go one time code one
five six five one five and we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Okay, we're in. That's good. Hopefully we can connect here.
Oh god, I'm Norman.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh no, no, starting starting the meeting. I'm absolutely the meeting.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I'm loving this. This is so good. Okay, there's another
problem on the way through here. No, you don't hope
that there's another problem.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Come on join?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Why won't not let me join? Okay?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay, so the meeting started? Has the meaning started for you?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Hosters joined, We've let them know that you're here, and
Matt's twirly wheel joined with computer audio.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
How are you sorry, Norman? That that was completely an
absolute organizational mess up from me, and so sorry for
the delay getting through to you.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It's classic Matt Norman. Obviously you have met Matt before,
but that's just classic Matt Edmund right there. Where do
we find you this morning? Well, nighttime, your time? I imagine.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
In a small town in Germany called spy Blucoln.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
What part of Germany is that?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
In southwest French border south.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I went to a place called Freiburg once, which is
maybe not too far away from where you are.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Oh three hours, but also in the southwest of Germany.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Beautiful goodness me, that's a wonderful part of the world.
Did you know when you'd finished writing Blitz that it
was going to be such a massive success, it was
going to be a MESSI.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Is this pre pre interview?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
We were sorry, we're already interviewing.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You, all right, okay, well, actually sorry. While I was
sitting While I was sitting in the most boring room
in Germany, which is the reading room of the Federal
Archives in a town called Koblin, because Germany is the
decentralized country, so the federal archive is actually not in
Berlin's and some small towns. I was sitting there and
(08:32):
I was looking at the actual notes of Hitler's personal physician,
Theo Morrel, and no one had looked at his notes
before for some strange reason, because Hitler is like the
most examined person in German history. While I was reading
these notes and they was so interesting, I realized that
(08:53):
this book actually is going to be of interest to
other people as well. So it was not a lead
the price because it was kind of interesting for me
to research it. So I thought, if it's so interesting
for me to research. It's probably also interesting for people
to actually read it.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You know, you say it's the most boring room in
the entire world, but there must be moments when you
come across notes like that, and and also there's a
bit and tripped as well. When you're going through these
archives and seeing these things. It must be incredible to
see these documents and read it. That must be a
huge buzz.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I mean, the room is boring, so that the architecture
of the room and the design of the it's a
very These archives are very uninsuming. But obviously the big
contrast is what you find in the documents if you
are lucky enough to find something, so that that contrast
is quite thrilling. That's why I actually like archives. They're
(09:52):
one of my favorite places because they're really they bring
you very close to the to the truth in a way,
because you're handling the original. You're not just reading what
some other person has written down. You know, you're not
you're not recycling stuff. You're actually looking at at sources
and then you know, come up with your own narratives.
(10:15):
So our archives are great.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Actually, well that's interesting, isn't it, Because most history books
are just people reading other history books and then pulling
together other history books and writing a book based on
other books, as opposed to what you do, which was
go to the source.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Well, I'm not a historian, not a trained historian in
any case. I'm I'm a writer. I'm a novelist. Actually,
I invent things. So when I decided to write my
first non fiction book, which is Blissed, I thought that,
you know, the proper ways to go to the archives.
I thought every historian does that. And then after spending
weeks and weeks and weeks in the archives, never meeting
(10:52):
a history and I realized that actually historians don't do
that because it's very time consuming. So my my out
of the box of approach was was kind of fruitful
in this in this in this case at least, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Let's you discuss the huge amount of myth the Nazis
were on. What's the Nazi connection to Acid?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Well, the Nazis were very paranoid people, and that paranoia
that everyone is against them and that the enemy is everywhere.
That feeling got stronger as the war went on. Because
the war, you know, obviously it didn't go well for
the Nazis, so they suspected that, you know, they're more traders,
(11:40):
like in their own ranks. And then they had the idea,
the the Gestapo and the SS had the idea to
develop what they call the truth drug. They were they
were very interesting drugs from the beginning. And when when
the tag was burning in nineteen thirty three and then
it was a suspect, a Communist suspect, they already gave
(12:03):
this person drugs to kind of get all the secrets
out of him. So they tried to perfect that that
that third that they try to actually find the truth drug,
like a drug you give to someone and then that
someone will tell you everything he or she knows without
you know, being able to hold anything back. So that
in nineteen forty three when also the assassination attempts again
(12:27):
sit there were on the rise. I mean it wasn't
just one, it was like many attempts on his life.
So he especially became extremely paranoid and saw great as everywhere.
So the search for the truth drug was coming all
the way from you know, the order was coming all
the way from the top. So what could be the
(12:47):
truth drug? Masculine was a candidate they started and they
as started to do tests with masculine in the concentration
camp of Daha. They gave they that put a little
they put drops of masculine and coffee and then gave
that to inmates and then when you know, the drugs
(13:09):
started to work, they would then the AS officer would
then say things like, I think, you know, I know
that you are having very strange thoughts right now because
I can actually be into your mind right now, and
I think it's better if you reveal everything you know.
So they were trying to develop kind of brainwashing techniques
(13:32):
like that. The problem with masculine was that it's it's bitter,
so it's not so easy to give it to someone
without that person knowing. So they were on the look
for better truth truth drugs. And then forty three, as
we all know, LSD was discovered in Switzerland, which is,
you know, quite close to Germany. And what I found
(13:54):
in the archives of the pharmaceutical company that discovered LSD
would his sounds a Swiss company. They'll see all was
best friends with the leading Nazi biochemist Richard Kuhn, So,
the Swiss CEO Artwa Stoler, and the German biochemist Richard Kuhn.
(14:14):
They had been friends for in since the twenties. They
had been exchanging all their research because they had had
the same teacher, which was Richard bridge At, a Jewish
German biochemist who won the Nobel Prize, and he had
these two, these two students that were outstanding. One was Stole,
who became pharmaceutical CEO in Switzerland and the other one
(14:36):
became Hitler's favorite biochemists. So, you know, they changed in
the twenties and early thirties. Was harmless, I mean, it
was just exchange between scientists. But in forty three when
Stole you know, messaged to Kuhn that in Battle they
had found this mysterious substance that they call LSD lazergic
(14:58):
acid the ethylmite, which working very intensely on the mind.
But they don't really know what it is because the
company didn't know in the beginning what LSD was good for.
They had Cood in Heidelberg in charge of developing a
truth drug for Pitler became very interested in it, and
he actually got sent material from Basil. And then the
(15:21):
Nazis had LSD, and because the Nazis had LSD and
became interested in it and testing it. Then also in Dakhau.
The Americans became interested in LSD when they liberated Dakhau
and found the SS reports on these tests and inmates
with psychedelic molecules.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Did it work?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Is there any truth serum? Does any truth smer serum exist?
And did LSD work as a truth serum at all?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
The Nazis weren't sure because they had just started the
tests and then you know, they lost the war and
they couldn't continue with the research. So these these initial
reports but that s S did, were then evaluated by
the Americans by a Harvard professor who was the advisor
(16:14):
to the American military. Beacher was his name, Professor Beecher,
and he wrote that LSD could very well become such
a truth drug if applied properly, you know, to unwitting unwittingly,
and with the uh you know, proper questionings and interrogation,
(16:35):
you know techniques. So he wrote reports that he called
h reports on ego depressant drugs, because that is what
LC actually does. It depresses the ego, which means the
place in the brain that kind of creates our reality
and kind of lets us function in day to day life.
(16:57):
Receives less energy when a person is on all the
and other parts of the brain actually become more active.
This is this is actually the beauty of LSD. But
if you want to use lstin in a negative way,
you could. The Americans thought it depresses the egos of
the person becomes less secure in his or her thinking,
and that is actually true, you know, because your brain
(17:19):
opens up to other possibilities, and if someone would be
very skilled, like a policeman or an intelligence officer, he
or she could try to, you know, use that situation
to his or her advantage. But you know, LSD is
it's not really a fool proof truth serum at all
(17:39):
because usually it's just you know, people can't really be
interrogated anymore like they do to develop their own thoughts.
They you know, they they realize what situation they are in.
So it never really worked. It was promising for the
intelligence uh services, first the Nazis and then the Americans,
(18:00):
but it's never really worked as a truth theorem because
it's actually quite the opposite. I mean, it is a
truth theorem in the way that it actually lets you
the more, lets you see your own situation more clearly.
But it's not a truth theorem in a sense that
someone can give it to you and then manipulate you.
(18:20):
That never really worked with LSD, and it actually took
the Americans like ten years to find that out.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So what happened after that in terms of the therapeutic
research of eliots day.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
When Sanders first discovered in forty three, they were very
curious about how they could use it. And the first
thing they did was they created an intoxication room within
the company and they invited everyone working for the company, bookkeepers, chemists,
the CEO, managers, you know, everyone who worked for this
(18:57):
big company could go into the intoxication room, take and
then kind of talk about the experiences to a secretary
who was typing everything up. And these reports that I
all read and that I that I quote in tripped.
They were very positive, like people really loved the experience.
They said, for the first time, I feel very connected
(19:22):
with nature, with myself, I realized my position in life.
And I mean all these things that we also experienced today,
they were experienced for the first time in nineteen forty three.
So the company thought there's a I mean, the company
was thinking that maybe they have a game changer. In
their hands in terms of mental health, because this was
(19:45):
World War Two, millions of people were traumatized. There were
no medicines available at the time. There were no anti depressants,
antipsychotics like we unfortunately, I say, but I mean we
have them today, but at the time that was not so.
They thought maybe LSD is that is that thing. And
there was very serious LSD research until basically the mid sixties,
(20:12):
when when LSD was most made illegal by the US government.
There was there was the negative or the CIA research
which was trying to utilize it for the for the
good of the CIA or the good of the military
abusing LSD, I would say. And on the other hand,
(20:33):
that was always until the mid sixties, the research that
was trying to figure out could this be turned into
a medicine? Is this actually healthy to take LSD? Is
this a brain food? Is this good for our brain?
Because it does reduce neuroinflammation, which is the chief cause
for mental illness and dementia, And neuroinflammation is reduced by LSD.
(20:57):
It increases neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain
to reorganize itself according to the situation it finds itself
in so there was always a lot of very hopeful
LSD research until that was blocked by the American President Johnson,
(21:18):
and only recently LSD research has been allowed again. So
we're basically back at the back at square one, trying
to figure out how we can actually use this for
mental health and not for some manipulation or brainwashing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Why was that a banned by the American government? What
were they trying to do with banning it.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
I mean, if we look at why drugs are banned,
especially in the United States, we don't see a lot
of scientific reasons for banning drugs because they might be dangerous.
Obviously a lot of substances are dangerous or are difficult
to use. But the reasons for a drug prohibition in
America have been have been very different. They actually quite
(22:06):
the reason that actually is actually racism. The first anti
drug person, Antling at the head of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, was a racist, and he was he was
going against what he called marijuana, which was before known
as cannabis. He gave it a foreign name, a Spanish
sounding name, marijuana, and he claimed that Mexican immigrants, uh
(22:30):
and Afro Americans were using mostly marijuana to you know,
improve their sexual skill, to lure white women into bed.
So he was that that that that was the beginning
of making cannabis uh illegal. And the reason to make
LSD illegal about thirty years later was not because it
(22:50):
was proven that LSD was dangerous to people's health, but
it was just a tool, and this was actually quite
important at the time. It was a tool to fight
the peace movement in the United States. In the United States,
which was growing exponentially during the Vietnam War, and the
(23:12):
peace movement was fueled by massive consumption of LSD. It
was the famous you know, tune in, uh turn on,
tune in, drop out, a thing that that learly propagated.
So you take LSD and you you become a peace
nick basically, which is kind of a ridiculous statement, but
(23:32):
it is a fact that the peace movement was using
a lot of LEDD. And one of the advisers to
the president later said, was it possible for us to
make demonstrations against the war illegal? Not really, we couldn't.
We couldn't do that because we are a democracy. But
could we make drugs illegal? Yes, we could, and we
(23:53):
could make led illegal, and that way we could go
against you know, anybody basically going onto the streets and
demonstrating against the Vietnam War. So it was, it was
it was a political move. It was not a move
to protect people's health.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Norman obviously in Blitz, do you talk about Perverton and
metamine use and amongst Germany Nazi Germany and something nowadays? Obviously,
certainly in this country anyway, we've got a lot of
mythm phetamine use and trips. You're talking about lisd obviously
both too. Drugs. Have you thought in terms of your
(24:35):
research did you think at the time that you needed
to take those drugs as part of your research as well?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
To be quite honest, while I was writing about Hitlers
drug abuse, a friend of mine suggested that we make
an art installation. He's quite a known artist at Dargess Gordon.
He said, we we we put someone into a gallery
and give that per all the drugs that Hitler has taken.
But then we realized this would really be inhumane, you know,
(25:05):
it would be it would it could It would not
be a nice experiment for that person. And I don't
like I don't take all the drugs that I write about.
It would be quite suicidal to take everything that Hitler took,
especially the crazy mix that he took, absolutely absolutely insane.
But I was curious about methon phetamine. I thought, I
(25:28):
thought of Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, who
said that he always carried a pistol. He always had
a pistol in the draw of his writing desk when
he was writing the movie Taxi Driver because he felt,
you know, he felt closer to the subject he was
writing about that. I wanted to have one gram of
mathon phetamine at least in my in my on my
(25:49):
writing desk, to be closer to the to the material.
I asked a woman, she's a she's a wheat dealer,
cannabis dealer, uh in Berlin. I said, can you also
get crystal meth? And she was like totally against it.
She didn't no, I don't want to get into that.
But eventually she said, I know someone actually has it.
(26:10):
So she brought me one gram of crystal meth, and
the guy who delivered it to her put a zerox
copy of the German patent of nineteen thirty eight of
methamphetamine with the graham of crystal meth, which I thought
was amazing because that guy didn't even know that I
was writing about it, so he was a crystal meth
(26:32):
dealer who had like a historical knowledge that this at
one point actually had been a legal German product. In
regards to LSD, I tried LSD for the first time
when I was twenty two. My girlfriend at the time
gave it to me in New York. I had no
idea what it was. My brain functioned completely differently for
(26:53):
eight hours, and me being an artist, I thought that
was quite fascinating. I also didn't have any hangover or
any bad physical feeling afterwards. So I tried it again.
And I mean the book tripped in at first was
called LEDD for Mom because I have read during the
(27:14):
research on LSD that an American startup company he lose
it I had had to, had produced a white paper
which showed that clinical trials of alzheimer patients using low,
very low dosages of LSD had cognitive improvements. And since
(27:35):
my mother is suffering from alzema, we discussed it in
our family. Should we not use LSD, should we not
give should my mother not take LSD in low dosages
against her dementia? And she did she wanted to try
it and the effects were quite good, so we stuck
to it because for her it was I mean, she
(27:55):
took LSD and she was Her cognitive abilities in proved tremendously.
She was able to communicate much better to us than before,
she was in a better mood. And this happens whenever
she takes it. She doesn't take it all the time,
but whenever she takes the drop of microdosed LSD once
(28:15):
a week or something like that, she has a definite
improvement of her condition. So unlike methamphetamine, which I think
is a very unhealthy substance, I think LSD is actually
a brain food is completely misunderstood by our society and
should be completely reevaluated to combat diseases like depression, dementia, trauma.
(28:41):
So I personally think, and I'm not encouraging people to
use it, but for me, I think it's I'm very
happy that I discovered it.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
To be quite honest, when training you talk about marcrotizing,
so your mum's having little bits. But some of these
studies around depression, so just a I guess you'd call
it a macro dose. Like they've had some studies that
say just one big trip. Can you know that's monitored
and done safely can have a huge effect on depression.
(29:14):
So with Alzheimer's is a micro dolcing, and depression is
it macro dolsing.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
I mean, the problem is that the research did get
stopped in the sixties and only picked up again, mostly
after twenty fifteen, when at John Hopkins University in the
United States, Professor Griffith made the first clinical tests that
showed that philosdybin, which is the molecule in so called
(29:46):
magic mushrooms, which psilocybin B is quite similar to LED
they're like cousins, is effective in high dosages against depression
that cannot be treated otherwise. But we don't know enough yet,
like we need another ten years of research, and there's
(30:06):
still because these substances are still illegalized in many countries,
it's very hard for researchers to go ahead. So I
don't know. Maybe large dosages are even better against alzheimer
but we don't do that in the family because we
don't have any scientific proof for that. And you know,
my mother is an old lady. She's not into like
(30:29):
experimenting with drugs basically, but she's fine with the microdose.
With the microdosing, I have no problem taking high dosages myself,
and I'm not depressed at all. I don't know if
that comes from the LC. I think we just need
(30:49):
a lot more research. But everything we know so far
about the psychedelic molecules seems to point in the direction
that many diseases could be cure it either in the
high or low dosages with these with these substances.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Now, going back to Blutz, we have always this is
a question that I was asking all the way through
the book to myself. We've always celebrated in New Zealand
as a member of the ANZACs and helping with the
Allied forces. We have celebrated long and hard our victory
against the Nazis as a you know, underdog victory. I
come back, but would it be true to say to
(31:27):
a certain extent that the Nazis defeated themselves with their
massive myth intake as much as we defeated them.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
I mean, certainly the Nazers defeated themselves, because it's a
self destructive regime that that uh attack the whole world.
It's it's kind of ridiculous to I mean, that is
actually the underdog, like one country attacking every other country
on the planet. Yeah, I mean that country has to
(32:00):
was basically, But I would I would say that the
Allied forces were fighting quite bravely and quite they were
quite determined, and they had to be determined, because the
problem with the Nazis was they were so determined, like
they were really going at it. So especially the British
resistance and and and the and the other countries that
(32:24):
fought together with with Britain and the United States, just
like New Zealand for example, or Australia. I mean they
they did a great job. I mean they liberated also
US in Germany from from from this UH disease called
national socialism, the meta phetamine. It really had decisive effects
(32:48):
early on in the war. It enabled the Nazis to
beat Poland and France very quickly. They would never have
been able to do that without metham phetamine. So these
early successes also led Hitler into believing that he's basically unbeatable.
It also led into UH the attack against the Soviet Union.
(33:11):
And if I just praised the Western Allies, we certainly
have to praise the Red Army for really, you know,
fighting the German Army on the on the on the
you know, horrific Eastern Front. So I mean, it's it's
it's just to attack the Soviet Union. It's not rational,
(33:34):
you know, it's it's it's it can only come out
of a of a of a of a drugged mind,
or like a paranoid mind, or you know, it's it
doesn't make sense. You know, the Germany was still fighting
in the West, hadn't beat a great Britain yet, uh,
and then attacking the Soviet Union, so many many mistakes
(33:56):
were done on the German side. Obviously, the whole thing
was was was horrible and could never have succeeded. And
I think the methamphetamine was just a small aspect of
the German defeat. The big aspect of the German defeat
is you know, is you know, the hybrids of fascism
(34:20):
and of national socialism.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
A new book is called Tripped Nazi Germany, the CIA
and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. Norman, it's been
a great pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so
much for your time and best of luck with everything.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Thank you, it was a pleasure. It was a great one.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Thanks Norman. That was awesome.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
All right, And is that going to be everywhere in
New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Yeah, this will be out everywhere in New Zealand at
eleven am today our time, which is in a couple
of hours, and then and then we'll cut up but
because this is our podcast, will cut up butts for
our nationwide radio show for tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Is there like a link you're going to send me
or shall I somehow find it?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
We can see you alone, not every grade.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
I would be interested.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
You can experience our unique technique of just going through
all the admin of trying to get the zoom call
up whilst we're recording. It's a revolutionary, utterly unprofessional technique
that we use.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
You might be quite shocked when you listen to the
podcast and be like, oh my god, what a load
of crap. And then you'll hear the actual interview. But
and you'll be like, Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I want to come to New Zealand. I hope it's
going to work out next year for the I think
that's like a book, a books thing in a reader.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
There's the Writer's Festival.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Oh you've got to come you. You wouldn't believe how
how popular your book is down here. Yeah, you know
Bloodstone then and now tripped.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Well that's cool.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, well if you if you come down, look us up.
We're quite easy to find as a very very small country,
but look us up and.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
It'd be great to meet in your studio.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, we'll take you out somewhere somewhere cool. Thank you, Hi,
Thanks Apes Norman, thanks for your time there.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
He is interesting, isn't it. That's so incredible.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I love hearing also Germans talk about Nazi Germany. I
think that's always a question.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I felt like because I felt bad because it's so
late for him, but there was another question. I was interested.
I'm always interested in how they celebrate there. You know,
we have our Anzac Day and we have our Dawn service,
and you know, you have all these soldiers that fought
in World War two and unlesla of them around now.
But those people, I mean, they went through a lot
as well, and not all of them. Wasn't all of
(36:45):
their fault that that Hitler is a crazy person. And
you know they've done some studies and not everyone was
supporting the Nazis, so you know, you didn't really have
a choice. I mean everyone everyone thinks now that if
it was that situation, then they'd be rebelling against the situation.
They everyone thinks, and particularly people that seem to be
following exactly the line of thinking today are the people
(37:07):
that are most likely to think that they would have rebelled.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But that was very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
If your family would be threatened and and your whole life,
I mean, you took a huge amount of bravery. So
there were people that were fighting in that in the
in those wars that were they had no choice, you know,
and so they were they were they were victims in
the same way that that our a lot of our
our soldiers were. And but even the people that were
(37:34):
supporting the Nazi cause, I mean, how do you celebrate them?
You know, how do you have you do you have
your dawn services, do you have your statues, do you
have your memorials.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, there's times. Having a look here at the German
public holidays and there's New Year's Day, there's Epiphany which
is on the sixth of January. Then there's International Women's
there's Easter, and then on the eighth of August is
Augsburg High Peace Festival. Then there's a sum Day which
is on the fifteenth of August. There's will children to say,
(38:03):
there's German Unity Day, there's Reformation.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Day, so they don't do Inzact Day.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
There's no repentance and preor day, Christmas Day day, there's
no there's no Anzi.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, there's you celebrate the alloyed troops the Axis.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean Reformation Day. That must be that's a reformation
between East and West Germany. Yeah, right, because I imagine what's.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Really interesting in the start of his new book Tripped,
when it's talking about just the state of Berlin after
and all of Germany, but it's particularly talking about the
state of Berlin after the war when the entire government
had been destroyed obviously by the Allied forces and the
Russians coming in from the east. So they had no law,
no they were trying to There was just cues of
(38:47):
people like picking up rubble, just actually a lot of
women just picking up rubble and moving the rubble just
to try and create a life. Again, there's no police force,
there's no government, there's no laws, and there's this huge
black market going on everything. Every one's trading everything. There's
incredible amount of drug use that's going going down because
what do you do, like you wouln't even able to
see a future at that point. You've just absolutely and
(39:09):
rubble everything was destroyed.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And also all of your industry was pretty much wiped out. Yeah,
so there wasn't much being manufactured I imagine by that
stage because the Allies were just bombing the absolute Bejesus
out of everything. I mean some of these cities.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
And you've got to say credit to the Germans for
pulling the record time, pulling it round to being, you know,
especially West Germany. East Germany had its own sort of
challenges with the being part of behind the Iron Curtain
or whatever, but Germany quickly became an absolute economic powerhouse
(39:42):
from absolutely nothing just through the fifties and sixties, seventies
starting again.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
But I mean the whole of Europe as well. So
much of Europe was completely decimated. I mean not so
much of England was last year.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Well, interestingly, post war England, the UK had really struggled financially,
and they won the war.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
It wasn't until this what wasn't until the eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, when they came back.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Took them thirty years.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Because America was like, hey, you borrowed a bunch of
money to the Americans really screwed them on the.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
They did well out of it, didn't they. And also
they had no rebuilding to do in America, so they
just they just kept going.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
That's the reason why New Zealand got so rich because
we fought in the war, but we had to do
no rebuilding because we were never We just we just
got to sell products to England and heaps a wall. Yeah, yeah,
so the game, give me a taste the Kiwi but yeah,
his box fantastic.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I fink that was interesting.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, okay, thanks everyone. Okay, I'm sorry about the zoom call.
I'm not sure his fault. That was at the start,
but someone hadn't organized it properly, So apologies from from
me to for whoever it was that that that cocked
that up.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
And Norman, if you are listening, like you said you
might be, thanks for coming on. And impressive English as well,
I should say that.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I'm sure he writes a lot for a while.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I went to school in America as.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Well, rights and English supposed as well. Doesn't he.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Judge, Well, there's another really interesting thing and tripped when
he has to like so his dad as a judge,
a very very successful German judge who's put people in
prison for. And then he has to convince his dad.
The hardest thing he has to do is convince his
dad that to give his mom LSD, to prove that
(41:19):
he's a very logical man his dad and go through
and say this is why LSD is morally okay to
give to.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Mom, right, you know, and interesting dynamic.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah. Well, his dad was born in nineteen forty three,
so right at the end of the war. I mean
right right, right at the end of the war. I
mean he was born as the Allies were invading. So
his nineteen forty four German he's surrendered, one.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Of the last babies before the boomers. I suppose is
he the generation then before the baby?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
But if you're forty three, I think you are.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, that's the same age as my dad. He's a boomer.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah. She said, when your dad was born and my
dad born into a world of uncertainty, wasn't it. Oh yeah, yeah,
for the parents having a child in the middle of
World War.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, although, but then growing up in the nineteen fifties
in New Zealand and my dad telling me that things
were very certain, Yeah, very wealthy New Zealand and the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Most wealthy country in the world. Through the fifties and sixties,
very well fell off a cluff about seventy.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
The world shocked and it really share. The EU was
not going to trust.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, the EU fucked us. Right, okay, right, it's not
slipping in New Zealand history. Okay, all right then, okay,
all right, seem basill.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Let you go.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Okay, then, hello.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'm Matt Heath. You have been listening to the Matt
and Jerry Daily Bespoke podcast. Right now you can listen
to our Radio Highlights podcast, which you will absolutely get
barred up about anyway. Set to download, like subscribe, wright
review all those great things. It really helps myself and
Jerry and to a lesser extent, Mash and Ruder. If
you want to discuss anything raised in this pod, check
(42:54):
out the Conclave, a Matt and Jerry Facebook discussion group.
And while I'm plugging stuff, my book A Life is
Punishing Thirty Ways to Love the Life You've Got is
out now get it wherever you get your box or
just google the bastard. Anyway you seem busy, I'll let
you go. Bless blessed, blessed, give them a taste of
keiw from me.
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