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Can you treat mental illness with psychedelics? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from houseff works dot com? Whoa, and welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheek Bryant Chee. Yeah, man, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I wanted to start this one out like a twelve
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Speaker 1: year old, So that's what I'm going with, a twelve
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Speaker 1: year old on acid. Maybe maybe it just happened before
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Speaker 1: in France actually really thanks to our old friends at
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Speaker 1: c I A. Oh, they just kids. They just a
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Speaker 1: whole town to see what would happen. And one kid
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Speaker 1: came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her. Really yeah,
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Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the town. Funny, but well, no,
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Speaker 1: people were like showing up at the hospital. There a
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Speaker 1: lot of it was funny in that, like, you know,
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Speaker 1: all these nineteen fifties French chees are losing their stuff
1:00
Speaker 1: for no apparent reason, right, right, but you know the
1:04
Speaker 1: suicides that resulted from that not very funny. Before we
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Speaker 1: get started, I think we should do like an official
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Speaker 1: c o A for this one. I think that is
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Speaker 1: a very good idea because what Josh and I are
1:15
Speaker 1: about to talk about are illegal drugs, and we are
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Speaker 1: not endorsing the use of these and they are illegal
1:21
Speaker 1: after all. We'll probably say this later on too, but
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Speaker 1: we just find it fascinating that they used to be
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Speaker 1: used for certain things and they're starting to be used
1:29
Speaker 1: again in certain scientific research labs for these things. It
1:32
Speaker 1: is extremely fascinating, which is what we're talking about exactly.
1:36
Speaker 1: I guess this could be a follow up to our
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Speaker 1: our mk Ultra cast. It's a follow up and uh,
1:42
Speaker 1: it's an epilogue and a prologue. Yes, yeah, very nice
1:46
Speaker 1: because we kind of came into the the c I
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Speaker 1: A l s D MK Ultra podcast like right in
1:52
Speaker 1: the middle of the history of LSD much well towards
1:57
Speaker 1: the beginning. But um, one of the things after nineteen
2:01
Speaker 1: forty three when Albert Hoffman, right, the chemist who created
2:07
Speaker 1: LSD tried it. Yeah it was attempt uh and tried
2:13
Speaker 1: it on himself intravenously. As I understand it, he injected it.
2:17
Speaker 1: It says, first he took it by mistake, yeah, because
2:20
Speaker 1: it was a blood thinner. And then he took it
2:22
Speaker 1: for real. Yeah. After that first bike ride home he
2:25
Speaker 1: was like, I gotta do some more and then I
2:27
Speaker 1: read uote I became aware of the wonder of creation,
2:30
Speaker 1: the magnificence of nature. Yes, to create Dr Hoffman. Yeah,
2:34
Speaker 1: and he was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist. Um.
2:38
Speaker 1: He was at the first person to come up with
2:41
Speaker 1: a synthetic hallucin Jim Back in nineteen fourteen, a German
2:45
Speaker 1: chemist who worked for Merk the pharmaceutical company, came up
2:49
Speaker 1: with M D m A, better known as ecstasy. Yeah.
2:53
Speaker 1: And here's a tip for you, chuckers. Um, anytime, according
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Speaker 1: to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug
3:01
Speaker 1: and used it by its designer name, capitalize it. So
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Speaker 1: ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking
3:09
Speaker 1: about the drug, guest, and not just the euphoric feeling
3:13
Speaker 1: you get from life. That's different. That's lower case, okay,
3:17
Speaker 1: but it should be all caps. Yeah. Sure, So it
3:21
Speaker 1: was m d m A was created. Yeah, and it was. Um.
3:25
Speaker 1: I guess it served as a it's not a catalyst,
3:29
Speaker 1: because I think it's changed, but it was to be
3:31
Speaker 1: used in the synthesis of other chemicals, and it kind
3:35
Speaker 1: of sat on the shelves for a little while until
3:37
Speaker 1: somebody along the way, and then I wonder what happens
3:42
Speaker 1: if I take this stuff? And they did, and the
3:46
Speaker 1: CIA again looked at it. I wanted to see what
3:48
Speaker 1: it could do. Passed it up. UM, and a guy
3:53
Speaker 1: by the name of Alexander Shulgin, right, yes, he's a
3:58
Speaker 1: dow chemist and a night seen seventy eight. At the
4:01
Speaker 1: age of seventy four, he published a study on the
4:04
Speaker 1: Ufork effects of M D M A. It was the
4:06
Speaker 1: first time anyone had ever published a study here. But
4:10
Speaker 1: he was seventy four and he first noticed the Ufork
4:13
Speaker 1: effects because he liked to take it and go to
4:15
Speaker 1: cocktail parties of yeah. UM. So he's like, hey, man,
4:19
Speaker 1: this stuff is the bomb, and here's my study on it.
4:23
Speaker 1: Here that my findings, and let's everybody start taking this.
4:28
Speaker 1: So he starts giving it to his friends, um, including
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Speaker 1: some psychiatrists. Did he give out passifiers? Not yet that
4:35
Speaker 1: that's coming though, that's very very close. PASSI fires came
4:39
Speaker 1: about night um. So Shilgin gives some to a friend
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Speaker 1: who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist some of the more avant garde
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Speaker 1: psychiatrists UM start giving it to their patients, and then
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Speaker 1: it gets called adam for a little while. For a.
4:57
Speaker 1: While this is going on, it's being used by established psychiatrists.
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Speaker 1: A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas finds out about this
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Speaker 1: stuff and starts taking it, hires an underground chemist and
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Speaker 1: has it made himself, and then start selling it at
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Speaker 1: clubs all over Dallas. And so this, this illicit use
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Speaker 1: of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence on the club
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Speaker 1: scene and about the mid eighties, led to the outlaw
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Speaker 1: of M D M A. We'll get into it more,
5:29
Speaker 1: but the point is to this very long and rambling intro,
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Speaker 1: both of these drugs and others were legal at one time,
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Speaker 1: were put to good use, beneficial use, and then outlawed,
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Speaker 1: possibly unfairly, and then now we're starting to see them
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Speaker 1: come back into use, hallucinogens being used to treat mental
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Speaker 1: illness and mental harm in legitimate circles, very legitimate. Quick
5:59
Speaker 1: question was that Dallas person was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
6:03
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think anybody knows who it is.
6:06
Speaker 1: Still gotta start maybe, I think to begin with, so, Josh,
6:12
Speaker 1: you mentioned the c I A. I do want to
6:14
Speaker 1: point out it wasn't just the Americans. Uh, the Canadian
6:18
Speaker 1: government and British's British is it works. Britain's m I
6:23
Speaker 1: six also experimented with LSD and between nineteen fifty and
6:28
Speaker 1: sixty five, forty thou people all over the world had
6:32
Speaker 1: been treated with LSD and and treatments. Yeah, um, Carrie Grant, Yeah,
6:39
Speaker 1: can we go back to Hollywood in in the nineteen yours,
6:45
Speaker 1: So a couple of guys set up shop Arthur Chandler.
6:50
Speaker 1: What was the other guy's name, Oh, Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman,
6:54
Speaker 1: who was a radiologist too acid Harman and said, you know,
6:57
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into psychiatry. These guy set up a
7:00
Speaker 1: shop called the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills right in
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Speaker 1: the middle of Beverly Hills. And this is back in
7:08
Speaker 1: the day when things were it was clean living going on,
7:11
Speaker 1: aside from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked, adultery.
7:17
Speaker 1: Probably some marijuana us going on here there, but that
7:20
Speaker 1: was among the hop heads. Yeah exactly. So he sets
7:24
Speaker 1: up a couple of rooms with a couch and uh
7:27
Speaker 1: starts booking patients at a rate of like six or
7:32
Speaker 1: eight hours of session, depending on what was going on
7:35
Speaker 1: with the person, and five days a week. There were
7:36
Speaker 1: books solid hundred bucks of pop hunter, which is a
7:39
Speaker 1: lot of money back then. And I guess that included
7:41
Speaker 1: the drugs. The drugs and the time that you were there, right,
7:45
Speaker 1: So they would sit with you, they will give you
7:47
Speaker 1: some blinders to block out distractions, and then you would
7:51
Speaker 1: go into sort of like the more meditative sort of
7:54
Speaker 1: acid trip. Essentially you were hard, they would because you
8:00
Speaker 1: were on pharmaceutical grade l s D produced by the
8:02
Speaker 1: Sandoz company. We're talking about Alice Huxley, novelist, and actually
8:09
Speaker 1: he died tripping. Did you know that? Really? Yeah, he was.
8:12
Speaker 1: He had m throat cancer, I think, and uh, the
8:15
Speaker 1: last thing he ever wrote was a note to his
8:17
Speaker 1: wife requesting UM such and such milligrams of LSD or
8:23
Speaker 1: micrograms of LSD injected intramuscular intramuscularly. And that was about
8:29
Speaker 1: six hours before he died. So he died and a
8:32
Speaker 1: grateful dead record. That was his last request before the
8:35
Speaker 1: grateful dea. Uh. Screenwriter screenwriter Charles Brackett took it. Director
8:44
Speaker 1: Sydney laments it. Lay or lament I think, okay, I
8:48
Speaker 1: always sad may, but I think I'm wrong. He took
8:50
Speaker 1: it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful.
8:53
Speaker 1: He re experienced his own birth, which apparently a few
8:56
Speaker 1: people did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either.
8:58
Speaker 1: And muh Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to
9:03
Speaker 1: Time magazine publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador
9:07
Speaker 1: and possibly an agent um for the US government. And
9:11
Speaker 1: they both took acid so much that Henry Loose and
9:15
Speaker 1: Time Magazine said we need to write about this. This
9:17
Speaker 1: is awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of good press that
9:19
Speaker 1: Time Magazine gave LSD in the fifties um as a
9:23
Speaker 1: basically a cure all um. And again Carry Grant got
9:28
Speaker 1: into it big time. Apparently he had like at least
9:31
Speaker 1: a hundred trips I believe. Yeah he was. Yeah, let's
9:35
Speaker 1: talk about him for a second, because he was one
9:37
Speaker 1: of these guys that carefully constructed his persona. He worked
9:42
Speaker 1: very hard. Apparently he was the The line he always
9:46
Speaker 1: gave was a lot of people want to be Carry Grant,
9:49
Speaker 1: and I'm one of them, indicating that this suave, Mr
9:52
Speaker 1: Cool persona was completely fabricating, created by himself so he
9:56
Speaker 1: could get you know, the fame and everything, but deep
9:59
Speaker 1: down he's suffered as a human until he started taking acid, right,
10:07
Speaker 1: and then he had um, well, he had some pretty
10:11
Speaker 1: interesting revelations, one of which I read one of the
10:14
Speaker 1: somebody thought to write down the stuff that he Some
10:18
Speaker 1: of the insights he had, um, some were kind of deep.
10:21
Speaker 1: Others were like, if I have to look at a man,
10:25
Speaker 1: he should be required to comb his hair and brush
10:29
Speaker 1: his teeth and wear a clean shirt. Yes, it was interesting,
10:34
Speaker 1: so it kind of ran the gamut. But yeah, he um,
10:36
Speaker 1: he became a real devotee of LSD. He yeah, and um,
10:44
Speaker 1: well she got him into right who wrote that we're
10:47
Speaker 1: part of this we're basing this part on a Vanity
10:50
Speaker 1: Fair article art. Yeah, um, it's called the Carrying the
10:54
Speaker 1: Sky with Diamonds. But he was a huge advocate for LSD.
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Speaker 1: He wasn't the only one, um, but he lived to
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Speaker 1: see it outlawed and public sentiment turned against it. Right,
11:05
Speaker 1: it's just like m D M A um psilocybin, magic
11:09
Speaker 1: mushrooms and part of the well, really one of the
11:14
Speaker 1: you could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led
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Speaker 1: to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who
11:22
Speaker 1: might otherwise have been helped by LSD with his his
11:25
Speaker 1: naive bravado of you know, the establishment just needs to
11:30
Speaker 1: get over its hang ups and we should all take acid.
11:32
Speaker 1: Whether or not you agree that that's a good idea,
11:35
Speaker 1: it's a stupid thing to say. Leary was originally a
11:39
Speaker 1: Harvard psychiatrist, right, yes, and he started taking I think
11:43
Speaker 1: mushrooms and then he eventually started taking LSD and was
11:48
Speaker 1: fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. And um,
11:53
Speaker 1: that was pretty much the beginning of the end of LSD. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: they may have continued to use LSD as treatment for
12:01
Speaker 1: mental patients mental illness and depression if not for Timothy Leary,
12:06
Speaker 1: who was trying to spread the word about acid. Uh.
12:09
Speaker 1: Back to Carry Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh.
12:12
Speaker 1: He had a couple of stories written about him in
12:15
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine and Look magazine the Curious Story behind
12:19
Speaker 1: the New Carry Grant gave a glowing account of LSD,
12:23
Speaker 1: and then This is the Best the following year the
12:26
Speaker 1: Good Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of
12:29
Speaker 1: Approval in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it
12:32
Speaker 1: the Secret of Grant's Second Youth. I want to get
12:35
Speaker 1: a copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah,
12:38
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast
12:41
Speaker 1: is so weird that these things were considered incredibly wonderful
12:46
Speaker 1: and benign um and now they're they're just viewed as
12:51
Speaker 1: just so they're evil in their outlaws simply because they
12:55
Speaker 1: were made illegal, right prohibited um. And again there's kind
13:00
Speaker 1: of a movement toward saying, hey, you know, maybe Timothy
13:04
Speaker 1: Leary did give this a bad name, Maybe that that
13:08
Speaker 1: um underground chemist in Dallas, uh really kind of put
13:12
Speaker 1: a terrible spread on this, and we should look at
13:14
Speaker 1: these again, right. She kind of tell one more story, Yes,
13:17
Speaker 1: from Hollywood of the nineteen sixties. Esther Williams, famous uh
13:21
Speaker 1: diva actress from the MGM studio friend of Carrie Grants
13:26
Speaker 1: called Carrie Grant up after these articles and said, hey,
13:28
Speaker 1: can you introduce me to your doctor, Dr Hartman. He
13:31
Speaker 1: did so. At the time, she was aging, just had
13:34
Speaker 1: gone through a divorce, her husband left her with huge
13:38
Speaker 1: debt with the I R S. And she was still
13:41
Speaker 1: struggling with the death of her sixteen year old brother.
13:45
Speaker 1: She goes in the office, she takes acid, does her session,
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Speaker 1: goes home, to her parents, still on acid, has dinner
13:53
Speaker 1: with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror, says
13:58
Speaker 1: good night to her parents, looks in the mirror, and
14:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled by a
14:03
Speaker 1: split image one half of my face. The right half
14:05
Speaker 1: was me, the other half was the face of a
14:08
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy. The left side of my upper
14:11
Speaker 1: body was flat and muscular. I reached up with my
14:13
Speaker 1: boys hand to touch my right breast and felt my
14:18
Speaker 1: penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I understood
14:23
Speaker 1: perfectly in that moment. When my brother died, I took
14:26
Speaker 1: him into my life so completely he became part of me. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: that's a pretty huge thing to understand and pretty jarring
14:33
Speaker 1: way to come to terms with that, right. Yeah. But
14:36
Speaker 1: that's what they're finding out now, though, is that these
14:38
Speaker 1: people are having these breakthroughs in the throes of their
14:42
Speaker 1: final days of let's say cancer, and they have these
14:45
Speaker 1: epiphanies before we get to that. So LSD is outlawed.
14:48
Speaker 1: We're following a timeline here. Yes, LSD is outlawed in
14:52
Speaker 1: I think st something like that. Um at the very
14:55
Speaker 1: at the latest nineteen, they shut down the shop in
14:58
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills. Yeah, then Sandoz stopped making it and it
15:02
Speaker 1: got it was outlawed and pushed underground. M d m
15:06
Speaker 1: A made it until and m d m A story
15:09
Speaker 1: is linked very closely to a guy named Dr George
15:12
Speaker 1: Quarte who is Johns Hopkins researcher. This floored me. So
15:18
Speaker 1: in about the time, the d e A is reeling
15:23
Speaker 1: from being caught totally unaware by the crack epidemic. Uh,
15:28
Speaker 1: and basically a lot of people think looking for a
15:32
Speaker 1: whipping post um, they they start considering outlawing m d
15:38
Speaker 1: m A. At that moment, this guy, Dr George rocquarde
15:42
Speaker 1: Um publishes a study that he says, this drug deplete
15:48
Speaker 1: your serotonin levels permanently causing brain damage. Right. Yeah, well
15:54
Speaker 1: that that didn't that. So this guy, who was unknown
15:58
Speaker 1: at the time, publishes the study starts to get UM
16:02
Speaker 1: National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically this is
16:05
Speaker 1: his job. He starts a career um creating scientific evidence
16:12
Speaker 1: in favor of banning drugs leads to the outlaw of
16:16
Speaker 1: m d m A. Right that wasn't quite enough, they
16:20
Speaker 1: scheduled it. Uh. The FEDS went after m d M
16:24
Speaker 1: A even harder, and in two dou two they came
16:26
Speaker 1: up with this thing called the Rave Act. It's, um,
16:31
Speaker 1: what does rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy?
16:36
Speaker 1: I wonder how long they sat around looking at the
16:38
Speaker 1: word rave, saying we've gotta make it fit, yeah, to
16:41
Speaker 1: make it fit yeah. So UM, the the Rave Act
16:45
Speaker 1: basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody
16:50
Speaker 1: gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club,
16:53
Speaker 1: we're gonna shut down your club. It was a huge,
16:56
Speaker 1: huge law and it was bolstered by another UM. Another
17:00
Speaker 1: study by Dr George roccaride UM that found that he
17:04
Speaker 1: tested on ten monkeys is a big one. He injected
17:08
Speaker 1: them with m d M A UM, A bunch of
17:11
Speaker 1: them went psychotic, some of them UM showed early signs
17:14
Speaker 1: of Parkinson's all of a sudden, and two of them
17:17
Speaker 1: died almost immediately after being injected. So people started asking
17:22
Speaker 1: questions about this, like, what what are you talking about?
17:25
Speaker 1: People have been taking this drug forever and this has
17:28
Speaker 1: never happened. So they started kind of going after recording
17:32
Speaker 1: and UM they found out that he had actually injected
17:36
Speaker 1: him with methamphetamine. The first thing that took them off
17:40
Speaker 1: as he injected him because people were like, well, you
17:42
Speaker 1: don't inject ecstasy, so that's kind of a weird way
17:44
Speaker 1: to do it. And then they found out it was methamphetamines,
17:48
Speaker 1: which he blamed on a mislabeling of a drug shipment
17:51
Speaker 1: which they traced back and they went, not the label
17:54
Speaker 1: right here. Yeah, the drug providers like, don't blame us,
17:57
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear. So this is by this time, the
18:00
Speaker 1: Rave Act has already passed her and the Rave Act
18:03
Speaker 1: didn't get past, but something that included that, um was
18:06
Speaker 1: passed by that time. The study that record A produced
18:10
Speaker 1: was pretty was published in Science, the journal Science. Like,
18:13
Speaker 1: that's as eyebrow as you get as far as scientific journals. Um.
18:18
Speaker 1: And finally he gets beaten up enough that he he
18:22
Speaker 1: prints a full retraction. The Science runs this retraction saying,
18:27
Speaker 1: the whole the whole study that I produced, just forget
18:31
Speaker 1: it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much, No, it doesn't.
18:34
Speaker 1: That's very unusual the record A, I get the impression
18:38
Speaker 1: is kind of this, um, well, it just kind of
18:41
Speaker 1: seems like the scientific community views him largely as a
18:44
Speaker 1: shill for the government. Yeah. Um, there's a couple of
18:47
Speaker 1: articles that he shows up in on a Reason and
18:51
Speaker 1: Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And you know, the
18:53
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about that whole story about the big
18:56
Speaker 1: fake study he did with meth amphetamines as to see
19:00
Speaker 1: is that the Parkinson's Foundation, the people Parkinson's researchers, said,
19:05
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much
19:09
Speaker 1: sense to us either, that they would show signs of
19:11
Speaker 1: Parkinson's right. So they looked into it. People went about
19:13
Speaker 1: reproducing his study um and the people who run the
19:18
Speaker 1: Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying ecstasy does not
19:23
Speaker 1: do this, so they basically came out in favor of ecstasy.
19:27
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat to watch from the outside because
19:30
Speaker 1: there's this guy who's again kind of viewed as a
19:34
Speaker 1: show for the government, who's beating up on this drug
19:37
Speaker 1: that a lot of people who are also in the
19:39
Speaker 1: scientific community feel is being unfairly outlawed, and so there's
19:46
Speaker 1: kind of beating up on him in retaliation. It's kind
19:49
Speaker 1: of neat to see eggheads beat up on one another.
19:51
Speaker 1: NERD fights and the n I d A. It went
19:54
Speaker 1: so far that the n I d A just kind
19:55
Speaker 1: of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy, and it
19:58
Speaker 1: was like, um, let's just take this down the website.
20:00
Speaker 1: After the retraction, we'll rewrite it. I'm sure it's back
20:04
Speaker 1: up now as something else. But it doesn't include immediate
20:07
Speaker 1: death and Parkinson's disease. I would imagine that's right. So
20:11
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary dies, he gets shot into space, he's out
20:15
Speaker 1: of the picture entirely. Everybody gets sick of hippies generally. Um, George,
20:21
Speaker 1: record is that, basically the guy who's single handedly getting
20:25
Speaker 1: ecstasy outlawed, his work comes into great, great question, and
20:30
Speaker 1: people start going back and looking at m D m
20:32
Speaker 1: A again, and they start looking at LSD again, And
20:35
Speaker 1: that's where we find ourselves right now. Slowly but surely,
20:39
Speaker 1: people are starting to run studies on whether or not
20:43
Speaker 1: you can use these hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And
20:46
Speaker 1: the results are pretty astounding actually, And you know where
20:50
Speaker 1: they're leading the charge in Switzerland, in Los Angeles all
20:54
Speaker 1: these years later, same place, Yes, hippie freaks. Yeah so yeah, Josh,
21:00
Speaker 1: they are I think in Switzerland, uh and solo then
21:05
Speaker 1: Switzerland they have been experimenting with LSD um psilocybin which
21:11
Speaker 1: you might know is magic much rooms ketamine you might
21:15
Speaker 1: know a special k That kind of surprised me that
21:17
Speaker 1: that was in there. Yeah, I hadn't heard much about
21:20
Speaker 1: that one either. And they're getting these, uh these studies
21:23
Speaker 1: published in Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, and other you know, leading
21:28
Speaker 1: industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah, it's not all under the
21:32
Speaker 1: table back room experiments. Oh no, these are very heavily
21:36
Speaker 1: um overseen. You have to be a very legitimate researcher
21:41
Speaker 1: to get government approval. They're not funded though still they're
21:44
Speaker 1: they say they're still having a hard time with funding
21:47
Speaker 1: and they're just the sort of looking to get some
21:49
Speaker 1: restrictions loosened. They're not saying make all this stuff legal, right,
21:53
Speaker 1: they're not battling a legalization on the legalization front at all.
21:56
Speaker 1: But what they're one of the reason why so many
21:59
Speaker 1: people are kind of starting to put their reputations on
22:02
Speaker 1: the line. Um, it's because the results that they're seeing.
22:07
Speaker 1: So we have antidepressants, right, Um, they take weeks to
22:10
Speaker 1: kick in, they have all sorts of side effects, and
22:14
Speaker 1: what they're what we're seeing in these studies now are
22:17
Speaker 1: that the the things like ketamine uh M, d M
22:21
Speaker 1: A l s D are having like a huge impact
22:24
Speaker 1: right out of the gate. There's one study, UM that
22:27
Speaker 1: came out in July, I believe, UM, and it found
22:30
Speaker 1: it was a study of twelve people who were diagnosed
22:34
Speaker 1: with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's one of
22:37
Speaker 1: the big ones. Yeah, that's huge at UM. That's where
22:41
Speaker 1: you well, it's what we used to call shell shock.
22:44
Speaker 1: Is you go through traumatic experience and you relive it
22:46
Speaker 1: over and over again. UM, and it's it's debilitating. UM.
22:52
Speaker 1: They found that of the twelve people in this study,
22:55
Speaker 1: ten of them, after going through the study, UM, after
22:59
Speaker 1: take king M d m A no longer met the
23:02
Speaker 1: criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterwards, ten of the twelve. Yeah.
23:06
Speaker 1: And for my understanding and most of these studies is
23:09
Speaker 1: it's not like you have to stay on ecstasy your
23:11
Speaker 1: whole life. Like a lot of people have these epiphanies
23:14
Speaker 1: and they quit taking it and they have changed their
23:16
Speaker 1: outlook and that right, Yeah, that's the impression I'm getting to. UM.
23:20
Speaker 1: Ketamine apparently it's good for depression in the same way. UM,
23:24
Speaker 1: just a very tiny dose I can get you over
23:28
Speaker 1: severe clinical depression. Or that's the results. The early results,
23:31
Speaker 1: we should say, yeah, um, and everything from quitting smoking,
23:36
Speaker 1: two suicidal thought, yeah, cluster headaches, Harvard studying. Those are
23:42
Speaker 1: migraines for men, right, what they call my migraines. I
23:46
Speaker 1: know they're so debilitating that you consider suicide or you
23:50
Speaker 1: know not everyone does obviously, but it's just this awful,
23:53
Speaker 1: awful pain. You can't leave your house, you get to
23:54
Speaker 1: sit in a dark room, and so it's helping there.
23:57
Speaker 1: And UM, what I thought was interesting John's Hopkins. You
24:01
Speaker 1: might have heard of them, a little reputable institutions or
24:04
Speaker 1: required is from was it they didn't experiment where they
24:08
Speaker 1: gave psilocybin too emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even
24:13
Speaker 1: people that were mentally ill, people that had never taken
24:16
Speaker 1: hallucinogens before, which is interesting that you would be. I
24:19
Speaker 1: think they had a sixty four year old that signed
24:21
Speaker 1: up for this. Yeah, it's crazy, and they said sixty
24:25
Speaker 1: four and they said the experiment a year later they
24:28
Speaker 1: said the experience is one of the most meaningful and
24:31
Speaker 1: spiritual experiences of their entire lives, and that those were
24:35
Speaker 1: mentally stable folks and this is a year on it
24:40
Speaker 1: still had an impact on them. Um, they're also finding
24:44
Speaker 1: that UH, O, c D and basically mood disorders are
24:49
Speaker 1: the primary target of hallucinogenic treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment,
24:55
Speaker 1: and the reason being, we think, is because they target
24:58
Speaker 1: serotonin in the brain. This is an other reason why
25:00
Speaker 1: they're not addictive. They don't they don't employ the reward
25:04
Speaker 1: circuit in the brain, which is how we become addicted
25:07
Speaker 1: to things were flooded with dopamine re member. It just
25:10
Speaker 1: affects the mood serotonin, And we don't really have a
25:14
Speaker 1: very good grasp on serotonin and exactly how that works.
25:17
Speaker 1: But we do know that UM, there's correlations between UH
25:23
Speaker 1: high levels of serotonin or low levels of serotonin and depression, right.
25:29
Speaker 1: And we know that UM using antidepressants which block the
25:33
Speaker 1: reuptake of serotonin UM reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people.
25:39
Speaker 1: So we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We know
25:42
Speaker 1: that the more serotonin have, the better generally or low
25:46
Speaker 1: serotonins bad UH. And then we also know that hallucinogens
25:50
Speaker 1: target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands
25:53
Speaker 1: right now. It makes you wonder where would we be
25:57
Speaker 1: if LSD and m D M A hadn't been in
25:59
Speaker 1: the wilderness the last few decades. Well, yeah, they may
26:01
Speaker 1: have a pill, like a low dose pill because a
26:04
Speaker 1: lot of these studies, just so you know, back in
26:07
Speaker 1: Carrie Grand State, that mean it was full full on
26:10
Speaker 1: acid trips. But a lot of these, like the psilocybin pills,
26:13
Speaker 1: they will give you be very low dose. So I
26:15
Speaker 1: don't I get the feeling that it's not like this
26:18
Speaker 1: huge mushroom trip that a lot of these patients are
26:21
Speaker 1: going through. Because it said of the people recognized when
26:26
Speaker 1: they did not have the placebo. So if it wasn't,
26:30
Speaker 1: then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes, would
26:33
Speaker 1: be my guess. Um, would you if if everything was
26:39
Speaker 1: legalized UM and m d m A came to be
26:45
Speaker 1: prescribed for just happiness, right, would you take it? Would
26:50
Speaker 1: you take a happy pill that was legal and didn't
26:53
Speaker 1: have side effects? Not to say m d m A
26:55
Speaker 1: doesn't have side effects, there's a UM like basically the
26:58
Speaker 1: three days after a depression that follows when you're serotonin
27:02
Speaker 1: levels are repleting themselves. I don't think I would because
27:07
Speaker 1: there are quote unquote happy pills now, and I mean
27:11
Speaker 1: it's not like I'm against any depressants. Or things like that,
27:13
Speaker 1: because people definitely benefit from those who need them. But
27:16
Speaker 1: I just I don't need that kind of thing, so
27:20
Speaker 1: I would not Uh, I would not serve you are
27:23
Speaker 1: not alone, Chuck. There was a survey conducted for this
27:26
Speaker 1: BBC series on Britain of British people that found that
27:31
Speaker 1: seventy of them said that they would not take a
27:35
Speaker 1: happy pill it was legal and had no side effects.
27:38
Speaker 1: It's interesting, yeah, because it kind of I think that
27:42
Speaker 1: for a large segment of the population, there's just the
27:46
Speaker 1: idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, you know, yeah,
27:53
Speaker 1: it's it's a little weird. I mean, that's not to
27:55
Speaker 1: say I'm a square and I don't like to get
27:56
Speaker 1: down another aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right
28:02
Speaker 1: now about literally the effect it has on your brain
28:05
Speaker 1: and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've also found
28:08
Speaker 1: that UH patients, cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens,
28:15
Speaker 1: or people with just um traumatic events from earlier in
28:19
Speaker 1: their life, they have the ability to relive some of
28:22
Speaker 1: these memories and events from their past. They can unlock
28:25
Speaker 1: buried traumatic episodes, deal with them psychologically, put them to
28:30
Speaker 1: rest and come out the other side with a new understanding,
28:34
Speaker 1: free from these demons. UM. You remember in the hypnosis
28:39
Speaker 1: episode where we were talking about how the way it's
28:43
Speaker 1: viewed now is that you you are you're accessing the
28:47
Speaker 1: subconscious scies. Yeah, more easily. It's like popping open a
28:51
Speaker 1: control panel. That's what this. This is what they're seeing
28:55
Speaker 1: with M D M A. Apparently, Uh, you are able
28:58
Speaker 1: to access things UM from a very empathetic way. I
29:02
Speaker 1: think the term I've heard for it is called UM
29:06
Speaker 1: a psychotherapeutic catalyst like kick starts things. And I think
29:12
Speaker 1: one researcher called it it's psychotherapy sped up. The psychiatrist
29:19
Speaker 1: called it it's like psychotherapy on acid. So this hasn't
29:27
Speaker 1: LSD specifically hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's
29:31
Speaker 1: ever taken it. And what's funny in this article that
29:35
Speaker 1: UM that's on the site, can we treat mental illness
29:37
Speaker 1: with hallucinogens? Tom Schif has to go to the sixties
29:43
Speaker 1: psychedelic rock scene to find examples of people who have
29:48
Speaker 1: had a bad, bad time on acid. Uh. And apparently,
29:52
Speaker 1: what what the conventional wisdom is is if you are
29:56
Speaker 1: predisposed to mental illness. LSD can exacerbate that. Yeah, if
30:02
Speaker 1: you have a bad trip, you're going to have a really,
30:04
Speaker 1: really bad trip because you're already predisposed to mental illness. Yeah,
30:07
Speaker 1: he's Brian Wilson and Sid Barrett as the two examples,
30:11
Speaker 1: and those are stellar examples, they really got to say.
30:14
Speaker 1: But they're also counterintuitive to what we're seeing with UM.
30:17
Speaker 1: Like PTSD, you are already suffering from a mental illness.
30:22
Speaker 1: So here's some m D m A. Probably LSD would
30:26
Speaker 1: be horrible to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, right,
30:30
Speaker 1: I would say, so, UM, and what else can we
30:33
Speaker 1: talk about? Pamela Secuda, Sure, Yeah, it's a very interesting story.
30:38
Speaker 1: This was a woman UM aged fifty seven at the
30:40
Speaker 1: time of this article, who was in the final stages
30:44
Speaker 1: of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was
30:49
Speaker 1: anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her
30:53
Speaker 1: husband and what they were gonna do without her. It
30:55
Speaker 1: was not a good life. She was living here at
30:57
Speaker 1: the end and she was prescribed any depressants. Of course,
31:01
Speaker 1: it didn't work, didn't do a thing for so she
31:04
Speaker 1: volunteered for an experiment at u c l A in
31:06
Speaker 1: two thousand five and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom
31:11
Speaker 1: pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs.
31:16
Speaker 1: They brought her husband in at the end of one
31:18
Speaker 1: of the sessions and he said, there's my Pammi. She
31:22
Speaker 1: was just beaming with light and I haven't seen her
31:24
Speaker 1: that joyous and so long. She was totally alive and happy.
31:27
Speaker 1: And she continued to take it until she didn't need
31:31
Speaker 1: it anymore. She had these breakthroughs and then all of
31:34
Speaker 1: a sudden, her husband and uh, Pamela were going to concerts,
31:39
Speaker 1: They went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations,
31:41
Speaker 1: They did all these things that she hadn't been doing
31:44
Speaker 1: in a long time because of these epiphanies she had
31:46
Speaker 1: under the influence of psilocybin, and sadly she died well, yeah,
31:52
Speaker 1: she died. Yeah, that's what she died from in two
31:55
Speaker 1: thousand six, and her husband said she died in his arms.
32:00
Speaker 1: But her husband was very appreciative and they actually did
32:04
Speaker 1: a benefit about a week before she died for the
32:06
Speaker 1: institute that was doing this work at U c l A.
32:10
Speaker 1: So it's pretty interesting. Yeah, the definitely and one of
32:13
Speaker 1: the applications that they're finding is end of life care
32:17
Speaker 1: for UM using m D, m A or LSD. You're psilocybin. Sure,
32:21
Speaker 1: we're special k. Apparently what about this eyebo gain. They're
32:26
Speaker 1: finding that iba game works really well. I be gain
32:29
Speaker 1: is a m it's from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa,
32:33
Speaker 1: I believe UM. And they're finding that you go on
32:36
Speaker 1: a thirty six hour trip. That's a long time, but
32:41
Speaker 1: they're finding that it's really effective in breaking UM addiction
32:45
Speaker 1: and like serious addictions to like heroin, yeah, cocaine. So
32:48
Speaker 1: being on this stuff just for thirty six hours creates
32:52
Speaker 1: a break in the addiction cycle itself. But what they're
32:55
Speaker 1: finding this most notable about it is it there's a
33:00
Speaker 1: lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see in every other
33:03
Speaker 1: type of addiction removal, especially with heroin. Like heroin, you're
33:09
Speaker 1: supposed to have physical withdraw stom withdrawal symptoms, and people
33:12
Speaker 1: who are taking eyeba gain are not experiencing that like
33:16
Speaker 1: they would if if they tried to kick the habit
33:19
Speaker 1: without it. It's pretty remarkable. It is very remarkable. It's
33:23
Speaker 1: very interesting. We should probably say, I don't know if
33:25
Speaker 1: we have yet that This podcast is in no way
33:28
Speaker 1: an endorsement of going out and buying yourself some street
33:32
Speaker 1: drugs and you know, seeing what happens. It's a study
33:35
Speaker 1: of what we findly be very fascinating. The fact that
33:38
Speaker 1: this is there's been a resurgence in this and these
33:41
Speaker 1: you know, qualified doctors U. C. L. A. Johns Hopkins,
33:44
Speaker 1: they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah, and
33:46
Speaker 1: they definitely are, and they're getting some very interesting results.
33:49
Speaker 1: What about the A A guy. We should mention that
33:50
Speaker 1: really quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill Wilson, Yeah,
33:54
Speaker 1: one of the co founders of A A. Yeah. He uh.
33:57
Speaker 1: He apparently took LSD in the fifties, wasn't. Yeah, And
34:02
Speaker 1: this is after he was long after he was sober
34:04
Speaker 1: from alcohol since the thirties. I think, um so, he
34:10
Speaker 1: takes LSD in the fifties and is like, this is
34:13
Speaker 1: really helpful. Um So, I think everybody who comes into
34:18
Speaker 1: a should take LSD. Uh. And they were like, Nick,
34:22
Speaker 1: you should probably not do that. So they talked him
34:25
Speaker 1: out of it. But the reason why he found it
34:26
Speaker 1: helpful when is that Hallucinogen's part of a twelve step
34:31
Speaker 1: program is to really reflect on past wrongdoings and then
34:38
Speaker 1: elucidate them to another human being. And apparently lsd M,
34:43
Speaker 1: d M a UM these other drugs help. They serve
34:47
Speaker 1: as a catalyst for that process. So that's why Bill
34:50
Speaker 1: Wilson I thought this, This is really helpful because again
34:54
Speaker 1: it's like a therapy sped up. Fascinating, very fascinating. I
34:58
Speaker 1: will say this though, I'm gonna go out on a
35:00
Speaker 1: limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh, you
35:01
Speaker 1: should go out and do these things, I will say
35:04
Speaker 1: that some chemically created in a lab pill called an antidepressant,
35:11
Speaker 1: isn't I mean, what's the difference the differences I think,
35:15
Speaker 1: in my opinion from what I've seen, Uh, one's marketed
35:21
Speaker 1: and legal and the other is illegal. Yeah, it's as
35:23
Speaker 1: simple as that one is made by murk and one
35:27
Speaker 1: is not made by murk but used to make this,
35:30
Speaker 1: which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah, you know,
35:34
Speaker 1: it's the same reason the alcohol. You can go into
35:36
Speaker 1: a bar and get completely wasted out of your mind
35:39
Speaker 1: and get in a car, but you can't walk into
35:41
Speaker 1: a bar and smoke a joint or shoot heroin or
35:44
Speaker 1: shoot heroin. And we're not labbying for anything. It's just
35:47
Speaker 1: interesting that the things that society has deemed acceptable. Alcoholism
35:52
Speaker 1: is just fine. Well it's not just fine, but it's
35:55
Speaker 1: it's legal and you can do it, even though it
35:57
Speaker 1: kills all these people, and this is not acceptable. It's
35:59
Speaker 1: just it's funny how we've evolved to think some things
36:03
Speaker 1: are evil and some things are just great. I wonder
36:06
Speaker 1: what the future holds, Josh. I wonder myself. We'll find out, Yes,
36:09
Speaker 1: we will, if we lived that long. That is about
36:13
Speaker 1: it for this one. You should probably check out Can
36:16
Speaker 1: we Treat Mental Illness with Hallucinogens on the site. Be
36:20
Speaker 1: sure to check out Carrying the Sky with Diamonds Vanity
36:24
Speaker 1: Fair article type in George Rick Quarte R I C
36:28
Speaker 1: U A R T e uh into Reasons website that
36:32
Speaker 1: will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time
36:36
Speaker 1: magazine article from I think two thousand or two thousand
36:40
Speaker 1: one UM on ecstasy on M D M A uh
36:45
Speaker 1: it was. That's really It's called the Happiness and a
36:49
Speaker 1: Pill something like that, Josh from the future. We are
36:54
Speaker 1: in New York right now, but tonight Thursday, the twenty
36:58
Speaker 1: one October. I know that our producer and comfitan and
37:03
Speaker 1: den mother. Jerry will be at a fundraiser for the
37:07
Speaker 1: co ED, the Cooperative Cooperative for Education right today, Yeah, tonight.
37:13
Speaker 1: If you're in Atlanta and you are about to pop
37:16
Speaker 1: another chef lonely Hearts frozen dinner for one and drink
37:22
Speaker 1: a bottle of wine for two by yourself, and you're
37:25
Speaker 1: looking for love in the Atlanta area, stop what you're doing,
37:31
Speaker 1: Grab twenty bucks and go to the Metropolitan Club in
37:34
Speaker 1: Alpharetta from seven to ten pm tonight, Thursday, October twenty one.
37:39
Speaker 1: Co ED is holding their Fall Fiesta, a t L fundraiser.
37:44
Speaker 1: It's gonna be awesome, right. The twenty bucks buys you
37:46
Speaker 1: that wine that you're going to drink by yourself, better wine,
37:48
Speaker 1: probably asked, and you get to drink it amongst friends,
37:51
Speaker 1: meet Jerry. There's also going to be food, better food, entertainment,
37:55
Speaker 1: and all sorts of chances to win or auction bid. Right,
38:01
Speaker 1: that's the that's the proper verb. Yeah, they're auctioning off
38:04
Speaker 1: cool prizes like African safaris and uh signed sports memorabilia
38:09
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and you never know, you could
38:12
Speaker 1: find love there. We're making zero guarantees whatsoever, but It's
38:16
Speaker 1: worth a shot, isn't it. Yes, And if we weren't
38:19
Speaker 1: out of town right now, we would be there tonight,
38:20
Speaker 1: Yes we would. So. Um again, if you don't remember
38:24
Speaker 1: who co ed is. Co ed are the is the
38:26
Speaker 1: great nonprofit that took us to Guatemala and we did
38:29
Speaker 1: a two part podcast on it which is awesome. Um.
38:32
Speaker 1: And they pull money together to buy books for schools
38:36
Speaker 1: in Guatemala, which then in turn rent the books. Uh.
38:40
Speaker 1: And that that rental fee is is put into an
38:43
Speaker 1: escrow account which after five years is substantial enough to
38:46
Speaker 1: buy all new textbooks. So what they start as a
38:49
Speaker 1: self sustaining system um of ownership of textbooks, and it
38:53
Speaker 1: has a huge effect. It's not just textbooks. They do
38:55
Speaker 1: computer labs too, So um, if you want more information
38:58
Speaker 1: on coed or the Fall Fiesta a t L tonight,
39:01
Speaker 1: go to their website www dot c o E d
39:05
Speaker 1: UC dot org. Right, that's right, all right, let's do this.
39:09
Speaker 1: So that that's it man, Nice job, buddy. I guess
39:12
Speaker 1: it's time now for listener mail, right, Yes, I have
39:18
Speaker 1: a listener mail, Josh from Rhea and this was about
39:20
Speaker 1: Octopus or OCTOPI. We were corrected the octopis not right,
39:25
Speaker 1: but she says it she worked at high is so right. Well,
39:28
Speaker 1: we have these people seeing actually the Latin thing the
39:33
Speaker 1: Jerry just left at that. Hi, guys, your podcast on
39:37
Speaker 1: OCTOPI made my day to day. Thank you. I work
39:39
Speaker 1: as an aquarist at a San Francisco aquarium and one
39:42
Speaker 1: of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery. Nice. I
39:47
Speaker 1: get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make sure
39:51
Speaker 1: all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble.
39:53
Speaker 1: And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to
39:57
Speaker 1: open a jar to get his favorite food, which live crabs.
40:01
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you fromstr octopus. Uh. It was
40:05
Speaker 1: great to hear someone besides myself get a little too
40:07
Speaker 1: excited about these critters. And you know, we've got great
40:09
Speaker 1: feedback on this. People love the octopus because are so freaky. Uh.
40:14
Speaker 1: The story about Lucratia mke evil especially cracked me up.
40:18
Speaker 1: I work with the g p O. That's the giant
40:20
Speaker 1: Pacific octopod that might give her a run for money.
40:23
Speaker 1: For the past few weeks, I've been walking around with
40:25
Speaker 1: what my colleagues call octopus kisses up the length of
40:29
Speaker 1: my arms. But I'm afraid my husband is getting a
40:32
Speaker 1: little suspicious about the number of hickys I've been acquiring.
40:34
Speaker 1: So that's from the little suckers. These little suckers clearly, Uh,
40:39
Speaker 1: these were given to me while I tried to remove
40:41
Speaker 1: the individual from blocking the flow to his tank and
40:45
Speaker 1: stop his flooding of the entire aquarium. It's never a
40:48
Speaker 1: boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys, thanks for
40:50
Speaker 1: all the great podcast. If you're ever in San Francisco,
40:53
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places, Josh, let me know and
40:56
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can't work out some behind the
40:57
Speaker 1: scenes cephalopod goodness. And that is from Rhea, and she says,
41:02
Speaker 1: and don't worry, by the way, I have trouble pronouncing
41:06
Speaker 1: hecto caudles as well and have taken the calling in
41:10
Speaker 1: the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works. The spermacle is what
41:16
Speaker 1: she says. She says, it's time to rename that organ. Yes, well,
41:20
Speaker 1: thanks Ria, right, thank you. My dad always said life
41:25
Speaker 1: is better with steffalo pods in it. Really. Yeah, Uh,
41:29
Speaker 1: if you have a fantastic saying that your father, mother, grandfather,
41:33
Speaker 1: some old timing person told you we want to hear it,
41:37
Speaker 1: Wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom,
41:40
Speaker 1: and then send it to stuff podcast at how stuff
41:44
Speaker 1: works dot com For more on this and thousands of
41:51
Speaker 1: other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want
41:55
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
41:57
Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com home page. M hmm. Brought
42:02
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready,
42:06
Speaker 1: Are you