Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Diana Colleen Author They Could Be Saviors - Psychedelic Therapy to Cure Greed & Save the Planet S2-EP16

Transcript

Diana Colleen Author They Could Be Saviors - Psychedelic Therapy to Cure Greed & Save the Planet S2-EP16 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  my only advice is to stay away from mirrors.
• 0:02
  Mirrors,
• 0:02
  mirrors are not good.
• 0:03
  Just mirrors are awful.
• 0:06
  Yep.
• 0:06
  Do not look when you go to the bathroom.
• 0:08
  Do not look in the mirror.
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:11
  That's in the book.
• 0:13
  I'm curious now.
• 0:14
  What's that all about?
• 0:15
  It's just,
• 0:16
  you remember,
• 0:17
  um,
• 0:18
  Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end.
• 0:20
  Oh no.
• 0:21
  The Ark.
• 0:22
  Oh no.
• 0:23
  That like your face melts.
• 0:24
  Oh no.
• 0:24
  That's terrible.
• 0:30
  all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the space tomatoes podcast i'm one
• 0:52
  your host havoc and we've got the other host hi mlx how are you today welcome back and all that
• 1:01
  stuff awesome and today we have a special guest with us diana colleen award-winning author of
• 1:07
  they could be saviors welcome to the show colleen diana sorry gosh that's two first names right off
• 1:15
  the gate it happens i couldn't couldn't even hold it together for like 30 seconds oh my goodness
• 1:21
  good job host number one we'll forgive you you're fired you're fired
• 1:27
  fire myself thank you very much for having me i appreciate being here absolutely absolutely
• 1:34
  so what what brought you to i mean what was i guess what what brought you to write this book
• 1:42
  um a life full of trauma and sorting out my own trauma using psychedelic assisted therapy
• 1:53
  and um that basically um brought me into the psychedelic world and i became a trained
• 2:02
  facilitator and i also learned tools like meditation through like when i was in my
• 2:07
  suicidal period, I learned meditation. And probably four years ago, this idea just kept
• 2:16
  coming up in meditation about this fully formed concept of a book just kept knocking at my brain
• 2:23
  saying, hey, write this book. And I'm like, I don't know how to write anything. I've never
• 2:27
  written anything in my life. And I know you got the wrong person. It's not me. But things
• 2:34
  It kind of worked out. I was in a job that I hated, and my partner at the time was like, you know, you're so unhappy, and you've got this idea. I can support you. Why don't you quit and write this book?
• 2:46
  and I was like wow
• 2:48
  that was a leap of faith
• 2:50
  but I did
• 2:52
  I quit my full time job and I sat at my desk
• 2:54
  at home for 8-10 hours a day
• 2:56
  and I wrote and I learned
• 2:58
  how to write
• 2:59
  I took so many classes and courses
• 3:02
  and joined critique groups
• 3:04
  and learned everything I needed to know
• 3:06
  and now I have a book
• 3:08
  so it wasn't planned
• 3:10
  awesome
• 3:11
  so
• 3:12
  Okay, so the psychedelic facilitator.
• 3:18
  I knew you were going to go right to the psychedelics.
• 3:20
  Well, come on.
• 3:21
  Most people do.
• 3:22
  Let's talk about the interesting stuff.
• 3:24
  Not that your book isn't interesting.
• 3:26
  I mean, come on now.
• 3:27
  So I guess my first question is, you know,
• 3:30
  did you have experience with psychedelics prior to using them therapeutically
• 3:37
  And not to say that it isn't, in my opinion, therapeutic in general.
• 3:44
  However, and when you did embark on that journey, did you do it in a guided way with a mentor or in a specific setting or group or, you know, how'd that work for you?
• 3:59
  Yeah.
• 4:00
  So, like, growing up, I grew up in the 80s.
• 4:04
  And so the war on drugs was a big thing.
• 4:06
  And I was very anti-drug and all drugs are bad. I grew up with that mindset. So that didn't really leave me until I was like in my 40s. And so when I heard about psychedelic assisted therapy, I was like, oh, I was terrified, terrified of drugs.
• 4:26
  And so, but I did a lot of research and there's a lot out there that shows how beneficial it is. And I was like, I need a lot of help and I think this is what can do it. So I really didn't have a lot of experience with drugs prior to finding a psychedelic therapist.
• 4:47
  That being said, I did an ayahuasca ceremony prior like that.
• 4:54
  An ayahuasca ceremony was my very first drug experience.
• 4:57
  And I don't recommend that.
• 4:59
  That's that's a jump in with both feet.
• 5:02
  Let's go.
• 5:02
  Here we are.
• 5:04
  Yeah.
• 5:05
  Learn to swim.
• 5:06
  No, we're scuba diving.
• 5:08
  Yeah, pretty much.
• 5:10
  Awesome.
• 5:11
  Yeah.
• 5:11
  Awesome.
• 5:12
  Okay. And so the ceremony, I assume you probably went South America somewhere and did one of the, you know, kind of guided sessions?
• 5:25
  yeah sort of so i um what year was it 2016 i think um i i moved to costa rica by myself
• 5:37
  and was living like in the middle of nowhere um in the mountains didn't speak the language i don't
• 5:43
  know what i was thinking but um somebody somebody i met introduced me to a shaman and they were just
• 5:50
  happened they happened to be having a ceremony in the middle of the jungle like a week from when i
• 5:56
  met the guy i'm like okay i'll try that so it was not like at a resort or anything like that
• 6:04
  yeah very unplanned wow i i i struggle myself with like anxiety and social anxiety and
• 6:12
  i've never tried psychedelics because honestly i'm worried like something would go on in my mind like
• 6:19
  I don't want to see demons. I don't want to like have those experience. I don't want to wear the chicken suit and walk around and do any like things you see on the Internet. I'd be worried somebody in the jungle is going to like murder me. How do you get past those feelings? Just the anxiety of that stuff happening?
• 6:34
  that that's that's very real that is so real um for me i think it was just that i was struggling
• 6:43
  so much mentally that like i i don't think i cared if like if if i died you know like oh well
• 6:52
  i wasn't happy in my life anyway so taking that risk didn't seem as big because i really didn't
• 7:00
  care, if that makes sense. So hopefully, you know, you're not at that place because that's not a
• 7:09
  great place to be at. Right. Yeah. I think the real, the, the only harm I think that, you know,
• 7:18
  okay, let me take that back. I have seen, I've gone through a couple of sessions where friends
• 7:25
  have had bad times, but temporary. I think the, the only real permanent harm that comes is to that
• 7:35
  fragile little three letter system inside of us that gets destroyed pretty badly. And that's your
• 7:44
  ego, right? It really, uh, and, and that I think is where the profound changes come from.
• 7:50
  Yeah. There are risks, though. Alex, you are very correct. There are risks. You can have a psychotic break. And because I am a facilitator, I know these things that I wish that everyone would get screened before they do any kind of psychedelics.
• 8:12
  Because there are contraindications and there are certain people who really should not be doing psychedelics because they can have an experience that they don't come back from.
• 8:22
  And that's probably what you're thinking about, Alex.
• 8:25
  Could you go over it with us, like possibly?
• 8:28
  And like who shouldn't dip their toes into the whole psychedelic thing?
• 8:33
  Is there like any?
• 8:34
  Like schizophrenia, like if there's any schizophrenia in your close family, don't touch this stuff.
• 8:42
  um, bipolar, um, you know, definitely just talk. There are doctors, um, that you can like
• 8:50
  do an online screening with, um, that will, you know, they'll ask you all about what medications
• 8:57
  you're on or have taken in the past, your family history. So it's really important to have a
• 9:03
  screening before you, you do with any of this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But in general, they're very
• 9:12
  safe they are very very safe um you know most people you're not you're not going to overdose
• 9:21
  and die like psilocybin you can't you can't overdose on psilocybin it's kind of like
• 9:26
  marijuana you can't overdose you can have some pretty shitty experiences by taking too much
• 9:33
  but you're not going to die yeah i don't i completely relate to what you were saying
• 9:38
  because I still have my elementary school picture that I have the just say no shirt that they gave everybody like, you know, in school back.
• 9:46
  And it was pushed pretty hard upon people.
• 9:49
  Oh, yeah.
• 9:49
  My wife talks about it all the time.
• 9:51
  You know, like that's what they hammered into our head that, you know, that you take the egg in the frying pan.
• 9:56
  Just once and you're going to, you know, like something horrible is going to happen.
• 10:00
  Yeah, you're going to jump out a window.
• 10:01
  We had the, was it dare?
• 10:04
  I don't think it was dare at the time.
• 10:06
  It was the, you know, Nancy Reagan, you know, Nancy Reagan, you know, had the officer come in with this little tackle box full of goodies.
• 10:17
  I guess I got the wrong message and thought, oh, well, you know, this is an instruction manual.
• 10:24
  No, probably just for samples.
• 10:27
  That was probably that close to doing.
• 10:32
  Yeah.
• 10:32
  Nice.
• 10:33
  I think, so after your first experience, was there anything the next day that really stood out to you as being visibly or recognizably different?
• 10:49
  So are you talking about the ayahuasca or my first session with a therapist, the one that saved my life?
• 10:56
  I would say I'm not as familiar with ayahuasca.
• 11:01
  So let's go with the first session with the therapist because that's where I would hone in.
• 11:06
  Yeah.
• 11:07
  So at that point in my life, I was suicidal.
• 11:12
  The first therapist that I was referred to couldn't get me in for six months.
• 11:16
  And I'm like, well, I'm not going to be around in six months.
• 11:19
  And then he referred me to somebody else who was training under him.
• 11:23
  So she didn't have as much experience and she could get me in pretty quickly.
• 11:26
  Thank goodness.
• 11:27
  So going into that session, I was ready to not be here coming out of that session.
• 11:35
  I was okay staying.
• 11:38
  So like, that's a huge shift in a short amount of time.
• 11:44
  So it, it literally saved my life.
• 11:48
  Yeah.
• 11:48
  Yeah. So for me, I guess I could say this. I can say this. I can own up to this. Yeah. For me, it was, you know, I was, I was young. I was a teenager with my first experience and it was, it was so recognizable and noticeable to me.
• 12:09
  I wasn't, you know, I don't, I don't, I mean, I'm sure troubled teen.
• 12:13
  Right.
• 12:13
  But yeah, I don't think there was anything profoundly, you know, off.
• 12:19
  Well, maybe, I don't know.
• 12:20
  But I remember, uh, we, we, we took LSD and, and, uh, I remember taking it and then about
• 12:29
  20 minutes later, I'm like, yeah, it's not, it's not doing anything.
• 12:32
  It's not working.
• 12:33
  So I took two more.
• 12:35
  Oh no.
• 12:36
  And then my buddies took it.
• 12:37
  And then we're like, you know, 40 minutes in, we're like, it's not doing anything.
• 12:42
  So we're like, all right, well, let's get out of here.
• 12:44
  So we got in the car and we get on the freeway and we're about 10 minutes into this drive on the freeway.
• 12:52
  And I just started laughing.
• 12:55
  And I mean, like, could not stop, like uncontrollable laughter.
• 13:00
  and the two friends that I had with me in the front seats just both looked at each other and went,
• 13:06
  oh no. We got where we were going and everything was good. The interesting thing for me was the
• 13:17
  next morning, and I remember it as vivid as anything, I woke up and everything seemed
• 13:28
  different to me. And, and it wasn't until I was on my way to, uh, I was on my way to work.
• 13:34
  I was catching the bus and I get on the bus and, and it hit me. All the colors of the world were
• 13:43
  a hundred times more vibrant. I was completely off. Right. I mean, it, it doesn't like,
• 13:50
  there's no real residual effect for psychedelics, right? Once you come down and you're done,
• 13:56
  it's gone it's just gone like it didn't happen um and i i remember thinking that and and it was
• 14:04
  just such a profound change for me that the world had become more vibrant more alive more detailed
• 14:12
  more colorful and and i you know i i don't know i i guess uh maybe it's something that you did see
• 14:21
  or did experience, but it was overshadowed by something that was far more beneficial and
• 14:25
  necessary in your life at that time, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. Like the, the therapeutic
• 14:31
  session, you know, is in a, a very controlled setting. So like on a, on a bed with an eye mask
• 14:38
  and you're, you're going inside. So you're not experienced and experiencing outside, but I have
• 14:44
  definitely had those experiences. Like, you know, I've been in a forest on mushrooms and watching
• 14:49
  the trees breathing and seeing how everything is connected and how I'm connected to the trees.
• 14:56
  And that's something like you can't unsee that. Yeah, it's gone after the experience, but
• 15:02
  that lives with me. And like psychedelics for me, and I think for a lot of people,
• 15:09
  they connect you to nature, which I think society is lacking. Like we really need more
• 15:17
  connection to nature it connects you to humanity and it connects you to yourself so like three
• 15:23
  major things like i feel like disconnection is one of the the worst things in humanity right now
• 15:31
  and psychedelics connect you to those three things that it it will change the world if people can have
• 15:39
  that kind of connection. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think it's, you know, it is an amazing
• 15:51
  thing that we're starting to see, you know, actual medical professionals utilizing psychedelics for
• 15:58
  treatments. And some of the results are astounding, right? People that have, you know, gone through
• 16:05
  the ringer and you know been on you know gobs of of you know psychotropic medication and and
• 16:12
  everything else getting to a place after one session to where that medication is no longer
• 16:21
  something that you know depending on the scenario depending on the person there's all sorts of
• 16:26
  different things and i would never want to make a blanket statement and right they're crying out
• 16:31
  loud. If you're looking to me for medical advice, just don't. Okay. But, you know, to see some of
• 16:38
  the statements, you know, with people coming out of that and, and people getting off of those drugs,
• 16:43
  which we all know have side effects and, and all sorts of other areas that I think at least
• 16:52
  warrant caution, right? And from something that has, you know, a very, very, very low
• 17:01
  possibility of any adverse effect and wears off out of your body, doesn't have an addictive profile,
• 17:10
  which is another thing that's quite amazing about them is, you know, there's this reset period,
• 17:15
  right? People think, oh, well, I might get addicted. You can't. I mean, you literally,
• 17:20
  Look, if you take shrooms and then you come down, you start taking more shrooms, you're not going anywhere.
• 17:26
  They don't do anything.
• 17:27
  You're just eating really horrible tasting mushrooms.
• 17:30
  And you're going to eat a lot of them and they're not going to do anything.
• 17:33
  And the same is true with LSD and peyote.
• 17:36
  And, you know, as far as I'm aware, all of the different psychedelics, they have this reset time.
• 17:43
  So it's not like you can even get to a point where, oh, I need, you know, I got to stay on my, it's not.
• 17:50
  And then seeing some of the, you know, what's referred to as micro dosing and how that's been impactful to people with everything ranging from, you know, ADHD to OCD to, you know, just PTSD.
• 18:05
  Yep. PTSD.
• 18:06
  Yeah.
• 18:07
  Anxiety is amazing.
• 18:09
  Addiction.
• 18:10
  Yeah.
• 18:10
  Like the possibilities for our war veterans with PTSD, like the VA is doing clinical trials right now to hopefully get the FDA to approve these drugs for therapeutic use.
• 18:27
  but yeah so PTSD and addiction
• 18:30
  I mean the homeless situation
• 18:34
  you know like we can solve that if
• 18:37
  these people have access to this type of therapy
• 18:40
  didn't our government invent LSD or am I thinking of something else
• 18:45
  no they didn't but
• 18:48
  I thought they gave it to like people back in the day to see just like
• 18:52
  what it's going to do
• 18:54
  there were lots of studies
• 18:56
  yeah there were lots of studies yeah some of them and some of them without willing participants or
• 19:02
  yeah that's what i'm talking about yeah yeah yeah that is messed up by the way don't ever do that
• 19:08
  to someone that is a terrible terrible thing unless it's me in which case fine
• 19:13
  so if one decides after their own research that this is something that they want to delve into
• 19:22
  how do you how would you go about finding a professional because i'm sure there are legal
• 19:26
  ramifications depending on where you live and all that stuff and you can't just go down to
• 19:30
  walgreens and pick the stuff up right how does that work exactly it's getting a lot easier um so
• 19:38
  like when i first was introduced it was really underground so like you had to know somebody who
• 19:43
  knew somebody um but it's opened up a lot so like the the person that i trained under has a website
• 19:50
  and you know she lists pretty much all the the people who have trained under her and they they're
• 19:56
  all taking clients so like you can go to her website and choose somebody but you know that's
• 20:04
  mostly in Seattle and Seattle is you know different than other places in the country
• 20:09
  so like Oakland I think is decriminalized Colorado and Oregon are are way far ahead
• 20:18
  so you know if you're willing to travel it's easier in certain places but even in places that
• 20:25
  you wouldn't expect it to be as prevalent if you have just like a normal therapist that you
• 20:34
  see start talking to them about it because a lot of therapists actually do it on the side and but
• 20:42
  they don talk about it because they wait for their clients to bring it up before they actually start talking about it I have heard things about ketamine therapy
• 20:55
  Is that separate or is that included in this too?
• 20:59
  It is.
• 21:00
  It's considered a psychedelic, but it's completely legal.
• 21:04
  And that's a great place to start because ketamine has very, very few contraindications.
• 21:09
  So most people can do it without worrying about what medications they're currently on or what their family history is with mental illness.
• 21:20
  So that's a really great place to start.
• 21:23
  And that would be under a physician probably, right?
• 21:26
  At least where we are, I think, in Florida, I think it's under the direction of a physician.
• 21:31
  If you get the intramuscular injections, it has to be done with a physician.
• 21:36
  You can go online, which I don't know how I feel about it, but like the lozenges where you actually do it on your own at home, sort of under the supervision of somebody online.
• 21:48
  That's a little sketchy to me, but it is a possibility.
• 21:51
  And I know that some people have really been helped by that.
• 21:54
  I would prefer if you find a facilitator who will sit with you while you take it.
• 22:02
  But you can get the prescription online.
• 22:05
  Yeah.
• 22:06
  so how does that work with the facilit i'm sorry go ahead go ahead i was just going to ask how it
• 22:13
  works with the facilitator do they just like kind of walk you through the whole process from start
• 22:16
  to finish because i from what i've heard i've never personally experienced it but
• 22:20
  most psychedelics are kind of like a investment in your time from what i've heard that it's not
• 22:27
  just so it's not over quickly that you got to kind of ride it out to the end like dmt is really
• 22:33
  quick dmt is like a 15 20 minute experience and you can drive home yeah and ketamine depending
• 22:40
  on how you do it like the lozenges might last anywhere from 40 minutes to like two hours so
• 22:46
  that's a shorter experience but yeah like mushrooms lsd mdma that's a whole all-day thing that's
• 22:54
  probably what i was thinking of yeah yeah so when we talk about a session with a psychedelic
• 23:00
  facilitator or psychedelic therapist, it's usually you have a couple of like talk therapy sessions,
• 23:08
  like a couple one-hour sessions with the person to get to know each other and talk about what you
• 23:15
  want to get out of the experience. And then you have the full day under the influence of whatever
• 23:21
  substance the facilitator thinks is going to benefit you the most, depending on what you're
• 23:27
  dealing with. So you have that full day experience. And usually, there's not a lot of talking. So it's
• 23:33
  very inside you lay back with the eye mask. And like, for me, the only time I talk is when I want
• 23:42
  them to write something down for me, because some people really enjoy writing while they're under
• 23:48
  the influence. For me, it kind of takes me out of the experience. So I just write this down,
• 23:52
  And they write it down for me. And unless you're really stuck in something or you're experiencing
• 24:00
  something that's really hard for you to get out of, they're there to ground you, bring you back
• 24:08
  to reality, keep you safe so that you know that, okay, I'm still in reality. They just kind of get
• 24:15
  you through tough spots, but it's not talk therapy. Then after that day, usually, hopefully
• 24:23
  within a couple of days of your big experience, you have another session with them, and that's
• 24:28
  your integration session, where you talk about what you actually learned and how you can change
• 24:34
  your life based on what you learned. So the actions that you're going to take based on your day.
• 24:40
  is is that a is that what would be considered a heroic dose that they use or is it more of a
• 24:49
  you know maybe two to three gram type of a situation it's typically a lower dose um the
• 24:56
  heroic doses i'm i'm not opposed to that for like a mystical experience you want to meet god
• 25:02
  you want your ego to totally dissolve i get that like that is definitely um you know i i
• 25:10
  think that's very beneficial in itself as well but these therapeutic sessions are more for trauma
• 25:16
  it's like it's um so the lower doses are more introspective if that makes sense you're really
• 25:23
  like looking at who you are why you are the way you are what happened in your life and how to move
• 25:31
  forward. Interesting. I have so many questions. I just, I find it fascinating. Big fan of the
• 25:39
  heroic dose reset myself. Of course you are. Well, no, it's not. So it's one of those things that,
• 25:49
  you know, um, I, I, you know, I mean, I, I think that doing that and I call it a reset,
• 26:01
  is really what it is. You know, I internalize and let things build up and, you know, I start to
• 26:10
  notice things about myself, how I am, how I'm interacting with others, you know, how I'm
• 26:17
  spending my free time, just little things that start to build up, I guess. And, and it doesn't,
• 26:23
  you know, it's kind of like, you know, the whole social media thing, right? Like doom scrolling,
• 26:29
  right? And you sit there and you doom scroll. And the more you do it, the more you start to
• 26:33
  recognize how you're like, you're anxious and you're tensing up and I'm all, you know, and
• 26:40
  someone says, Hey, you want some coffee? What do you mean? Do I want to hear? And I was like,
• 26:43
  whoa. And the reset for me doing that heroic dose really allows me to dissolve that ego and really
• 26:52
  internalize what are these things? What do I need to let go of? And for me, it really allows me to
• 26:59
  to almost go into the warehouse
• 27:04
  and look at all the compartments
• 27:06
  and expose those things
• 27:09
  and go, yeah, this has got to come out.
• 27:12
  I got to pull this one out.
• 27:13
  I got to open this one up and get rid of it.
• 27:16
  You know, it's like a spring cleaning, if you will,
• 27:18
  for my mental well-being,
• 27:20
  my spiritual well-being as well, right?
• 27:23
  I really do believe that there's a lot of that
• 27:25
  that comes in.
• 27:26
  I don't really get that same thing when it's a lower dose.
• 27:33
  It's more of a fun, happy-go-lucky type of a time.
• 27:37
  Although I'm also not doing it in a more medical setting where, you know, things are more controlled and we're trying to do that.
• 27:47
  It's a little more, you know, when it happens, you know, a little impromptu, I guess.
• 27:55
  So, yeah, I kind of really enjoy those myself. And I mean, I've gone absolutely way past where I would suggest anyone should go many, many times. And yeah, I mean, I'm weird, but I don't know. I don't think that's the reason.
• 28:17
  when you say dissolve the ego what does that mean exactly like i'm just not that knowledgeable
• 28:24
  what does it mean for you maybe would be the better question
• 28:28
  for yeah for you for me yeah it's it's the it's the
• 28:36
  so my okay so in general my ego so i want to take these things and i want to compartmentalize
• 28:45
  We do this with everything in our life, right?
• 28:48
  We compartmentalize it, but there are some things we don't want to touch.
• 28:52
  It's not comfy.
• 28:53
  It's not cozy.
• 28:54
  I don't want to look at it.
• 28:55
  I don't want to think about it.
• 28:56
  And I certainly don't want to feel that.
• 28:58
  So I shove that way at the back of that corner of that.
• 29:02
  And I stack all kinds of boxes around it with other stuff.
• 29:05
  That's way more comfortable.
• 29:06
  Like my garage full of garbage?
• 29:07
  Yes.
• 29:08
  But only one of the boxes has a bunch of pit vipers in it.
• 29:11
  And you just leave it back there because it's protected with all these other boxes.
• 29:15
  right and what that really means is is getting rid of that ego that doesn't want me to take that on
• 29:23
  and and and suffer that kind of and really be able to examine that even though it you know
• 29:30
  honestly can bring about times where i go into you know almost hysterical crying right
• 29:37
  but i come out of that and that box is gone baby it's it's not like i opened it up peeked inside
• 29:45
  I had had some radical emotion and then shoved it back.
• 29:49
  Like I can't, you know, it kind of dissolves the ego.
• 29:53
  And that's the part of you that doesn't want to deal with this because it is hurtful.
• 29:59
  It's shameful.
• 30:00
  It's, you know, it's impactful to your pride.
• 30:02
  It's impactful to any of these things that our ego centers around.
• 30:07
  Right.
• 30:07
  And so the dissolving or the dissolution of that ego for that period of time really allows you.
• 30:14
  and sometimes even brings these things to the front.
• 30:17
  Like it just comes scooting out of that room right in front of you
• 30:20
  and the box opens up and you're like, dang it.
• 30:24
  But that's what it is.
• 30:26
  And so it allows me to reset and I can get all those,
• 30:29
  maybe not all of them,
• 30:30
  but I can get some of those boxes out of there
• 30:32
  and dissolve, get rid of them, right?
• 30:35
  Just go ahead and deal with them
• 30:37
  and then they don't have to go back.
• 30:41
  Yeah, so like psychedelics
• 30:42
  take it, they take away your fear, the fear of examining yourself, the fear of, like, for me,
• 30:51
  trauma, you know, like talk therapy never worked for me, because every time I went to talk therapy,
• 30:57
  I was re-traumatized just by talking about it, like you can feel the trauma in your body when
• 31:03
  you talk about it. And the psychedelics takes that fear away, so that you're not feeling it
• 31:09
  in your body and you're looking at your life and yourself, everything that's happened to you from a
• 31:16
  very different perspective without the fear. And that's how, like, Havoc, I think that your
• 31:24
  description was fantastic. And that is the therapeutic, like, your heroic dose sounds
• 31:30
  very therapeutic. So, like, when I think of a heroic dose, I'm thinking meeting entities,
• 31:36
  meeting god you know mystical experiences um but your heroic dose sounded exactly like what
• 31:44
  a therapeutic dose does yeah only don't you don't need to be in that controlled environment because
• 31:51
  you've taken enough to where it's going to happen whether you like it or not um so you get you get
• 31:58
  both i guess right and it's it's a good mix of the two for me as well because i really enjoy the
• 32:03
  visuals. Like you said that when you look out into nature, it doesn't happen if you're in a house,
• 32:11
  it doesn't happen if you're in a room, but if you're in nature and you look out, literally
• 32:16
  everything is completely intertwined and, and connected. You could draw a line from whether
• 32:25
  it's gears or swirls or whatever you happen to be visualizing, but it's usually one of those two
• 32:31
  swirls or gears don't ask me why but it is um and you could literally draw a line from a tree branch
• 32:38
  down the tree through the swirls into the ground onto a rock and and you know even up into the sky
• 32:45
  and the clouds and and the stars and everything and it just brings about this feeling and then
• 32:51
  if you look down at your feet the swirls come up into you and go out for you as well and it really
• 32:59
  brings about that that it's it's a feeling it's not just like a thought like oh we're all connected
• 33:06
  you know what i mean some platitude right it's like i am literally connected to that tree
• 33:13
  and the sky and it's it's it's it's very in in it's a very uh
• 33:21
  it's a thought-provoking experience i mean it really is and that's i guess the best way to say
• 33:28
  is it really flips, it breaks down all those mental barriers,
• 33:33
  just smashes them.
• 33:35
  They're gone.
• 33:36
  They don't exist.
• 33:39
  Diana, you brought up something,
• 33:41
  and this is probably one of the things that I would have fears about.
• 33:44
  And you talked about meeting God or speaking to entities,
• 33:47
  and I'm sure it's open to each individual person's interpretation,
• 33:52
  but what do you feel that people that experience that
• 33:56
  are actually interacting with you do you feel like they're entities or is that just a part of
• 34:00
  their their mind that they're interacting with so the entities thing is is a tough one for me
• 34:07
  um i personally don't believe in in evil i don't believe that uh that if we have a loving god that
• 34:17
  a loving god would create evil so i don't believe in evil demons and entities and stuff like that
• 34:23
  So I think that one's hard for me to answer for other people.
• 34:30
  But as far as like meeting God, before psychedelics, so I grew up in a Christian household.
• 34:38
  And in my late teens, I just was like, this is all bullshit.
• 34:43
  And I really went away from all kinds, like everything.
• 34:47
  I did not believe there was a God for decades.
• 34:50
  And then I got into psychedelics, and I'm like, there's definitely a God. I don't know what it is. But I am a very spiritual person now, which I absolutely was not prior to this.
• 35:06
  So, meeting God, I think that happens in a lot of different ways for people. I guess some people actually meet a thing, like an entity that they believe is God. For me, that hasn't happened.
• 35:23
  It's just kind of the awe, the awe of existence, of the universe, of the unexplained, of the vastness that, like, to me, that's God.
• 35:40
  And every time I do psychedelics, I am in awe and I have bliss.
• 35:45
  Like, it's love.
• 35:47
  People talk about love and blissful love.
• 35:51
  That's what you get with psychedelics.
• 35:53
  And I get it in meditation now, too.
• 35:55
  Like, I know how to reach that state through meditation.
• 36:00
  And it's like having an orgasm in your heart.
• 36:03
  Like, it's incredible.
• 36:05
  And I just, I don't have another word other than God.
• 36:10
  Well, I call it source or, you know, God.
• 36:13
  I don't know what else to call it.
• 36:15
  It's a lot like, if you've ever been around an infant, right?
• 36:21
  and and you just just watch them and and look at them and they're looking at things and everything
• 36:28
  to them is just awe-inspiring everything right because it's all new and it's just like wow you
• 36:37
  know that i i feel like that's the state your mind gets put into everything is like wow you know
• 36:48
  it just breaks down
• 36:50
  and you think about it
• 36:52
  a baby doesn't have barriers
• 36:53
  there's no barrier there
• 36:55
  there's no trauma
• 36:56
  there shouldn't be
• 36:58
  I hope there isn't
• 37:00
  but there's no barrier there
• 37:03
  there's no learned behavior
• 37:05
  to protect from this
• 37:07
  or these words
• 37:09
  are not good words
• 37:10
  whatever that
• 37:12
  all that's just gone
• 37:14
  it's an interesting thing
• 37:16
  So switching topics just a little bit, billionaireism.
• 37:25
  Okay, so I was doing a little bit of research and I looked at your book and I think you may have hit on something because I've wondered this quite a lot throughout my life, right?
• 37:39
  Like for me, if I made a billion dollars, you'd never see me again.
• 37:42
  Just you wouldn't.
• 37:43
  Bye.
• 37:44
  Gone.
• 37:44
  I'd be like, I'd have a thousand acres.
• 37:47
  My house would be in the middle of it.
• 37:49
  And I might even just not make a road, like just no more, just it.
• 37:53
  I'm gone.
• 37:56
  And, and you, you equated it to kind of, if I recall correctly, a mental illness similar
• 38:04
  to hoarding.
• 38:05
  And I've never really heard it put that way, but I've always thought to myself, what keeps
• 38:12
  these, why do you, what is the point?
• 38:14
  Like you, you, you need so much.
• 38:17
  You could never even spend all this money.
• 38:19
  What is the point?
• 38:21
  Yeah.
• 38:22
  And it doesn't add to their wellbeing, right?
• 38:25
  Like I, I like to talk about the definition of enough.
• 38:29
  What is your definition of enough?
• 38:31
  And for me, it's like, if I get more, if it doesn't add to my wellbeing, but it takes
• 38:37
  away from somebody else's, then that's too much.
• 38:41
  Right.
• 38:42
  And these billionaires, they're taking and taking and taking. It's not adding to their well-being because, like you said, they can't spend it in a thousand lifetimes. So they can buy whatever they want. They have all this power. It's not adding to their life anymore, but it's definitely taking away from the rest of us. So yeah, that's a mental illness.
• 39:03
  It certainly seems to meet that criteria. And I never, I never even thought about it like that. So I think that's an interesting thing. So what kind of led you to the idea of billionaireism and the idea that it's potentially grounded in a mental illness?
• 39:23
  like i said the whole concept of the book came in meditation so
• 39:31
  i don't really know when i started thinking about billionaires um i grew up really poor
• 39:39
  um like eating out of garbage cans poor so i know what it feels like to watch other people have stuff
• 39:46
  and you not have it.
• 39:48
  So obviously that's part of, you know, how my brain works
• 39:53
  and like that's back there, the inequality.
• 39:57
  So that's always, and I've always been kind of an activist.
• 40:01
  But as far as the billionaire stuff,
• 40:05
  I feel like just in the last 10 or 15 years,
• 40:11
  especially in the U.S.,
• 40:14
  Like just the adoration of these people, you know, like we put them on pedestals and we want to be like them.
• 40:21
  And I just, I find it sickening.
• 40:26
  It really makes me sick that these are the people that we're looking up to.
• 40:31
  And I just think that it's so wrong.
• 40:35
  I think any celebrity can be probably put in that category as well.
• 40:38
  It's crazy that people will listen to a celebrity even though they know nothing about them or what their morals or ideals are.
• 40:48
  Yeah, exactly.
• 40:49
  Yeah, and these billionaires have so much power.
• 40:53
  They're not elected.
• 40:54
  And I don't know.
• 40:57
  I won't be able to talk, give the points he gave.
• 41:01
  But John Oliver just did a segment on Elon Musk and Twitter, and he still calls it Twitter, which I love about John Oliver.
• 41:09
  But like watching that, you're just like, holy shit, like stuff that I had no idea about.
• 41:15
  And it's just it's scary as shit that they have that kind of power and not being elected.
• 41:23
  No consequences whatsoever for these people.
• 41:26
  Well the interesting thing to me is that in celebrities really you know drive this home as well is in general in our lives Trust is not something you just give right There a process where you meet someone and a little bit of trust is there
• 41:46
  Okay, well, go ahead and not just be standoffish with everyone.
• 41:51
  So there's some trust and then it builds, right?
• 41:55
  And you build that trust until this becomes someone that you can trust
• 41:59
  when they say something you feel, I can trust this.
• 42:02
  with celebrities and with these, you know, these uber wealthy people, there's, there's,
• 42:09
  it's a weird thing to see, but people just give them their trust just right off the bat.
• 42:16
  And it's like, you don't know anything about this person. And if you did, you, you probably would
• 42:22
  think real, real hard about that trust that you're giving this person. And it's just a weird
• 42:29
  phenomenon to me to to see that you know what i mean yeah seems very very counterproductive to
• 42:37
  you know the way we are in general well i think we think that we know these people because they're
• 42:45
  on our screens right like we are always on screens um whatever screen it is and you they're in your
• 42:52
  home. And I think people feel like they know these people. You don't. You don't know them at all.
• 43:00
  And they don't know you, that's for sure. Nor do they care to, believe it or not. Exactly.
• 43:07
  They have zero concern for you or your plates or any of that stuff, right? I mean, they may have a
• 43:16
  humanitarian moment here or there but you know that's just pr for a tax break maybe it's npr
• 43:24
  right oh look at this great thing yeah i'm so great yep yeah yeah so you're you're i kind of
• 43:30
  feel sorry for these people a little bit because how do you ever know that someone's truly your
• 43:34
  friend if you have that much money and they're not just like there for something that i'm sure
• 43:40
  they're always being pulled at for something or another you could probably never tell who your
• 43:46
  true uh friends are in life right and that's gotta like that's gotta be a mental challenge too right
• 43:52
  so like they need therapy they need therapy to to deal with that stuff too and i think that they
• 43:59
  i mean i don't know any billionaires i don't know if they're in therapy or not but they should be
• 44:05
  they definitely should be yeah in your book as well right part of the whole thing is
• 44:12
  I don't think I'm giving it away,
• 44:16
  but essentially kidnapping billionaires and taking them to a camp
• 44:20
  and going through psychedelic therapy to hopefully change some of their
• 44:25
  thoughts, beliefs, patterns, et cetera.
• 44:30
  So, okay.
• 44:33
  That's a little radical there, right?
• 44:36
  On one hand, I sit there and look at it and go,
• 44:39
  okay, that would probably be beneficial.
• 44:41
  And then on the other hand, I go, that's like forced conversion therapy right there.
• 44:46
  And that's a scary thing as well.
• 44:49
  Right.
• 44:49
  I mean, so how did you, I mean, I would, for me, I would wrestle with that quite a lot, writing something like that, knowing that deep down, I don't believe that that's a, a, an approach that should ever be taken.
• 45:03
  But at the same time, maybe it would work.
• 45:07
  So did you have to wrestle with that, like morally and ethically or?
• 45:12
  Absolutely. Yeah. So I kind of look at it in two in two ways.
• 45:18
  The first being like with alcoholics and drug addicts, a lot of people have interventions for them. Right.
• 45:26
  So like a lot of addicts don't want help, but then their family intervenes and they're forced into rehab.
• 45:35
  So I see it kind of that way in some respects. But in the book, there's actually quite a bit of time spent getting the billionaires on board. Because with psychedelics, it's not a good idea to force somebody to take them, especially if they're angry. And that does come up in the book, what happens when somebody takes psychedelics when they're angry.
• 46:01
  um so yeah there's there's a lot of time spent actually getting them to to agree to it so it's
• 46:09
  not so they're coerced into it they're not forced it's a little bit different but but yeah um like
• 46:17
  i have a a discussion guide for like book clubs and the discussion guide really goes into stuff
• 46:24
  like that like is this actually a good thing to do is it moral to to require somebody to do this
• 46:34
  type of stuff yeah so it's something that readers would need to wrestle with as well
• 46:39
  interesting i need to write that one down don't take psychedelics when you're angry got it
• 46:45
  that's important for me yeah set and setting yeah those are the two things set and setting this is
• 46:52
  this is exact mindset yep yeah exactly it's it's your mindset when you're going into it
• 46:57
  and then the setting you're in which you know i've always been interested in the the medical
• 47:04
  portion of this right because for me a real big part of this is being in an environment that i'm
• 47:10
  comfortable in and i can tell you one place i am never ever ever comfortable in any way shape or
• 47:16
  form and that's in a medical setting so i'm like well i don't know how that would work i i kind of
• 47:23
  want to try it just to see like you know what would it be it's not really a medical setting
• 47:28
  so so like with that with a therapist it's not met most therapists have a really nice setting
• 47:35
  you know like um almost like a massage uh you know you know with the the candles and the music
• 47:43
  and that kind of, it does not feel like a sterile medical setting.
• 47:49
  Yeah.
• 47:50
  Yeah.
• 47:51
  Okay.
• 47:51
  Oh, music.
• 47:52
  I'm sure there's good music to go with that stuff.
• 47:54
  Oh, yeah.
• 47:55
  Like tools?
• 47:55
  Music is really important.
• 47:57
  No.
• 47:58
  Here's what you really want to do.
• 48:00
  Here's a good one for you.
• 48:03
  And you may absolutely, like, most people would probably put this album on
• 48:08
  and just go, why would you ever subject yourself to this?
• 48:13
  take psychedelics, wait 45 minutes to one hour,
• 48:18
  no longer than one hour and put on Pink Floyd's Uma Guma.
• 48:23
  I knew you were going to say that.
• 48:25
  And I'm not, I'm not kidding you. It's, it's a, it's a ride, man.
• 48:32
  I think it was purpose built for that. I really do.
• 48:36
  It just takes you through so many different.
• 48:39
  So here's an interesting thing on psychedelics.
• 48:44
  The smallest change can be profound.
• 48:50
  And I really mean this.
• 48:52
  If you are sitting in a room and you walk into the next room,
• 48:57
  the air changes.
• 48:59
  Everything changed.
• 49:00
  It's like everything changed.
• 49:02
  It's like you just got transported to a different planet or something.
• 49:06
  and it's just
• 49:08
  my only advice is stay away from mirrors
• 49:11
  mirrors are not good
• 49:12
  mirrors are awful
• 49:14
  do not look when you go to the bathroom
• 49:17
  do not look in the mirror
• 49:18
  yeah
• 49:19
  that's in the book too
• 49:21
  I'm curious now what's that all about
• 49:24
  it's just
• 49:25
  remember Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end
• 49:29
  oh no
• 49:30
  that like your face melts
• 49:33
  oh no
• 49:33
  it doesn't necessarily melt but it's moving and it's doing some wild stuff it doesn't normally
• 49:40
  do and it's it's a weird yeah it's it's uncomfortable just the thought of that is
• 49:46
  absolutely frightening to me maybe i'm in the in the not probably i shouldn't touch that stuff
• 49:52
  just don't look in the mirror and if you do look away just don't don't focus on it
• 49:58
  But MDMA doesn't do that. MDMA, if you're cleared by a doctor to take MDMA, I highly recommend MDMA as your first experience because it's very, very rare to have a bad trip.
• 50:15
  There's not a lot of visuals.
• 50:18
  It's just heart opening.
• 50:20
  It's blissful.
• 50:22
  It's like, it's really hard to describe it to somebody who hasn't felt that.
• 50:26
  But like I was saying, like an orgasm in your heart.
• 50:29
  It's just like peaceful and beautiful and loving.
• 50:35
  So for a first experience, that's the way I'd go.
• 50:39
  Yeah, MDMA is like, it's like taking LSD with no visuals.
• 50:43
  is kind of how i would describe it yeah really just yeah that i i'm kind of partial to the
• 50:52
  visuals myself i like the i like the i like the visuals man they're they're pretty epic
• 50:59
  it's like wow that's so cool we're getting banned from youtube aren't we i mean i maybe i i literally
• 51:06
  sat there and looked it at like i was at a construction site one time and there's just like
• 51:12
  where they, you know, graded a road and all the,
• 51:15
  the dirts piled up on one side and there's just dirt clods and stuff.
• 51:19
  And I, I sat down and stared at dirt clods for probably two hours.
• 51:24
  Dirt clods.
• 51:25
  Yeah. I started,
• 51:26
  I started at like my shirt and like all the stitching and like,
• 51:30
  it's incredible.
• 51:33
  It really is. It really is. Yeah.
• 51:37
  So was there a reason you chose Canada for the location of your camp in the
• 51:41
  book? I am Canadian. So I have, I, yeah, I have a fondness for my country. But also, it's a place
• 51:54
  like in the middle of the prairies where there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing for hundreds
• 52:01
  of miles. So it was a place where the, you know, it's near future. So climate change has, you know,
• 52:09
  done a little bit more to the planet than it is now.
• 52:14
  So, you know, the temperatures aren't as horrible in the winter there
• 52:17
  in the near future.
• 52:20
  So it was just a place where there was nobody around
• 52:23
  and people can still go outside year-round.
• 52:27
  That sounds great.
• 52:29
  Yeah.
• 52:30
  Maybe I should move to Canada.
• 52:33
  I'm going back.
• 52:34
  Are you guys full?
• 52:36
  I'm telling everybody, no, don't come here.
• 52:38
  That's what we try to do in Florida.
• 52:39
  like we're full don't come here we don't want you if you can't take our weather there's not a chance
• 52:44
  for your survival in canada dude no i would like north carolina is way too cold that's
• 52:52
  whole nother level whole nother level yeah like 60 something and i'm for shivering
• 52:59
  yeah yeah you'd never lived
• 53:02
  never never so what's your favorite part about the book what's what's what's what portion of it
• 53:10
  like was the most exciting for you when you came to the time to write it etc the trips I loved
• 53:18
  writing the trips yeah it's like um that was like the most creative part trying to imagine what
• 53:26
  what a billionaire's trip would consist of and and trying to write that in a way that
• 53:33
  i mean like trying to describe a psychedelic experience to somebody who's never had one
• 53:38
  it's hard it's really hard and to make it feel like yeah that i i could see that happening for
• 53:47
  somebody to read it and to imagine the trip it's it's really hard but it was it was a lot of fun
• 53:54
  yeah it sounds like it what what do billionaires uh trip about like hanging out with world leaders
• 54:01
  and and changing policies and all that kind of thing scrooge mcduck's vault that's what they
• 54:06
  that's what they trip on they're like oh piles of gold i can swim in dude i i would think you
• 54:13
  have enough money you don't even think about money like it ain't it really isn't even a thing anymore
• 54:16
  well like in the book it's it's therapy it's not the the hero heroic doses so it's
• 54:26
  them dealing with their own trauma um because i believe they probably have had drama
• 54:30
  oh why why are they the way they are we are all i i believe that every human being on the planet
• 54:38
  has had trauma nobody escapes right so they have they have their shit that needs to be dealt with
• 54:45
  um so all that comes up and yeah and nature connection to nature
• 54:53
  seeing what they're doing to the planet yeah interesting because the whole concept of the
• 55:02
  book is to make them solve climate change um they don't they don't get to go home until they solve
• 55:07
  climate change after their psychedelic stuff yeah yeah it's an interesting one they could
• 55:19
  think of a couple of easy ways to to reduce its impact pretty easily and quickly yeah like yeah
• 55:28
  i don't know you know stop no private jets i would go to like the bigger polluters like you know
• 55:35
  bombing things and you know things of this nature or shooting rockets into space yeah
• 55:44
  bombing oil depots and things of that nature and you know uh yeah and flying jets around that burn
• 55:51
  through fuel that you know uh yeah i i would say we could probably like if we just got rid of that
• 56:00
  stuff, we could take a break. We'd be in darn good shape, right? But, you know, I talk about
• 56:07
  that all the time. Like I go on podcasts about climate change. And, and I'm like, we are focused
• 56:13
  on the wrong people. We're trying to change the behavior of 8 billion people. That's really hard
• 56:19
  to change the behavior of 8 billion, like, take shorter showers, don't use plastic straws, don't,
• 56:24
  you know, all this stuff that we're told to do. But there's roughly 3200 billionaires in
• 56:30
  the world. And if they change their behavior, climate change would be solved. So why are we
• 56:36
  focusing on 8 billion instead of 3,200? That's what I don't understand. But that's because they
• 56:43
  have the power. They create the systems that benefit them. So things aren't going to change
• 56:50
  if they're the ones with the power. So you don't think it's beneficial to have them all fly their
• 56:55
  own personal private jets to Davos once a year so that they can talk about how to tax us into being
• 57:02
  better stewards of the planet you think that's counterproductive a little bit maybe just yeah
• 57:10
  like I have zoom and teams I frequently would meet with people all over the planet
• 57:17
  right here face to face i can see their reaction yeah see what they're doing you know yeah i think
• 57:27
  you're thinking about this the wrong way because if you have enough money you just like let things
• 57:30
  play out and then when it's no longer sustainable just go to mars easy easy solution but mars has
• 57:37
  no resources i don't that's another that's another thing is like they're spending billions of dollars
• 57:43
  to go to Mars and we're going to colonize Mars that has no water, no oxygen,
• 57:51
  instead of taking the billions of dollars that they're spending on that
• 57:54
  and working together and fixing this.
• 57:58
  We have a beautiful planet.
• 58:00
  This planet is abundant.
• 58:02
  There is enough for everyone on this planet
• 58:05
  if 3,200 people didn't take all the resources for themselves.
• 58:10
  I would say that there's still more than enough for everyone on the planet. But, you know, I'm also to be quite honest, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very skeptical on the whole climate change. I do believe that there is a huge capacity and a lot of room for improving what we do.
• 58:32
  um but you know you i don't necessarily believe uh i don't believe a lot of the hype behind it
• 58:43
  right uh i i especially okay so here's the red flag for me the second you come up and you start
• 58:50
  saying well i'm going to tax you to to solve climate change i go there you've you've right
• 58:56
  there discounted anything right because that's a non sequitur right it doesn't it that's not you
• 59:04
  you carbon credits come on really uh i'm sorry but no right now i'm a big fan of you know plastics
• 59:10
  reduce or eliminate plastics in your life um yeah try and reduce chemical uh inputs
• 59:18
  everywhere uh like i'm a farmsteader uh lx is a homesteader and we you know we grow our food and
• 59:26
  We also raise livestock and, you know, this all occurs with zero chemical or agrochemical input.
• 59:38
  Zero, right?
• 59:39
  We take the compost from the manure from the animals and we use that.
• 59:43
  That is our fertilizer for the most part.
• 59:45
  when we do add any kind of a fertilizer, it's a purely organic fertilizer, which typically
• 59:53
  consists of bunny poop and some minerals and some things of that nature, right?
• 59:58
  Alpaca poop.
• 59:59
  Yeah, alpaca poop.
• 1:00:01
  But, you know, so I think there's a lot of room for doing these things.
• 1:00:06
  And I think that makes us better stewards of the planet.
• 1:00:08
  I think, you know, monoculture ag is just terrible, right?
• 1:00:17
  It's absolutely terrible.
• 1:00:20
  That said, when it comes to the climate change thing, I think there's been too much hype on this.
• 1:00:26
  And I tend to fall into the more cynical George Carlin thing on this.
• 1:00:33
  Like the planet's fine.
• 1:00:34
  The planet's going to be fine.
• 1:00:35
  It will be.
• 1:00:36
  So don't, we're not saving the planet from anything.
• 1:00:41
  The planet's going to be 100% okay.
• 1:00:45
  So, you know, I think there's also a lot of room for, you know, I know everybody wants to get that, you know, that, you know, clickbait, that shock, that, you know, let me get you to be interested in this thing.
• 1:00:58
  But I think that gets watered down and diluted when it's this shock that is like, it falls flat, right?
• 1:01:06
  save the planet the planet's not going anywhere you know save save humans what about save humanity
• 1:01:13
  there you go save humanity save humans right yeah and yeah i would say and but we saw even in the
• 1:01:20
  pandemic right you you take people and you get them off the roads and you do this kind of stuff
• 1:01:25
  and all of a sudden the earth comes back and it's like hey i'm here you know you yeah we think way
• 1:01:32
  too highly of ourselves to think that we could ever destroy the planet we really can't it it's
• 1:01:37
  going to be fine i think you just solved it we need another pandemic no i was so hopeful i was
• 1:01:46
  so hopeful during the pandemic i really thought that was going to be the catalyst for humanity to
• 1:01:52
  wake up and go oh this is how we're supposed to be yeah that didn't happen no no and and i think
• 1:02:01
  you know i'm very big on you know doing things that are local to you that can change these things
• 1:02:11
  and and i even go so far as plant a tomato plant if you like tomatoes if you don't like tomatoes
• 1:02:17
  whatever you do like eating plant one just on your balcony if you live in an apartment
• 1:02:22
  it so tiny but that little fraction if you eat two tomatoes that you don buy from the store you put a dent in that supply line right All of that those moving pieces
• 1:02:36
  You know, and the more people do that, the better I think we all will be.
• 1:02:41
  Plus, you'll get to taste what a tomato really tastes like.
• 1:02:45
  And I promise you, if you've never had one off the vine, you cannot get one like this in a store.
• 1:02:52
  There is no store that can deliver this experience to you.
• 1:02:56
  Go find someone that grows tomatoes, grab one off the vine, and take a taste of that tomato.
• 1:03:01
  And I guarantee you it doesn't taste like what you've been eating is tomatoes, right?
• 1:03:06
  So I think there's a lot of, I'm in complete agreement with those types of things and the actions.
• 1:03:13
  You know, limit your pollution, limit these types of things.
• 1:03:16
  the climate thing is
• 1:03:19
  you know
• 1:03:20
  the problem that I have with it is there's no
• 1:03:23
  definitive causal
• 1:03:25
  right
• 1:03:26
  that we can point to
• 1:03:29
  we can say yes
• 1:03:30
  we can see humanity's effect
• 1:03:33
  we can say that these things are
• 1:03:35
  ecologically not good
• 1:03:37
  we can say that they definitely impact
• 1:03:39
  systems but I don't think
• 1:03:41
  that we can say that as a whole
• 1:03:43
  the entire system is impacted
• 1:03:45
  in a way that actually shifts things.
• 1:03:50
  And we also have a very, very minute amount of recorded data,
• 1:03:56
  which means that all of our basis of this is in a period of time
• 1:04:03
  that doesn't even account for one real cycle of change,
• 1:04:07
  which would be 10,000 years.
• 1:04:09
  We don't have 10,000 years, like 100 and some odd,
• 1:04:13
  maybe up to 300 if you go back to some old, old records, but we don't have solid, good data that
• 1:04:22
  goes back and we can say, yeah, 10,000 years ago, oh, Hey, maybe this is more of a cycle, right?
• 1:04:28
  These are, these are cyclical things. And we've seen that we've been able to prove that through,
• 1:04:33
  you know, uh, carbon dating. We've been able to prove that through, uh, you know, uh, uh,
• 1:04:39
  ice cores where we could sit there and look at what the mixture of the gases on the planet were
• 1:04:46
  at any specific time. And, you know, you hear about, oh, you know, carbon dioxide and it's like,
• 1:04:52
  okay, yeah, but it's been far higher and things have thrived, right? So there's a lot of things
• 1:05:00
  there that make me go, look, there's definitely room and there should be studies on these things.
• 1:05:08
  They should continue, but I haven't seen any of them come back and definitively go.
• 1:05:14
  This is the causal source and it is humans.
• 1:05:17
  And, and there's a lot of speculation and, you know, but it doesn't, it doesn't hold up as, as a system approach, right?
• 1:05:27
  Is kind of where I'm at.
• 1:05:28
  So I'm waiting on better scientific data.
• 1:05:31
  And in the meantime, what I will say is I'll champion the cause of let's reduce pollution.
• 1:05:36
  let's reduce these types of inputs that we know are dangerous and bad they're bad for you like
• 1:05:42
  if nothing else just think forget about that right other argument and just go look these things are
• 1:05:47
  bad for your body you your health so make a change for you and your family don't worry about all the
• 1:05:55
  other stuff and if i think if people started to take that approach a lot of this other stuff would
• 1:06:01
  start to diminish in what we see as something that's potentially capable of altering life on
• 1:06:10
  earth. I totally agree with some of the stuff that you're saying, but I feel like that's still
• 1:06:19
  putting the onus on all of us instead of the onus on the people that can actually affect change.
• 1:06:26
  So like the plastics, right? Like I personally use a shampoo bar and bar soap because I don't want plastic in my bathroom. But it's the companies that are still allowed to produce the stuff that we shouldn't be using.
• 1:06:43
  like that's that's where the change needs to come in is like um why are we allowing these companies
• 1:06:51
  to produce chemicals that are killing us why are they allowed to put this crap in our food that's
• 1:06:56
  killing us why are they allowed these you know the the feedlots and stuff that are killing their
• 1:07:03
  neighbors it that's that's where the change is really going to happen and i agree like i i love
• 1:07:11
  I love gardens, you know, people growing their own food.
• 1:07:14
  I think that's fantastic.
• 1:07:16
  And do that for sure.
• 1:07:17
  And do everything that you can as an individual.
• 1:07:21
  Because I always say hope is a consequence of action.
• 1:07:25
  So, for me to have hope in my life, I do things.
• 1:07:28
  And the things that I do make me feel better about my life and who I am and what I'm doing in society.
• 1:07:36
  But the systems have to change.
• 1:07:39
  because as much as we do on our own,
• 1:07:42
  it's not going to make that much of a difference except to ourselves.
• 1:07:46
  There's also, you know,
• 1:07:47
  a lot of burdens that get placed that shouldn't be there, right?
• 1:07:50
  Like we can create plastics out of hemp that biodegrade.
• 1:07:56
  Yeah, and mushrooms.
• 1:07:58
  That biodegrade.
• 1:07:59
  And it's like, but there's so many regulatory hurdles to get over
• 1:08:03
  to be able to do this stuff.
• 1:08:05
  Exactly.
• 1:08:06
  And that right there is, so, I mean,
• 1:08:08
  we could change the industry by just getting over that hurdle, right?
• 1:08:12
  We can change a lot of industry.
• 1:08:13
  You know, textiles, another one with hemp, right?
• 1:08:16
  Here's, here's literally a weed that just, it just grows.
• 1:08:20
  If you put it in the ground, it will grow.
• 1:08:22
  Maybe not great.
• 1:08:23
  And, you know, maybe not the desired outcome for a lot of people doing this,
• 1:08:27
  but in general for, you know, stock for, you know, creating, you know,
• 1:08:33
  plastics or hempcrete or, you know, textiles, et cetera, it will grow.
• 1:08:38
  It doesn't need a lot of input and, and it plays perfectly into a permaculture scenario as well. Just tons of chop and drop, drop foliage. Right. Um, so yeah, I, I, I always like to make it actionable for myself though. Right. Like I can, I can think about what can I do to change these 3,200 people that happen to be powerful enough to influence and or create policy.
• 1:09:08
  which I can't, or I can think about, well, you know what?
• 1:09:14
  For me, I can't do that.
• 1:09:16
  But what I can do is I can stop buying this garbage.
• 1:09:18
  I can stop, you know, funding these people.
• 1:09:21
  I can start doing things in my own life that reduce their, you know, sales.
• 1:09:28
  They reduces their, you know, I mean, honestly, you know,
• 1:09:31
  if we as a society were to start voting with that, like we're not doing it
• 1:09:37
  Unless you change, you know, I don't want these plastic bottles.
• 1:09:41
  Make hemp plastic.
• 1:09:43
  And I'm not going to buy it until you do.
• 1:09:45
  You know, they would change, right?
• 1:09:46
  I think there's a lot of room for bottom-up as well, right?
• 1:09:53
  For sure.
• 1:09:55
  I agree with that.
• 1:09:56
  But there's also the fact that there are a lot of poor people who can't make those choices.
• 1:10:04
  So they have to buy what's cheap.
• 1:10:06
  And what's cheap is plastic crap from China. It's junk food. It's not healthy stuff. And they don't have a garden to grow tomatoes. So I absolutely agree that we all need to do whatever we can as individuals.
• 1:10:23
  but I also believe that we have to start changing the narrative.
• 1:10:30
  And that's what I want to do with the book,
• 1:10:33
  is change the narrative to we the people.
• 1:10:37
  We the people have the power and not these 3,200 people.
• 1:10:43
  You're right about the food stuff because, yeah,
• 1:10:45
  like a half dozen zucchini or organic squash is like six bucks,
• 1:10:51
  or you can buy two gigantic bags of potato chips for five bucks.
• 1:10:54
  That's how they get you in there.
• 1:10:58
  Yeah.
• 1:10:59
  Yeah.
• 1:11:00
  Yeah, no, it's...
• 1:11:01
  Yeah, they're definitely poisoning us.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah, without question.
• 1:11:04
  And legally, which is great.
• 1:11:07
  Awesome.
• 1:11:08
  Thanks, guys.
• 1:11:08
  I appreciate it.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  Yeah.
• 1:11:11
  Yeah.
• 1:11:12
  So, I just lost my brain again.
• 1:11:17
  It just went away.
• 1:11:18
  It's over there somewhere.
• 1:11:19
  Alex, you got anything?
• 1:11:21
  That happens to me all the time, but I have menopause to blame for that.
• 1:11:25
  I don't know what your excuse is.
• 1:11:26
  Did the psychedelics help with menopause?
• 1:11:28
  Maybe I should get my wife on board with this whole thing.
• 1:11:31
  She's probably going to be mad I brought that up.
• 1:11:36
  I think psychedelics help with a lot of things.
• 1:11:39
  I was just thinking our next get-together, maybe you should have it invite Elon down.
• 1:11:44
  I don't know.
• 1:11:45
  Dose him up.
• 1:11:47
  Sit around the campfire and get him going.
• 1:11:50
  I don't know.
• 1:11:51
  No offense, but I don't want anything to do with him, to be honest with you.
• 1:11:57
  All right.
• 1:11:57
  Yeah, no thanks.
• 1:11:59
  Maybe he's a nice guy.
• 1:12:00
  You don't know.
• 1:12:01
  I don't care, honestly.
• 1:12:04
  I just don't.
• 1:12:05
  And I'm not going to say anything one way or the other other than just, you know, I'm not his biggest fan, right?
• 1:12:16
  And I'm certainly not like anti-Elon.
• 1:12:20
  I think he has done some things that are, you know, in some way, shape or form, you know, maybe beneficial, right?
• 1:12:31
  You know, like the whole rockets thing.
• 1:12:34
  Okay, yeah, but we're going to fire rockets anyway.
• 1:12:37
  So at least now the dang things can be reused and we're not like redoing them every single time.
• 1:12:45
  So there's some benefit.
• 1:12:47
  But EVs, I think, are, yeah, my opinion of EVs is not a good one, right?
• 1:12:55
  I don't think the NIMBY thing is the way to go about changing things.
• 1:13:02
  And if you take some time and research them and look at the, you know, massive toxic lakes and the damage.
• 1:13:15
  We need to go back to horses.
• 1:13:15
  The damage that comes from mining this stuff and then refining it or extracting it, etc. is insane. Like we would never tolerate that in our country, right? Like no town would be like, oh, hey, yeah, there's that lake. And if you go, you know, you can't go past that fence because if you get too close of it, you're just going to die of some radical disease or something. You know what I mean?
• 1:13:41
  But we allow other stuff to do that.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah.
• 1:13:43
  You know, well, the funny thing about that, right, is, is I remember when I was younger,
• 1:13:48
  I was living next door to a gentleman and he was driving this go-kart around. That's all he did all
• 1:13:53
  day is he'd be in his garage and he did the stuff and he'd drive this go-kart around. And finally,
• 1:13:58
  one day I went out there and I'm like, Hey, you know, what are you doing? What is this? And he
• 1:14:02
  goes, Oh, he goes, well, this is a hydrogen motor. And I'm like, what? And he goes, yeah. And I'm
• 1:14:09
  like, well, I don't get it. Right. So he started explaining it to me and I'm like, really? And he
• 1:14:13
  goes yeah and like the tailpipe there's you know a little bit of of like water coming out of it
• 1:14:19
  and he goes yeah and he held his hand under it he goes like that and i'm like wow he goes no it's
• 1:14:24
  just water it's it's it's all the output is and you know we've had this technology we know how to
• 1:14:34
  make it safe it's it's yeah you know why would we go to something like evs when something like this
• 1:14:42
  really solves that problem. Quick, efficient to fuel up, you know, um, you know, you could do it
• 1:14:50
  at home, just like you can plug your EV in at home. Uh, same thing. You're going to use electricity
• 1:14:55
  to create the hydrogen, um, et cetera. So, you know, again, there's, there's these things, uh,
• 1:15:01
  I look at like thorium reactors, right? Instead of these giant windmills where we've got these
• 1:15:06
  graveyards of, you know, carbon composite materials that can't be recycled. They can't
• 1:15:13
  be broken down. So they just go into the earth because that's great, I guess. But, you know,
• 1:15:20
  you look at these and it's like, you know, the best of intentions, right? We're going to go with
• 1:15:24
  renewable energy, but the problem is we're like creating worse destruction and pollution,
• 1:15:31
  creating these things that create that energy than we ever get back from that energy.
• 1:15:37
  Whereas a thorium reactor, you know, it can be small, contained, put in a neighborhood.
• 1:15:43
  Every neighborhood could have one.
• 1:15:45
  They could all be grid into, you know, grid tied together.
• 1:15:48
  So if one goes down, the others take the load.
• 1:15:51
  They kind of self-manage themselves.
• 1:15:54
  The danger profile is almost zero.
• 1:15:56
  the uh the the fuel rods that we're now storing in some mountain in a desert because can't do
• 1:16:05
  anything else with them what the heck are we gonna do we got like 10 000 plus years before they're
• 1:16:10
  going to be good you could feed those into a thorium reactor and turn that into a half-life
• 1:16:15
  that's 300 years once they're spent through a thorium reactor so you know we've got all these
• 1:16:21
  things that could be done that would benefit humanity as well as take care of the environment,
• 1:16:28
  right? But we don't. It's all about money. Exactly. It's all about money. And yes,
• 1:16:34
  the funding, right? It's, yeah, there's, there's some amazing stuff being produced right now. Like
• 1:16:40
  I look at mycelium, um, there's, I can't remember the name of the company, but they're doing so much
• 1:16:46
  stuff with mycelium and mycelium is abundant and cheap, but there's no funding for them.
• 1:16:53
  And they're competing against other people for the same resources, right? So like all these,
• 1:16:58
  all these companies that have these amazing ideas that are, that would absolutely work,
• 1:17:04
  they're competing against each other for very limited funds. We need to, we need to have all
• 1:17:10
  of these people working together to solve these things. And yeah, so they're not competing for
• 1:17:18
  limited amount of money. And we need the billionaires to be putting money into these things.
• 1:17:25
  I know, I completely agree that that I can agree with, right? And maybe it's something, you know,
• 1:17:31
  be kind of cool to see the billionaires start a new project and each of them just, just take
• 1:17:37
  one one thousandth of your wealth and put it into a fund and that fund goes to fund startups that are
• 1:17:45
  doing things like the mycelium stuff mycelium is amazing too i mean they have it's a living
• 1:17:54
  organism right and and they have found webs of it that go for miles and miles and miles and the
• 1:18:02
  interesting the largest living organism is mycelium in an organ yeah and they've found that
• 1:18:09
  interacting with it in one area spreads that message to all of the mycelium that whole mycelial
• 1:18:18
  layer is is like a communications network right it's it's pretty amazing stuff i mean i get all
• 1:18:25
  excited about plant stuff is it like sentient and stuff there's there's there's there's some
• 1:18:33
  conjecture about that yeah honestly really yeah there is that some people think it's alien yeah
• 1:18:39
  that it's it's i mean it is alive it communicates if you harm a portion of it it sends out signals
• 1:18:46
  to let the rest of the network know that harm is coming and it's there's a good chance that it
• 1:18:54
  some way shape or form this thing has the capacity to i don't want to say think right but to interact
• 1:19:04
  with the environment around it and understand that environment i guess how much do you get
• 1:19:11
  to mess with it before it gets angry it comes after you that's what i'd be worried about i don't want
• 1:19:15
  to find out it's good stuff isn't that the last of us that's right the last of us that's the
• 1:19:22
  mushrooms fighting back it makes really good berries though so you know i'm i'm not gonna
• 1:19:28
  mess with it and try and feed it that's what i'm gonna do hopefully not with me
• 1:19:32
  at least not for a while you know eventually i'm sure i don't know why this came to my head but
• 1:19:42
  you guys were talking about the climate change and while they were giving us the don't do drug
• 1:19:47
  shirts they were also talking about the holes in the uh the yeah the ozone we're not even supposed
• 1:19:55
  to be here by 2000 are we but we fixed it but because of science we fixed the hole in the ozone
• 1:20:00
  oh it's fixed now i don't even follow that stuff yeah yeah all right yeah we figured out the science
• 1:20:06
  and we fixed it reduced the amount of carbon fluorocarbons we were putting into the atmosphere
• 1:20:10
  which oh is that what that was okay all right yeah in large part it's not in total there's
• 1:20:16
  There's still a hole, but it's way smaller.
• 1:20:19
  There's always going to be a hole.
• 1:20:21
  My understanding is there always has been and there always will be some form of hole there.
• 1:20:26
  But that's a more natural phenomenon, whereas the CFCs were really kind of widening that thing in a bad way.
• 1:20:34
  Yeah.
• 1:20:34
  Yeah, it's a good area.
• 1:20:37
  Yes.
• 1:20:37
  I think this is probably a good place to wrap up.
• 1:20:41
  first and foremost, so your book, is there a preferred place to buy it?
• 1:20:49
  I'll just hold it up.
• 1:20:51
  There you go.
• 1:20:51
  There it is.
• 1:20:52
  Awesome.
• 1:20:53
  There it is.
• 1:20:53
  Nice.
• 1:20:54
  Is there a preferred place to buy it?
• 1:20:56
  Like, do you have your website or is it just Amazon's fine?
• 1:21:01
  So I'm very torn about saying where to buy it because Amazon is where I make the most money.
• 1:21:11
  As the author, I get more if you buy it from Amazon than anywhere else.
• 1:21:17
  But I also hate supporting Amazon.
• 1:21:20
  I don't know what to do there.
• 1:21:23
  But it is available pretty much anywhere books are sold.
• 1:21:27
  You can go to any indie bookstore and have them order it for you if they don't have it in their store.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah, pretty much everywhere.
• 1:21:35
  I don't sell it directly from my website.
• 1:21:37
  That's something probably down the line that I'll do.
• 1:21:41
  Um, but I do have, um, if you sign up for my newsletter on my website, um, you can, you get a free download of the discussion guide that goes along with the book, which is also for sale on Amazon, the discussion guide.
• 1:21:57
  But if you want it for free, you can get it from my website.
• 1:21:59
  And even if you're not in a book club, just reading through the questions in that discussion guide is really eye-opening and it makes you really think about what you believe.
• 1:22:10
  And so I highly recommend doing that.
• 1:22:15
  And if you are in a book club, I would love to come to your meeting.
• 1:22:19
  You know, like if your listeners have a book club and they read the book, I will come to the book club's discussion if they want me there to answer any questions and talk about it.
• 1:22:30
  That's awesome.
• 1:22:31
  What is your website?
• 1:22:34
  It's just dianacolleenauthor.com.
• 1:22:36
  All right.
• 1:22:37
  There you go.
• 1:22:38
  Her name's right there.
• 1:22:39
  It's in the little box with her name.
• 1:22:41
  And so you just type that in, author.com.
• 1:22:45
  Author.
• 1:22:45
  I make it very simple.
• 1:22:46
  Yeah.
• 1:22:46
  Yeah. If any of the audience is like me, we're going to need very explicit instructions for this. No, I'm kidding. I love y'all. All right. And then, are you working? You got any other projects going on? What are you doing? Where can people follow you, find your work, etc.?
• 1:23:10
  Yeah, we just started a sub stack. There's just so many
• 1:23:15
  things for authors to do. It's like it's overwhelming. This
• 1:23:19
  media and all that. So I am everywhere on social media, but the sub stack is where I'm going to
• 1:23:25
  write short pieces. I think I've got three up there right now. Just random stuff, a lot about
• 1:23:33
  billionaires. There's going to be stuff about me and it's called A Reckoning of Sorts. The sub stack
• 1:23:40
  is called A Reckoning of Sorts. And yeah, and I've got this book. I've been marketing it as a
• 1:23:48
  standalone but there is another one after this there's actually it's a trilogy so i'm i'm working
• 1:23:54
  on the second book right now and it's it's a lot there's i'm biting off a lot for the second book
• 1:24:02
  i think it's going to be even more controversial than this one awesome that's that's the best kind
• 1:24:07
  of stuff be controversial yeah all right yeah so throughout our lives we're impacted by someone
• 1:24:16
  an author, you know, could be anyone, sixth grade science teacher, an author, a historical figure,
• 1:24:24
  mom, could be anyone. And we like to give our guests the opportunity to shout out to that one
• 1:24:30
  person that made a huge impact in your life. I think as an author, like we're influenced by
• 1:24:41
  what we read. And the, as an adult, the, the book that had the most influence on me. So the author
• 1:24:48
  of that book is Daniel Quinn and his book was called Ishmael. And that book influenced how I
• 1:24:56
  lived my life and it influenced my writing. And I think it should be required reading for everyone.
• 1:25:02
  So that who I would say Awesome Awesome Very cool Thank you so much for giving some giving some of your time to us We really do appreciate it And uh you know i really enjoyed having you on the show it been a great conversation and uh it been really fun i
• 1:25:20
  love to have you back when you uh when you complete your next book i'd love to come back
• 1:25:26
  thank you so much for having me on your show it's been great awesome lx anything you want to wrap up
• 1:25:32
  with? No, I think we're good. Yeah. I had a great time. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you everybody
• 1:25:39
  for joining us for another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast. You know where you can find us
• 1:25:45
  everywhere. We are now on fountain.fm as well. If you appreciate our work, you can go there.
• 1:25:51
  It's a value for value or podcast 2.0 app. So you can, you know, drop a couple pennies or something
• 1:25:57
  our way if you'd care to or not.
• 1:25:59
  And as always, if you liked it,
• 1:26:01
  give us a thumbs up. If you didn't,
• 1:26:03
  give us a thumbs down, leave a comment,
• 1:26:05
  tell us we suck. We don't care.
• 1:26:07
  But we will respond.
• 1:26:09
  And that might be fun. So, hey,
• 1:26:11
  if you have an idea or a topic for the show,
• 1:26:13
  give us a shout.
• 1:26:15
  You can find us on our Telegram group.
• 1:26:17
  You can find us online.
• 1:26:20
  And now you can find us on
• 1:26:21
  Fountain.fm, where we have a
• 1:26:23
  chat group set up.
• 1:26:25
  And Noster. Don't forget Noster.
• 1:26:27
  And Noster. Yeah, Noster. The protocol where you own your identity and your account. And remember, wherever you are, whenever you're watching this, have an amazing day.
• 1:26:45
  See you, everybody.
• 1:26:57
  We'll see you next time.