Duncan Trussell muses on pandemic-era paranoia, comparing lockdowns to asteroid-prep theories while debating COVID-19’s fatality rates—50,000+ U.S. deaths vs. Sweden’s lower-density approach. They critique dystopian surveillance tech (like China’s social credit system) and laugh at absurdities like "asshole reading" as a quantum-computer prerequisite. Trussell’s The Midnight Gospel thrives on Netflix’s creative freedom, but deeper talks reveal how trauma, institutional manipulation (e.g., CIA’s MKUltra), and societal bullshit—like fake rowing photos for elite schools—expose fragility in systems and human judgment. [Automatically generated summary]
It's hilarious that your biggest concern was getting stuff in your beard and me not telling you about it.
You've got a strange one going on, man, because you kind of like trimming the sides a little bit and then you're puffing out here in sort of a bow tie fashion.
Now that you're a father and this craziness went down and your protection instincts, protective instincts kick in, have you been thinking about moving elsewhere?
You know, it's a constant consideration, especially when you have a kid.
And aside from, like, apocalyptic prepper bullshit, there's just a general feeling of, like, you know, I think if I... Were a little boy, I would want to be in a place where there's creeks and places I can run and woods and forests and stuff like that.
So there's that consideration too.
God, I hope my wife isn't listening to this because she's always like, maybe we should move somewhere in the country.
And I'm like, we got to stay in LA. We got to stay here now.
Yeah, and it's like Pendleton Ward, who made Adventure Time, he listens to my podcast and he just, I don't know, we had a really great collaboration and that's a lot of Pendleton and it's a lot of like 150 other people at Titmouse Studios, like Jesse Moynihan, like just these brilliant people.
People like Mike Mayfield, who are like, who just...
Also, by the way, a non sequitur, or when we were making it at Titmouse, one of the really weird things was walking by an animator, and they're watching your podcast while they animate the Midnight Gospel.
You know, it's one of those weird...
It's not like a deja vu, but it's like...
That's my friends!
So many odd moments like that.
Whenever you see any animated thing, you're looking at a squadron of brilliant, eccentric artists.
Doing animation, and I'll never be able to look, even if an animated series, if I don't like it, or if the plot's weird to me or whatever, I'll never be able to be like, whatever, man.
When you realize how much and how many people have to do just one frame, how much time goes into just milliseconds, and how many people are sitting in these rooms that are lit specifically so you see all the colors, having real deep conversations and debates over, What color they should make a pizza cutter in the show?
What should the shade of gray be for this one specific area?
So much thought goes into that, and that's part of making one of these things.
It's called the dailies, where...
You'll sit and you'll watch tiny, tiny little bits of the show.
Every single frame you have to look for continuity problems and you've got to catch all these little things.
I'm not an animator, obviously, so I'd be sitting there and Pendleton or Mike Mayfield would be like, can you go back two frames?
It looks to me like there's a...
They have an animator language.
Looks to me like there's some kind of warble on the 28th pixel there.
And you're like, what the fuck?
And they have the eye to catch the tiniest, tiniest thing that's off.
And you have to, because otherwise, once it's up there, it's up there.
Jesus.
I know.
It's literal magic.
It's like Titmouse Studios who did that is like, you know, I would go in there so stoned and I would just start getting that feeling of like, this is a temple.
I don't think this is even a, you could call this a studio as much as it's a temple.
I mean, why wouldn't you call it a temple?
And then you see all these people, you know, focusing their life energy on essentially like bringing a thing to life.
Like Clancy is alive now.
That's a living being in some...
In this universe, who lives in that medium of animation.
I wouldn't agree with you in a technical sense, but in a sense of like, well, it is affecting the things it comes in contact with, at least through a one-way dimension, right?
The things it says hit people, the animation, it seems like it's a living thing.
That's, you know, Pendleton, like, when you watch him draw...
It would be easy to think, man, I could totally do that.
Because I'd watch him.
He would just draw, and you watch these beautiful drawings that are just Pendleton.
This is his art.
Then I would see that and be like, maybe I'll try to draw a little Pendleton.
And then it's like, What the fuck, Hand?
I can't do it!
On one level, what's so powerful about it is how simple it is.
It's very similar to stand-up, the way Pendleton is treating working on the show, which is one of the cool things about him.
His ability to cut the fat and get right to the simple point.
That's where the power is.
When you're drawing something or telling a story or whatever, the more...
complexity that gets added to it.
Not to say the show, it doesn't have, like, chaos and wild psychedelic stuff, but any decision we made ended up, like, any decision you make creatively in anything, it's like, what am I trying to say?
Like, what is the artery that is running through this that I'm trying to express?
And then getting as close to that as you can, and then putting it out there.
Because otherwise, the whole thing gets blurred by all the I guess you could say, like, extra bells and whistles you might want to attach to it, you know?
That's something you taught me, too, with stand-up, man.
Like, how important it is to just, like, cut, just trim the fat, trim the fat.
And that's a sad thing to do with comedy, when you think you got a nice eight-minute bit.
It's like a two-minute maybe, but you, you know, instead of...
You don't realize this is like a masterpiece of syllables and pauses and the right amount of outrage and segueing it in and hitting you with this at the end and all these things that have put it together that make a great Bill Burr bit.
It's like if you don't know, it's hard to draw what he's drawn.
So when we were coming up with that, we had to come up with a character.
And so what's really fascinating about it is this character goes into a multiverse simulator and chooses a new avatar for every place that he goes.
So you have to take that character And put it in a completely different drawing that is that character and still maintain the body language that you're maintaining in that character to produce continuity.
That's one of the challenges of the show.
And also the conversations you end up having just to come up with his hat or what's he going to wear.
For example, here's how cool Penn is.
And how much he loves people who love Adventure Time.
One of the things he was saying is, you know, people are probably going to want to cosplay Clancy at Comic-Con and stuff.
And he doesn't have anything to carry anything.
He doesn't have pockets.
So if people are cosplaying him, they're not going to have anywhere they could put their stuff.
So let's give him a bag.
That's hilarious!
And so Clancy ended up with this cool bag that he carries around.
Dude, when you're around someone who's actually put that together and you realize how detailed it is, your respect will go up regardless of thinking, I don't think I'd ever do it.
When you see someone who looks better than the version of Spider-Man that Marvel's putting out, it's amazing to watch that happen.
That kind of contagion, too, of like, you know, again, obviously, Clancy isn't alive, but I know what you're saying.
But we had this chat last time I was on, which I really love, is the origination point of ideas.
And so to me, in my more stoned states, when I consider this show represents over 100 people connecting and the connection in between those people channeled this universe, I do think like...
Shit, maybe Clancy is alive.
Maybe it's a channeled thing.
Maybe there is a place in the multiverse like this or something like this.
And then where it got really weird is people started sending me their art from like images that they had drawn on dimethyltryptamine or ketamine and stuff that has within it similarities.
And I've obviously never seen their art where you're like, shit!
As television, as viewing things gets more complicated, and as it gets more immersive, It's going to come to a point in time somewhere where you're going to think Clancy's alive.
And what you're experiencing when you watch Clancy, what if the way we're looking at life is wrong?
What if we should just look at it like a thing?
Instead of life, a thing.
So there's a thing that you do where you drink water and you grow plants in the dirt, and this is a thing that exists only when the people press a box.
But you go, well, it's not alive because it needs animators to make it and someone has to come up with the idea for the storyline and it needs a studio to fund it.
Uh-huh.
Right.
And you need bacteria.
You need food, you need oxygen, you need water.
There's a bunch of living organisms inside your body that are 100% necessary for you keeping going in a regular life, driving your Tesla, listening to music.
There's a bunch of other things.
You're not one thing.
We all know this.
This is what this fucking whole virus thing is about.
We got infected by another thing, but we're not one thing.
There's a bunch of things inside of us, and if those things died, We would be fucked, right?
If all the bacteria in your body died, you would be fucked.
And you'd be so vulnerable to attack from the outside, right?
I mean, look, if you want to take it to like, okay, forget all the shit about channeling some alien realm into this realm through, you know, this disguise a TV show, whatever.
Let's just look at what we know is going to happen regarding technology.
There's no question, but that...
I mean, already somebody made a Clancy in Minecraft, and I saw a picture of that.
So Clancy is now existing in 3D space and some Minecraft blocky version of that.
But then, of course, as time progresses, the Chromatic Ribbon or any great animated series, Castlevania, whatever, Gravity Falls, all those things, they're going to end up getting...
I put into 3D space in virtual reality.
And then those worlds are going to be real, but now it's going to be more than just 2D. It's going to be a virtual space that is going to be real.
And then, of course, it's only a matter of time before AI just understands the character of Clancy, animates the...
The virtual Clancy in the simulated space, and now the chromatic ribbon is real.
And then at some point, when is it just going to be accepted that, oh yeah, that's a part of the universe now that's inhabited by artificial intelligences, which we don't call that anymore, because you know at some point it's going to be considered off limits to call them artificial intelligence.
That's a matter of time because I already know people in the tech world who think The term AI is ridiculous in the sense of like, what do you mean it's artificial?
Like, what's really artificial?
Like, you could say this is artificial sweetener in the sense that it's not actual strawberry juice, but it's certainly real as real could be.
And like, when I was at the Comedy Store, a guy from Google, I got in a conversation with someone from Google, which is awesome, and he was telling me that they, this is like six months ago, he was telling me that, obviously before the pandemic, he was saying that they had achieved What do you call it?
Quantum supremacy.
And he was like, this is like the Wright brothers taking flight, but nobody can understand it because it's so arcane that it's not getting the press it should get.
But then I was like, I don't have one too many vodkas, man.
So I wish I could remember all they were saying, because he was trying to describe to me what it means regarding how quickly this thing is making calculations.
And I was like, yeah, of course I understand exactly what you're saying.
I think what it is, is it's somebody trying to come up with an angle to write a blog that they could sell to somebody.
It's like, you need to come up with some weird hot take, right?
So it's like, I think more than likely that's just somebody thinking like, I bet people will read that, you know?
Because clearly whoever is comparing that to white supremacy or racism didn't spend four minutes Watching the Google clip on it where people are explaining what it means, which, you know, I'm watching it on the couch with my wife.
She's getting weirded out.
She's like, let's just not watch this.
I just maybe we shouldn't watch this.
I'm like, no, let's fucking watch it.
Let's go deep and see what the the white videos that start suggesting for us to because it's not like Google's being secretive about what the what they did.
It's just it's so weird.
I don't think people are like I guess people are a little more concerned with other shit right now, but one of the engineers over at Google just was saying, like, you know, I think one of the things I'm excited about when it comes to quantum supremacy is that this could be one of the technologies that allows us to discover an alien intelligence.
Just, you know, kind of casually mentions that.
I mean, yeah, it's on the YouTube video.
You're watching it and you keep looking up To make sure it's actually released from Google because it seems so sci-fi that it could be like Black Mirror or some shit.
But it's, yeah, it's like they're just saying it.
Like, yeah, we might connect to an alien.
We might be able to at least identify it.
Maybe they mean because they're going to be able to sift through all the data we already have from radio telescopes and stuff that they could maybe look for signals that we can't find.
I've thought that many times when tripping in the middle of having some sort of like really vivid interaction with some intelligence or with some perceived intelligence.
I mean, maybe this concept of planets and then stars and the way we have it set up here in this dimension, in this universe.
We just think that's how everything is.
Everything is, well, there's a star and there's planets around it.
What if you can go into a place, chemically, that takes you to a nearby dimension where there's no matter?
Where there's no form to things and everything that exists is just thoughts and light and perception and emotions and anger and fear and love and hate and it's all moving in geometry and everything's lit up and everything's impossibly bright and vivid.
Not only can you go there, but there's a visionary artist, when you look at the art that has been inspired by various entheogens, it all has a specific flavor to it.
You look at that, and one of the reasons it resonates for people like us...
It's because we admire the fact that somehow they managed to go over there and come back and draw what's over there in a way that we saw that.
But when I came out of it, it's like, well, you know, it's...
Undulating colors and there's some kind of disembodied intention that seems to be expressing itself through a variety of geometries, but it's not just geometries because the geometries seem to react to the way that I feel regarding the geometries, so it's also kind of taking on the form of my energy output as though it's trying to be a combo mirror, but not just a mirror, an educational mirror that's sort of showing me how I'm affecting the world around me.
Then again, I'm just not sure if I was just super high, but they go in there, and Alex Gray said this to me once, that they're cartographers.
Cartography is fascinating because you go back and look at the old maps or you go back and look at like, my favorite thing is like old pictures of a giraffe or like old pictures of some shit somebody saw when they were Oh yeah, like bison on the walls of caves.
Yes, exactly.
And it kind of looks like a bison, but also it's somehow in that time period our brains hadn't evolved to the point they have now.
So you look at a medieval drawing of a giraffe or something someone saw in the Crusades and came back and tried to explain to somebody.
It looks exactly like the way your description of getting completely blasted on psilocybin probably looks compared to what you saw.
It's a downgraded, weird version of it.
People like Alex and Allison or Terrence McKenna, they're so good at going into that place and maintaining some kind of Like long-term memory that they can come back and fully articulate it in a way that we as people who've been there know what it is and then there's something comforting in that because that does point to the idea that this is a place.
We're not just mashing down the watch or we're not just distorting our biotechnology.
This is a shared place.
We're all seeing the same thing.
Now, that could be a synaptic place or a genetic place that happens to be in humans or something.
You know, we'll never be able to answer that probably in our lifetimes.
But to me, regardless, it's still a place.
And to get back to what you were saying about our current concept of travel.
You know, our current idea that, well, I need to get my meat body over here, because if I don't, that means I'm there.
And, you know, that's how I know I've been there, because I was there in my body.
You know, this is like the guy who founded the Hare Krishna, His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
He would show, he would, in his writings, he would like...
It was derisive of the idea that people were sending a metal ship to the moon with bodies inside of it.
He would say that shows where human consciousness is right now because they think they're their bodies and they think they need to put their body in this box and send it to the moon because they haven't figured out yet that you don't need metal to send yourself to anywhere in the universe that you want to go.
It just requires yoga and discipline.
You know, which is hilarious.
And also, I remember reading that and thinking like, but I still want there to be interstellar fucking travel, man.
You know, like I still want to get in the box and travel to the moon.
That being said, you know, I think that you're on to something when you are contemplating right now that maybe our idea of going to one place or another with our meat bodies could be looked at in the future as a little archaic.
Well, when they talk about there being different dimensions, right?
Like when they use quantum physics to determine the number of dimensions, they've determined there's multiple dimensions that we don't have access to, right?
Like the other day, I have a little cute little poodle.
And this is just a cute creature, sits in my lap.
I love this dog.
But our new place...
I noticed like mouse turds around the dog food and it sucks because you're like damn that mouse is definitely gonna get through the doggy door and then we're gonna have mice in the fucking house and that's gonna be a nightmare so anyway I was like under a tree with my kid and I looked down And there's a broken body of a mouse that one of the dogs took out.
It's, you know, like just been smashed to death.
And like, I know, it's brutal.
I don't think my son saw it, thank God.
I don't think he's ready to deal with that reality that like Gatsby on, speaking of dimensions, on the dimension subjectively that that mouse lives in, Gatsby is a dragon.
That's a monster that lives in the field it runs in when it's trying to get food for its kids.
And he realizes that we're approaching to take his prey.
And he just looks back like the fucking American werewolf in London and just goes off into the shadows behind the house to finish off the mouse.
And all you hear is like...
Is he's like killing the mouse.
You know?
That's a fucking poodle!
That poodle's the sweetest little thing ever.
But like it's also I think maybe something in animals knows that like and there was a time when mice were a sign that things are they would eat your grain.
They would fuck you up.
Like, they spread disease.
They'd shit on your baby, you know?
They were like, they're gonna piss all over your hut.
Maybe there's something in dogs that just knows that.
I mean, I don't think he's a sociopath.
I don't think he's doing, like, Jeffrey Dahmer shit, where he's just like, I wonder what sound it makes as it dies.
My heart is breaking because it's like, what do you do?
That being said, there's not much I could have done.
This is the way nature is.
Get back to your dimension thing, man.
Not that it's literally a physical dimension, but the reality tunnel that my poodle lives in and that mouse lives in is so fundamentally different than our reality tunnel that the mouse is in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The mouse is in The Walking Dead, except it's like two Cavalier, King Charles, a poodle, and a Chihuahua.
But for the mouse, that's The Walking Dead, and the mouse...
It's got to eat.
It's got to get food.
And so it's constantly developed this way that humans would develop, which I think The Walking Dead did a good job of, the comics especially, of showing the way people over time would evolve to deal with zombies and how people would gradually, completely...
Change or transform based on their predators.
The rats and mice have done that.
When you see a thing that is a prey animal, you're seeing a reflection of the predator in the prey animal.
Everything was cool until we split the atom and then that was like no they're like we can't that's too much that's we're we're always in transit so when we say everything was cool until the thing about people is we're always going somewhere in terms of we're always trying to make better things and we're always moving into a better place and a better thing that that there's never gonna be it was good until this is all like Romantic thinking like looking back.
I'm sorry I don't mean he's saying it was good until we split the atom.
He was saying, we split the atom and the greater intelligences that were existing in alternate dimensions were like, hey, wait, what the fuck?
That's what he was saying.
They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, no, no.
They can't do that.
The way he put it, and I'm not only paraphrasing, I'm probably misphrasing, but as I remember the essay...
The idea is like that parallel timeline, the multiverse right next to ours that you see, that's the DMT realm.
But this DMT is just showing you one version of it.
But that is populated with spirits or aliens or whatever the name you want to give them.
And they are pretty much, as far as we go, they're just like...
They look at us the way we look at birds or whatever.
It's like they're there, but maybe some of them study us or are interested.
Sure, maybe some of them hunt us from time to time or maybe some of them possess us or whatever, but mostly it's a world that coexists with us with a very limited form of interaction.
Is, you know, subtle.
But somehow there's some, like, Star Trek intentionality behind that, which is like, let them evolve as they're evolving.
Let's not fuck with it.
But the splitting of the atom, that was powerful enough that it bled over into their realm destructively.
And so they were like, that was the beginning of the end for us.
Not because it meant a nuclear holocaust or whatever, but because they couldn't just ignore us anymore.
And that this was like, you know, I don't know.
Maybe this is where aliens are coming or the singularity.
The thing we call the singularity is not that we technologically...
Create a machine that produces a thing that opens up a parallel timeline or creates all moments at once, but rather that's when they come here.
That in the way we see that, because we're so limited in our understanding, when I do something, I'm like, I'm doing this!
This is how I did it!
I did it!
This is like, in music, If you write a song, or you write music, and you're just in the room with somebody, there's some kind of law where they get credit for it, because just they were there.
That's a collaboration.
Musicians, someone explained this to me a long time ago, but there's an intense way of quantifying collaboration in music that is a little different than in making other forms of media.
And I think it's a little bit more sophisticated in its Way of looking at that quantification, like every time we finish a podcast, we always have the same, damn, whenever we talk, it's like you bring, like these conversations we have, I'm not having them all the time.
You know what I mean?
It's like us together and Jamie and like something about that produces a space where we're able to have these kinds of conversations.
And so quantifying that is like, How would you even fucking quantify that?
But so, to get back to the weirdo idea of technology not even being a thing we're making, but we're pretending we're making, because we can't see the fact that technology is crystallizing in our time frame, and as part of that crystallization, because it's such a...
It's such an insane visitation.
We have to, in our brains, invent a reason that it's happening.
And so we're making it and someone's like, oh, I had this idea.
I'm going to work on this thing that's going to lead to a quantum computer that's going to lead to a thing to a thing.
And then all of a sudden the quantum computer starts giving ideas about, well, why don't you try this?
My conspiracy friends, I'm not even going to attempt to give the download on it, because, like, y'all have done a pretty good job of putting all the pieces together out there.
Whether they're real or not, I don't fucking know, but I enjoy reading them late at night.
And they've been giving me terrible dreams.
But the asteroid theory is that...
Okay, so...
We want to have, by we, I mean they want to have maximum survivability for the planet.
They're not out to like, they don't want people to die.
They're not trying to, it's not a bioengineered thing that's designed to like cull the population, which is another of the theories.
But rather, there was a plan, which is like, what's our plan if we do see a meteor is going to impact?
The planet.
What's our plan?
Do we let people know that the meteor is going to impact?
Well, it depends.
Like if an astronomer that's not connected to one of our labs or whatever sees it, they're going to let people know.
And then, you know, so that's a whole different, I think, method of like reacting.
But what if we see a thing that they don't know about?
There's some probability, even a 20% chance the thing impacts the Earth, right?
Or there's some cosmic event maybe we're not even aware of, like the Sun doing some weird shit that we don't even know happens because it's like deep data, right?
So maybe it's not an asteroid.
It's a cosmic event that's approaching, right?
And so there's got to be a plan.
And it's like, well, if we just tell people that the Sun's going to do like a mile blip, which is going to destroy all...
Satellites and destroy all GPS and just that alone would cause runs on the bank mass panics like in people would start looting and shit and that's not you don't want that because ideas like we want them to hole up in their houses till the shit passes so we get maximum survivability and so the whole pandemic this is a conspiracy theory not real the whole pandemic was A plan to get people to go inside,
store up food, get them off the roads, and wait for whatever this event is to pass.
And as soon as the event passes, you'll find that all of a sudden it's like, what do you know?
The curves are all dropping off.
What do you know?
And then we'll all be back because the thing they were worried about didn't happen.
It's so good that I married the person I married because if not, I would probably be digging a hole to crawl into out of pure paranoia because she does do this to me.
She's like, Duncan, do you think there isn't a COVID virus?
You think there's no virus out there?
Do you think that maybe...
So all the scientists that have identified COVID are all part of this thing to keep us from the meteor thing?
And then I'm like, yeah, thank you!
Because I'll start getting freaked out from it, but I'll answer your question.
If I had to answer that, I would say, oh no, it's real.
But hopefully whoever's like making these decisions is aware of the fact – That like right now there's folks who are getting Meals on Wheels.
There's folks who are like on unemployment and lost their job and like I hope they're aware of the fact that like, and I'm sure they are, that the pressure of folks who are in this That horrendous economic position, the pressure on them at some point is going to exceed the humanity and compassion and empathy they're showing by not being in the demographic that's most likely to die and still staying inside, losing their job.
That's love, man.
That's deep compassion because you don't want someone's granddad to suffocate on some new fucking Bat flu, right?
That's love and that's beautiful.
But at some point, that pressure is, people are going to be like, look, I don't want to kill anybody, I don't want to be a carrier, I don't ever want to hurt anybody, but my kid has got to have food.
And I have to work.
And, you know, and then I think somewhere there, hopefully by then there's at least a treatment they've discovered, or at least we get to a point where they've, you know, where maybe what's happening in Sweden, we get enough data on that to realize that there's other ways to do it that don't involve complete lockdown.
If you look at nearby countries, the death rate is lower.
But weirdly, countries that were doing complete lockdowns have higher death rates than they do.
And, you know, look, the problem is that you have this glob of data that anyone can interpret.
And there's probably angles you can take on it that would show, look, yeah.
Yeah, there's a higher death rate, of course, in Sweden, because it's going to spread more if people aren't staying inside.
I mean, that seems pretty logical to me.
But then also, if you're showing some conflicting data where some other country in complete lockdown with a similar population or somehow equating their population with Sweden's population, if they're...
If they've got a higher death rate, then that's fucking terrifying, man, because the implication of it is like we really don't understand what this is.
And especially right now, Jamie was, you know, talking about like, think of the people right now in New York who are just in, you know, alone in an apartment, seeing the news that apparently spreads through like air conditioning ducts.
It's like, you know what I mean?
That's terrifying.
But, you know, again, I My opinion on it, in my old age, it has to be my opinion on things.
I'm going to trust scientists.
I'm just going to.
I didn't go to medical school.
I don't understand what the fuck a virus even is.
I don't remember.
I've been trying to remember.
I'm too lazy to Google how it works.
I know it gets into your DNA. It replaces it.
What I'm saying is...
Suggesting some kind of surrender to authority out of absolute weakness.
But if a large consensus of scientists are advising some specific method of dealing with this thing, let's listen to them, you know?
And then just make sure that...
I feel bad for, like, I have a friend in Georgia right now.
And like right now, he's become part of an experiment, a global experiment.
They're opening up Georgia right now.
And every state that opens up right now becomes an experiment.
We're going to get a lot of data from what happens from all these states opening up right now regarding the efficacy of a shutdown like we have right now.
And it could be that all of a sudden we realized we overreacted.
And you know what?
I'd much rather overreact than underreact in situations like this.
It's like, fuck, we overreacted.
Whoops.
Yeah, we thought there was the potential to think of mutate and kill fuck tons of people, way more than the flu, and we were wrong.
And it fucked up the economy.
But it's a lot better than what would have happened if it was some new smallpox or black plague.
I've noticed, though, sometimes if I get sick, night is always worse than the day.
I don't know why.
I don't know, man.
Whatever the fuck it is, to me, the part that really sucks...
I got friends who are immunocompromised, man.
And that means that they really will if they get it.
It's game over.
Fuck, it sucks.
And so there's that quality to it, too, where you're like...
Statistically, I don't know where I'm at.
Statistically, I think I'm on the cusp.
All of us have friends that are dead meat if this thing were to explode.
So fuck it.
I get staying inside, man.
I just know that eventually...
My brother was telling me every day, his neighbor...
My brother works from home.
He's a video editor every day and a producer every day.
He sees people are getting food deliveries because they can't from the state.
I don't know.
I'm just glad I don't have to...
I'm glad I don't have to be the one who makes decisions like this because that must be a weird thing to be in a position where any decision you make kills people.
Like, if you make the decision to open up, people are gonna, you know, die because they're gonna get sick.
If you don't make this decision to open up, there's a potential that, you know, just think of the mentally ill people right now.
No one's talking about that.
Like, I keep thinking of like the manic depressive people, the people who are already depressed, who now can't go outside, but are also getting blasted with apocalypse news.
I don't know what suicide rates are looking like right now, but like, you know what I mean?
So it's the decision to keep people shut down.
You know, what might result from that, those deaths might be secondary or tertiary or some shit.
But still, it's like, it just sucks to have to be in a position where you have to make those decisions.
And it's like, how awful to know.
It's just, it's like, brutal.
I feel terrible for them.
You know, anyone who's like, because I don't, you know...
It seems like the best idea would be to quarantine all the people that are very vulnerable, to make sure that they quarantine and make sure that people who know them are aware, you know, do not, you know, touch them or touch anything around them.
If you could have potentially been in contact with something because they're immunocompromised.
That seems like the move.
The move seems like to quarantine the people, at this point at least, to self-quarantine, you know, tell them to quarantine people that are really vulnerable, older people, people with, you know, people that smoke, people with respiratory conditions.
Be aware that you're vulnerable, you know, and then you act accordingly.
But everybody else, we need to...
At some point in time, whether it's this week or next week or three weeks from now, when they think it is, May 15th, right?
That's like three weeks from now.
They're gonna have to open the doors.
And when they open the doors, people are gonna be starving.
Yeah, no the chips you can put on yeah, it's Bluetooth So it's it's essentially like tracking and alerting you if you've come in contact with someone who has it I don't what do you think about that?
I don't trust anyone to have all that data and only use it for that, right?
There's no way.
That data would be so valuable if everyone had a chip.
And everyone was tracked.
You knew where everyone was all throughout the day.
Oh, you're only going to use that to see who's got coronavirus?
Really?
Get the fuck out of here.
Once that technology exists, it's not like they're going to murder it at the end of the fucking season.
Well, we've got no more COVID, so let's just stop all this technology.
No chance.
They'll find a new reason to use it.
They'll be able to track the flu.
They'll be able to track adulterers.
They'll be able to track robbers.
They'll be able to track carjackers.
They'll be able to track...
You name it, man.
You name it.
These are the right-wing activists that like to yell at abortion clinics.
Let's track them.
Now a Republican gets in office, hey, these are the people that are the fucking animal rights activists that always get in front of the meat plant.
Let's track them.
You can't track people.
And they're already doing it anyway.
You talk to Snowden, they're already tracking you by your goddamn phone.
But I like the fact that I could take this phone and chuck it in the fucking river.
I could just chuck it.
I'd throw it in the ocean.
No, I wouldn't even do that.
I'm environmentally conscious.
No matter what you say, someone's gonna be like, you bastard.
But I wouldn't.
I really feel strongly about that.
I would never litter like that.
But point is, I can get rid of that fucking following.
It's not a part of my body.
Once they're injecting, I've talked about this way too many podcasts in a row, but there's a company that had these people inject a microchip in their arm and they could wave it in front of the soda machine and get fucking snacks with it and shit.
It was like your tab was on your arm.
Mike's here, open the door.
It unlocks the door.
Get the fuck out of here.
And we were saying, what if that company fires you?
What if Chipotle fires you and you got that Chipotle chip in your arm?
But I was management!
It's not a regular Chipotle chip!
You imagine?
You imagine?
And now you have to work for fucking 7up, and 7up's like, we're going to have to cut your arm off.
You know, also, when you combine those chips with augmented reality so that you could have a visual floating around them as, like, the mascot of the various companies they work for.
Or, like, you know, like, let's say we do get the chip, right?
The chip exists, and we all just somehow decide, like, yeah, well...
Let's just do it.
I mean, fuck the whole book of revelations.
That's just the whole bullshit.
The whole mark of the beast.
I'm not going to pay any attention.
Let's get the chip.
That was just some old ancient bullshit.
Alright, come on.
I want to get sodas without having to pull out my fucking wallet.
It sucks.
I'm sick of it.
I'm exhausted all day from this activity.
But we all get the chips.
And then what happens is...
And of course it would start off with a decision to make.
What data in the chip do you want people to be able to see with augmented reality?
And so this is where you run into what I think the future is going to look like with this shit.
It's like when you're walking around in your company and you're Employee of the Month and everybody's wearing augmented reality goggles, you're going to have some kind of Employee of the Month halo around you.
So everybody's aware that you made the most sales, you know?
It's going to be like that for like, you know, it's going to be brutal as far as, let's say, credit scores go, right?
Because if you've got a great credit score and you want to indicate to the world that if you want to Get into debt.
You can, baby, because you've got a great credit score.
You're going to have this glowing shit around you.
And the moment one person decides to reveal that, everybody's going to feel like they have to reveal it.
And if you see someone who doesn't have the good credit score crown or whatever, like the banner of great credit floating in front of them, you're like, yeah, you're probably fucked, right?
Like you made some bad decisions.
You'll see someone who's got a lot of shit.
Nice car, really nice clothes.
But you'll be like, yeah, but you know, he doesn't have the glowing medallion of good credit on his AR self, so I don't know if he really owns any of that stuff, you know?
Then there's going to be all forms of that, which leads to venereal disease.
You could go into a bar, and if you just got tested, and you're clean, so to speak, then maybe there's a little AR Clean angel that flies around your head like, he doesn't have herpes!
There's going to be big arguments about that where it's like, you know, currently, if you're a registered sex offender...
We know where you fucking live.
And I get it, man.
Like, that's good.
That's good.
But then it's going to be like, okay, but do we put that in their augmented reality chip profile so that anywhere they go, people are seeing that this is a person that hurts kids, you know?
And there's going to be a conversation about that where people are like, fuck yeah, that's what you do.
Like, I want to know if some weirdo is getting anywhere close to my kid.
Anyway, that's the slippery slope that leads to the dystopian Black Mirror future and that great episode where there was...
This is a real concern if this technology does get released in time and people start using their COVID tests and putting it on their QR code, that little thing that you do with the photo, and it scans you like a plane ticket.
You know, like, oh, you're good, Duncan.
Seems like you're good.
Make sure you keep that phone on you everywhere you go.
Email the other day, it shows that you have been going, I don't know who has this data, but you've been going down to San Clemente during the lockdown?
The power to have a mayor tell you what you can do.
That's never happened before.
I'm not saying they're doing it because of that.
I know why they're doing it.
They're doing it to save lives.
I'm 100% for it.
Don't get me wrong here.
But still, that power that anybody has to say, you can't work, you gotta stay home, you can't go to the park, you can't go to the beach, That power's weird.
Some company saying if you're aware that your bosses are violating software, like don't have licensed software, We'll give you a reward.
Inviting people, disgruntled employees who know that their boss is running stolen photoshop or whatever, to make a little money and fuck their boss over.
That invitation to snitch, that is a satanic invitation, man.
I don't care what level it's at like in general unless you're looking at like hardcore Snowden level whistleblower like you've been down in the deep underground military bases and you saw the fucking thing in the egg that could read your mind and you're like I can't keep it to myself!
And it's like, because what you're asking for there, which is another thing that I think the state, anytime anyone starts doing this, then you really have to start thinking about who you voted for.
But like, because the idea is like, I love it when...
You know, and I'm cheesy, and I am a fucking hippie, and I get accused of stoner talking shit, but yeah, I want there to be world peace, and I want people to love each other.
And when I see, you know, any even the slightest thing that like transcends political divides, We're like, you know, people who've hated fucking Trump and people Trump have hated.
I saw something where like, I can't remember who it was.
Like, God, what's the name of the Mormon politician that was running for president against Trump?
So some dude Like, voted against releasing money to people who don't have jobs.
And Mitt Romney tweeted, well, that senator, whoever he was, tested positive for being an asshole.
And Mitt Romney said that!
And fucking, you know, and then, like, there was this just flickering moment where Trump retweets that or says something about it and says, like, I didn't know he had that sense of humor, but I liked it.
And, like...
For that one stupid moment, there's a second where it's like, that's, we're supposed to be on the same team!
And like, you know, that's not a political statement.
That's like a statement of survivability.
And when you have a fucking, when you have a, and again, I'm not saying bow down to the state or anything like that either.
That's the opposite of what I'm saying.
I'm not saying, therefore, we all gotta be on the side of the president!
None of that shit.
I'm not saying any of that shit, man.
So don't take this the wrong way, because that's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, when anything that divides one neighbor from the next, anything that invites neighbors to divide instead of unite, is cancerous, literally, for society, in the sense that what's going to start happening is the...
The pixel of society is the neighbors.
That's like the connection between your neighbors makes up the tapestry of the entire country.
And that connection, if it's broken or weird or fucked up, then that's fucking everything up.
And so to invite that, invite anything that fucks that up.
Is, to me, really, really long-term disastrous.
It's like, the idea would be like, hey, is your neighbor an old person?
Go find out if your neighbor's an old person and can't get food.
And if they are and you get food to them, we'll pay for it.
You know someone who's fucked up right now, let us know so we can make sure their kids aren't starving.
Man, what about the fucking kids whose parents are right now super fucking sick with this shit?
We need governors and we need people saying, you need to know where the kids are in the building whose parents are sick.
So we can make sure those kids are getting taken care of while their parents are in bed and shit.
Like, so, fuck that.
That is what people get rewards for.
Why don't we have a way of monetizing kindness and acts of, like, grace to your neighbors instead of monetizing, like, you becoming, like, literally what is one...
A universally derided thing, which is a snitch.
You don't want to be a snitch.
Fuck snitches get stitches.
Maybe they don't get stitches, but man, I'll tell you, when you die, Wouldn't want to be you.
Wouldn't want to be a snitch in the afterlife.
I'll tell you that, man.
You get devoured by spirit wolves.
Spirit wolves?
I'm sure.
You don't get the experience of seeing your mom come running to you with a bowl of soup.
It's your mom.
She comes running to you and you think it's a bowl of soup, but you look and it's your wife's head.
And then you look back up.
It's a spirit wolf.
It's like, so you thought it was smart to snitch in that dimension, huh?
Yeah, actually, now that I think about it, the flowers...
You know, it did seem like there was something like sticky and creamy on the flowers.
But, you know, I'm saying like, again, this to me, not getting too much in the macro, because I'll go insane if I get in the macro, getting into the micro, which is your direct, literally your direct neighbors, and like making some connection with them.
You know, like the guy who lives across the street, we talked for like two minutes and it was wonderful.
And he's like, if you need tools, just let me know.
I got a ton of tools.
Just you can like, you know, message me and I'll come and leave them here and you can come and get them.
That's probably like one of those if you build it they will come things like do you imagine how hard you would trip inside that place?
Do you know I'm saying yeah now like I don't think it's I don't think it's a But like you could do DMT in a shitty apartment and still have some crazy mind-blowing trip But you can't tell me that coming to this place and going through this Entheon portal Yeah, this isn't gonna have some fucking crazy effect on the way you trip.
Yeah, oh my god, but that you know that was the idea of a temple I mean that the idea is and not I'm not just saying to trip or whatever but the concept is like You know, let's acknowledge the fact that maybe our ideas aren't necessarily coming from inside our brains.
Let's just as a fantasy imagine that there is a divine intelligence that as one of the many beautiful things it pushes into this particular realm is art.
And that if we can figure out a way to purify the connection with that thing, then we become receivers for that.
And by doing that, we allow that thing to begin to exist in this world.
And a temple was a place that allowed that connection to be refined, purified, intentionalized.
And in that, there's a solidification called Inspiration or art or whatever the name is you want to give it, but it's really, it's like output from a place that maybe is, you know, a few floors up from the one we're at.
It's having a pretty wonderful party right now.
And like part of what we do is like allow it to drip into this realm, which is potentially a denser realm.
We're in the realm of matter.
It's dense, you know, and like ideas, if you look at your ideas, they're light.
They're like, they don't have a lot, at least my ideas, like, they're not like heavy.
Inspiration feels like barely anything.
In fact, it's so barely anything, think how easy it is to miss a good idea.
How easy it is to think something cool that maybe you want to write down for a joke, and you're just like, I'll write that down later, and then it's gone.
It's light.
It's light.
And so in part of what they're, I think, are all about, or I mean, again, that's me putting it on them.
They have a wonderful description on their website about what they're all about.
But to me, part of what creation is, is taking those things, allowing them to come through you, and then allowing this realm to do what it does, which is to crystallize them in a denser form that other people can enjoy.
And, you know, That enjoyment is, you know, that's enough.
It doesn't have to be some lofty ass shit.
It's just like people get a little, like, this tiny little smell of heaven, like a better place, a lighter place, a place that isn't.
Encumbered by so much bullshit is this particular realm that can like completely take someone out of a depression man that can completely give somebody the you know juice they need to like get back out there and like open up themselves to the world and not be shut down just one little like tiny tiny minuscule reminder of like don't worry there's this isn't the only place there's simultaneously amazing things happen happening which you're part of you just don't realize it yet And...
Don't worry.
McKinney, in one of his essays, that's what he'd say on mushrooms is he would get this message.
One of the things about tryptamine experiences is that things twist and change and morph and shift.
They never stay any one thing for any length of time.
They're always becoming other things and moving in and out of things.
Maybe that's just what happens over there.
Maybe these things are constantly shifting and changing.
You know?
Maybe what we're doing is we're trying to apply, when we think of how we are here in this life, we're trying to apply those laws to whatever we experience when we do that.
But it seems so alien.
When you have those experiences, it seems so alien.
You're not going to be able to bring any of that back.
You can give someone little glimpses.
And what Alex has done the best is capture like, oh, I know what he's doing.
Like those faces, those almost Egyptian-looking golden faces moving apart from each other.
You go, oh yeah, I've seen something.
Yeah, something sort of.
Yeah, there's a tryptamine part to that.
But whatever that would be in that dimension, it would change and become something else instantaneously, and then become something else.
And a lot of it has to do with how you're thinking.
Which is weird.
It's like, is the way you're thinking actually affecting those things?
Or is the way you're thinking affecting your perception of whatever this energy is and how it manifests itself visually?
And so we have a thought and we're thinking to ourselves, ah, I just got a good idea.
We don't know that if we had a different way of quantifying time and space, we might have just seen some ethereal mist drift through us that produced a thing we called a thought that we thought must be us.
So you look at a thing in that realm and it's shifting and converting.
And you notice that that conversion seems to be happening in relation to how you're feeling.
And now you're in a chicken or the egg conversation, which is like, who's reflecting who here?
Which of us is real and which of us isn't?
Am I just seeing who I actually am?
But because I live in a world of individuality and I live in a world where There's a separate quality to things.
I have to see you as separate.
Because if I don't, I can't see you.
I'm seeing myself in you, which is, I think, what is happening in this realm anyway.
Anything you're looking at right now is some phenomena being painted instantaneously by your imagination.
That's what the imagination is doing.
It's painting colors onto the universe of Infinite phenomena that your brain is doing out of habit.
Anyone you're around, you make an instantaneous assessment of that person.
You begin to realize, like, wait, I got a bad vibe about that person.
I bet something's off with them.
And then you go into, like, you're a TV psychic bullshit.
You can tell if a person's off, like they're not really connecting with you, or they're pretending to connect with you, and you're like, whoa, I got a weird vibe from this guy.
Now your projection has sprung to life in front of you because you've essentially animated a person with your expectation of them.
And then, because that person is acting the way you thought they would act, because they don't know the fuck they are, you're making monsters with your imagination.
Almost definitely a part of these fucking psychedelics LSD experiments that they were doing on hippies.
Almost definitely experimented on him, probably in prison, but almost definitely allowed him to get out of when he violated his parole, let him loose, let him free, supply him with acid, monitor him, They were monitoring him every step of the way.
They, like, fed that monster.
They knew that this guy had been incarcerated half his life.
He was a con man.
And they taught him how to be a cult leader.
They taught him how to be a cult leader.
And they probably taught him how to talk people into killing people.
And to do so with acid.
And they would dose him up and he would make people do all kinds of shit.
Like it would take people like, okay, you're going to fuck her and he's going to fuck him.
Connected to LSD and hippies, LSD and mind control, LSD, trying to come up with a Manchurian candidate, trying to get someone to commit murder and not even realize they did it.
Also connected to Lee Harvey Oswald.
Because Jack Ruby was all fucked up on that program when he killed Lee Harvey Oswald and afterwards went completely insane, was seen by the very same doctor that was running the clinic where Manson used to go.
This guy was a CIA doctor, was a psychologist or a psychiatrist dosing people up with LSD, running studies on prisoners, getting students to run studies, getting scientists to run studies, not even knowing they were doing it through the CIA. Kaczynski, too.
How about Operation Midnight Climax ran brothels in San Francisco and a couple other places where they dosed people up with acid and watched them fuck.
Whoever named that, that really tells you a lot about the program.
But, like, you know, man, the...
Here's a controversial fucking thing to say, which someone reminded me of a while ago, which really freaked me out, kind of, which is like, back then, like, right now we know a little bit more about some of the shit the CIA did.
The guy who wrote the movie, or didn't write it, but the documentary Kill Shot.
Was he the guy who talked about a kill shot, or that's the name for the thing that happens when the sun fucks up?
It didn't fuck up.
I mean, who am I to say the sun fucked up?
But for us, it fucked up.
It does like a, not a supernova, but just does a big-ass flare that kind of like melts whatever side of the earth happens to be facing it.
You know, that's like the kill shot that a lot of these remote viewers were apparently saying that they were seeing because they were realizing that they could actually...
They weren't sort of bound by time and these visions, and they all started sharing this vision of this thing.
Ask Molly, your CIA source on the inside, and it's hashtag AskMollyHale, and Molly Hale's like a hot agent.
This week's Ask Molly Hale question comes from a writer who wants to know if there's a path forward for them at CIA since they have done illegal drugs in the past.
Having previously used illegal drugs does not immediately disqualify you from working at CIA. If working for CIA is your life's goal, and we certainly hope it is, there could be a path for you here.
With that said, there are certain restrictions you should be aware of, especially if you've used illegal drugs within the past year.
Generally speaking, to be eligible for CIA employment, applicants That's not a word, kids.
Not only an applicant, but as the potential holder of a security clearance.
It might seem a bit archaic, but consider the access to information we're giving at CIA employees and consequences of granting access to the wrong person.
How much access to information?
Just read that real quick.
It might seem a bit archaic, but consider the access to information we're giving at CIA employees.
That's probably the first thing they say after you get hired.
They're like, it's a simulator.
We're just doing like what the programmer wants.
It's like, I know you're going to freak out for two months.
We're going to give you like a protocol of antidepressants because you can go nihilistic or absurdist when you realize you're just a string of code that's running, but you'll get over it.
That's all fine, Molly, but I live in a state where marijuana use was legalized under state law.
So why would any of this really apply in my case?
The short answer is...
Or would any of this really apply in my case?
The short answer is yes.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law in every state.
The CIA is bound by federal law which prohibits CIA from granting security clearances to unlawful users of controlled substances including marijuana.
State laws do not supersede those of the federal government.
The great lord who looks over the land with an iron fist.
For more information regarding the federal government security clearance guidelines regarding drug use and other considerations, you can check out the...
But I do think, like, in there is they're also kind of saying, like, that being said, if you can set shit on fire with your mind or something when you're stoned, come talk to us.
It's like, you know what I mean?
They are saying, like...
The other cool thing when you look at applying for a job is it says, after you apply, don't tell anybody you apply for the job.
No, I just found out about this shit really recently.
Fitzsimmons told me about this guy.
Tom O'Neill was his neighbor for like 20 years.
He was neighbors with Greg and Greg the whole time he was doing this book while Greg was friends with him.
It took him 20 years to write this book.
It started out as an article for Premier Magazine and then as he started uncovering all these inconsistencies with the trial he realized that there was kind of a bullshit trial and that the Prosecuting attorney like everybody had there was there was deals that everybody had made to have a specific narrative go through and Susan Atkins one of the people from the Manson families on trial her her fucking defense attorney was like a former prosecuting attorney that had worked with Vincent
Bugliosi and all these other people before they were all buddies and they signed him to her and To take over for her state-appointed attorney.
This guy took over.
They followed directions.
Everybody followed directions.
As he was going deeper and deeper into the story, he realized there was a lot of crazy shit.
That was going on.
First of all, Manson for sure was let out of jail multiple times when he shouldn't have been.
When he was violating parole, he was let out of jail repeatedly for crazy shit like theft.
They were monitoring these people.
They knew where they were staying.
They knew the ranch, the spawn ranch where they were staying at.
They never did anything.
They let them go whenever they were in trouble and most likely got him the fucking LSD. Have you looked up the Finders cult yet?
So, you know what's so bizarre, and I don't even want to say it, but I think it's like, because you say it, and then people see you say it, and they're like, see, you're all in the CIA! But something Rick Doblin, you know, I was bitching to Rick Doblin on a podcast, and I was doing this thing I used to do when I was younger, Which is like trying to create an all evil, all good binary regarding people who work like in the CIA or people who work in even the DEA or whatever.
That thing you do when you're being lazy in your way of thinking, right?
The thing that's somewhat annoying in the sense that it requires nuance rather than a heavy-handed, they're all evil, is some of the people in there Are really like 100% trying to keep at least people here from getting blown the fuck up.
And they're not like, oh god, let's find another manson.
Exactly.
I went and got this tour of...
Actually, JPL, the place Parsons was at, man.
I think it was BP or Shell or some oil company.
Generally, we all look at the oil companies and think, they're all the worst!
While you're driving in your car, you'll be like, these fucking oil companies!
They were working on some kind of new solar panel technology.
It was like Shell, or I don't remember which fucking company it was.
I remember saying to the guy, like, This technology, if it works, doesn't this destroy the oil industry?
Like, don't they know they're working on a technology that's gonna make the thing they make money selling and buying irrelevant?
And he's like, oh no, these companies are so big.
That there's departments within departments within departments.
And that's where it gets fucking crazy about the CIA. Which is like, the people in the CIA don't know, obviously, all the people in the CIA. Exactly.
That's your security clearance.
And the question is, how deep does that basement go, man, under the CIA? But here's also the question.
How are you going to find out what happens when people take LSD without giving people LSD and studying them?
Ready?
Go.
You're not.
So if you're in 1953, okay, and you're finding out about LSD, and people are taking LSD at parties, and people are taking LSD at concerts, and you start realizing the ramifications of a society in 1964 that's all taking LSD, and you see this hippie movement, you're going to run some studies.
So then you're going to give people the ability to test people without their knowledge.
You don't know how crazy that guy is, what kind of a sociopath that guy is.
And he's going to run tests on people without their knowledge and give them LSD. And then there's going to be people that say, hey, you know, we want to infiltrate all these anti-war groups.
We got him in prison for half of his fucking life in federal prison so far.
He's 32 years old.
Yeah.
Dose this motherfucker up with LSD. Let's run some studies on him and let's tell him that he's a cult leader and get him to make some apocalyptic fucking death cult that wants to kill people and write pig on the wall in their blood.
And so they let Manson, they knew where he was.
They knew he was getting acid.
They knew that he was probably having people kill people.
Yeah, well, okay, first of all, to go back, man, if you really study the spread of LSD and the popular culture, it wasn't that the CIA saw people taking LSD at parties.
It's that the CIA, as I understand the story, goes and buys from Sandoz Laboratories all of their LSD and then begins to do tests on college campuses.
Where people begin to take the LSD and then the parties start.
So I think it's more like the CIA started the party when it comes to LSD, or at least were majorly involved in the initial experience people had with LSD, which was like, that's when you get Tim Leary, that's when you get Richard Alpert, you know, Ram Dass.
They were both like hanging out.
At Harvard where the same psychology professor did this shit on Kaczynski was and like LSD you know that's they were doing I don't know if they were doing the LSD test there but these tests were going on they were being exposed to LSD that theoretically I don't know if it came from the CIA or not but I don't know like where the I think they actually those tests were they were ordering it from Sandoz but for sure like who wrote one flew over the cuckoo's nest uh Damn
it!
I can't believe I can't remember that author's name!
He did one of the CIA LSD. He was in one of the CIA LSD experiments.
That makes sense.
And also, man, back then, I don't think, because we didn't get the Manson, the Kaczynski, or all the awful shrapnel, weird shards of chaos that exploded off of the crazy, unethical shit they did, I don't know if there was so much of an idea that they were evil.
I could be wrong about that, but they weren't even called the CIA. I think they were called the OSS. In the beginning, yeah.
But by the time, the CIA was running a fucking clinic in Haight-Ashbury that closed down after like 30 years of being open or 40 years of being open, closed down three months after this book came out.
Like, well, that's a wrap.
Yes.
Yeah, Jolly West, the same guy who visited Jack Ruby in the hospital.
And after he left, Jack Ruby went insane.
He was crawling underneath the table and thought that Jewish children were getting lit on fire and cut apart in the streets and a new Holocaust was going on.
Immediately, immediately he has to.
They have no record of him acting insane before this at all.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, and you can, what's probably, you can probably, I know you can.
If we go on the CIA, the crazy thing is, you can go on their website, look at the Freedom of Information archives, and they have MKUltra shit up there right now that you can look at.
That's where it gets really weird, is it's like, they're like, yeah, Yeah, but they never admit that they gave people...
You'll get your dick wet, listen to the podcast, and then you're going to want to listen to the audiobook or read the book.
But he has 60 pages of citations and references at the end of the book to show each thing and how he can prove it.
He's got some speculation that he entertained at the very end of the book, and we talked about it on the podcast, but the stuff that he knows for sure to be true is bonkers.
I do think also that some of those guys turn into fucking cowboys and try to fly coke back from Mexico and crash CIA jets.
That's true too.
All that shit that happened in Mena, Arkansas, you know, all that shit that happened when Clinton was governor with Barry Seals, when they were running coke back and forth and dropping off in Mena, Arkansas, that guy was a CIA contractor.
There's a lot of those guys that were CIA. Look, they got compromised.
I think, but that doesn't mean the whole CIA's bad.
It doesn't mean we don't need a CIA. Man, if you talk to people, if they're honest, I don't know if they're...
Let's just assume they're honest.
If you talk to people that deal with trying to infiltrate terrorist groups, and deal with tracking terrorists, and deal with trying to figure out if someone's trying to make a dirty bomb, trying to figure out if someone's ready to blow up a mall, and they're doing this Actively, every day, all day.
That's essential.
That's essential.
So the CIA, oh, fucking MKUltra, they dose people at whorehouses.
They're not the same people.
This is a giant organization that's been around for a long fucking time.
What you're hearing about from Jolly West and the MKUltra, those people are dead.
Those are not alive today.
But you know who is alive today?
ISIS. You know who is alive today?
A lot of threats all around the world.
You know who is alive today?
Kim Jong-un, the leader of China.
All these fucking dictators that are heavily armed all over the world.
There's a lot of them.
You've got to keep an eye on those motherfuckers.
If you don't think you have to keep an eye on them, you're crazy.
Well, the CIA is evil.
No, no, no.
Humans are evil.
And sometimes you need someone who's paying attention to the evil people.
So the question is, how good are these people at walking that line?
Turns out, pretty fucking good.
Turns out pretty fucking good.
There's a bunch of shit that's happened over time.
But also, they've gotten intel on all these different terrorists and all these different fucking terrible situations all over the world and probably saved a lot of people.
It's not perfect, but nothing's perfect.
It's not a fucking thing that's perfect, whether it's the fucking post office or police officers or fire department or doctors.
No one's perfect, including the CIA, including the FBI, including the Army, the Navy.
There's going to be problems.
But overall, they're trying to protect, I would imagine, if I had to ask, like, what are you guys here for?
To make sure this shit doesn't hit the fan.
Pay attention to the shit.
Pay attention.
Do some of them branch out into coke business?
Yes.
I'm sure some of them sell coke.
I'm sure there's someone for the federal government that's selling guns to a bad guy right now.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
People are people.
If you got a million people, you're gonna get 30 bad ones or whatever the fuck the number is.
Well, because for sure, by the way, you know, there's a, there's like, I guess at the CIA, there's a layer of all the sober people who've like, haven't gotten high for a year, which whoever's writing that fucking thing is definitely like laughing as they're writing it, you know, they're like, just laughing because they're so fucking high and they're like, all right, we'll just say it.
Well, when we were kids, that was like one of the ways you could die.
It's quicksand.
And sometimes you would, like if you're out in the woods and there was a suspicious patch, you might even poke it with a stick because it's like, fuck, that was a whole trope in like old movies.
You know, like Tarzan stuck in the quicksand or you're in the quicksand and then someone throws a vine that you pull yourself out.
So if you end up stuck in quicksand, the best thing to do is if your phone isn't fucked up, set it up to take a video and then send that video to ilovemudboys at gmail.com.
It's my private email.
I will come to you.
Trust me, it seems like I won't get to you, but I will come to you.
You have a service, and your service is you get people out of the mud, and you give them $1,200, but you've got to jerk off on their face while they're trying to get out of the mud.
But you kind of fall in love with them, you know, and then you start dating them.
But then all of a sudden you realize everyone they've dated, they've saved from quicksand and you begin to realize, oh shit, they're doing it on purpose!
And not only that, but like the ones that we were in, I don't know if they had heated it wrong or whatever, but anytime my ass touched like close to the bottom, it was burning my ass.
We don't even live in that world, and yet we're raising our kids for that world.
That seems to be a little crazy.
And I understand, like, look, if I worked in an office somewhere or if I had to deal with people professionally, I wouldn't be dropping F-bombs all day.
You can't.
People get upset.
They don't like it.
They want you to behave like a business person.
They'll turn you into human resources if you have a funny joke about Puerto Ricans.
You can't.
You can't.
There's no jokes.
There's no laughter.
You can't.
You gotta...
So...
When you're telling your kids not to say certain words around other people, you're telling them that because you want them to be polite.
You don't want people to feel uncomfortable.
But you should never have them think that there's something wrong with those fucking words.
Those words are important.
I can't really explain it to them because I can't really say it the way I want to say it.
It would just be too sensitive.
Like, I couldn't say...
I can't say...
Sometimes, when someone's telling you something that you know isn't true, and they're telling you, you want to be able to look it in the eye and go, hey, that guy's a fucking idiot.
That's, like, kind of my wife and I have decided that, and, like, some of my friends or parents have also said, just teach them not to say those words.
The only reason why I think a lot of these swear words, like the F word or the shit word or whatever, if you're at work and you can't say those, why not?
What is that?
What kind of job is that?
We're all the grown-ups now.
Remember when we were children?
We thought that there was a system that was put in place by enlightened beings, and these enlightened beings, adults, they knew better.
We resisted, but we thought they eventually were correct.
All the data sources, some of them are so very different, it seems like, that it's like, you know, you have people who've won Nobel Prizes, you know, saying what they think it is, and you have other people who are doctors saying what they think it is, and those things don't quite match to the point where it comes down to, it's not like what I think is going to happen, it's what I hope is going to happen, which is like...
That it just, not only that the curve keeps flattening, maybe not necessarily because, maybe because it's mutating.
Maybe because herd immunity.
Maybe because, you know, I don't know who to believe.
You turn on Fox News, you see one story.
You turn on CNN, you see the other story.
You go on the internet, it's a fucking meteor that's going to hit.
You go, you know, it depends on who you're talking to.
5G. 5G? You know, a variety of things.
A low-level bioweapon that's being combined with a horrific, powerful psyops operation.
Who the fuck knows, Joe?
We don't know.
So it's like, that to me is the real unnerving quality of this outside of worrying like if you go outside, like every time you cough, I'm like, mother fuck, I should have worn my mask.
I'm doomed when my wife sees it, she's gonna fucking kill my ass.
But like, that, you know, just that.
Those moments that would normally just go completely unnoticed.
You'll be operating with fear and operating with anxiety.
And everyone's thrust into that without anything bad that they've done.
For no fault of their own, they're thrust into the situation where even though they've worked really hard, they've been really disciplined, they've done the right thing, they've been conservative, they take care of their health, all the checks, everything.
But still, all of a sudden work goes away.
For everybody.
Nobody did anything wrong.
So everybody's thrust into this situation.
It's really the ultimate haves and have-nots moment.
What's really interesting is right when Bernie Sanders just stepped out of the race.
This is the example.
Of why we need some sort of comprehensive plan for everybody if everything goes wrong.
This is right here.
The idea that capitalism moves the world, yes it does.
It seems to motivate most of what we do.
But the idea that there's not more that we can do For the people of the community of the United States of America as a community.
Like, yeah, we went through a nice, sweet spot where there was no real problems other than occasionally little blips of bad flus and bad diseases, and we squashed them real quick.
This is a big one.
It hit the whole...
And this is only...
As far as terrible pandemics, the amount of people that it kills per people that get it is not as high as it is for some of the more horrendous diseases.
We got lucky.
We should prepare for the worst.
We should prepare for airborne Ebola.
We should prepare for all that shit.
We should think about it the way we think about arms races.
How much money they put into the military and how much money they put into the war against viruses?
Well, the war against viruses just killed 50,000 people at home.
Imagine if China just had just launched missiles into American cities and killed 50,000 people.
We would be at fucking war.
All of our resources would be dedicated to that, right?
Why aren't all of our resources being dedicated to fighting off fucking diseases and viruses?
This is a real wake-up call for that.
It's also a wake-up call for power grid people, people that are worried about the power grid go down.
It's a wake-up call for people that haven't had food stockpiled in their house.
Wake-up call for people that are living extended, like they've really extended their reach as far as how much their rent is and how much their car payment is.
They're really stretching it.
Well, boom!
Something like this happens and you're never going to play catch up.
You're barely keeping up with your lifestyle before all this went down.
And again, through no fault of your own.
So you've got to kind of prepare now.
People are going to have to look at this like, okay, now we know something can happen that we never thought could happen before and the whole world shuts down.
It's like when you have a thing happen that you realize like, you know, whatever, like in your car, you get lucky and you notice that the tire is like super flat and you fill it up.
You just didn't notice or whatever.
You see a thing and it saves you from a later fucking thing that could have been a million times worse.
But you know, man, the wake up call to me is It's no joke that you need to at least be on some terms with your neighbors, and it's no joke that you need to understand how to grow food out of the ground and some basic first aid and stuff like that, and also to always have gas in your car, man.
The other day we went to get groceries and left a credit card at the house.
But the car was kind of low on fuel because I hadn't gassed it up like I should have.
And the combination of suddenly not being able to put gas in the car and these two dumb mistakes.
It wasn't just a normal shitty day where your car runs out of gas.
Now it's your cars run out of gas during a pandemic, meaning you got to call somebody to come and put gas in your car or walk somewhere to get gas.
That's a whole different walk than before.
And that's asking someone to come and help you is kind of like asking them, hey, would you mind taking a I mean, I know you're wearing a mask and everything, but you know what I mean?
So suddenly, fuck-ups in this kind of environment, they mean a lot more than fuck-ups in, like, the previous world that we were in.
And that's teaching me a real kind of responsibility, you know, like having some cash on hand, like stuff like that.
Yeah.
What we, you know, we should always be doing that.
And to me, that is one of the, you know, and I hate using, everyone's using the term silver lining right now.
And it's like, anytime you say that, it's like, yeah, it's a silver lining on people who drown in their own fucking mucus.
It's not the, you know, it's fucked up.
But I guess one of the silver linings in it is just that, the fact that it's like, look, man, Trump just was talking about maybe we should inject ourselves with Lysol.
Anyway, bottom line is, he's saying wacky shit, and the focus is on this lady, and as she's watching him, she's like, I can't even fucking believe I have to handle this.
Because you see a thing like that and it's like, okay, lean into that.
Lean into that is the thing that you can count on.
That's the thing saying inject Lysol.
That's the kind of thing where your craziest friend, if they said that to you, you would be considering calling their friends or their mom to be like, hey, Jack, he's having a hardcore manic episode.
He's talking about injecting Lysol into himself.
You better do something.
That's the fucking president.
And to me, what that tells me is like, Motherfucker, you need gas in your car.
You gotta be ready, because if we think we're gonna lean into some imaginary hammock, Made of people who are saying that we should inject ourselves with Lysol, then it's our fault.
Let's imagine, let's say you went into the forest and you got attacked by a tiger.
But right before you went into the forest, you said to somebody, hey, do you think I should go in that forest?
There are tigers there?
And they're like, no.
And then they start shooting up with Lysol.
You know what I mean?
If you go in that forest and the tiger gets you, that's your fault.
You fucking listen to a dude who thought you could shoot up Lysol.
that's your what was he thinking while he was saying nice He's probably like, there's got to be an intelligent way to get out of this fucking subject that I've already started and I'm already coming up with perhaps, for instance, maybe you could...
So to me, you see that and it's like, okay, well, I'm not quite certain that that is where I'm going to get my data stream from because that's a Lysol person.
But then there must be a thing we can do regardless of the fact that clearly...
But imagine, imagine you have zero expertise in a certain subject.
You're talking to someone who's like some expert in this said subject.
And you're proposing these outlandish, like you're on a podium.
You're not even having a private conversation in front of everybody.
You're somehow or another having a side conversation where you're proposing these ridiculous ideas that show that you don't understand how disinfectant works.
Look, first of all, I mean, look, the guy works some ungodly amount of hours in a day, right?
He's gonna do some dumb shit, like, and he wings it a lot, right?
So he probably was stuck on that conversation of things that might be able to be done, and maybe you could do strong, ultra-violent light, like, in the skin.
Then all of a sudden he's like, oh my god, I'm laying out Possible ways that you could cure this there.
I better keep going.
I better have more than one.
Yeah, and there's like a disinfectant.
That's right disinfectant Disinfectant maybe inside or outside they have a way of doing that.
Yeah, and then you say and then he goes to her like he's looking for support Like I think you said maybe I think you said maybe you're looking at that Yeah, man It definitely has that sense of like when you had to give a report at school and you hadn't prepared for it That's it!
They fought, and they fought long and hard in Syria, in areas around Syria, and some people in areas around Syria referred to them as rebels and said they were some of the most intense rebels in the region.
I think it was the Red Badge of Courage, which even now I can't remember.
I think it's about the Revolutionary War.
And I believe that I didn't read it at all.
Clearly I didn't read it because I still can't remember.
Which war it was about, but I remember just having not read the book at all, having to write a report on it, where I think I said it in Vietnam or something, or maybe it was a civil war, and she was just like, that's not even the war that it was that it happened at.
There's a little gray area a few years ago where kids could just copy and paste other people's reports from years past because they were all digital and teachers didn't know this was a thing they could check.
They now have checking tools to find out plagiarism and whatnot, but so many kids probably for a few years just did literally nothing.
Well, I mean, you know, there's like, that's one of the, isn't that, no, the people who went to, recently went to jail for like, bribe, for getting their kids into college.
It's kind of a version of that, except with your kids, right?
You're like, you're like, just, the kids aren't, aren't supposed to be in college because they haven't done any work in high school and they don't know what they're doing, but if you pay enough money, you get them in there.
It's like, And also, aren't they doing something where they get people to go and take SATs for your kid?
Like, you figure out a way to, like, it's an identity theft thing where you can even get someone to go and, like, do the test as your kid using fake ID and shit.
So it's like you send in an operative that isn't your kid to take the test so you can get into a nice school.
Well, get me in the fucking UFC. All my friends are going, dude, the thing that's really fucked up is like there's some kid whose parents are making 20k a year who's working his fucking ass off, you know, just somehow managing to study...
Non-stop to try to get into a good school who doesn't get into the school because of that shit.
That's the satanic part is like they buy their way in and that's someone's place.
They have a limited number of places, meaning like theoretically someone doesn't get into the school who could be the person who is going to, you know, invent teleportation or some shit.
It's like, goddammit, I hope we get to a time where, like, they take pictures of someone doing a fucking thing that's legit fucked up, so that, you know, and they get banished for it.
It's like, I'm, god forbid, like, I can't even imagine the Polaroids that could emerge of weird shit I've done, you know?