July 4, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| I can totally see why in the 50s this was in 60s actually some psychedelics were already legal | ||
| in a medical setting against depression whatever but back then depression was not a big thing so I | ||
| was like it must be that I was very sure actually people would work on it now because this was so | ||
| powerful and then actually for two years I was looking around are there any companies | ||
|
unidentified
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I can invest in they weren't and then I did it myself. I'm Dave Rubin and we're mixing it up a | |
| We're going to shift from politics. | ||
| Hallelujah. | ||
| We're going to be talking about crypto, about longevity, and of course, about magic mushrooms. | ||
| Joining me is the founder of Iperon Investment Group, a board member of the Hayek Institute, and the founder of the Angermeyer Policy and Innovation Forum. | ||
| Christian Angermeyer, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Hi, Dave. | ||
| Pleasure to be here. | ||
| It's good to be with you. | ||
| You know, you were one of like 10 people that I would occasionally check in with in the last year and a half to make some sense of the world and talk about COVID and lockdowns and science and fact and all that stuff. | ||
| So I'm going to just start you broadly here. | ||
| Where are we at in the world right now? | ||
| Where are we? | ||
| Well, let's start there. | ||
| I'm vaccinated, so I'm pro-vaccination. | ||
| It seems still to be a big debate in the US. | ||
|
unidentified
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Always when I post something, I get a lot of hate and love and whatever. | |
| But generally, like we discussed it before, if we take it one level higher, one of my my ideas or my fuses that sort of the whole world is kind of going into or is already in a mental health crisis, meaning it's really in a mental health crisis in terms of really like what we at the moment define as mental health crisis, like depression, anxiety, addictions, all of opioid addiction, like all of these numbers are skyrocketing. | ||
| But I think we have way more issues. | ||
| We as a, sort of planet or humanity is going through mentally, which we have not defined yet as a, as a real disease. | ||
| So my, so if you talk to so many people, they feel literally, they can't even express it because there is no word for it. | ||
| Like, yeah, but like, like some, some, I think the majority of people feels that the world is going in a direction which, A, doesn't make sense for them, so they can't understand a lot of things anymore, and B, they subconsciously, and that's even worse, know there might be no place for them in the world, let's say, we, the tech elite, is building. | ||
| So I'm always, when I have these literally, every time I, whenever we do a new investment, and I'm telling my friends, like, we just did a investment in a brain-computer interface company, And so my vision is, and I'm super excited about it, that in 10 years, 15 years, all of us are going to have brain implants. | ||
| Yeah, brain computer implants. | ||
| And then we can sort of do things like from telepathy to communicating without any device. | ||
| The sky's the limit what you can do if our brain is directly linked to a computer. | ||
| I think it's fascinating. | ||
| And always when I talk to friends of mine, I realize how deeply terrifying that is for them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's just one example. | ||
| So what I'm thinking is in a coming back, why are we saying that in terms of COVID? | ||
| So, so I'm thinking like, again, the world, it makes less and less sense for people at the same time. | ||
| They, they don't feel sort of at home where they see they don't have a place and that frightens them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And fear, unfortunately brings out the worst in us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So in fear and trauma, is also one of the underlying root cases for mental health issues. | ||
| So I think like we all have this collective mental health issue. | ||
| Again, for a disease we don't have a name for yet, it could be like, I don't have one, like it's not a good short name, but like being afraid of the future or don't feel at home in the world anymore. | ||
| So the outcome is though, that we become extremely tribal. | ||
| Because we try to find like refuge or like a home or like stability in a world of permanent instability and it's not going to change me. | ||
| The world in 15 years or 10 years will be so different meaning never ever we had we have a change which was happening so quickly. | ||
| So we resort in this tribalism, which practically makes also every, now coming back to COVID, every rational discussion obsolete. | ||
| Meaning we completely lost the ability, I think, to be in the middle of something. | ||
| Like it's always like in here, meaning we had all these discussions, like both sides, like in America, the Republicans or the right wing, the left wing, like, yeah, it's insane. | ||
| And I think there is a more underlying reason, which is the one I just described. | ||
| Yeah, so that's why I wanted to have you on because I've been talking about on the show for a while that it seems like we're at the end of one world and there's a new world on the horizon, but people are worried about it. | ||
| We know about all the mental health stuff, but you were kind of in the psychedelic game before all of this was happening. | ||
| You've been thinking about how do we make people happier and less depressed and with less anxiety and all that stuff for quite some time. | ||
| When did you get interested in that? | ||
| I got interested, I can tell you exactly, in 2014 when I had my first own Magic Mushroom trip. | ||
| Which was in a country where it's legal, which was- Which country was that? | ||
| I always have to say the disclaimer. | ||
| Was that Holland? | ||
| Where was that? | ||
| Which country was that? | ||
| That was Holland? | ||
| No, it was actually on a really, a tiny island. | ||
| It's called Canuan in the Caribbean. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So it's legal or not classified in most countries in the Caribbean, Latin America, and actually in the Netherlands. | ||
| Like that's the interesting part. | ||
| And so, and by the way, Because maybe I come to this in a point that I think psychedelics should be taken in a medical context, or at least with a guide. | ||
| So I had a very good shaman doing it with me. | ||
| But just for the ones who are watching now and saying, Jesus, he's a druggie, I always was extremely comfortable to talk about it because I am the least druggie person you ever met. | ||
| I have never drank alcohol ever in my whole life. | ||
| I have never smoked a cigarette, never smoked a joint. | ||
| I actually never did anything else. | ||
| Like I drank coffee when I was 28 for the first time. | ||
| Christian, not coffee! | ||
| Now I love coffee, it's okay now. | ||
| But what I want to say, so I came very virgin to that whole thing and then it was hands down the single most meaningful and important and life-enriching thing I've ever done in my whole life, full stop. | ||
| Nothing really comes close. | ||
| And I have to say, I was already a very happy person. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, and immediately after that, I was like, okay, if it can do this to me, yeah, a happy person, I can totally see why in the fifties, this was in sixties, actually some psychedelics were already legal. | ||
| In a medical setting against depression, whatever, but back then depression was not a big thing. | ||
| So I was like, it must be that I was very sure, actually, people would work on it now, because this was so powerful. | ||
| And then actually, for two years, I was looking around, are there any companies I can invest in? | ||
| There weren't. | ||
| And then I did it myself. | ||
| Right, so what's that like when you're like, all right, I'm gonna be the magic mushroom guy. | ||
| And I should tell you, I've done magic mushrooms many times and it's been a while, but I've always loved doing it. | ||
| I never had a bad effect. | ||
| I wasn't depressed after anything. | ||
| If anything, it's exactly what you're saying. | ||
| It sort of elevates the good stuff. | ||
| But sort of what I think is interesting about you also is that you're basically, but I don't wanna put words in your mouth, you're basically politically a conservative. | ||
| And I think it's kind of, There's like this dichotomy between, wait a minute, he's a conservative, but also he's the magic mushroom guy. | ||
| I sort of say that's what the new sort of conservative thing is. | ||
| So can you talk a little bit about that and then how you went ahead and said, okay, we're gonna make this into a business. | ||
| All right, so first of all, I mean, totally fine. | ||
| I actually wouldn't say I'm rational. | ||
| I think one of the big problems is already that I think we're still using terms | ||
| which don't fit in our time anymore. | ||
| There should be no left and right because left and right, I always tell my friends | ||
| who are like in Germany and the social Democrats are like you were, I tell my friends, | ||
| "Look, you should have come home in the '80s "because you won." | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| 100 years back, there were real issue for the working class | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So then someone, you reached everything. | ||
| You should have reinvented yourself. | ||
| Funnily, but that's another topic I'm finding. | ||
| Actually, there would be a place for real social, in a positive, I know socialist in English always have this negative, we call it social democrats, like center socialist, because I think never ever then in the last 60 years than today, The working class has a real issue because their jobs are gonna vanish, all of them, 100%. | ||
| Yeah, this is what Tucker is always talking about. | ||
| If I were a national politician, I would take that as my thing. | ||
| How can I help the real working class? | ||
| How can we create, and this comes back to my worry about the mental health state, we have to create a world where we all have a place. | ||
| Because let me take one analogy, which is not a nice one, but to sort of paint A negative picture. | ||
| Because we had all of that. | ||
| So I love history. | ||
| I searched for a time which is sort of similar to ours. | ||
| I know history never repeats but rhymes. | ||
| But if you go in the time 1850 to 1910-1915, There are so many parallels. | ||
| The elites were completely tech savvy. | ||
| You had Jules Verne, the author, he was writing actually about going to the moon, about flying to the stars, about going undersea. | ||
| You had the, people forget that it was the time of the World's Fair in Paris. | ||
| Actually, this was the Eiffel Tower was built as a symbol of technological innovation. | ||
| So there was the biggest elevator in the Eiffel Tower. | ||
| You had all these amazing books writing about actually future, like fantasy, but it became real. | ||
| So you had this enormous optimism. | ||
| You had Berlin, by the way, being an incredibly liberal city, like gay rights, like party, like the elite was in a collective happiness. | ||
| But 95% of the people were most likely thinking, you're fucking crazy because they were all farmers. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And was it actually was, it was the dawn. | ||
| So we were moving from an agrarian culture or agrarian society into the industrial age. | ||
| That was, this was the evening or the eve of the industrial age. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, but unfortunately in that industrial age, a lot of the people who were needed in the agrarian age were redundant. | ||
| So again, like the same like today, people had no place in that future. | ||
| So what did the people do? | ||
| They invented kind of nationalism. | ||
| And they invented communism, because that was the tribes they were resorting to, to actually sort of get a little bit of healing from their anxiety and their fear, and then actually gave the world two world wars. | ||
| So my fear is that if we're not finding a way to take 100% of I mean, the tech elite who says, hey, we're going to go to Mars. | ||
| I do think we're going to go to Mars. | ||
| But if we don't take all the people with us, it's going to end very badly. | ||
| Because I can say it again, fear brings out the worst in that. | ||
| And that comes then back to psychedelics. | ||
| Wait, let's pause for one second, then we'll get into the psychedelics part, because I love this. | ||
| So are you shocked how the tech elite seem to hate the regular person? | ||
| Like, if you ask the regular person, like, what do you think the head of Twitter or Facebook or all of these people think about you? | ||
| They think, oh, they want to censor us. | ||
| They don't want us to speak freely. | ||
| They want to own our data and all of that stuff. | ||
| So you're trying to basically rectify that. | ||
| Well, so what do you think that the ordinary people hate the tech people or the other way around? | ||
| I think it's a little bit of both, but I consider myself more of the regular person. | ||
| I think the average person thinks that the big tech people just basically, you know, think that they're fodder for whatever their algorithms want and however they can make money, something like that. | ||
| Well, I mean, one other theory, and I'm copying that, what I'm saying now, because it's not my original thought, but like, one of the things what Jubbal Harari sort of coined was this idea that if, again, if humanity | ||
| I don't want to say it goes bad, because I still don't know. | ||
| I have not reached a conclusion if it's good or bad or neutral, but it could be hindsight. | ||
| In 100 or 200 years, we might look at this time and say, we have split up into species, because you have a part of the humanity who says, hey, bring it on. | ||
| Let's fly to Mars. | ||
| And by the way, one very simple fact, if you wanna go to Mars, we're gonna need to change our body, because our body is not made for not even Mars travel, not to talk about space travel. | ||
| Yeah, you die of cancer within some weeks, yeah? | ||
| So if we wanna go to Mars, it's not just going to Mars. | ||
| We're gonna have to modify, and nobody's talking about that, but I think everybody knows it. | ||
| Right, so that's the whole transhumanism movement, basically. | ||
| Exactly, so, and by the way, And it's going to happen because we already have it. | ||
| You have a heart, if you have a stent, I think it's called in English, like, yeah, so it is already a mini technological intervention. | ||
| Like, so it's somehow we go comfortable, like, and we're going to get more and more and more. | ||
| But there might be a part of the humanity who says, this is not for me. | ||
| Yeah, I don't want to merge with machines. | ||
| And again, this sounds already so sci-fi, but it's going to gradually happen. | ||
| So humanity might split into species. | ||
| And in 50 years, 100 years, we're going to look back and say, well, And that's already in a mini way happening now, because you have this one part of humanity who wants to go wider, further, the sky's the limit, let's bring it on, and then you have the other part who maybe doesn't really... I don't want to say intellectually, because this sounds... | ||
| Degrading. | ||
| But it's just like, let's take a positive example. | ||
| And I really mean it positive. | ||
| And sorry, by the way, I'm not an English speaker. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
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unidentified
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A lot of political correctness things, because I always can say I didn't mean it that way. | |
| So when I take a bus driver, so he or she maybe can't explain to you how autonomous driving works. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But somehow I think humans always have a very good gut feeling. | ||
| So as a collective, we're actually pretty smart. | ||
| And somehow the bus driver knows This is not going in the right direction. | ||
| I'm not gonna be a bus driver in 10 years. | ||
| And that again, makes him maybe resent the people. | ||
| So again, it comes back, we need to sort of take him or her or whatever, like on this sort of thing. | ||
| Okay, so now link that to psychedelics for me. | ||
| First of all, I don't have an answer on that fully. | ||
| But I think the bigger fear I have is that we don't even discuss the problem. | ||
| We discuss so many bullshit stuff. | ||
| Can I say bullshit? | ||
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unidentified
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You can say bullshit. | |
| I think this is your point. | ||
| This is the point of a lot of friends we have, that a lot of discussions, if you see the real issue or the real problems, A lot of discussions are really absurd because they're like, why don't, but again, I see rather through the lens that I'm like, okay, I understand why the people have this discussion. | ||
| Take all the identity politics. | ||
| It is again, another form of tribalism, how in the 1850s and following the people invented Communism, so to say, and nationalism. | ||
| Now we're inventing other crazy stuff, yeah? | ||
| But it makes us feel at home, it makes us feel us against the rest of the world. | ||
| So how do psychedelics come into it? | ||
| So where do I start? | ||
| Because it's like, it's very, so one thing why I'm always very, a little bit hesitating, not hesitating, like, so it's very hard, and I have to describe a psychedelic trip first. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you, please. | ||
| And in a certain way, it's extremely, let's call it spiritual. | ||
| You could also say religious. | ||
| You could say, so the thing is, it's very mystical. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And practically every word, our language is not made to just, it's really out the worldly. | ||
| You sort of leave the realm of, of, of something and go to another one. | ||
| So, so what I want to say is like, the language is not so easy. | ||
| This is why, by the way, most religions are based on psychedelics. | ||
| Provenly, including Christianity. | ||
| And this is why they all use these pictures and describe things like the burning chair, which for chariot, which goes in the air, whatever, because they can't put actually their experience really in words, because there are no words to describe a psychedelic trip. | ||
| That's first. | ||
| So if I do it, then I need to use religious terms. | ||
| And the problem is that religious terms, in our world especially, are incredibly loaded. | ||
| So if I use the word soul, then you might think, or might think about, and I do, and another person, either God, whatever. | ||
| So I try to stay as neutral and try, for the viewers, to make a little bit of an abstraction and don't think necessarily in the narrow terms of any religion, but in a wider meaning. | ||
| So when you do psychedelics, You have a part in your brain which constitutes your ego. | ||
| And this part is, depending which psychedelic you take, is either really reduced to zero or at least heavily regulated down. | ||
| So it's called default mode mechanism. | ||
| So practically in this part of the brain, there is something which tells you, you are Dave, and this is Christian, we have a different history, you | ||
| have all the happiness you received, you have all the pains, all the scars, everything which | ||
| makes Dave, Dave is there, yeah, and that goes down again, very down or to zero. And interestingly, | ||
| in the same moment you doing that, something else is emerging, or at least it's heard. | ||
| Maybe it's always there, philosophically, but you realize it again, hear it, see it, feel it, and now we can call that a soul, we can call that an inner voice, we can call that your subconsciousness. | ||
| I'm not saying it proves, by the way, that God is there. | ||
| That's another discussion. | ||
| But that is definitely what 100% of the people have. | ||
| And this sort of soul and sort of universal feeling gives you a lot of insights. | ||
| So if I try a little bit to make the main ones, the first one is, which is by the way super important I think for everybody, is it shows you who you really are and what you really want. | ||
| So it might sound as a simple question, but most people either don't know, or they know they are afraid of accepting it in any form. | ||
| It can be simple stuff. | ||
| I had people who took psychedelics who were Extremely wealthy and realized the only thing I want to spend more time with my family, but I didn't dare to Say it because I'm running this big corporation or whatsoever. | ||
| Anyway, so so it's it's it sounds by the way everything I tell you about psychedelics sometimes sounds super simple because you could read it in every Deepak Chopra book. | ||
| Yeah, and But you perceive it on a level that it's an absolute truth. | ||
| You come out of it and like, OK, I realize now what I want. | ||
| I'm going to change my life in a way that I'm happy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that is one. | ||
| One big part is that sort of realization of your true self, of your also the negatives, also the painful ones. | ||
| So it's incredibly trauma healing, which is, by the way, and I have to say more often, like, A trip must not be nice. | ||
| It's not a party trip. | ||
| It's nothing you want to do at a disco, yeah? | ||
| So it can be extremely catharsic or extremely cleansing, yeah? | ||
| But you're always going to feel better after, yeah? | ||
| And I actually had very, colloquially we say bad trips, but I like the word more challenging trips, but they were actually the nicest or the best ones. | ||
| Not the nicest ones, but the best ones. | ||
| Because they gave me so much because I learned so much about, again, fears, whatever, which you're trying to hide very somewhere. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you dissolve them. | ||
| So that's one thing. | ||
| And the second big thing, what also happens is you feel connected to nature and other humans in a way you can't describe. | ||
| And one other form. | ||
| So there are several sources of mental health issues, if I'm being oversimplified. | ||
| The one I already said is fear and trauma. | ||
| Yeah. And the other one is lost connections. | ||
| A lot of people feel disconnected from everything, from the world, from from people, whatever. | ||
| And psychedelics bring back that enormous sort of love for the creation. | ||
| If I want to say, it's like for humans, animals. | ||
| This is why, by the way, this is why a lot of people go vegan | ||
| after that, or at least say I want to be more responsible towards my environment. | ||
| And then the third part is very interesting. | ||
| And that is maybe and it's all of these things are very, I think. | ||
| helping and what I said to de-traumatize the world. | ||
| The third one is in the weeks after, in a very simplified way, your brain is literally growing a | ||
| bit. We call that neuroplasticity. | ||
| So which helps you on the one side to develop habits | ||
| or to get rid of habits. | ||
| So it's extremely helpful if you want to get off an addiction, stuff like that. | ||
| But also if you look at brains after the people seem to be more creative and also more Again, it's very more open for the world. | ||
| And I think what we all have to have to go into this time with the same mental health is like this awe, like this sort of, the future is going to be fine. | ||
| Like we just need to find a way. | ||
| So, but if you tell that a 60 year old even leave away, whatever the job is like some, so unfortunately, if you look at the brain, people always think of the aging of the body, but our brain roundabout when you're 30, is starting to age not just in a sort of mental capacity that you're losing gradually a little bit like but also you're literally closing down like if you go like in an old people's home why do people not make friends you would say they have time they have the whole day they should make a lot of friends yeah you literally can't your brain is not wired anymore so you make your friends in your 20s yeah when you're open when so so | ||
| I mean, I, for example, all my friends, I have, but I actually, I make new friends all the time because I think I'm always, I don't know, psychedelic. | ||
| So psychedelics, that's the creativity. | ||
| Well, we became friends in the last two years. | ||
| Now, I don't know if you were tripping at the time, but. | ||
| Yeah, so, so no, so, but honestly, like, so, so you get back this sort of openness for the world. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And so, yeah, so in these three things, if I look at what we need, A, we need, to have the discussion that we, let's say the elite, or we as the world, we need to offer a world where these people, I said, like the sort of the lower level jobs, where we find new jobs for them. | ||
| But at the same time, we need to make sure that they want it, by the way. | ||
| So and again, telling a 60 year old, look, you know what, you go back to university, even if you mentally, if you intellectually can, it doesn't have that He doesn't have impetus anymore with 16. | ||
| However, he could have it maybe, yeah, with psychedelics. | ||
| It's like telling a journalist to learn to code. | ||
| I guess that's a big problem. | ||
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unidentified
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He could maybe, if you get a little bit of help. | |
| And by the way, one main example, it becomes too esoteric, where the UK as the first country, I think the first country, recognized loneliness As a disease, and especially in old people. | ||
| And it's literally, by the way, if you look at the health data of people who are lonely at any age, their health is dramatically getting worse because we're pack animals. | ||
| So if we are alone, our stress level goes up permanently. | ||
| So we're going to get depressive, which is again, depression has an impact on our immune system. | ||
| So there is a really a downward spiral. | ||
| So they're not saying yet that loneliness should be treated with psychedelics, but the first step is always to speak it out and say, OK, loneliness is a disease, because now we can start going to the regulators and saying, hey, maybe we can prove you. | ||
| in a proper clinical study that psychedelics also might heal not just depression, what we're about to prove, but like also loneliness and stuff like that. | ||
| And, and I think again, coming back to the beginning, there will be someone, a disease, again, we need a cool name for it or cool, but like, which is that a fear of the future. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And, and, and again, then once we have named it, we can maybe run clinical trials and we can, Let's bring the ball in motion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I'm so with you on this that I think you're right. | ||
| People have this sort of existential dread about the future. | ||
| It feels like the past is kind of broken and they're just like, oh, they can't even see what is in the future. | ||
| So for people that know nothing about this, I think they're probably going, wait a minute, wait a minute. | ||
| Does this guy just want me to be tripping on mushrooms all day? | ||
| So what does, what does like an actual way of life look like incorporating some of this stuff? | ||
| Like are people just micro dosing? | ||
| Okay, let's leave the mic because it's a complex answer. | ||
| Let's stay with what we are doing. | ||
| So I have a company, just IPO'd, which is called Atai, A-T-A-I, and we have more than 10 new mental health drugs, most of them psychedelic, in development. | ||
| So what we're doing, we're taking actually I that we have a lot of what we call anecdote level. | ||
| So I'm always careful because like I know that I had these amazing not just one trip. | ||
| Yeah. And I know many friends. But in a scientific view, this is anecdotal. | ||
| It's like a question. At the same time, I know, to be fair, like there are thousands of reports and | ||
| and thousands of so. | ||
| And some of these drugs actually, interestingly, in the last millennia, in the last century, were legal or medically available for depression and stuff like that. | ||
| But it's sort of old data. | ||
| But what we are doing, we're taking these anecdotal and partly historic, so to say, evidence and really doing, and this is important, very rigorous Really state-of-the-art clinical trials under FDA and European supervision. | ||
| In order to really prove it, at the moment I have to say, look, I do think magic mushrooms potentially, or ketamine, or ibogaine, or all the psychedelics, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, Yeah so I have to potentially say because it's in a sort of scientific way not proven but we're proving it now once and for all and we are actually with some of them already in phase two which is like sort of pretty advanced for biotech yeah some are a little bit earlier stage but sort of I would say within the next five six years yeah hopefully some of our drugs will be approved so and then this is important they're gonna be medically available | ||
| Not for take it home, not on prescription, but that you go to your psychotherapist or your doctor and you do the trip with him or her, which is important because you need a guide. | ||
| Actually, when you look where these drugs coming from, they were used since thousands of years in ritualistic, shamanistic, religious way. | ||
| So you always had a priest or a shaman with the disciple and kind of can say that the The psychotherapists are the shamans of our time. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So, but it's important. | ||
| So we don't, we want to have it in this kind of restricted access, not because we, I think ultimately big parts of humanity will, will sort of benefit from it, but it's very, it's a very powerful drug. | ||
| So it's not that you, it's not like an aspirin, you pop it and you're fine. | ||
| Like again, part of the process is really touching your deepest fears, your, All of that, yeah, so you have to do it with a psychotherapist. | ||
| But that's what we wanna make available, and I think we're on a good way with it. | ||
| Yeah, this may sound like an amateur question, but is everything that you're testing right now, is it all actually natural substances, or is any of it made in a lab? | ||
| Not all of it. | ||
| So, some of the substances we have in our portfolio at Atai are originally nature substances, But in any case, may they be natural originally or some of them are like take MDMA, which is a synthetic drug from the beginning. | ||
| There is a nature, natural MDMA. | ||
| So both. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But in any case, we are just using the synthetic version because you need to be precise in quality and dosage. | ||
| So you can't, you will not have homegrown magic mushrooms in a hospital with a doctor because you need an exactly for a, for a patient you want, It's a clean and perfect version, yeah. | ||
| Can you just tell people how people actually get magic mushrooms? | ||
| Because I remember when I was in college and my buddy came in and he had a bag of magic mushrooms and he's like, you know, we're going to do these and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And then I was like, well, where'd they come from? | ||
| And then he told me and I actually couldn't believe it. | ||
| And it's still sort of amazing. | ||
| Well, at the moment, like, first of all, like for all the viewers, like in most countries, Any form of psychedelics are illegal, which is actually sad because they weren't in the 50s and 60s for good reason. | ||
| But like, anyway, here's what it is. | ||
| We're going to hopefully make them medically available. | ||
| But at the moment, I have to say, yeah, this is not a medical advice. | ||
| And I think I made it clear, like, even I did. | ||
| So they are. | ||
| So just saying like so. | ||
| But if you if somebody says at the moment he or she uses magic mushrooms, That means they've grown it themselves. | ||
| It is a mushroom. | ||
| In the Netherlands, you can grow it and eat it yourself. | ||
| But in essence, it's just a mushroom that's growing off cow poop, right? | ||
| Yeah, well, you can grow it at home in a small... | ||
| How do you say, like a... Like a greenhouse or something, yeah. | ||
| Exactly, greenhouse, yeah. | ||
| But yes, in nature, they actually often, not always, but often found on cow poop, yeah. | ||
| So not always, but like that's one of, I think, their favorite places. | ||
| And they, by the way, they grow in most countries. | ||
| So this is why also, like, if you go back, actually most religions are based on psychedelic consumption. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's why I was asking you, because not to be funny about it growing on cow poop, but it's kind of, it's like metaphysically amazing that this mushroom that grows on cow poop basically can cause you to have a five-hour trip that could potentially change your life. | ||
| And when you laid out those three steps before, I've done it enough in my life to know that everything you said there was true. | ||
| You mean, it's metaphysically interesting that it's growing on Cowboy. | ||
| I was just thinking about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's an interesting... It's just a little bizarre. | |
| But I was just thinking because the question is when exactly people are seeing it. | ||
| So I have to phrase it a little bit vaguely, but we're going to do a very big university project with a friend of mine, whom you probably should have on the show if you haven't, like Brian Murarescu, who wrote Who worked years, because so many people would say instinctively, if you take psychedelics, yeah, this is what Moses took, Jesus took, Mohammed took, yeah. | ||
| And now I have a fatwa, no, I'm joking. | ||
| You're not the first on this show, don't worry. | ||
| That's true, but actually Shiite, You say Shia, right? | ||
| So the Iranian side of Islam actually is endorsing psychedelics as something which brings you closer to God. | ||
| And actually, interestingly, also a lot of the Orthodox Jews, and it's very interesting how that merges with religion. | ||
| Coming back, so because my friend went out and really researched temples and graveyards and whatever, and tried to find out literally, proving me what did people eat? | ||
| What do they have in their stomach? | ||
| What is like, what is the residual in a mystical cup or whatever? | ||
| And this is how he could trace back most religions, provenly, that they were all doing psychedelics, including early Christianity. | ||
| And we actually have very interesting conversations with the Catholic Church because they're saying kind of unofficially like if this was the reason, which by the way I deeply believe this was the reason why an obscure Nishi cult from the East became the dominating religion in 300 years, meaning this was always, I'm brought up Catholic. | ||
| I was always thinking like, how did that happen? | ||
| Like, because like they were people were killed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is not a fun religion to be in. | ||
| Like, and then my priest always said, well, they were so big believers. | ||
| I was like, that's a big belief to get killed, like, and, and, and slaughtered whatever. | ||
| But if you think about it, if they use psychedelics, which take away the fear of death, Because you know that there is, at least you think you know, like again, religious discussion for another thing, like there is an afterlife, whatever, it gives you a completely different framework, sort of, to operate in. | ||
| Anyway, so, but now like actually Catholic churches come back and say, if that is provenly the case that early Christians took psychedelics, We might use it again because that seems to lift spirituality up a lot, and it does. | ||
| And I think there are already sects, like Santo Daime in Brazil is a Catholic sect and they use psychedelics. | ||
| And I think we need that spirituality back in our world. | ||
| So I'm a very, my view is a religion is like, whatever you believe, it's definitely healthy for you. | ||
| Would you say there's any specific risks related to all of this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To psychedelics or to religion? | |
| We're kicking the religion conversation for the next time, for psychedelics. | ||
| Well, we are, I have to say, both legally but also responsibly, we are about to prove both the efficacy and the risks. | ||
| This is why clinical trials are made. | ||
| So there have been, though, great studies over the last 50 years, repeatedly, which show that psychedelics have a very, very low risk profile. | ||
| So what I would recommend, like if people are watching now sitting in front of a computer, Google, my favorite chart of all, like Google David, not chart David and not NUTD. | ||
| David is a very famous neuroscientist and very famous for his research around psychedelics. | ||
| And so he made a book, he wrote a book which shows how wrongly society looks at drugs in any form. | ||
| Actually, a lot of people would say today, it's still like, Oh my God, psychedelics, like, yeah. | ||
| And then at the same time, they drink a glass of wine, which is pure toxic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, so he, and the essence of his book is this one chart where he rates all the legal and illegal drugs from alcohol to cocaine, to psychedelics, how risky they are and how bad they are | ||
| for our body and our mind. | ||
| And then, I'm spilling now the secret, but if you look at the chart, you see on the left, | ||
| you see alcohol as the most risky drug, actually before heroin. And then at the very right, | ||
| practically mini, mini, mini risk, you see psychedelics. | ||
| And that is very scientific. | ||
| But again, we are trying, or not trying, we are about to prove that now in a very proper clinical FDA setting. | ||
| All right, well, we're gonna link to that chart below so people can, so they can see it while they're listening to you. | ||
| What else are you interested in right now? | ||
| I mentioned longevity at the top. | ||
| That seems to be a big one with all the tech people right now. | ||
| Like, can we actually live longer? | ||
| Well, I, yeah, for sure. | ||
| I mean, that's not even a question. | ||
| Like, are we gonna live longer? | ||
| Because it's already happening. | ||
| Like, our life expectancy is sort of, is going up. | ||
| I think if I come back to the optimistic view on the future, I think we're going in this amazingly interesting time. | ||
| We all don't know where it leads us, but I think if we instill back curiosity and awe for the wonder of the world, In not just the 5%, not just the 1%, but like the majority of people, that's one step. | ||
| And then I think once you have that, so once you have it in general, let's call it neutrally curious outlook in the future. | ||
| And at the same time, if you're happy, and I have this one luck in life, which which actually is a different backstory | ||
| than most people have psychedelics because a lot come to psychedelics | ||
| because they search healing. | ||
| This is why I didn't want to do it. | ||
| Like I was like, I was always a happy child. | ||
| Since I can remember, I have a bad day, but in generally, I like myself. | ||
| I'm sorry, I'm-- | ||
| I'm a very happy person. | ||
| And I also always say, and I think I'm not dumb. | ||
| So hence already when I was 12, 13, I was like, okay, this is kind of a great situation. | ||
| Like don't mess it up by putting any drugs into your brain. | ||
| Like don't touch alcohol. | ||
| Don't do it because you just can get worse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, but, and so what I was saying, like once you're happy and once you're healthy, yeah. | ||
| And once you're curious about the future, you want to sort of experience, So now as long as I want. | ||
| So I don't think we're going to live forever because forever is a very long term. | ||
| I do see the realistic chance that even you and I, because we're not 15 anymore or 10 or 20. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We are like the middle. | ||
| Now it's actually interesting. | ||
| So I think like the sort of The group in the middle is 40 to 60. | ||
| I think the younger people are. | ||
| I mean, if I talk to my 10 year old godson, then he's going to be some hundred years for sure. | ||
| I'm very sure that we're going to push life expectancy into some hundred years in the next 30, 40 years. | ||
| By the way, very important because a lot of people then think, oh my God, I'm going to be a hundred like they see people who are a hundred now, right? | ||
| But like, so no, there is no way to push life expectancy into some hundred years without rejuvenating. | ||
| So it's good for you. | ||
| So we're gonna, you're gonna be young again when it happens and we're going to live significantly longer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I think, Our mind is not made for eternity. | ||
| So even if we potentially could live very, very long, my expectation is that we will come to a point Where every one of us at this point might be completely different. | ||
| Some people might say, I had enough, like I had enough Christmases, I had enough birthdays. | ||
| I want to go now on my own terms. | ||
| But I think that's the ultimate because ultimately I'm not even conservative, I'm kind of libertarian. | ||
| Like I want to mind my own business and I want everybody else to mind their own business. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I also want to want to decide my own time of death, so to say, when I had enough, when I'm not interested in the world anymore. | ||
| I do hope that with psychedelics that's gonna come very late and I'm gonna enjoy that for a long time. | ||
| But longevity is a long story short and we have several companies Two big ones are Cambrian and Rejuveron, where we sort of really try to do cutting-edge drug development, like four things which sort of make us really live significantly longer. | ||
| And it's going to work out. | ||
| In the next 10 years, you're going to see, again, coming always back, the next 10 years, earlier than people think, It's gonna be so world-changing in many ways. | ||
| We just need to look forward to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Give me one more thing that's really on your mind at the moment. | ||
| You want to go crypto? | ||
| You want to go somewhere else as we get to the future that's not depressing? | ||
| Because that's what I want my audience to see, that it's not depressing. | ||
| I know it's painful at the moment, but it's not depressing. | ||
| Maybe one thing, it's, you're the first one I'm talking about because I'm formulating it myself. | ||
| So it might be, I tried to get it across. | ||
| So it's about, so we're living in these money printing, um, spree. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think, or one idea I have is like, most people would say, because it's traditional economics tells you that's not going to end well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And we have all the, With all the sort of all the consequences, like we talk about an asset price bubble or at least asset price inflation, real inflation, maybe the wealth gaps. | ||
| There is a lot of things which are associated with money printing. | ||
| So it could be, though, that it's the most important thing we can do at the moment for one reason. | ||
| Like if I look at the world, what we haven't talked about yet is is sort of the the competition of economic and political systems. | ||
| So I'm practically, you have three relevant players, forgive me, Russia, like it's Europe, it's the US and it's China. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's, it's actually with some, I mean, obviously US and China is a, is a very big difference. | ||
| Europe and the US is, is a little bit less, but we are, all three are different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think what politicians were used to is that in the old world of economic linear growth, in the 50s and the 60s, 70s, whenever a country was falling behind. | ||
| Think about Germany, by the way. | ||
| Around 2000, we were called the sick man of Europe and then the German economy took up again. | ||
| So in the old days, countries could underperform relatively to other countries for a while and then they got their shit together and then sort of they caught up because it was possible to catch up in a world of linear growth. | ||
| So we now, and by the way, I have this theory of a very, very high level communist party member. | ||
| So it's, this was like, okay, they, they really thought about it, which is scary, is that in a world of exponential growth, it's think about tech companies. | ||
| So we live, we are already with tech in a world of exponential growth. | ||
| And look at Google, look at Facebook. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Once You have enough, I think in English you would call it velocity, like you are number one and you're gonna stay, look at Apple, and you dominate the market. | ||
| So exponential growth is actually fostering monopolies. | ||
| So in the same what we see on companies, and coming back to money printing, we see, I think, on nations or on regions that we are living in a world where if one nation For some years is practically ahead. | ||
| It might be that someone they can never be, they will always be number one. | ||
| So if China is the first one to really develop AI properly, if China will be the first one to get a quantum computer, if China is going to be the first one to really Be ahead 10 years in space tech. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there are certain innovations. | ||
| If you are ahead, you're going to cement your number one status and game over, at least for a very long time. | ||
| So why I'm saying that, like what happens in a bubble, what we don't even know if I don't want to say if we have a bubble on the stock. | ||
| But what I want to say is we definitely have. | ||
| I think we all agree on that. | ||
| We have a time of intense money printing, of monetary inflation, of As a presentation. | ||
| So you can make fun of it now that sort of money is pressured into the system and like young people, whatever, trade on Robinhood up and down. | ||
| But the truth is, even if you take GameStop out or whatever, I don't want to make an argument. | ||
| A part of that money is going in innovation and actually a lot. | ||
| So at the moment, thanks to the bubble, a lot of innovation is financed. | ||
| So if you think what money printing does, it takes away practically capital from from the ones who are savers, who are savers are actually, forgive me, but the older people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they took a lot out of the world already. | ||
| And you give it to the younger people. | ||
| So the younger people might make stupid stuff. | ||
| But overall, they actually finance smart stuff. | ||
| Look at what is working in the stock market. | ||
| Climate tech, because they care about climate tech. | ||
| Yeah, everything they care about all these story stocks is working. | ||
| And yes, there might be some stupid ones, but the money is flowing into a lot of good stuff, which actually, if we're lucky, cements the technological leadership of the US because I say it that way, and you're going to like it, I'd rather trust a 16-year-old kid to make the right allocation decision than the government. | ||
| So if the government tries to do innovation, which never really works, I'd rather want to have a lot of money pressed in the system And a lot of investors, retail and institutional, push that money into innovation, because I think we have to succeed. | ||
| Because one thing, and I don't want to say anything against China with a lot of discussion, but I like to live in the Western world. | ||
| And actually, I think the world, with all the sort of bad stuff, what you can say about the West, It's actually the place where most people want to live. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I want the West to succeed. | ||
| But if you look again into history, always the dominating economic superpower became also the dominating political power, but also also like not just setting the agenda. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So so so I desperately want America to get sort of succeed in that. | ||
| And I think money printing Might be the smartest way to do it. | ||
| So I would just go on printing just because we need, we can't lose In a time of exponential growth, we can't lose out on innovation. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| So just keep printing the money, which oddly devalues it at some level, but at the same time allows young people to just keep pumping it into all the cool new things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then hopefully that's a net win. | |
| But there will be good companies at the end. | ||
| And again, the price is paid by all the people who have savings. | ||
| But I don't want to say anything. | ||
| I don't know how to say nice in English. | ||
| But if you're like 80, you're not going to matter in 50 years, most likely. | ||
| I'm very optimistic. | ||
| Despite all the longevity stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Despite all the longevity. | ||
| So so it's kind of like I like to see this money printing as kind of almost 50, 100 percent inheritance tax, because you take it away from the people who are going to leave this planet in the next 20, 30 years, and you give it to the younger people and their future. | ||
| That's what we all want. | ||
| By the way, again, that's where we could merge left and right. | ||
| Climate change is a problem. | ||
| The question is just, do we change it by I don't know, standing on the street, or do we change it with technology, with re-innovation, with going to renewable energy, but making that even way more efficient, getting fusion finally running. | ||
| I have a very cool investment there. | ||
| It will work out the next 10 years. | ||
| If you get fusion running, forget about solar, then the thing is fusion. | ||
| But tech will save the world, not kill it. | ||
| We just need to embrace it. | ||
| Tech will save the world, not kill it. | ||
| Well, I love that you're positive for the future and that you wanna bring everyone with you because you usually don't really hear the tech people talking about that. | ||
| And I should say that I know that you're a wise investor because you also did invest in locals, which I hope makes you more money than your mushrooms and longevity and everything else. | ||
| That is my hope for you. | ||
| By the way, I think because I was an only child. | ||
| So I always learned I need to be nice to other people to have friends to play with. | ||
| No, no success. | ||
| I mean, at least this is my view on it. | ||
| Like, you don't want to have success without friends succeeding. | ||
| And on a bigger picture, you don't want to go. | ||
| I mean, one of my big worries is actually, and I mean, I know they're watching, but like, my parents are a good example because I discuss a lot, like they're 70. | ||
| I'm like, okay, I need to really But they don't even want all that stuff. | ||
| That's one of these good examples where I have all these discussions. | ||
| If I had certain things and some things are available already, they don't want to use and because they're like, no, this is natural. | ||
| I'm like, no, people told us since thousands of years, this is natural that we age. | ||
| It's just a story we told ourselves because we couldn't prevent it. | ||
| Anyway, so I want to take the people with me because I think that's maybe the psychedelic way. | ||
| Maybe one last sentence. | ||
| I have one. | ||
| I have one cliche. | ||
| It's very, very cheesy, but I think it actually summarizes happiness very well. | ||
| So I was thinking a lot like what what makes people happy overall. | ||
| And when I happy, I don't mean that giggly like in the moment, but like really like the this content. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| Zen wise. | ||
| So I think you need three things. | ||
| You need any form of faith. | ||
| I touched it already a bit, but like, and by the way, coming again back to why, because it's fear and trauma. | ||
| And the biggest fear we all have, and we don't admit, is that either you could die or I could die. | ||
| But even worse is actually that other people you love could die. | ||
| So I'm permanently terrified that some of my parents will die. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everybody is terrified that something could happen to children, to your partner, to your parents, whatever. | ||
| And this is like a permanently trauma or permanently nagging fear. | ||
| And religion, again, I don't want to argue if it's real or not, but if you believe in something which is a little more than this world, it takes a little bit away this sort of nagging fear of losing people for good. | ||
| So then the second thing you need is like you need purpose. | ||
| So people want to know why they're here. | ||
| They want to be needed. | ||
| They want to be included. | ||
| And the third is love. | ||
| It's very cheesy, but like you need, we are pack animals. | ||
| Like we need family. | ||
| We need, but we also need love in a wider circle. | ||
| We need a good environment. | ||
| We would friendship, whatever. | ||
| So, and unfortunately coming back on the whole development, all these three things in the world we live in, are actually dissolved a bit. | ||
| So faith is on a record decline. | ||
| Purpose kind of as well, because I told you like most people feel that their job might not be there anymore in 10 years. | ||
| And I also love in a certain way, I don't want to make the pitch because as you know, and I'm playing myself, but like because we'd be solving in record speed sort of Things which give us in a certain way, like family systems, but also community. | ||
| It's not just about who you love. | ||
| Like it's about the community. | ||
| Like when I grew up, like there was like a school club for everything. | ||
| So any of these three things which make our actually mind happy is on decline. | ||
| And the good thing is if we come back, psychedelics give you back of that. | ||
| They give you back faith, spirituality. | ||
| They give you back purpose because they show you, hey, this is what you really want. | ||
| Even if you're 60, whatever, you can do that. | ||
| And they give you back most important love and connection to close people and the world. | ||
| So I think that's the formula everybody should, with or without psychedelics, I think it's just a very good tool for that to hold on to. | ||
| Christian, where can I send people to find out more about you? | ||
| I feel like a lot of people are going to, we just really scratched the surface on all this. | ||
| We just do another, I love to talk like that's like, I'm admitting that I love talking about this stuff. | ||
| So we can do another one or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But where can I send people to? | ||
| You have a newsletter. | ||
| Is there a way to, where can they sign up? | ||
| It's just for close friends because I'm very political. | ||
| What do you mean send to? | ||
| You mean like a website or like, what do you mean send to? | ||
| If they want to find out more about you and what you're doing. | ||
| Well, on the website of my family office is Apeiron, A-P-E-I-R-O-N, and then Minersinvestments.com, or go on Atai. | ||
| This is really worth checking out. | ||
| The psychedelic company is definitely the coolest company I've built so far. | ||
| I hopefully have a hundred years to come and build some more, but like, yeah, but like we stock market listed now. | ||
| So there's a lot of information out there. | ||
| Actually Twitter, I sort of hate it. | ||
| We'll link to your Twitter. | ||
| It's a love and hate thing. | ||
| Although I think it's very exciting. | ||
| People need more love. | ||
| It's just like, I don't know why. | ||
| Yeah, people are so hostile there. | ||
| So LinkedIn is a little bit more friendly, like so. | ||
| Yeah, I should have realized that I'm on a very special newsletter. | ||
| That's not the public newsletter. | ||
| Now I'm even more honored. | ||
| Very small group of people friends. | ||
| Christian, I really love this. | ||
| I would love to trip with you sometime. | ||
| We're gonna have to do that. | ||
| So I hope to see you soon. | ||
| We're gonna go to the Caribbean. | ||
| I'm a great shaman. | ||
| Do you act as a shaman too? | ||
| I don't know if I want to go here on a public, like, are we going to set it up somehow? | ||
| We'll figure out something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
OK. | |
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was great seeing you. | |
| But I think I have compassion a bit. | ||
| So this is a good starting point for tripping together. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about tech instead of nonstop yelling, check out our tech playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist. | ||
| They're right over here. |
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