 how you guys doing great man awesome well this is really cool I whenever I do a live podcast I I want you guys to know how they work and then we'll jump right into the thing first of all like if you I don't know how many of you listen to my podcast I mean listen to the DTF awesome well those the opening rants that you hear me do I it's I spent a lot of time on those rants so it's a really weird few days when I'm doing that because I'm going back recording listening to myself hearing what I said thinking God who the fuck do you think you are man you sound crazy then going back and re-recording and re-recording and re-recording and re-recording and re-recording trying various combinations of coffee and marijuana and mushrooms until something comes out that seems okay and sometimes it doesn't happen sometimes it's just I just put it up and I think oh well I hope they forgive me for that one so what I do in the live shows because I think what's cool about a podcast is that it is a collaboration compared to other forms of entertainment it's a collaboration not just between me and the guest but between me and the listeners I get incredible emails from you guys and tweets and texts correcting me scolding me telling me things that I should check out telling me I don't fucking know what communism is man and I listen and then and it helps me evolve a little bit so for these live shows I like to get suggestions from you guys about things we could talk about for the opening rant so what do you guys want to talk about first somebody said not floating had enough yeah long you've been here for one fucking day man what you're the wrong conference god damn these fucking float conferences all they do is talk about floating around this fucking place first float on psychedelics shore okay what else what okay creative process okay that's cool he asked if I ate the mushrooms that he gave to me at the commies for no I didn't officer I'm drug-free anything else what's that Portland hipsters I don't know I don't yeah what was it what is communism okay well I think I got a couple of things we could talk about for sure I didn't look into communism yet so I don't know and seems interesting so the other thing I like to do to start these shows off is to get everybody to ohm together and to ohm for a little bit longer than any of us feel comfortable alming for which is the right amount of time to ohm longer than you feel comfortable for and it's really cool because a lot of us have never experienced congregational alming and what that sounds like and how powerful it can be and if you get over the first few minutes of weirdness and let yourself do it and just listen you might find that it begins to create a really interesting effect inside of you and it's also an interesting sound because at any given moment all over the planet hundreds and thousands of people maybe more are making that sound and that's something that always trips me out not just people in temples not just people in new age cults not just people in yoga studios but kids are saying it every time they go mom it's even in mom which is quite beautiful so we're gonna do the ohm for a little while and to get us started I'm just gonna light some incense here and pass it around so if you can when I don't know what the floor is like here so probably don't drop the burning incense on anything flammable but if somebody could if some folks I need three people to come up and just start passing this around wow thanks did a dog just bark here you go thank you you can just go back down and pass it all over the place thanks for jumping us wait no I've got two more this is a really good one my barber gave me this one joke he said use it at the podcast yeah this one's cool I can't remember the name I can't remember the name of it man he told me it's some kind of sap from a tree you guys probably know what it is it's not frankincense yeah that's it kopal which is interesting because the name of Krishna is Gopala one of the names of Krishna and the other kind of incense that we're passing around comes from Vrindavan in India which is the birthplace of Krishna so it's good shit man there we go all right yeah let's do it now greetings my sweet friends it is I Duncan Trussell and thou art listening to a live Duncan Trussell family our podcast being recorded at the Portland Float Conference man this is what you guys are doing here at this Float Conference is incredible and I think it's really important and I'm sure you guys have been talking and bowing to and honoring the creator of the first Float Tank John Lilly and yeah I I love John Lilly a lot and John Lilly falls in line with a lot of other great inventors in the sense that we use their technology and we take their technology for granted that they brought into the world but a lot of times we kind of forget the other stuff that they talked about and John Lilly is a prime example of that there's some other ones too Nikola Tesla for examples another example of a genius and both of them have something in common that I quite like which is both of them claim in some way or another to have been contacted by entities and what I like about John Lilly and Nikola Tesla is they weren't afraid to use that word entity they weren't afraid to talk about what was happening to them inside those he wasn't afraid to talk about what was happening to him when he was taking psychedelics and floating how many of you guys know that story about what happened to him in the tank clap if you know that story about we um we live in a time now where some of the smartest people on earth Elon Musk being one of them are talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence how recently with a scary shit that's going on in North Korea Elon Musk said that we shouldn't be worried about North Korea but we should instead be thinking about artificial intelligence because it's a thousand times more dangerous to nuclear war this is Elon Musk this is one of the smartest people on planet earth saying this and what's really interesting about him saying that is that in 1974 John Lilly made contact with some kind of malevolent entity that he called a machine intelligence he called it solid what he called solid state intelligence what's the name of it solid state intelligence some kind of entity that was going to manifest as technology and was going to use human beings to appear on the planet and take over this was long before Elon Musk started working on solar panels this was before AOL this was before Twitter this is before we had a tweeting president or before we had the emergence of the first emergence of a malevolent AI that I'm aware of one of the first emergencies which is these fucking Twitter bots that are creating the impression of a majority that isn't there and all of this was in a weird way predicted by the creator of float tanks and it's amazing to really think about that because I know a lot of people they say oh you know Lily later on down the line he was like shooting too much ketamine and he lost his mind and yet he predicted one of the great problems that we are facing as a species today which is that this technology that is coming through us has such great potential to transform the world in a beautiful way and yet and yet it has an equal potential to completely destroy the entire planet now I'm sorry I don't mean to start off on such a negative note but I think it's it's if there was ever a time to talk about how important what you guys are doing is it's at a float conference right it's to emphasize what you're doing maybe I don't think any of you have forgotten it but this technology that you are allowing so many people to have access to is a transformative technology it's a transformative technology that is going to and has allowed so many people to get outside of their limited conceptualization of what life is and what they think the universe is and to overcome the boundaries that this paradigm that we're in right now wraps around our fucking brains it's showing people there is so much more to this universe than what you can see and what you can feel and what you can hear now the first time I took psychedelics in a float tank was actually the last time I took psychedelics and I had this wonderful for a while I had this wonderful Zen tent created by Shane Stott a beautiful beautiful thing man and I had in my house he came and helped me set it up and I was really excited about it you know because suddenly I had this hole in the universe sitting right next to my podcast studio so I could just go climb into this thing and vanish in the time and of course I was thinking man I'm gonna eat some fucking mushrooms and go in there and I'm going to contact entities and I'm going to get the transmission so I did it ate some mushrooms just joking cop I didn't really do that for those of you listening there's a police officer in the audience disguised as a hippie I could see right through you man so I ate these mushrooms went to the float tank floating in the tank and it was beautiful for a second and then the mushrooms very clearly started talking to me I guess you could say in the way that they do and they said why don't you go outside man this is dumb what are you doing why are you laying in a dark pool of salt water when you could be under a tree or looking at birds that's the first time I attempted to add something to the floating experience the second time I attempted to add something to the floating experiment experience it was it was a it was a bigger project because there's something called the overview effect which is I think it's called the overview effect it's when astronauts see the earth from space and they're floating there that's what it's called right you guys yeah the overview okay so it's a it's this profound moment where you look down and you see the flat earth and you're like it was all a lie man they tricked me this is thing where you look and you see you know this beautiful planet that we're all living on and how precious it is and it's an intelligence and it's a it's a divine intelligence and it is a it is the mother and we're all part of it and it's our responsibility to make sure that this planet is kept kept alive and beautiful and all these poor fucking animals that can't do anything to stop the industrialists and all the pain and say you see it all you see it all and you love it and it like changes you forever so I thought shit well probably not gonna go into space in this incarnation but maybe I can create the overview effect by putting on virtual reality goggles in a float tank that's where I was looking down on planet earth so we and anyone here who wants to try that do it go for it try it it's all yours maybe you can make it work but what happened is so we get we spent a lot of time with this man we built a we built a simulation of floating in space we like waterproofed some VR goggles strapped them on very excited went in the tank floated there and then like within a few seconds the fucking thing fogged up and it's like and it's heavy you know you got this heavy thing strapped to your head and you know I'm not afraid to say it if John Lilly can talk about entities and I can say that float tanks they talk they'll talk to you they have a conversation with you and the float tank said to me what are you doing man take that fucking thing off your head it didn't say fucking but it was like this isn't you're trying to add something you're trying to add something and that's what humans do you know we want to add we want to add something to something that maybe doesn't need anything added on to it because when you're floating and finally you get to experience darkness which is such a precious thing and I think that the when people first were talking about these beautiful devices they were calling them isolation tanks or sensory deprivation chambers and I think that's an indication of how absolutely crazy our society is to say that if we take away light and if we float in this beautiful body temperature water that somehow we're depriving our senses when the float tank shows us this is all you need nothing this is all you need in this darkness is everything in this darkness is the earth is planet earth is the overview effect is the overview effect not of the planet but of everything because it's it's what we all are and so it's a healing technology that you guys are offering people when you bring them into the tank for the first time and it's a transformative technology and I think the reason so many of you when I've gotten to talk to you seems so fucking cool is because as all transformative technologies people who work with them are also transformed this is something really hilarious if you look up on the DEA website about LSD you know what I'm talking about man one of the fascinating things I read about it and it's kind of like a frustrated note about about LSD distribution chains is that an LSD distribution chain when it breaks down because as people begin to sell LSD they're taking LSD and the more you take LSD the more you're like why am I selling this man I should give it away it's the thing melts down on itself you know because the technology that is LSD it begins to transform the people who are who are utilizing it and giving it to other people and I think it with the float tank floating is the same way and the more that you guys heal people in this way the more you have to I would I would suggest you should be open to the possibility that John Lilly didn't do too much ketamine that John Lilly was tuning into something very very real which is that we live on a in a living universe and that this living universe has the desire right now to transform us and to transform us in a way that we aren't machines that we don't turn into robots that we don't turn into Twitter bots that we don't turn into people who only say what we think we're supposed to say and only parrot what other people tell us is the right thing to say and I think that the more you open yourself up to that the more you'll be transformed and podcasting is a transformative technology and and and for when I first started podcasting I was a very different person over the course of all these conversations my life has shifted significantly and and that's what happens I think when you're doing something with the even the slightest intention of helping the world at all so today's guest who's here with us today is someone who is is one of the people that has radically just from knowing him has radically shifted my life has transformed the way I think about a lot of things including including sex and he's my especially sex but a lot of other things too and I think he's being transformed by his podcast in such a way that and that's what we're gonna talk about today is how how he's transformed over the course of doing his podcast and and what he's up to right now it's pretty incredible because he's gone off the grid and so I'd really love you guys to give a giant round of applause to our guest today he is the author the co-author of an amazing book that you may have heard of called sex at dawn he has an amazing podcast called tangentially speaking everybody please open up your heart chakras and send out as much loving energy as you possibly can to today's guest Chris Ryan Chris Ryan it's on it's on how you doing free floaters what's up Chris I was listening to your last podcast you're floating not in tanks now but you've been on a basically a van tour I guess you would call it what are you calling it vanthropology 2017 that's right yeah and you've been living in a van and one of the really poignant and incredible things that you are talking about is the joy of swimming in a river every morning yeah when possible and every afternoon yeah we're sort of cruising around and we were up in Idaho Montana Wyoming you know Oregon northern California and you just the roads go along these beautiful rivers and normally you're driving along and you look at it and you think oh I'll bet it's nice to swim in that river but now it's just fuck it pull over find a spot and jump in it's fantastic before you went on the vanthropology tour was last time you swam in a river oh good question I don't know I'd have to think about that I mean I just that's how you can tell how fucked up you are like if you want to figure out how fucked up you are just ask yourself when was the last time you swam in a river yeah well if it's like more than a few months you're fucked up yeah or or do you know what phase the moon in it moon is in right now you know when I'm living in the city I never know when I'm out on the road I always know what phase is it in it's it was full about a week ago yeah so it's that ain't a phase it's a week past like a cosmology term oh it's in the phase full about a week it's a waning it's waning oh it's waning is that what they call it yeah waxing and waning okay but don't they have different names for this isn't it like it's like quarter what do you want to know the phase what it's waning gibbous gibbous yeah right on the tip of my tongue yeah waning gibbous moon yeah I think that's where it is now I gotta I have to learn the phase of the moon not only because it connects you to nature because it makes you sound like a black metal rock star waning gibbous yeah well yeah so I don't know about this though I don't know if I want to know all these terminologies because getting into your technology thing like I think I don't know a lot of constellations I only know the Big Dipper and maybe Orion's belt I think that's about it and I wonder what's it like I look at the sky at night and I see just a shitload of stars I don't know I want to trade that for oh there's blah blah and there's blah blah blah it's a different way of seeing things right which gets into technology and we start naming things then we see them differently I mean yes not to knock any astronomers you might be in the crowd but no certainly like when you're like laying in the sand of let's say I don't know the playa burning man and you're gazing up at the stars and your eyes are your eyes are blacker than the night and you're gazing up the stars what I think you don't want is for someone to be like and there's the there's a Orion's belt see a pleiades yeah no I know what you mean ignorance helps in a way it keeps you open there's some there's an innocence and a genius to ignorance I think which I'm trying to preserve as much as possible I think you're doing a good job man you care I mean that in the most for real I think it's a real that's what you represent to me is this enlightened sage who is like because you know I've been you when we first met before you had your PhD what was before you had your PhD yeah right for those you don't know because Chris had used to have PhD next to his Twitter name I realized like oh fuck anyone can put PhD there he stole he stole my PhD is what he did I put PhD next to mine and then it's great because like occasionally people are mad about something you tweeted will be like what kind of fucking doctor are you man yeah man but when I first met you you you you fall into a I guess you fall into a class of person that I get to make contact with through the podcast occasionally you're a traveler and you're somebody who has somehow avoided being completely tied down to a single place you're a traveler you when I first met you you were traveling your travels seem to be if anything you seem to be becoming even more disconnected in some way I know you have a place into paying I don't mean disconnected in a bad way but it feels like from listening to you talk about these experiences out on the road that you're being drawn deeper and deeper into a lifestyle that I don't even think a lot of people are aware of as an option for them or at least it doesn't seem to be a realistic option if you find yourself knee deep in kids and a job and a marriage and a thing and the stuff and the to like go and travel around in a van I mean isn't that in fact we live in a society where that is made fun of right there's a meme van down by the river right right but it there's a there's a counter meme now which is this sort of glamour of like modern nomadism and like there was a big article some of you may have seen in the New Yorker six months ago about a couple that travel around in their van and and it's glamorizing it and it's cool and I mean in their case it was kind of funny because they make they stay finance their trip with their Instagram page because they've got so many followers then they do product placements and they're branding and they're sponsored by this van company and they've got all this stuff so it's sort of tied into the whole commercial thing even though it's a counter example in some ways do you think that's bad I don't have any moral judgment about it no I mean I think people do what they need to do like in my podcast I don't have any ads but it's not a moral judgment it's just that I felt weird selling underwear you know because a lot of what I talk about on the podcast is don't wear underwear and I made him spit I made a comedian spit ladies and gentlemen the high point of my life yeah man that's nuts why don't you why don't you think we should wear underwear go commando when I was 11 years old my kung fu teacher told me never wear underwear and always sleep in the nude and I really in jail now right are you you know do you remember I told you the story on Joe Rogan's he killed his father this was before he killed his father yeah but now I'm gonna make him cry what just watch do you think do you think he killed his father cuz he walked in on him he's wearing underwear while sleeping it's too tight no it was it was a strange thing yeah his father was abusing his mother and they got into a fight and it was this big thing wow yeah that was when I I told that story on Joe Rogan's podcast one of the first times I was on maybe the first time and that was I got a sense for the power of that podcast because a day later I got an email from a guy who said yeah I heard you talking about this thing and I was the prosecuting attorney in that county and you know here that you've missed this date or this whatever and it's like how many fucking people are listening to this podcast right that the prosecuting attorney from 1974 in Western Pennsylvania happened to be one of them that is one of the things I try to keep out of my mind completely during the podcast because you start thinking about that you can go absolutely nuts especially Rogan's podcast where you're like there's if there is an Illuminati probably like two of them are listening to this shit probably you know so like there is that thing while they work out while they swing kettlebells inside a pyramid or something yeah yeah it's it's it's it's it is weird do you get this thing like when you're at a sporting event in a stadium and you look around and you're like okay this is 70,000 people this is what 70,000 people like my podcast I get around 80 to 100,000 downloads per episode yeah and sometimes like I was at the Rose Bowl and it's like that's 50,000 people yeah you know what I try to do I always refer to the there's a verse from the Bhagavad Gita which is you have a right to your action you do not have a right to the fruits of your action so it's like with the podcast if you get caught up in that which I know what you're saying and sometimes I have thought that then you could what'll happen is you'll start changing what you're talking about you start getting super concerned because of this imaginary number who fucking knows what the number is it really doesn't matter like the the the we have to only stay in the moment you know well that's the beauty of it because on one side there's this huge like crazy abstraction but I mean I did your part first time I ever did a podcast for I first time I ever heard of a podcast was Duncan reached out to me and invited me to be on his podcast and I was like what the fuck's a podcast and who the fuck is Duncan and but I was living in Spain and I was gonna be in LA visiting my parents and so I agreed to do it and I thought okay I'm going to some studio cuz sex of dawn had come out a year earlier something I was doing a lot of media or whatever and I went to the address expecting it to be a studio and it was Duncan's house and I walked in and there were two chairs and a table and some Mike set up and Duncan said you want to get high no thanks you want some mushrooms no thanks you want a beer and and there's like okay push the button and we talked and that was it and then we went out and had dinner that's right yeah it was amazing and I was like that that's a podcast wow yeah I love it man it's simple it's humanizing right I mean that's that's the ideas I think we you know hopefully we're there there was a time when people didn't have access to this technology and and that was the time where people develop these like famous personalities and like these insane ideas of there being some kind of wall between them and everybody else based on their being famous or something like that and it's really gross some people are still like that like some people are all fucking puffed up and they think that there is some difference between them and other people and I think what one of the beautiful things about podcasting is it's allowed a venue for us to like to be human you know like my favorite comedian is Doug Stanhope sure and the reason he's I love him so much is because he's an exorcist because he's completely honest and when you go and see him he's purely bellowing out exactly who he is yeah and when the thing that he is on paper you might not be like that's the healthiest thing to be it's like but it but because of his pure honesty and his incredible talent how fucking funny is you realize like that is the thing to be this is something that Ram Dass talks about that I love a lot which is that we have to honor our incarnation have you ever heard that before no so it's like the idea is you start getting into spirituality and or you know what have spirituality mindfulness consciousness whatever they call it and you start thinking I was just talking to someone maybe he's here last night I was talking to him and he was telling me how he'd gone on a hike I don't know exactly which mountain he'd gone to the top of here and he was looking out and it was just beautiful it was just spellbindingly beautiful and he felt so good and then within a few sentences like yeah but you know I got to start meditating man it's like you are met it that is it like the few we always have this idea of who we should be if we were good right and who we should be if we were okay and the problem with TV in the past is corporations present this idea of what a healthy human looks like right they're not there they're in shape they're symmetrical generally if they're asymmetrical they're still like incredibly classically beautiful and they have a job pickup truck they have a fucking pig yeah well they have a they usually have like a very expensive Range Rover that they're in debt to the banks for usually that's a what a healthy human looks like 26 yeah yeah what is that 21 forever is out that shop is called forever 21 fuck that shop forever 21 are you fucking kidding me no thanks oh you mean the age like if you were gonna be if you're gonna be stuck at an age for the rest of your life what what age would you be stuck at forever probably 21 you're forgetting is like yeah like I think of it like forever 21 in the sense like it's a vampire like somebody turned that person into a vampire when they're 21 right they're really like 300 right okay so that's when you want to be forever 21 because like do you have it's vampire clothing they sell there is that what I mean like yeah would make it a lot cooler I shop there if it was vampire clothing yeah but the yeah so I know what you mean though like you don't want to be literally 21 forever completely confused astoundingly like unhappy because you haven't figured out what you're gonna do with your life yeah yeah although when I was in 21 I was when I was 21 I think that was when I went to prison in Alaska so maybe that's why I'm what did you go to prison for shoplifting what did you shoplift a Snickers bar that is so crazy how long what was your sentence four days memorial day weekend that's in May right I was getting memorial day and Labor Day way yeah it was a Thursday and my friends and I had been hitchhiking from Skagway up through the Yukon and across to Fairbanks so we'd been you know camping for 10 days or something and we got there and it's a long story but we basically two of us went to the grocery store because the one guy wanted to call his girlfriend and while we waited for a guy to get off the pay phone we walked around pretending we were shopping and I ate a Snickers bar and we got caught and one thing led to another and so we were in this medium security prison for four days waiting for the magistrate to come in on Tuesday were you wearing underwear no I was not it's funny you mentioned that because what we did I wasn't I went to prison with no underwear and I was 21 we not only was I now wearing underwear I was wearing shorts whoa yeah because what happened was we how short short this was the 80s you know so before the surfer shorts came it wow yeah so what happened was we the three of us had been hitchhiking and it was me a dude from Telluride named Rob and his buddy Brent who was a black Mormon who had been adopted by Mormon cattle ranchers at birth so anyway those two were traveling together I sort of hitched up with them we got a ride and so we got to Fairbanks the first place we went was this laundromat because in Alaska some of you are from Alaska I imagine the laundromats have showers and they're like kind of set up for travelers to like go in and clean up and everything and so we went to this laundromat we put all our clothes in the washing machine because we everything we had stank you know or stunk I'm not sure the grammar there right both probably both yeah so we put everything in so all three of us are wearing a jacket with no shirt and shorts with no underwear and boots with no socks because everything's in the washer and then we went over and got arrested and four days later got out wow so you what two of us the other guy was in the laundromat like where the fuck are they actually we called from the prison we got our one call and we called the laundromat we're like is there a dude has been sitting there for about four hours looking nervous like yeah you buddy get over here where the fuck are you guys we're in prison man did you run into trouble in prison what happened was when they did the intake the dude who did the intake looked at the report and it and my buddy Rob from Telluride had drunk a kefir this liquid yogurt shit which I never even heard of anyway so he looked on the report it's like Snickers bar and a kefir are you fucking kidding me and this cop brought you in in handcuffs and it's like guys an asshole you know and so I had some pie I had a pipe and a little weed and which wasn't illegal at the time but didn't predispose the cop to like me much and wait I thought how is it in Alaska the weed was not illegal yeah weed in though in the early 80s weed you could have up to four plants in Alaska yeah as an adult and you could carry up to an ounce legally anyway so the guy was doing the intake and and I said like I'm never gonna see that pipe again right and he's like yeah probably not I said I don't and I'm never gonna see that weed I don't even know if there is weed there and he's like oh cuz basically what I was saying is like if you want the weed take it you know and so we sort of build a nice rapport and he said look I'm not gonna put you guys in with the general population I'm gonna put you in on cots in the gym nice and you just stick together and you'll be fine and we we stayed together and actually it was a really valuable experience for me because I mean if you see you see those doors close and it's like you you know nobody gives a fuck who your daddy is you know nobody cares you went to college or you're smart or you know a lot about Ralph Waldo fucking Emerson yeah which is you know what I knew about at the time so yeah it was an interesting experience and and I remember this one guy like the the sort of guy I imagined that I was most scared of like a big black dude was in there for you know murder or something putting his arm around me and saying you're gonna be alright little man you're gonna be alright Snickers that's what I'm gonna call you now Snickers my friend and we had the conversation like do we lie about what we're in for in order to scare people away for a few days or do we come clean right and we decide when I'm in trouble I always tell the truth only when I'm in trouble and so we told the truth and people just thought it was hilarious I bet yeah I mean you know that thing that you're talking about the doors closing have you read this book the gulag archipelago that Jordan Peterson talks about all the time there's Schultz and eats and yes I'm so glad you could pronounce his name I was just gonna say gulag archipelago and skip over the author but he taught there's a description in there about arrest what it's like to be arrested and how the moment you're arrested this basically a chasm opens up between you and the world that you used to be a part of and that chasm just it gets to a point where you're gone you're gone you are gone and this is why you know this is something that just fucking pisses me off man when Jeff Sessions is like sending out letters to people or to the sending out letters saying that we should start enforcing the mandatory minimum prison sentences and this is something that I think is so haunting right now you you know you're fine you you were fine you made a friend in there you got a free Snickers bar you shoplifted the right way by putting it in your stomach they couldn't get it out but one of the haunting things that like really gets to me and is is how all of us is are kind of programmed to ignore the fact that our prisons are filled up with people some of them who did just take a Snickers bar many of them who just had some mushrooms or you know I know someone who a few years ago got busted with mushrooms and it's really it's really fucking scary you know and like how his attorney told him yeah you know if they want to they can put you in jail for 20 years for this 20 years think about that the next time you're like joking about it or talking about it on the phone with people or whatever really think about that man I'm being a bummer fucking watch out you know seriously because it you know it's this is the thing that like really gets to me because as a society we ignore the fact that our prisons are filled up with all of these sweet Snickers there's so many Snickers right now so many good people in there right now who did nothing at all you know nothing at all what's interesting that you know one of the things I talk about a lot on my podcast and you do as well is consciousness and sacred plants and you know the healing potential of psychedelics and all this and it's so interesting that every culture that's ever had access to these substances has seen them as the greatest gift of the gods the greatest thing that the gods have bestowed upon humanity was this piety or these mushrooms or or in Africa this dance and that helps you enter a trance right the musical forms in Africa and here we are in this weird aberration the one society where you go to prison for longer for having a significant quantity of hallucinogens than if you had killed someone right minimum mandatory sentences for second degree murder are less than they are for like a pound of mushrooms it's what does that say what do you every society saying this is great except there's one society that says we'll put you in a cage for the rest of your life to me what that says is those societies value truth this society is terrified of truth wow yeah but let's talk about floating you know what I saw the first time I floated hold on wait we're not gonna fucking talk about floating he didn't want to he's a cop wait that guy hold on we'll get to we'll get to before we dive into that I want to talk about I want to talk about this idea of truth if you're saying that this our society doesn't want us to contact this truth what is that truth like what it's what is it telling us what is the message that we're getting from mushrooms from lsd from ayahuasca what is the message that we're getting that this society that we're in right now doesn't want us to have what I think you know you can look at an intermediary level and say it's about valuing the integrity of nature over an open pit mine it's about valuing relationships and sensuality over ambition and acquisition of you know material things those sorts of things I mean there are a lot of examples of that right you know love over possession you know these kinds of things but I think on a more profound level what those substances have shown me and I think show a lot of people is the deepest truth is that there are many truths and so doubt is sort of the only thing you should really ever be certain of and that the the culture's values that the culture's so insistent on instilling in you you start to question them so I think it's it's not that that these substances or physical travel which I consider to be very similar to to you know tripping that's why I guess we call it tripping right is it shows you what Joseph Campbell the mythologist called detribalization where you recognize that you're part of a tribe and then it's like oh wait I'm in a tribe so all the shit that I think is true is just what my tribe says I just speak that language so then you get out and you start looking back from another place where you see multiple truths and multiple worlds and and then you're in a whole different way of thinking so that when your government says you know pledge allegiance motherfucker you're like to what you know go go fight this war for whom yeah so I think it's critical thinking is basically what these substances instill in a strange way and this idea is an idea I think about quite a bit because the implication of what you're saying is that there is a conspiracy that is so dark is so dark that it would you could almost just as a form of laziness call it Luciferianism not to insult Lucifer actually I don't want to pry isn't Luciferianism because Lucifer was a rebel angel but it's like this this idea is so incredibly dark and this is where you know I I think that there's a lot of walls that have been built inside of us a lot of walls that we're not supposed to cross if we are going to be productive members of American society right and one of the walls is this wall that you're talking about because the question is who fucking built this wall who built this wall between us and these substances you know who is it is it Jeff Sessions is there and I would love to know your thoughts on this do you think there's an organized cobble of people who are like we can't let them take mushrooms or they'll realize that we're lizards do you I mean it's do you think maybe not lizards maybe assholes okay yeah lizards are cool like you know I think I don't mean to diss lizards or Lucifer here man but who's behind it man I mean it's like a real problem who's behind it who's engineered it I again I think they're different levels so so you can look at it if you want to look at it as a conspiracy I think there's plenty of evidence for that so you look at Harry Anselinger for example who was the head of the division of the government that was responsible for enforcing the laws in prohibition against alcohol distribution so then the whatever amendment it was that made alcohol legal again was passed and then he was like oh shit now this whole division of the government's gonna be liquidated I'm gonna lose a job everyone's gonna lose their job we need to find something else to prohibit so what's it gonna be well blacks and Mexicans are using this marijuana stuff so let's drum up a lot of hysteria against that so we won't lose our jobs so that's the origins of the anti-marijuana crusade in the United States it was all about the flow of money and keeping the money moving then you have the example in the Nixon administration where I think it was HR Haldeman who was recently interviewed about this who some of you might remember was in the cabinet I don't remember what his position was but he said talking about the drug laws the draconian Nixon war on drugs thing primarily against hallucinogens and marijuana he said we knew that psychedelics and marijuana weren't health hazards but we needed to isolate and neutralize the people who were protesting the Vietnam War which was mostly the hippies and the people who were agitating in the cities which was the blacks and those are drugs that those people were using so we made them illegal so we could throw them in prison investigate them wipe them out he said this in an interview I don't remember I mean look it up online it's everywhere you know I'm talking about it was like in Vanity Fair or something recently and so you know there it is it's like they know everyone anyone who looked at marijuana with any seriousness knew damn well it wasn't dangerous but we're many presidents away from Nixon and they're still enforcing these insane laws so they're enforcing that against black people against poor people see this is the thing like right I mean I don't know about your friend who got busted with the mushrooms and it's true that a lot of people at dead shows are getting busted and there's a lot of bullshit around that but you could if you have access to lawyers you know I mean I went to a college where everybody was tripping every weekend and no there were never cops there well this is so now we enter into something that's like even more horrifying which is that now we have like where we're get this is where it gets this is where my mind really starts fucking spinning which is that so this country is built on slavery we all know that and slavery ends except in the prisons because in the prisons people have to work there's there's you have to work there's work so a lot of like I guess license plates really do get made in prisons lots of free or die live free or die yes New Hampshire slogan on the license plate if you if you really want your fucking head to spin think about this our attorney general from Alabama wants to start enforcing mandatory minimums again for those of you don't know what that is that means that if you get pulled over and you've got some acid in your pocket you will go to jail for five years there is a five year mandatory minimum the judge cannot not send you to jail yes you're going to jail so when you think about the statistics which is that yeah more than likely it's you're not going to jail if you're white if you're not gonna get busted you're gonna get pulled over but if you're black you're going and when you're in prison you're gonna have to do slave labor so if you really want your fucking head to spend think about that a fucking attorney general from Alabama has figured out a way to make slavery happen again that's spooky man that's spooky and that's really happening right now and this is a thing where I wanted to ask you because when I might start spinning like that I start feeling hopeless Chris Ryan so you know another example is I was just in the airport and like going through TSA thick fucking security it's getting worse they're getting worse about it now like they're getting more intense more scrutinizing more like authoritarian they don't and there was a period with the TSA where they would try to be sweet they're not doing that anymore and as I was walking into the fucking TSA there's like these like hardcore thuggish looking fucking cops you know packing heat looking at all of us tourists kids old ladies no one there is going to hurt anybody right and we're being fucking processed our shits being rifled through and we accept it we're just like yeah this is what it's like now we just our shit gets rifled through now we just get rifled through we want to travel and I had this very hopeless feeling I thought what how does this get better when does this change can this change is there anything that could be done to make this go away what do you think you want me to say this publicly yes well you know I've lived in Europe most of my life right and I think one of the things that's interesting in Europe is that the memory of fascism is fresh relatively there are lots of people who remember when Spain was like that right Franco died in the 70s late 70s World War two you know Spanish Civil War it's it's recent so I think there's a like a vigilance in people there not to let shit go that way right again that is lacking in the US there's a lot of like you know I've been driving around in Idaho and you know there's all these signs you know all this like political sloganeering and stuff but I think you know most of these yahoo's in the mountains with their AR-15s if shit gets bad then you know they're not serious they're not gonna be shooting at military vehicles I think Americans that are so out of touch with war because all the war and we're incredibly war-like's culture but we export it we send the soldiers off and then we ignore them when they get back we've been at war eight the 80% of American history we've been at war yeah yeah yeah and that's I mean I don't know probably a hundred percent if you really look at it but anyway I I mean what can be done I think that one of what we're doing here is actually what can be done I think we're using podcasts you guys are using float tanks other people are using ayahuasca and sacred substances or meditation or all these different techniques to free your mind and your heart and your your ability to communicate with other people I think that's where revolution really happens you know the the revolution of the bombs in the street and the fires and the the kind of public screaming sirens I feel like that you know it's meet the new boss same as the old boss shit you know it's the some other power just takes over and plays the same game right the only way to have a real revolution you know they say think globally act locally I would take that act personally you have a revolution in your life in your heart in your marriage and your friendships and hopefully that ripples out and and becomes a better world that's all I got you had that revolution you've had that revolution inside of you I think that I never signed on to modernity in the first place right like I was retired the day I finished college you know I've never really plugged into I haven't had a job since the 90s so you yeah this is yeah right so but what about people who have had the job and people who are you know firmly yeah solidified inside of the system I think they're feeling it you know there's this line that we quote in sex at dawn from Arthur Miller the playwright who says an era can be considered over when it's basic illusions have been exhausted wow right and I think you look at the world we're living in now especially those of you who are you know over 35 or 40 who have some perspective on this if you look back you know 20 years all these institutions were respected the church this is before the whole priest sex abuse scandal came out the church was still respected Wall Street was a conservative place where you could park your money and not have to worry about it you know the banking sector was like safe and conserved you know take whatever sports the president the politics yeah of course that's the worst remember that the president used to be like that was like a respected position yeah anyway all these institutions are just collapsing yeah and so I think that a lot of people are saying this doesn't fucking work anymore right people are saying oh I'm gonna have less money than my parents well when did that when did that turn right it used to be it was getting better and better now nobody thinks it's getting better and better you know the climate change and whatever so there I think a lot of people I think we're at this really exciting heartbreaking fascinating moment where where a lot of people are looking for alternatives and I think that explains why podcasts are taking off because you know the technology's there but the beauty of it is you do a podcast you click a few buttons it goes out to however many thousands of people are listening to it there's no company in between there's no studio executive there's no money man there's no it's just you talking to whomever is listening and so there's a level of truth and authenticity that can happen there that I think is fucking revolutionary I think it's as revolutionary as the printing press yeah well okay so like yeah it's an example of technology working for us but just in a real work from a real world perspective because you you have been you're one of the most free people that I know most people I know don't swim in rivers most people I know don't travel and around in vans most people I know are localized most people I know are deeply intertwined with the grid so as someone out there to those of us in here I mean surely starting a podcast is not the answer right I'm looking what I want from you I want the fucking answer Ryan I want you to help us man I want you to help us like what what what can we do what are some real things we can do to experience this kind of revolution that you're talking about that happens inside first what can we do those of us who haven't had that revolution what are some tricks some tips some ways that maybe we can end up floating down it's floating naked down a river stop not wearing underwear fucking how can we start shoplifting Snickers yeah see I don't one of my favorite quotes is is respect those who seek the truth fear those who claim to have found it so I don't claim to have found any truth and so I'm very hesitant to you know give people advice this you know people I don't know especially but my feeling is my friend Aaron and I were talking about this the other day there are things that you do in life that you become accustomed to really quickly and there are other things you do in life that you'll never get accustomed to so working in a cubicle under fluorescent lights you can do it every day but it'll never feel right whereas staring into a campfire at night it feels right immediately and you know after a week or two of that you check into the Hilton hotel down here and it's like this sucks right you know it's loud you can't open the windows where's the fire you know where's the stream where's the sound of the birds and the wind going through the pine trees so I think that there's a guide there there's like for me anyway there's a there's a navigational device where where you like for example a couple weeks ago I went to North Carolina to interview to have some people on the podcast who are building a community there and so they've got animals and they grow their own food and and they're really interesting people because one of the sort of triggers for the coming together of this community was a very tragic death that happened about a year ago to actually they happened one was a surprise and one they saw coming and and those deaths have given a lot of meaning to this group of people and what they're trying to do together and anyway the point is there are like 20 people living there and every one of those people was so fucking authentic just no bullshit at all you know and I was only there four or five days I think and then when I left and went to the airport and you know started dealing with normal shit I suddenly I was aware of how clean that was there it's as if I'd been drinking clean water and when you're drinking clean water you don't go like that's some clean water you know but you notice then when you go back to the fucking Gatorade right that this doesn't taste right right you know and so I think that's for me that's that's the guide like things that I sort of fit into really quickly and easily and they you know I try to follow that and that I don't know that's all I got yeah no that's beautiful that's beautiful I I think a lot of us are afraid to follow that you know and I like I you know one of the things whenever I get around you and if when I listen to your podcast and I hear the the song that you sing the theme song yeah the theme song by Carsey Blanton I don't mean literally your theme song I had the theme song your podcast okay whenever I listen to the theme song your podcast I just want to make mail bombs and send them to people okay but this is the theme song is cool to finish your point we'll leave song I mean your song the song of Chris Ryan it's a that's it's in sex at dawn that your song whenever I hear this song there's like actually in the mythology of Krishna there's something you know about the Rasulila you must know about the Rasulila oh cool I could I get to tell you about the Rasulila you'll like this so the Rasulila what happens is in this mythology Krishna goes out into the forest and starts playing his flute and there's in the villages the gopis as they're called the women are there and they hear Krishna's flute and as the you know and this is written in really beautiful poetry but they basically leave they leave the lantern burning and they go into the clearing to find God because they hear this song and they leave everything behind because the song is just so beautiful that whatever they thought was important ceases to be important and like a hundred of them gather in this clearing and then Krishna divides himself into a hundred different Krishna's transforms into the ultimate lover for each of these people like their soulmate essentially and they well they do it out there man make love in this clearing and then what could be more ecstatic than making love with God you know what could be what could be better than that and so when I hear the song that you sing it scares me because I think God you know man really I could just do that I could just let go of everything you invest all my money into like a van and just like go go go go just get out just go out into the into the wilderness and it's really scary there's a piece of me that like wants to do that very badly but there's another piece that's clinging to the world that like feels there's got to be this one way to live and but if all of us start doing what you're doing what would society look like if everybody heads out if everyone listens to you and they're like you know what this is fucking stupid not only am I gonna sit in front of a fucking campfire I'm gonna make the campfire out of my goddamn cubicle and I'm gonna fucking warm my hands on the fires of my old life and the woods if everyone did that what would happen to the world wouldn't everything collapse a lot of the bullshit would collapse yeah I mean think how many jobs that people are doing in cubicles actually really need to be done at all and then how many of them are going to be done by some fucking it algorithm you know we're they're gonna be very few jobs left in 20 years because of AI and robotics and all this kind of stuff and so I think as a society we need to really seriously look at how are we going to distribute the wealth it's you know so far we're not doing it well it's all going to the very very very top and and to me one of the ultimate ironies and tragedies of modernity is for this book I've been sort of working on as you may have gleaned from this conversation I'm not particularly ambitious so I've been working on a book for about four years now it was due three years ago and my editors are for some reason very patient about it and it's called civilized to death and it'll be out someday but anyway one of the things I was looking at in this book is I was looking at this sort of economic question right and how and and the correlation between happiness and wealth and these kind of things and what you find in all the research shows it is that people get happier when they go from poverty to about 60 or 70 grand a year per individual right but that's that's basically the level where you've got enough money you got a place to live if you get sick you can pay a doctor you don't need to worry your kids are gonna starve you're you basically you have your basic shit covered after that there's little if any correlation between satisfaction life satisfaction and income and actually it gets to a point where there becomes a negative correlation so to me the great irony is everybody's chasing money and a few people are getting a whole lot of it and they're miserable fucks so if the winners in this poker game we're playing at the table here are as miserable or more miserable than the losers then who benefits from this right so I used to look at economics is like a poker game among a bunch of buddies I if I won 20 bucks it means somebody else lost 20 bucks right the same amount of money comes and goes it's a zero sum game now I look at it as a poker game at a casino so now who's the house right right because we're all losing nobody wins at a casino right even if you win you lose let you lose it later right yeah so then this gets in I mean we don't have a lot of time but this gets into this sort of deeper conception for me where I started looking at levels of life and and so you have the simplest matter which is inorganic life and then you have simple life single cellular you know bacteriums and then you have multi cellular and then you have and you get up to the most complex forms of life which I think are social mammals like us champs bonobos dolphins maybe insects some you know ant hills and things like that and then you say okay why would it stop there right right of course we always think we're the ultimate but scales continue right you know there's visible light but there's wavelengths above it and below it right so what's after us we're made each of us is made of many billions of microbes that don't share our DNA each of us is you know we think of you as an individual and me as an individual but that's all a fiction we're a system of all these different organisms working together so then what are we embedded within and that's when I get into super organisms so we are embedded in these super organisms that we can't see because we're within them right and so the agenda of the super organisms which are institutions I think run counter to ours so that's why you know we say why are we destroying the earth well we're not really these super organisms are and they don't give a shit and so you know it's like people will say to me hey you know you're always pissing on oil companies because they're destroying the ocean there are good people who work at oil companies and there are right there are but it doesn't matter because people don't run companies companies run people you know that the CEO of Exxon could go to Peru and take some ayahuasca and have a fucking epiphany and go in on Monday morning and say gentlemen we got to stop this deep water drilling we can't control it it's irresponsible we're destroying the planet he's out of there by fucking lunchtime right you know it doesn't matter if there are good people working there you know that thing about this is like I was talking to a friend of mine it was like yeah we've got to get the president to take ayahuasca and I was thinking like you know man you're rolling the dice on that one yeah he's already unstable yeah because it's like I think there is this idea of like oh if we get these people to psychedelics we get them to float if we get them so they're gonna like you know be like wow yeah I've got to change but I bet the president of Exxon drinks ayahuasca in somewhere in that experience he's like I am god I am god and oil is beautiful we don't know that could happen but but yes but I what you're saying is is so crazy which is that we have essentially become part particles in some kind of malevolent organism that is actively eating planet earth right so either way I look at it is like we are in a school of salmon that are we're swimming toward the nets right and some of us are going are those nets up there right fuck it I'm going over here right you guys you want to go into the nets I don't think you should but I'm going this way the other salmon are like dude you're too high man you're doing too many drugs there's no nets right so you're asking me like you know what's revolution I think revolution is when enough fish go I don't want to know those are fucking nets I'm going with them right and we start peeling off and there's a critical point where one more fish peels off and then the whole school goes oh fuck it and we'll go that way then they move the nets well then they move the nets maybe yeah yeah it's true oh we got to get the motherfuckers holding the nets man get them hot that's what we got to do I mean I don't know the answer I love that though I know what you mean and I think that like the the the beauty of what folks here are doing is I think when you go you don't have to take psychedelics to see the net I think just floating alone can I mean in your opening bit there you're it was really beautiful you're like you know the beauty of floating is you get there and and when you were talking about like adding this adding that I was thinking like I never wanted to do that I never wanted to get high I've never even smoked a joint and gone in a tank I I want to go there to strip it down right and I'm glad you circled around to that where that's the beauty you don't need anything you don't need a fucking screen to keep you interested you don't need you know things beeping and you know you can be alone I had a friend and took her to a float thing and she couldn't last 15 minutes in there and I felt so bad for her afterwards you know yeah so bad you can't be alone in your head for 90 minutes or 60 minutes or 20 minutes right what what hell is happening in your head you know so yeah I think I think stripping it down to the basics I mean the theme song on my podcast is by this beautiful woman Carsey Blanton uh and the song is called Smoke Alarm and she says it's like uh hey baby what's the big deal say what you're gonna say feel what you're gonna feel because you're gonna die one day you know and it's the whole song is like we're gonna die one day I you know I hate to give the end away but you're gonna die one day and you keep reminding yourself of that and then all the shit that you're afraid to let go of is like well you're gonna let go of it anyway dude right might as well let go of it now and enjoy the fucking ride rather than clinging to it you know to the bitter end Chris Ryan everybody guys uh we have about 20 minutes left and we've got two microphones here this is one of my favorite parts of the podcast I forgot to mention it up front any of you guys who have questions for Chris or for me I'd love it if you'd come up to the microphones we only have 20 minutes to to take questions so anybody who wants to ask a question feel free to come up here and ask oh the cop is the first one so as a cop who's been in the force undercover for a long time and I'm not trying to blow my cover um um do you think that Donald Trump could possibly be the catalyst or the kickback for you know um what we've experienced as maybe the solution to open people's eyes up to ideology um different ideologues and whatnot because it started to kind of I feel like it's opened people's eyes and broken up a lot of um biases that were formed on socio-dynamic I I hope so I I think that could definitely be one of the possible outcomes of this you know they say addicts have to hit rock bottom before they start to recover and if this isn't rock bottom I don't want to see it you know uh yeah I I hope so I'm not a political theorist so I can't say for sure but it certainly seems you know as Duncan pointed out the presidency is one of those institutions that's lost its uh what's the word I'm looking for it's uh well it's like my dad says you we must respect the office of the president yeah right but what if the president doesn't respect the office of the president which is right yeah yeah I don't know I think I think he is I think there is something in him that is divine for sure he seems to be a you know a reflection of our shadow you know a reality a billionaire reality tv star is the president now and like I mean let's face it if you were running a simulation and you wanted to create the funniest apocalypse it does seem artistic to be like all right they fucking like money and tv all right let's make their fucking president be a Frankenstein monster composed of everything that they have uh become addicted to and let's see what happens that's one level the other level is making the president a catalyst I always think of ramdas and how he has on his pooja table a picture of the president and uh no matter who that president may be he tries to find compassion there because what a fucking heavy incarnation man heavy heavy incarnation to be that stuck in that place where you're casually casually suggesting that you might incinerate a country with nuclear fire yeah yeah so it's like if you think about that how that I mean like I'm just thinking the worst thing you ever did when you were super drunk you know and you wake up in the morning and you're like oh fuck oh no I've got to call like seven people and apologize think of Trump's morning when he comes off of the bender that he's on and he wakes up and it's like oh fuck I'm president oh shit oh wow I fucking caused the apocalypse that's a heavy incarnation so maybe we can find a place to have some compassion for him or something and that could be the transformative thing what do you got is that it no more questions that's it no one wants to talk to us wow everyone's depressed sorry we bumped you out oh what's your question over here yeah tell us about your your best float experience individually okay yeah that's that's cool I uh the first time I floated I don't know that it was my best but you know I don't judge them that way but the first time I think it might have been in Austin Texas at Kevin Johnson's place and if you've been down there beautiful place it was I was lying there and I've tried meditating for years I've been to the 10-day vipassana retreat I've done you know martial arts with an incorporated meditation and I've never gotten past the my fucking back hurts stage you know my knees hurt my back hurts my hips hurt my neck hurts uh and I mean the 10-day vipassana thing was like a 10-day porn festival in my head I just that that's all I did I just sat there and imagined uh and uh it didn't work you know unless that's nirvana which it may be but the first time I floated I I felt like something clicked in and I got into this meditative state I got into the thing where it's like oh there's my mind working now I observe it it slows down it stops and then whatever I am that's observing it starts to disappear and then I wake up but I wasn't asleep and it's like wow that's where I've been trying to get for years and years and I just got there in 15 minutes and in part of that process of that sort of watching this weird shit that was happening in my mind I saw this image of Joe Rogan's face with a halo and that big shit eating granny's got just float right across like the dome of my brain and I thought that's pretty funny dude that wasn't in your head Kevin has a projector in the tanks like Joe Rogan's face floats across cool man I uh my my best float experience was like kind of my most painful painful it wasn't it wasn't like euphoric it was uh this is when I had a float taken my house I was doing it a lot and uh I was starting to have like uh it was dislodging memories and um I was starting to have these memories that were long gone I had this uh memory a photographic memory of this like me and my brother as a kid I was a kid but me and my brother were like leaving this summer we were staying with my dad I mean this is a horrible story I'm about to tell you but uh I guess there was a little girl there who liked me I was just a kid and she came up to the car and uh and was like I said something like I love you oh I hate saying this I said something like you shut up fatty like the worst fucking thing man and and like I was trying to impress my brother and it was just horrible and so the tank showed me in vivid detail that moment and the look on her face and the way that I felt and the look of my brother's look of disgust as he looked at me and uh and it you know makes you realize like oh my god if that's down there if I'm that much of an asshole and that that's compressed somewhere underneath my waking experience how much other stuff is in there you know I just went to the dentist and uh you know he floss he floss he flosses you and there's a lot of blood and I'm like is there a lot of blood there's a lot of blood right he's like yeah you got to get scaling dude because there's like fucking shit in your gums and it's gonna hurt it's gonna hurt he said that he's like it's it's challenging and I think for some people like me that's what the float tank does it's it gets into the gums of your psyche and gets in there deep and sometimes there's fucking blood and that's what it gave me gave me a moment to like really really uh think about my own potentially aggressive patterns in life that I'm not aware of and help me hopefully be a little kinder because that's all you can really do you know because that little girl killed herself and her entire family I found out was your question that's fantastic I love that thanks I actually I'm just very curious I've been someone who has been very curious to live off the grid most of my life because I have a rather unorthodox upbringing so I was never really introduced to a lot of stuff that people consider normal now so my question is when and why did you decide to start living off the grid and when you did how did you survive initially well first thing I should say is off the grid is probably an overstatement for how I've lived my life I mean I'm not like the unabomber or anything you know I travel in airplanes and drive a van and you know have a bank account and you know a cell phone right there so I'm not technically off the grid but off the sort of consumerist corporate kind of treadmill yeah I've been off that what happened was that year I went to Alaska I was in college and I had a life plan I was going to go to Oxford and do a PhD I had a professor who was going to get me into Oxford I was going to do a PhD and I was going to teach literature the rest of my life and the literature that I really loved the most was the American Transcendentalists who some of you will know Emerson Thoreau Whitman Melville and a lot of this stuff is sort of like an indigenous American Buddhism in a way if you read them you know Thoreau of course famously wrote Walden where he went off and lived in the woods for a year so that's the stuff I loved and that's the stuff that I was anticipating teaching for the rest of my life and I found a way a loophole in the student handbook that allowed me to skip my junior year and still graduate on time so I decided to go to Alaska to see the sort of frontier and I hitchhiked from New York to Alaska and spent the summer up there working in a cannery and doing weird shit and getting arrested and by the time I was done with that experience I realized like I had met people on the road who picked me up who took me home who fed me who you know let me sleep in their daughter's bedroom because she was away in college or something and they're just so kind and so open-hearted and you know these are people who didn't know they didn't read a lot of books they weren't hyper-educated and but they were so welcoming to me and they were so competent like I remember this one guy like he had built the house he had these cool dogs who like were really well trained and loved him and he had a good relationship with his wife and his kids were cool and he knew how to fix his car and it's like this guy probably didn't graduate high school but he had so much practical knowledge on how to live a good life and I was struck by that and I thought about what would happen to this guy if he stumbled into my world back at university with all my arrogant genius professor friends they would have laughed at him they would have rejected him and yet my professor friends were kind of fucking miserable and that was the path I was on and so I had this epiphany where it's like wait a minute I don't want to be like them I want to be like that guy right I want to be someone whose life makes sense and so at that moment I decided until I'm 30 I won't commit to anything no marriage no career no grad school no nothing I'm going to spend my 20s there's an image I loved from Robert Frost he says a poem must like a piece of ice on a hot stove a poem must ride its own melting and I thought I'm going to ride my melting through my 20s and then it extended into my 30s and I'm still fucking writing it beautiful so yeah I think you may have just answered my question but since I took the trouble to get up here I'll ask it anyway I'm I'm relative to unplugging from the grid or whatever besides floating which I think moves us from our our mind into our heart I've always thought that growing your own food expanding that a little bit is one of the most revolutionary and radical things that you can do and I wanted to get your feedback on that oh man I'm growing tomatoes right now and uh I'm growing tomatoes and uh you know what I did a podcast with Dennis McKenna uh Terrence McKenna's brother and he told me if you wanted the most revolutionary thing you could do is not just growing your own plants I think he said it's to grow like psychoactive plants right so but I think maybe he meant growing plants too but uh and so because of that I ordered some san Pedro cactus and I have in my garden three beautiful san Pedro cacti that every single day break the law because they're making mescaline right and it's illegal it's cool I look at them there's little chemical laboratories growing in my growing in my yard I'm like I'm gonna eat you but I won't I love them I won't eat them but but what you're saying is so true because you when you're watering the plants you can I mean I I feel like they are thanking you I feel like they are dancing with the water and that they're communicating with you and that they're just I think plants dance most of the time and I think that they you're kind of dancing with them and they like are rewarding you I bet there's things coming out of them that we don't even we haven't even identified yet maybe what McKenna called exo pheromones like who knows but so yes growing food for me is like you know how you know what's great is the stuff you remember right like you know what you don't remember plane rides you don't really remember plane rides and unless they're like really like unless the plane crashed you'll remember that one you don't remember a lot of stuff the the bus ride you don't remember the taxi rides you don't remember waiting for the meal you don't remember most meals you don't remember much but I'll tell you man I remember almost every time I've watered my tomato plants that's such a moment and you want water them long enough you start hearing the nature spirits and that's that moves you back again into your heart what do you can you talk about that for a second the nature spirits what do you mean by that rather than than watering plants I'm really into bees and if if you have this incredible flowering plant where all the honey bees are are visiting the flower getting nectar from it you hear this in incredible buzzing and I don't think you can have that experience without you you know that there's there's some entity that they're representing or that they're a part of that makes your heart sing yeah yeah man I love you all of this makes a lot of sense nobody has the answers but everybody wonders and all of this is true my life has changed after I found floating which is January of 2017 but I lost 60 pound in year and a half went plant based no meat no salt no sugar no bread no eggs no cheese and what was the first thing you said know what the first on the list of things you stopped eating no sugar no salt no bread no eggs I don't know which I said first I repeat this I'm just noticing every day I repeat this five times no to I just say no to things and then rest I can do I like freedom so I just I pin down the things that I don't like right and then I just remember those because I want to stay happy and I don't want to be like okay what do I need to remember to eat because life keep your mind empty and free just remember the things you don't need because there is everything else you need you need company you need people one religion everybody respect each other ice sees colors and bodies soul sees who's person sitting inside of you so you want to meet the third eye and get to the person if the persons are caring for that's it no matter who that is it's a simple question for floating that met a lot of the float owners all over and everybody's why floaters don't come back mine is 50% rate why are we judging and is there should be we're judging if there should be a rate and how long and how often you need to float is there a recommendation or people can decide on is the is that their own freedom and how often you guys float and what what you know those are the questions we're asking ourselves while we're in our float center and I don't have a center yet I just have a float tank in my basement so I do float but let's work on the problems that keeping us not happy which is after the float is why the floaters are not coming and this might be not a question for everybody for me it was just that you know what is the asking the people who has the knowledge so how often we should float how long we should float or even need to float once you open your mind because like the guy said you know you open your you put your mind in your heart and that's the end of the life now you know what you're doing your conscious mind right now what does floating takes a play after that man I don't I think floating is bad for you that's what I want to do here because can I pick my own time when I want to float my wife asked me did you float today when you float last time so I float when I get want to get in that's the only reason I get the tank from in my basement because I get up one o'clock in the morning and float in 15 minutes if I'm tired I'm out back in my bed right well I think I think it's important to not be dogmatic about floating I think that Kevin who Chris was talking about runs what I consider to be one of the great float centers of all time many of them are incredible but it's a very special place in Austin uh what I love about the way he uh he addresses it is that there isn't any dogma there it's just come and do this thing and let it do its work and that's it and it's beautiful so because like you don't want to pressure somebody it's like music you love a song and you don't want to tell somebody this is the best song you ever heard man you got to listen to this song how many times has someone tortured you in that way like oh I've heard this incredible song I don't like the word tortured forget who's torturing me don't the word torture should is not in my dictionary well you never heard this song man I'm listening to the different wait until you're on acid and somebody wants to show you a fucking Dave Matthews retrospective brother and you will know torture is the right word for that when I when I hear things during the daytime when somebody's if I feel like I'm being tortured I just put this on that's the reason I carry great and I just stay happy throughout all day well thank you so much thank you for the question right of applause for this shit over and over we have time for one more question hi thanks uh thanks for coming guys it's a pleasure to see you and uh live in person in the spirit of the float conference and just out of curiosity if you had to open a float center what would you name it and you've seen the different styles of tanks do you have one that you would choose over the other oh shit hmm what shit got real I mean well you go you're looking at two bad business men right here you're asking the wrong people you can answer that what would you name a float center float free come on yeah I free I like that I like the idea that floating is freedom you know I like the idea but people are gonna think you're not charging I know that's why I'm such a bad business man you could put free in quotes how about float here now oh that's cool yeah that's what I'm gonna name mine what do you name yours if I open a beer pub it would be beer here now you know that's cool drink beer now yeah I don't know I'm out of Ram Dass jokes yeah I guess I don't know I don't know man I you know and getting back to the woman before I didn't really answer her question like how do you finance this non-conventional life I didn't get into that and it related to what the gentleman after her said like I've been growing weed for 20 years which is helpful allegedly officer but growing yeah growing plants and uh yeah I don't I don't want to get back into that question but I have no fucking clue what I would name my float center do you float at dawn oh that's really good float at dawn yeah yeah although that you know I don't want to get up and open it at five you know the only thing I want to do at dawn is in that book I don't know man I probably call it like king Williams exclusive float palace yeah as far as like the float tank itself man oh man my friend Kevin makes the best float tanks man they're cool Kevin's getting a lot of love up here yeah hope he's out there somewhere yeah Kevin oh there he is there he is yeah so I don't know enough about float tanks so that's exactly what I would do I just go to him and have him make them for me I mean if I had like some supernatural powers or something like that then I would make it out of like obsidian or something it would be like made out of a it would be shaped like a pyramid made out of obsidian it would be lined up perfectly with some kind of like masonic lay lines or something like that there would be a a crystal hanging above it that like kind of like what they do at the temple and burning man that like barely touched the very tip of the obsidian pyramid and the crystal would be like connected to some kind of moon antenna on the roof of the float center so that it like somehow called down moonlight into the float tanks so that people were like conduits for some kind of like a Turkish bath sort of yeah that's it that's what it would be man and uh I could go on for a long time there'd be there'd be like you know a lot of like cats around you know like dogs and cats staying out with after your float I think that'd be nice when you're relaxed have like like friendly dogs and cats sit down climbing on top of you that you could pet and then there would probably be like a definitely like an lsd chemist there something like that and uh after the float of course not during it or during it whatever and um yeah that would be it that's my float center and it'd be the greatest fucking float center of all time that would be it thanks for the question that's it friends we are out of time thank you so much for hanging out with us tonight a big round of applause for Chris Ryan everybody thanks so much we'll see you at the party