Speaker 1: Disclaimer drug episode. Hey, everybody, we recorded an episode on
Speaker 1: LSD and we just wanted to throw it out there
Speaker 1: that we talked about LSD and other drugs in a
Speaker 1: very frank, open, uh, non judgmental way. So parents, you
Speaker 1: may not want your little kiddies to listen to this one.
Speaker 1: It's up to you. I don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: household you run, but that's our disclaimer. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know the podcast. It's right, Josh. Uh. I'm gonna wish
Speaker 1: you two things. Happy anniversary, Yes, happy anniversary because the
Speaker 1: day that we're recording, it was eight years ago this
Speaker 1: week that we released Well not we you we. I
Speaker 1: wasn't even there yet, you were here in spirit. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. Yeah, it's when stuff you should know. I I
Speaker 1: was born. Yeah, two mid April, eight years ago. We
Speaker 1: got forty two years ago. And happy bicycle Day. Did
Speaker 1: you know that it was bicycle day when he picked
Speaker 1: us out? No? Really really, that's actually that's amazing, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. Yeah. It was the thing that prompted it
Speaker 1: was that recent study about LSD and I was like, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should totally do LSD. We've never done it. And
Speaker 1: it was I think yesterday that I realized today is
Speaker 1: bicycle Day. And for those of you who aren't in
Speaker 1: the know, bicycle days not about riding bicycles to work. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. As a matter of fact, somebody on Twitter
Speaker 1: said every day's bicycle Day. To me, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: bet you don't. So. Bicycle Day commemorates the day when
Speaker 1: Um Albert Hoffman, the discoverer or creator I guess, depending
Speaker 1: on how you look at it of LSD, UM experimented
Speaker 1: on himself and part of that included him riding his
Speaker 1: bike back home from work while he was Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that here in a minute. But bicycle
Speaker 1: Day itself was started supposedly by Professor Thomas Roberts of
Speaker 1: Northern Illinois University, Go Huskies, in commemoration of that what
Speaker 1: some people say it was a great day in history.
Speaker 1: It certainly was the day that changed history. You really
Speaker 1: can't argue that. No, and Um, if you want to
Speaker 1: just hear all things LSD and stuff you should know
Speaker 1: We and did two other shows two thousand eight, did
Speaker 1: the CIA test LSD on Unsuspecting Americans? Good? The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, mind opening and October. Can you treat mental
Speaker 1: illness with psychedelics? And now in typical stuff you should
Speaker 1: know backward form, we're gonna do LSD. Yeah, we like
Speaker 1: to nibble around that. Do l s D. You know
Speaker 1: that'd be weird. Oh, we weren't supposed to. Oh, we
Speaker 1: better get through this quick. We got about thirty minutes. Oh.
Speaker 1: We should also point out at the end of this
Speaker 1: episode we have John hodgment On is in a very
Speaker 1: special listener male audio segment where he rebuts our nostalgia episode.
Speaker 1: Although it seems like we agreed more than we didn't,
Speaker 1: he didn't end up forbutting anything. Yeah. Uh, and that's
Speaker 1: we worked out the the the misunderstanding, how about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we like all times that you sit down with
Speaker 1: hodgement We talked for thirty minutes about one small thing.
Speaker 1: That's why this episode is super long, because this is
Speaker 1: gonna be long too. It is so it's super size
Speaker 1: robuts we should sell like eight more extra ads all
Speaker 1: but just kidding. Yeah, like Tommy Chong would probably one
Speaker 1: in on this one. He's got some businesses done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't joke because sales will be like knocking on
Speaker 1: the door. All right, Chuck really really said, Chuck, we're
Speaker 1: talking about l s D today, um and l s
Speaker 1: D again. That that bicycle day, that first day seven
Speaker 1: three years ago. I think it really did change the
Speaker 1: world because there are very few substances that have ever
Speaker 1: been created by man that had a more sweeping, profound
Speaker 1: effect than LSD. Like you, kind of a lot of
Speaker 1: people associate LSD with hippies, they're grateful dead maybe ravers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But if you really start to
Speaker 1: kind of poke around popular culture here in the West,
Speaker 1: you start to see it turn up everywhere. Like every
Speaker 1: American president has taken LSD. Right, Well, it's part of
Speaker 1: the oath of office, like the Bible is laced with
Speaker 1: LST put their hand on their hand on it. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's debunk that myth right now. Apparently LSD is non
Speaker 1: absorbment through the skin. Yeah, which means that those says, well,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of rumors, but the one with Jimi
Speaker 1: Hendrix would put LSD in his sweatband. He may have
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done anything, although it could have trickled down
Speaker 1: into his mouth maybe. Yeah. Uh, here's some other popular
Speaker 1: LSD myths. I don't think there have been any They're
Speaker 1: drugs that have spawned maybe these days. But I'm not
Speaker 1: hip to all these new drugs, man, and like it's
Speaker 1: impossible to be. I was doing research for this and
Speaker 1: I ran across, like all the new drugs that are
Speaker 1: available today. It's incredible. There's just like an avalanche of new, new,
Speaker 1: virtually untested drugs that's being They're they're going from synthesis
Speaker 1: to human trials by way of customer like people are
Speaker 1: taking these things and they're essentially like guinea pigs for
Speaker 1: these things. Still, it is extremely dangerous. Yeah, Molly and
Speaker 1: Billy and Jim's way beyond that, Jimmy, Jimmy's old news,
Speaker 1: Jimmy's oldness. Uh. Here just a few quickie uh highlights. Um,
Speaker 1: the guy that thought he was an orange so he
Speaker 1: like peeled his skin off. Clearly LSD did that. Not true? Uh,
Speaker 1: college kids who stared at the sun until they were blind.
Speaker 1: Clearly LSD is responsible for those children licking stick tattoos
Speaker 1: given out to children at Halloween. Uh, seven hits will
Speaker 1: make you legally insane, right, you can use that as
Speaker 1: a defense in court. Diane link Letter jumped from a
Speaker 1: window because she thought she could fly, So that was
Speaker 1: a big one that kind of changed public opinion. She
Speaker 1: jumped from a window, she definitely did, but she was
Speaker 1: also suicidal and she had taken LSD before. What made
Speaker 1: it such a huge case was that, um, she was
Speaker 1: Art link Letter's daughter art link Letter at the time.
Speaker 1: This is I think the early seventies. When his daughter
Speaker 1: committed suicide, Um, he was already a bit of a
Speaker 1: He was like the Bill Cosby of the age, which
Speaker 1: is not surprising, and the moral crusader and kind of
Speaker 1: um social scold of everybody, and how things are just
Speaker 1: not like they used to be in the good old days,
Speaker 1: are so much better and everybody's just letting their kids
Speaker 1: get away with so much and pull up your pants
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. He was a bit like
Speaker 1: that already. And then his his daughter committed suicide, and um,
Speaker 1: he was understandably uh devastated by that, and he turned
Speaker 1: his ire towards drugs because she had taken LSD before.
Speaker 1: But there's no evidence that she was on on LSD
Speaker 1: at the time, she was already suicidal. But again, art
Speaker 1: link letter is going to all of the kids parents
Speaker 1: and saying like, you can't let your don't let this
Speaker 1: happen to your children too. Scared America's parents and really
Speaker 1: kind of sealed the deal of public opinion against LST
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah. Uh, and how about one more
Speaker 1: for you. Uh. Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher doc Ellis thoes a
Speaker 1: no hitter on acid. That's true, that's true. Well, I
Speaker 1: know we've covered it. Dufus Okay, oh you're putting one
Speaker 1: into yeah. Oh sorry, there's a great documentary about it,
Speaker 1: and um, true is the only person's word we have
Speaker 1: to go on. Was doc Ellis, Well, his girlfriend also,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say testify, but she she backed
Speaker 1: it up. She was like, yeah, we took acid and
Speaker 1: into it. Though, and apparently the story changed a bit
Speaker 1: over the years, and he also said other things that
Speaker 1: didn't quite match up. So there's a little speculation that
Speaker 1: he might have Gussie did it up a little bit. Oh,
Speaker 1: like the ball was telling him what pitch to throw,
Speaker 1: and maybe when he took the acid, so supposedly took
Speaker 1: it at noon and he was pitching it like seven.
Speaker 1: So I mean he still would have been on acid,
Speaker 1: he just wouldn't have been speaking on acid or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a great documentary. You should check it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good. Okay, you threw me off at that. When
Speaker 1: you got me I was like, Chuck, wait, we did
Speaker 1: an internet round up on that. Yeah, that's right. So
Speaker 1: there was another thing, Chuck, that I remember growing up
Speaker 1: with is that acid. If you took acid, it would
Speaker 1: mess up your chromosome so that when you had offspring kid,
Speaker 1: they would be all kinds of messed up, disfigured, deformed,
Speaker 1: would have severe developmental defects, all sorts of terrible stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what we call it back in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: By the way, um, it could put holes in your brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another one too that everybody ringing around believing. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons everyone ran around believing all of
Speaker 1: these weird myths. By the way, No, LSD doesn't affect
Speaker 1: your chromosomes. That actually is metabolized. It out of your
Speaker 1: system faster than just about any other drug on the planet.
Speaker 1: Pee it up very quickly. Your liver starts breaking it
Speaker 1: down immediately. Um, So it certainly doesn't affect your chromosomes
Speaker 1: and it doesn't put holes in your brain. But the
Speaker 1: reason why these myths are around and the reason why
Speaker 1: people believe them is because the authorities are the ones
Speaker 1: who either made up these myths or latched onto them
Speaker 1: and basically amplified them through these kind of public service
Speaker 1: announcements and through the media. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: people walked around believing this. And and on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, that's fine, it kept some kids
Speaker 1: maybe off of heroin or something. Lying to kids is
Speaker 1: fine when it comes to drugs. You can make that case, right,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can also point to
Speaker 1: the real chilling effect that the LSD hysteria had on
Speaker 1: um understanding consciousness, potentially treating mental illness, which were just
Speaker 1: now starting to realize, like, yeah, it has that a
Speaker 1: lot of potential for that treating alcoholism. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people whose lives could have been helped had
Speaker 1: at the very least uh Science been allowed to continue
Speaker 1: his inquiry into LSD. But the the the fear of
Speaker 1: LSD was so widespread and so profound that even science
Speaker 1: was clamped down. Yeah, the CIA was like only week
Speaker 1: and good people LSD, not you scientists in controlled settings.
Speaker 1: There's this one guy. I don't know where the lawsuit
Speaker 1: is now, but he uh. I don't think we covered
Speaker 1: it on our show about the CIA, but the family
Speaker 1: of a guy that supposedly jumped from a window after
Speaker 1: being dost Yeah, but his family is suing the CIA,
Speaker 1: saying now he was beaten up and shoved out the
Speaker 1: window because he had information. I think he was actually
Speaker 1: does though, and he was losing his stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: know he was dosed, but they're there. Their contention, the
Speaker 1: families and he was thrown out is that he was murdered.
Speaker 1: I saw that too. Yeah, yeah, like the Frank Olsen
Speaker 1: project dot org. Maybe that's what the website is. And
Speaker 1: we definitely covered that the CIA thing because he definitely
Speaker 1: he was around at the time that happened at that time,
Speaker 1: because that was the time when like, if you went
Speaker 1: to a party with CIA, they we were all just
Speaker 1: dozing one another for fun. If you went to a
Speaker 1: San Francisco CIA party, you're a hardcore at that you'ren
Speaker 1: me drinking acid unwinningly, all right, So we should, uh,
Speaker 1: even though we've covered it before, the story is so wonderful.
Speaker 1: We should go over the creation of LSD by Albert
Speaker 1: Hoffman again. So I think, please begin. You didn't want
Speaker 1: to skip this, did you know? I was? I was.
Speaker 1: I think we should put in like a little accompanying music, said, yeah,
Speaker 1: like some Jefferson airplane maybe. So. Um a Swiss chemist.
Speaker 1: His name was Albert Hoffman. We said a few times.
Speaker 1: He was working at a lab called Sandoz. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were a farmer company and now they're they're still around,
Speaker 1: but there's a subsidy or I can't remember who. They're
Speaker 1: not making drugs anymore, okay. Uh. So he was working
Speaker 1: on a project involving something called ergot. It's a fungus
Speaker 1: that grows on rye and it's been blamed uh, notably
Speaker 1: this woman named Linda l Oh, I know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, she put forth a theory that the
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials were kicked off by a round of
Speaker 1: ergot poisoning, and she has a lot of good evidence. Um, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll go over it all. It's it's cool to look
Speaker 1: up though, And a lot of people came out and like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I bet she's right. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the Hoffman. Yeah, so he was working with ergot,
Speaker 1: which grows on rye and UM did a lot of
Speaker 1: poisoning over the years, notably in the Middle Ages. Even
Speaker 1: though they used it medicinally, midwives used it to help
Speaker 1: speed up labor until they decided in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that's pretty dangerous, actually, maybe we should just not poison
Speaker 1: these pregnant women with ergot. Well they were they were
Speaker 1: not just giving them ergot to poison them for fun.
Speaker 1: Apparently it um contracts muscles, right, so it would speed
Speaker 1: up labor, right exactly. UM. And they figured out that
Speaker 1: they would actually prove it would slow bleeding, I think
Speaker 1: by dilating blood vessels maybe, so they would give it
Speaker 1: to a woman after labor. Still, but they stopped giving
Speaker 1: it to them like to to create, to put a
Speaker 1: woman into labor. But it was it was remarkable enough
Speaker 1: that even after this level of medicine UM went away,
Speaker 1: scientists were still figuring out there, like, there's something with ergot.
Speaker 1: We've got to be able to do something with it.
Speaker 1: It's just too potent, you know, so uh in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, this was the nineteen thirties. It's just so crazy.
Speaker 1: To think about when you see pictures of the nineteen thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like wires hanging everywhere the new electric lamp, like
Speaker 1: experimenting with LSD. But it happened um at the Rockefeller
Speaker 1: Institute in New York City. They isolated lisergic acid from
Speaker 1: ergot and um, this is where Hoffman kind of started
Speaker 1: his work, resulting in N and the derivative. The number
Speaker 1: twenty five is and he did twenty four previous. He
Speaker 1: finally landed on LSD, and uh that was kind of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And LSD we should say, stands for lysergic acid diethyl minde.
Speaker 1: And uh, basically he started with this lisergic acid um
Speaker 1: and just basically tinkered around with it until he, like
Speaker 1: you said, arrived at LSD. And again, he wasn't looking
Speaker 1: for the most potent psychedelic known to humankind. Now he's
Speaker 1: looking for medicine exactly. He was looking for I think
Speaker 1: a respiratory um um stimulator something like that made me asthma. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: give these kids some LSD. Twenty five it up and uh,
Speaker 1: he the first time he messed around with it, he
Speaker 1: sent it off to the pharmacologists to look, because he
Speaker 1: was a chemist at Sandos, and chemists at Sandos they
Speaker 1: figure out processes to extract stuff, to make new compounds,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But that's that's the sum of
Speaker 1: their job. Once they come up with a new compound
Speaker 1: that they're satisfied with, they send it off to the
Speaker 1: pharmacology department. The pharmacology department says, uh, yeah, actually this
Speaker 1: made that frog's leg jump by itself all the way
Speaker 1: across the room. I think there's some potential here. The
Speaker 1: pharmacologist got their hands in on LSD, examined it, said
Speaker 1: we don't think there's any pharmacological potential here. Throw it away,
Speaker 1: and Hoffman did as he was told. Five years later,
Speaker 1: he um suddenly just thinks about LSD again, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think they missed something. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make a new batch just on my own. Later on,
Speaker 1: he was quoted as saying, I did not choose LSD.
Speaker 1: LSD found and called me. So him deciding to make
Speaker 1: a batch on his own is highly irregular. For the
Speaker 1: first For one, he's a chemist. You know the chemist.
Speaker 1: Don't go and tell the pharma colleges they missed something.
Speaker 1: They certainly don't have a hunch. Five years later they
Speaker 1: missed something. And then thirdly, for him to make a
Speaker 1: batch of LSD was very weird. It was contrary to
Speaker 1: his work orders. And also Ergot was very expensive and
Speaker 1: Sandoz was trying to keep a lid on expenses. So
Speaker 1: it was really really weird that five years later he
Speaker 1: mixes up another batch of LSD. That is true, but
Speaker 1: while he was mixing it up, it was a sort
Speaker 1: of a little like a Peter Parker experiment gone wrong.
Speaker 1: He got a little inside of him somehow. Uh they
Speaker 1: think now he probably got on his fingers and maybe
Speaker 1: like licked his finger while he was he had been
Speaker 1: eating KFC for lunch, maybe so, and uh it got
Speaker 1: into his body. Uh, and he you know, he had
Speaker 1: a macid trip. He had an accidental one at first,
Speaker 1: the world's first acid trip. That's right, And that happened
Speaker 1: one of those pharmacologists. I was keeping something on the download.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, this is useless, throw all this away
Speaker 1: except to save me, like since my head staff. So
Speaker 1: that was April eighteen ninety three. And um, the next
Speaker 1: day Albert Hoffman's like, I got to try that again.
Speaker 1: So he takes some LSD. I think he took two
Speaker 1: fifty micrograms at PM. Yea, I noticed that too, almost
Speaker 1: on four nineteen. Yeah, but that's a marijuana thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just it kind of jumped out at me.
Speaker 1: It's like I thought I saw that too. I'm sure
Speaker 1: everyone who's ever read that was like, oh dude, nineteen
Speaker 1: Oh he was so close. That's the universe. So he
Speaker 1: took two fifty micrograms, is that right? Which is about
Speaker 1: ten times the minimum dose that an average person takes
Speaker 1: these days. That's a lot. And he he shot it.
Speaker 1: He injected it in traveniously, I believe. Yeah, didn't he
Speaker 1: or did he take it orally? I'm sorry, no he
Speaker 1: took it orally? Yeah, I don't. I don't see in
Speaker 1: there where he injected it, and uh, he started to
Speaker 1: have a wild ride. He did. He went to the doctor.
Speaker 1: At first, he asked his assistant. He was like, um,
Speaker 1: I am tripping pretty hard. You don't know what that
Speaker 1: is yet, but I do. And he said, I think
Speaker 1: I should go to the doctor. And he went to
Speaker 1: the doctor and the doctor was like, dude, you're fine.
Speaker 1: Uh you're not fine, but there's nothing physically going on
Speaker 1: with you. Right, and we should say he was that
Speaker 1: he made it to his house with his assistant and
Speaker 1: they were on their bikes. This is why where bicycle
Speaker 1: day comes from. And he was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how long did it take for us to get home?
Speaker 1: And as the system is like, actually, we made it
Speaker 1: home really fast, and he's like what, he's freaking out,
Speaker 1: He's like, go give me some milk from the neighbor.
Speaker 1: Ends up drinking two liters of milk that night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because milk could supposedly quell the effects of different drugs
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, so sense it did nothing for
Speaker 1: this no and his neighbor. Later on, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of stellar quotes. Let me jump back, sorry, jump back jack,
Speaker 1: that's all right. After forty minutes after that initial dose,
Speaker 1: he wrote down in his journal seventeen hundred hours beginning dizziness,
Speaker 1: feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to
Speaker 1: laugh full stop. Uh. And then following that closely, I
Speaker 1: was able to write the last words only with great effort.
Speaker 1: And then who wrote that last? And when he got
Speaker 1: the milk, he said, Um, the lady next door, whom
Speaker 1: I scarcely recognized, brought me milk. She was no longer
Speaker 1: Mrs R but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a
Speaker 1: colored mask. So people think now he was fearful going
Speaker 1: into this experiment, and that's what you know. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about setting, setting and your mindset going in has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with what kind of trip you have.
Speaker 1: And people think now like he went into it fear
Speaker 1: full and ended up by all accounts, having a bad trip.
Speaker 1: He had a bad trip. But then the doctor came
Speaker 1: and was like, look, man, uh you're something wacky's going
Speaker 1: on with you, but physically you're fine. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. And I believe that's what kind
Speaker 1: of freed Hoffman up to have a good time, have
Speaker 1: a good trip. After that, he uh really started to
Speaker 1: go oh wow and really took in what he was seeing,
Speaker 1: what he was thinking, what he was experiencing, and um
Speaker 1: moved from dysphoria to euphoria is the way he would
Speaker 1: have put it. That's right. And he goes into work
Speaker 1: the next day, tells everyone about this amazing experience and uh,
Speaker 1: everyone else tries it, well, not everyone, but other people
Speaker 1: at Sandos. His two bosses, did I think his boss
Speaker 1: and his boss's boss. And the reason they were like no, uh,
Speaker 1: it was because he said I took two and fifty micrograms.
Speaker 1: They're like, that's astounding, two fifty micrograms, right, that they've
Speaker 1: never heard of a compound having the kind of effects
Speaker 1: that Hoffman was reporting. And he's like, I measured it myself.
Speaker 1: I know what I was doing, and it was two micrographs.
Speaker 1: These guys each took a third of that, and they
Speaker 1: tripped pretty hard themselves, and from that moment on, Sandoz
Speaker 1: was like, we're onto something here. Yeah. He also experimented
Speaker 1: on animals. He started dosing boy, you name it. He
Speaker 1: gave it to mice, and he said they moved radically
Speaker 1: and showed alterations in licking behavior. They taught themselves to
Speaker 1: tide cats cats hair stood on end, and they salivated.
Speaker 1: He put cats and mice together and instead of the
Speaker 1: cats attacking the mice, said, the felines would ignore the
Speaker 1: rodents or sometimes even appear frightened by them. How about
Speaker 1: that that's a cat on a bad trip, it said.
Speaker 1: Chimpanzees did not show any obvious signs of being affected,
Speaker 1: but normal chimps around them became upset, which he his
Speaker 1: theory was they failed to maintain these weird social norms
Speaker 1: that are only perceptible to other chimps. Fish swar am oddly,
Speaker 1: and finally Spider's altered web building patterns that low doses
Speaker 1: the webs were even better proportioned and more exactly built
Speaker 1: than normally, But in higher doses the webs are badly
Speaker 1: in rudimentaral rudimentarily made. Yeah, so he would give it like, look,
Speaker 1: there's a roach crawling across the floor. Let's douse it.
Speaker 1: See what happens. And there's also a very famous case
Speaker 1: and it wasn't Hoffmann. Who's who tested it? This dude
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma Um who was a professor of maybe pharmacology,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure psychology. He shot an elephant. He got
Speaker 1: his hands on the like Oklahoma City zoos elephant and
Speaker 1: shot it full of LSD. The elephant, like trumpeted once,
Speaker 1: fell on its side, started seizing its eyes, roll back
Speaker 1: on its head, a bit part of its tongue off.
Speaker 1: It stayed like this for an hour. He finally, ultimately
Speaker 1: a lot of people point to this as a fatality
Speaker 1: from LSD, proving that you can die. There's such a
Speaker 1: thing as a fatal overdose from LSD. UM. But other
Speaker 1: people say, well, actually, and then he shot the elephant
Speaker 1: with even more tranquilizers to try to calm it down,
Speaker 1: and that's probably what killed the elephant. But this guy
Speaker 1: gave But it was like that for like an hour
Speaker 1: and a half, just suffering on just an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of acid. And the guy actually used to boast about it.
Speaker 1: He kind of wore it like a badge, like it
Speaker 1: made his career and it was just such a foul thing.
Speaker 1: But even the scientologists were mad about it and released
Speaker 1: like articles criticizing the guy in his work. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of questions about whether he's actually
Speaker 1: UM and a CIA funded scientist as well. Well, he
Speaker 1: had a blowgun so personal to give you when you
Speaker 1: signed up with the CIA, is your blowgun and gallon
Speaker 1: of LSD. Yeah, but r I P. Tusky the elephant
Speaker 1: he went in a really bad way. That's terrible. Uh,
Speaker 1: So long story short, sandals is onto something. Um. They
Speaker 1: say this research is compared telling we're gonna patent this
Speaker 1: stuff and market it as Dela said DELI the E
Speaker 1: Y S I D and uh they started advertising it
Speaker 1: for use like psychiatrists you should get some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Get some you should use it yourself and use it
Speaker 1: on your patients and see what happens. They said again,
Speaker 1: I just want to repeat with Chuck said, use it
Speaker 1: on yourself. Well, yeah, so you know what's going on exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: that's highly irregular compared to the psychiatry of today. They
Speaker 1: don't usually go like, here's a here's a couple of
Speaker 1: any bars for you to try, just you know, eat
Speaker 1: some and then you'll know what your patients are going through.
Speaker 1: They don't do that anymore. So well that they they
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to Chuck um. But yeah, Sandals was
Speaker 1: like sending this stuff out as uh an experimental drug,
Speaker 1: that's how it was labeled at first, and as it
Speaker 1: called on um. They moved it into like full on
Speaker 1: marketing and started selling them like hot cakes. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty neat. If you look up de LISID for Google images,
Speaker 1: you know it's just package right there. It looks like
Speaker 1: it's a very nineteen sixties boss, says Del said, LSD
Speaker 1: here it is in the vials, so weird. And they
Speaker 1: came in uh microgram doses, which is a it's a
Speaker 1: low dose. It's about half of what an average dose
Speaker 1: you would buy today would be at a fish concert.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm sure that's even a dated reference. What
Speaker 1: were people doing LSD these days? E d M shows? Sure, Uh,
Speaker 1: scrillics shows, how about that? That's probably dated it Probably
Speaker 1: we're old chucks, you know, we're old Billy Joel concert. Sure,
Speaker 1: people inject LSD at Billy Joel concerts right in their eyeball.
Speaker 1: So by um, by the mid nineteen sixties, uh is
Speaker 1: when it actually became illegal in nineteen sixty six. We
Speaker 1: hold on stop making it before that though, as when
Speaker 1: it was selling like hot cakes, like it was having
Speaker 1: a real beneficial effect in the psychiatric setting. Doses were
Speaker 1: given to patients. Patients got doses just in the U
Speaker 1: S alone, right, I mean like a lot of doses
Speaker 1: were sold and that was just the U S. And
Speaker 1: it was having an effect. And in Europe they used
Speaker 1: it for um this, they used it for a camera
Speaker 1: what it was called, I want to say, like psychotronic
Speaker 1: or something like that, where they just give you, like
Speaker 1: the the average dose, maybe two pills, the low dose,
Speaker 1: and then they would talk about your childhood and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They used it to to kind of
Speaker 1: disarm the patient. Right in the US, they used what
Speaker 1: was called psychedelic therapy, where they would give you about
Speaker 1: ten times the minimum dose about what Hoffman took when
Speaker 1: he experimented on himself, right, and that was meant to
Speaker 1: just not not just break down your defenses, but to
Speaker 1: completely blow your mind basically, so that when you came
Speaker 1: back down you had had all these revelations and you
Speaker 1: were essentially a better person with a more fulfilled sense
Speaker 1: of self and meaning in your life. Yeah, those were
Speaker 1: the two schools of thought, Like in Europe, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about your childhood and give you a little acid. In America,
Speaker 1: We're gonna open all these doors of perception. And the
Speaker 1: thought was that you could skip years of psychotherapy with
Speaker 1: like a good acid trip, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: had this experience. Very famously, Carrie Grant was um hugely
Speaker 1: into acid as a result of going to see a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. And there's a really, really great
Speaker 1: article from Vanity Fair from a few years back called
Speaker 1: carrying the Sky with Diamonds that I would strongly recommend
Speaker 1: going and reading because it's really interesting and it gives
Speaker 1: you a really good glimpse of this era where like
Speaker 1: like the mad Men era, everybody's taking LSD for at
Speaker 1: their psychiatrist's office for eight hours. Well, there was an
Speaker 1: LSD episode for Madness, right, I think it's mentioned in
Speaker 1: that article. It was one of the best of a
Speaker 1: great show when Roger Shirling takes acid. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: it at a psychiatrist. Uh no, it was. Um, it
Speaker 1: was just like a you know, like a party, right, okay,
Speaker 1: but like a party where they were saying like, do
Speaker 1: this to expand your mind. It wasn't you know, slip
Speaker 1: to him or anything. But I had a profound effect
Speaker 1: on him in the show. And Chuck, there's actually this
Speaker 1: awesome little quote from Carrie Grant that makes it in
Speaker 1: that that article about his experience with LSD one of
Speaker 1: them at least. He said, Um, when I first started
Speaker 1: under LSD, I found myself turning and turning on the couch.
Speaker 1: And you have to imagine Carry Grant saying this year
Speaker 1: which better? I said to the doctor, why am I
Speaker 1: turning on the sofa? And he said, don't you know why?
Speaker 1: And I said, I didn't have the Vegas idea, but
Speaker 1: I wonder when I was going to stop? When you
Speaker 1: stop it he answered, well, it was like a revelation
Speaker 1: to me. He felt like he was under the spell
Speaker 1: of LSD or there's whatever. He realized like he had
Speaker 1: control over his life. It's kind of cool. So it
Speaker 1: did have a really big effect on people in real
Speaker 1: life as well. But like you said, very quickly, in
Speaker 1: very short order. Within ten twelve years of it being
Speaker 1: marketed for the first time by Sandos, it starts to
Speaker 1: become outlawed around the country and around the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty five, not a lot of research was
Speaker 1: done in the United States. Um. By nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: there were only six projects conducted. By seventy four, the
Speaker 1: National Institute of Mental Health said that had no therapeutic value.
Speaker 1: And then the final experiments in the United States took
Speaker 1: place in the nineteen eighties. Uh. And those studies and
Speaker 1: most of the newer studies now are concerned with end
Speaker 1: of life care and germanly ill patients. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: the the window is starting to open once more to
Speaker 1: studying LSD and its effects on neurology and um psychiatry
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. UM. And actually, when it
Speaker 1: started to get outlawed in Sandos stopped making it they
Speaker 1: recalled their stocks of it and um handed it over
Speaker 1: to the National Institutes of Mental Health for study. But
Speaker 1: within a few years the National Institutes of Mental Health staid, like, no,
Speaker 1: no therapeutic value whatsoever, despite people in the US alone
Speaker 1: basically singing its praises, no therapeutic value whatsoever. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if all forty thou people said it was great,
Speaker 1: I would say a significant portion of it. If you
Speaker 1: go back and look at the media coverage of it
Speaker 1: at the time, it was mostly favorable. It's very promising.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're gonna take a break here and
Speaker 1: come back and teach everyone how to make LSD. Al right, Josh, alright.
Speaker 1: H The first thing that you want to do if
Speaker 1: you want to make LSD is be a really really
Speaker 1: good qualified chemist. Yeah, with a really good qualified set up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not meth. You can't go to Walmart making
Speaker 1: it in a mountain dew bottle and make it in
Speaker 1: a mountain dew bottle on aisle six, shake it up
Speaker 1: real good, and you've got meth. Yeah. Um, this is
Speaker 1: The ingredients are tough to get and they're highly regulated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not found on drug store shelves. It's very different. No. Plus,
Speaker 1: I mean you can start with um, and there's actually
Speaker 1: other natural sources of LSD precursors, including um morning glory
Speaker 1: seeds in Hawaiian baby wood rows seeds, And there are
Speaker 1: some LSD recipes that call for extracting the stuff called
Speaker 1: L S A um from these things and starting with that.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a coin toss what kind of quality
Speaker 1: your ultimate LSD is going to be because you don't
Speaker 1: know how how good the L. S A is in
Speaker 1: these things. Plus, the government um, in a nod to
Speaker 1: their prohibition era tactics, actually put a toxic coating on
Speaker 1: these seeds to discourage people from using them to create
Speaker 1: LSD or even eating them, which some people do. So
Speaker 1: I guess if you're a legitimate LSD chemist, you are
Speaker 1: starting with ergic like Hoffman did. That's right, just like
Speaker 1: in the old days in the nineteen thirties. Uh, what
Speaker 1: you wanna do? You get this fungus, which is the ergot,
Speaker 1: and you have to culture it to extract the alkaloids
Speaker 1: from that ergot. Right, you have to have a dark
Speaker 1: room because just like sheets of acid can be contaminated
Speaker 1: by sitting it out in the sun, in the back
Speaker 1: of your Jetta. The fungates itself will decompose under bright light. Right,
Speaker 1: so you gotta do some of this early work in
Speaker 1: the dark room, right exactly. Um. And uh, you take
Speaker 1: the org it once you have it extracted. Um, you
Speaker 1: you're you're isolating the alkaloids, right or get alkaloid. And um,
Speaker 1: when you've got the alkaloid, you add some solvents and
Speaker 1: reagents to it, which themselves are dangerous as well. Um.
Speaker 1: One of them is chloroform, which is no joke chemical. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hoffman actually the next day thought he didn't quite know
Speaker 1: for sure that it was the LSD, so he huffed
Speaker 1: chloroform because he thought, you know, it's probably the chloroform.
Speaker 1: He's like Jeff Bridges in The Vanishing. He has some chloroform,
Speaker 1: and I guess woke up a little while later and said, Nope,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't acid. Nope, something different must be the LSD. Um,
Speaker 1: So chloroform is not good for you. Another one of
Speaker 1: the re agents is uh anhydrous hydrazine, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a Douglas Adams character and it's a known carcinogen, very poisonous.
Speaker 1: And both of them are easily breathed in and absorbed
Speaker 1: through the skin. So it's these things are no joke
Speaker 1: in there important in uh turning ergic alkaloids into LSD.
Speaker 1: So it's very difficult, very dangerous if you're not getting
Speaker 1: that picture. Yeah, hopefully no one's like setting up in
Speaker 1: their kitchen and like following along. Hit Sweet said, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you would get nowhere very quickly. We're not
Speaker 1: giving out detailed information. And what's funny. It's funny you
Speaker 1: bring that because until I think like nineteen five, you
Speaker 1: could mail off to the U S. Patent Office and
Speaker 1: for fifty cents they would mail you the patent to LSD,
Speaker 1: which is the recipe for LSD. You could get it
Speaker 1: directly from the US government for a few years. I
Speaker 1: bet it's some one somewhere, don't you know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: on the dark web, probably not even on I Can
Speaker 1: has cheeseburger. So the ergic alkaloid is in synthesize into
Speaker 1: lesurgic acid compound. It's called isolasurgic acid hydrolyzed I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: hydroside and you uh do you do that by adding
Speaker 1: some chemicals, heat it up a little bit, uh, shake
Speaker 1: it in your milk jug, put a little basil in there. Um,
Speaker 1: is it okay to joke about this? If it's not
Speaker 1: okay to joke about this, chuck, then we've lost our
Speaker 1: sense of humor. That's right. Uh. Then that is is summarized,
Speaker 1: which means, and this is pretty advanced chemistry, but it's
Speaker 1: really advanced chemistry. Yeah. Uh. It means the atoms are
Speaker 1: actually the molecules are being rearranged in the chemical process
Speaker 1: with a little heat, a little reagent, solvent, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's taking a compound and basically doing the
Speaker 1: old switcheroo and then bam, you have an entirely new
Speaker 1: chemical as a result. That's right. Um, you cool that down,
Speaker 1: you mix it up with an acid, and the base
Speaker 1: evaporated and you were left with isosurgic diaphylamide. I summarize
Speaker 1: it again because you know if once it's good too
Speaker 1: with better, then you have LSD and it's it comes
Speaker 1: in the form of a crystallized powder, I believe. I
Speaker 1: think it also says you can also make it a liquid.
Speaker 1: Now you have to do something else to make it
Speaker 1: a liquid. So when you have LSD that you've synthesized
Speaker 1: from urga alkaloids, Yeah, it's a crystalline powder, a white powder. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in the old days, in the in the sixties, um,
Speaker 1: you could make micro dots, which was a tablet form. Uh.
Speaker 1: You could just mix it with liquid and you know
Speaker 1: use it like you know, put this drop under your tongue, um,
Speaker 1: or you know, make tea out of it or whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then window pane, which was gelatine squares. So that's
Speaker 1: still around. I saw on Reddit some kid was like,
Speaker 1: look at this and he was holding like a huge
Speaker 1: thing of window panes and I think he called them,
Speaker 1: well window panes too. Yeah, they're uh. The great great
Speaker 1: movie Flirting with Disaster, did they take gel tabs? Well?
Speaker 1: That one of the sun Lily Tomlin and Ellen all
Speaker 1: the son at the end of the movie doses everyone
Speaker 1: at dinner with window pane. That's what he calls it.
Speaker 1: And I always just think that that's a funny word
Speaker 1: for it. But these days you're more than likely going
Speaker 1: to see what's called the blotterer acid. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: they do is they just dissolve that powder in ethanol
Speaker 1: and then dip a sheet of blotting paper that's conveniently
Speaker 1: perforated into tiny little squares about a quarter inch by
Speaker 1: a quarter inch. Yeah, they're little and and he he
Speaker 1: soaks up into that paper. Um, sometimes the paper is
Speaker 1: just plain white. Sometimes it's got a little cartoon characters
Speaker 1: and things. A lot of times and uh, then that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's a sheet of acid. Right. There's actually
Speaker 1: a dude in San Francisco who has an acid museum
Speaker 1: and he has a book like a huge binder of
Speaker 1: sheets of acid just to basically show off the artistry
Speaker 1: on it. And um, it's like, how has this not
Speaker 1: been rated by the d A. I think the answer
Speaker 1: to that is because the d e A doesn't know
Speaker 1: it exists. It's probably fake, right, No, I would say
Speaker 1: that's stupid because he hit a waste of money his Um, well,
Speaker 1: I meant fake paper in there and tell everyone it's acid,
Speaker 1: because what he's he's not trying to sell it. He's
Speaker 1: trying to say, like, look at the art that people make.
Speaker 1: You know that what I'm saying that why would he
Speaker 1: waste all that money putting the drug on something he's
Speaker 1: not he's buying I don't follow, Like he's going out
Speaker 1: and being like, Wow, that's a really beautiful sheet of
Speaker 1: acid by it and put it in my museum. Well
Speaker 1: that's even dumber. So he said that these things have
Speaker 1: been exposed to light over the years and that they're
Speaker 1: they're most likely totally inactive. That we said the last
Speaker 1: twelve times I tried to take it, it didn't work.
Speaker 1: He's like, but I traveled back in time. So each
Speaker 1: square is a dose, and you can get up to
Speaker 1: nine doses on a single sheet. Uh. And we'll get
Speaker 1: to this later, but the only might as well talk
Speaker 1: about now. Uh. There was a Supreme Court ruling in
Speaker 1: early nineties where they said, um, the weight of the
Speaker 1: drug is also the weight of the paper, which uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people got really and remain
Speaker 1: upset about this. Uh there. The argument is that's the
Speaker 1: equivalent of saying, well, this cocaine came in this um suitcase,
Speaker 1: So just way the suitcase with the cocaine, and if
Speaker 1: it adds eight pounds, then it adds eight pounds. Instead
Speaker 1: of measuring the actual quantity of the drug itself, it's
Speaker 1: measuring the carrier device, right. And one reason they did
Speaker 1: that was because the weight of again LSD, when you're
Speaker 1: looking at a minimum dose of about quarter quarter of
Speaker 1: a microgram, that's like the weight of two grains of salt.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to bust people, you could be like,
Speaker 1: well a quarter microgram get to a year. So that's
Speaker 1: why I'll see why they didn't do that. Just rewrite
Speaker 1: the law to reflect the weight of the real drug,
Speaker 1: because that's all they'd have to do. I know, it
Speaker 1: was very weird. Sam Fisted can say that, yeah, you
Speaker 1: just did. But the long and short of that is
Speaker 1: there are people, uh the dealt acid at a fish
Speaker 1: show that are in prison for longer than you know,
Speaker 1: rapists and murderers. Oh yeah, there's the guy who's um
Speaker 1: in prison for life without parole. He's like sixty six now.
Speaker 1: He's been in there for a while because he got
Speaker 1: busted with some acid. Yeah, um for life. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: spending his life in jail because he had acid with
Speaker 1: and he's seen violent criminals all around him. Get pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh so should we talk about what an LSD trip
Speaker 1: is like? Yeah? According to whoever wrote this article, I
Speaker 1: think this is a Shana Freeman joint. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: most of this was pretty good. There were a few
Speaker 1: parts that I was like, come on, it was yeah,
Speaker 1: very straightforward and logical and reasonable and rational and myth
Speaker 1: busting too. Yeah, I agree. Uh so the hallucinations that
Speaker 1: one would have on LSD. I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a misnomer there and that some people might think, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw a pink elephant come in the
Speaker 1: room and sit down beside me, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was real. Um, that's not exactly what they mean by
Speaker 1: an LSD hallucination. What they mean more is, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I stared at the wall and the wall looked like
Speaker 1: it was pulsating and breathing, or that painting had a
Speaker 1: glow around it. Uh. And and it's also a case
Speaker 1: of not oh my god, what's happening to my brain?
Speaker 1: It's oh my god, this asset is awesome or bad
Speaker 1: or strong. But I know that I'm on a drug
Speaker 1: and it's making all these hallucinations happen precisely right, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to say I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's away from the classical definition of a hallucination because
Speaker 1: you don't and it's also you don't you don't believe
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is like real. You realize that it's
Speaker 1: the result of the drug. Although I'm sure some people
Speaker 1: have taken asset and really uh thought, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's done such a number on the brain that they
Speaker 1: didn't know that they were on the drug, which is
Speaker 1: why you have your buddy there. You say, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the acid. Right, Well, that's that's Another point that
Speaker 1: um Shane of Freeman makes in this article is that
Speaker 1: because of the trip and how what a profound impact
Speaker 1: that has on the brain. Um, you typically want to
Speaker 1: trip with other people who have experience tripping in a
Speaker 1: very calm place. And you mentioned set and setting earlier.
Speaker 1: I think that was Timothy Leary that came up with that,
Speaker 1: and set reminds refers to mindset and setting refers to
Speaker 1: the setting that that you and you take your asset in. Right,
Speaker 1: So you want to be in a positive frame of
Speaker 1: mind or else you're going to probably have a bad
Speaker 1: trip and you want to take it in a calm,
Speaker 1: comfortable setting like your home or SHANEA. Freeman suggests the park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe don't. If you're stressed out about finals, maybe don't
Speaker 1: take acid before you go to class to take those finals.
Speaker 1: You're probably going to have a bad time. That would
Speaker 1: betray set and setting in a profound way. Exactly. So
Speaker 1: the trip itself typically lasts for something between maybe seven
Speaker 1: to twelve hours. About halfway through. Uh, you're going to
Speaker 1: experience what's called the peak, and the whole thing is
Speaker 1: going to really start about thirty to sixteen minutes after
Speaker 1: you take acid. Uh. Yeah, And if you've ever been
Speaker 1: to college and seeing someone taking acid on the dorm floor,
Speaker 1: you might hear a lot of like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's working yet. I don't think it's working yet.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we got ripped off, man,
Speaker 1: I don't think. And then all of a sudden, and
Speaker 1: then you just shut the door and then you go
Speaker 1: and study like a good student. Right. Physically, Josh, you
Speaker 1: might have dilated pupils, increased blood pressure. Your body temperature
Speaker 1: might raise. You might go a little sweaty and dizzy.
Speaker 1: You might be drowsy. Um, you might be tingly in
Speaker 1: the extremities, right, your stomach might feel kind of weird,
Speaker 1: have a metallic sensation in your mouth. Yeah, you're probably
Speaker 1: not hungry, right, Um, and you may uh, you're seeing
Speaker 1: things in a very weird way. You will probably start
Speaker 1: to notice patterns basically in the air. You could see
Speaker 1: a wall, but eating. Like you said, Um, you're going
Speaker 1: to see things in a different way than you normally do,
Speaker 1: is the best way to put it. UM. In some
Speaker 1: extreme cases, some people have reported synaesthesia triggering in them,
Speaker 1: where their senses they're basically getting mixed up. I wonder
Speaker 1: if they're synists maybe in that like unlocked it maybe, Um,
Speaker 1: that's entirely possible because there's a pretty well established school
Speaker 1: of thought that says that if you are predisposed to
Speaker 1: a brain based mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, UM,
Speaker 1: taking LSD can hasten its onset. It's not going to
Speaker 1: give you schizophrenia, it's not going to give you bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: But if you were already predisposed to it and the
Speaker 1: symptoms hadn't started yet, it could hasten that true. Emotionally,
Speaker 1: Shana points out that you kind of can run the
Speaker 1: gamut from happiness and euphoria. Uh, you love everything, You
Speaker 1: love everyone. Everything's magical. That's the key word right there.
Speaker 1: What's that magical? Yeah, everything seems magical to you, or
Speaker 1: it can go the other way. Um, and you can
Speaker 1: have you know, bad emotions, and that's you know, probably
Speaker 1: part of the bad trip, go into it in the
Speaker 1: wrong headspace, like we talked about. But that's the crux
Speaker 1: of It's still the magic is still the crux of it.
Speaker 1: Regardless of whether you're having a uth fork or a
Speaker 1: dysphoric experience, it still seems to have supernatural qualities to it.
Speaker 1: It's not just normal um having a bad experience, bad
Speaker 1: mood kind of thing. It's like the universe is coming
Speaker 1: apart and it's it's all reflecting poorly on my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think with a lot of hallucinogenics, that's why
Speaker 1: they're used in in spiritual and religious ceremonies all over
Speaker 1: the world because it's a profound experience. It can make
Speaker 1: you very contemplative, uh you know the things you think.
Speaker 1: It can make uh people look inward and to cover
Speaker 1: things about themselves. And so that's why I mean like
Speaker 1: ayahuasca and uh ayahuascauska Ia huskahuasca and there's somewhere in
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms who did a great episode on that. Um.
Speaker 1: They've been used for millennia around the campfire for people
Speaker 1: to like, you know, quote unquote unlock these doors in
Speaker 1: their mind that they don't readily have access to. The
Speaker 1: doors of perception. It's right. Uh. If you are an
Speaker 1: observer of people on LSD and you're not on an LST,
Speaker 1: you might think, Man, there talking a lot about really
Speaker 1: things that aren't very important, But to the person on
Speaker 1: the LST, it's very important. It's the most important thing
Speaker 1: in the world at that moment. The person not on
Speaker 1: LSD and the person on LSD will both mutually scare
Speaker 1: one another and usually end up in different rooms at
Speaker 1: a party. Uh. And then there is the the the
Speaker 1: time jumps. Um. It just really will mess with your
Speaker 1: sense of time. According to research, and they will say
Speaker 1: that you might think you've been doing something for five
Speaker 1: minutes and it's been an hour, or it might be
Speaker 1: the reverse, and you might not have any idea how
Speaker 1: much time is passing. So whether you're having a good
Speaker 1: trip or a bad trip, the one thing that all
Speaker 1: trips are gonna have in common is that they end
Speaker 1: within about twelve hours or so. Like the magical thinking
Speaker 1: goes away, what you would perceive as normal reality starts
Speaker 1: to step back in and um, there may be some
Speaker 1: sort of emotional or mental hangover, not a hangover like
Speaker 1: one that alcohol brings on, but more just like a
Speaker 1: whoa kind of thing after a profound emotional mental exercise
Speaker 1: or being put through the grinder. Um, you're going to
Speaker 1: you will have some sort of you'll be a wash
Speaker 1: in something, but you reality will return eventually. That makes
Speaker 1: sense that you would have an emotional hang over, Chuck,
Speaker 1: because LSD basically mimics the shape of Sarahtonin and kind
Speaker 1: of hijacks your serotonin receptors. Is how it does its thing,
Speaker 1: So Sarah toonin is in part responsible for mood regulation, emotions,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So it makes sense that you'd
Speaker 1: be a little wacky the day after you trip on LST. Interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might see uh, I always say college students,
Speaker 1: And to keep picking on college students, I mean, what
Speaker 1: happens about of acid trips are taken by college students. Um,
Speaker 1: you might see a college student admit themselves to the
Speaker 1: e R or call an ambulance. The doctors like this
Speaker 1: was a terrible decision on your part. Yeah, and you go,
Speaker 1: why are you talking to me about this? Just heal
Speaker 1: me and the doctor will pat you on the head
Speaker 1: and put you in a in a quiet room. And
Speaker 1: no the doctor coming to the hospital while you're on acid,
Speaker 1: I got you. But when you get to the r
Speaker 1: the doctor will patch you on the head, put you
Speaker 1: in a nice quiet dark room that everything is okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: They may give you some anti anxiety meds or a
Speaker 1: tranquilizer to sort of chill you out a little bit,
Speaker 1: but basically they just keep you in there and tell
Speaker 1: a nurse like, do me a favorite every hour going
Speaker 1: there and make sure that guy isn't breaking some equipment
Speaker 1: and he'll be fine. And you know it sounds like
Speaker 1: about six hours. So that's tripping tripping one on one. Um,
Speaker 1: you want to take another break before we get into
Speaker 1: like what's going on in your mind? Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 1: All right, so everybody bear with us. Man, So chuck,
Speaker 1: what's going on right now? Yeah, well just went and
Speaker 1: ppet he went to a little podcasters room and now
Speaker 1: you're back during the break. That's what's going on. What's
Speaker 1: going on in the mind? You mean on LSD. Funny
Speaker 1: you should ask h here's the deal. When this article
Speaker 1: was written, she said, researchers aren't sure what LSD is
Speaker 1: doing in the brain. They still aren't sure. We have
Speaker 1: a better idea, that a much better idea. Um, well
Speaker 1: it was back a little bits of two. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: this this one was from two thousand eleven. A Yale
Speaker 1: psychiatrist named Andrew Sewell, one of the few dudes in
Speaker 1: the US who uh does psychedelic drug research. He's not
Speaker 1: l seven, He's not square. Remember that band else, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were good. Remember it was them, the Breeders and
Speaker 1: four non Blondes all came out with like great albums
Speaker 1: all at once and whole and I'm gonna take issue
Speaker 1: with wholes. I'll take that one. No fenand blance they
Speaker 1: have that Hey song. That whole album was pretty good.
Speaker 1: All right, Well I'm bad, Okay. I was listening to
Speaker 1: Pavement the entire time. You could listen to all of it,
Speaker 1: all right. I was listening to Pavement to Now I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. I liked El seven though. Um Andrew Sewell, Uh,
Speaker 1: he was a Yale psychiatrist, like I said, or maybe
Speaker 1: still is. And he said at the time, uh, that
Speaker 1: it had to do with the thalamus. Sensory impressions are
Speaker 1: routed through the thalamus. Jacks is a gatekeeper. So his
Speaker 1: theory at the time, which was built upon research from
Speaker 1: Franz Volanda, Switzerland, said that drugs like LSD and psilocybin um.
Speaker 1: They toned down the thalamus's activity. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the gatekeeper doesn't work. The he liken to to a
Speaker 1: spam filter on email, said, it's not working as well,
Speaker 1: So it lets it lets unprocessed information through to consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is a great explanation of it. That was two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, but from you got that from Live Science, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was a good, good explanation of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we have brand new hot off the press's information
Speaker 1: which I which doesn't necessarily contradict that, right, agreed. So
Speaker 1: I think Imperial College of London researchers got their hands
Speaker 1: and some acid, gave them to some people and threw
Speaker 1: them in a wonder machine and looked at their brain volunteers. Volunteers,
Speaker 1: we should add that had all taken LSD before. This
Speaker 1: wasn't against their will now, and that uh, they wanted
Speaker 1: people that have tripped before and people that knew they
Speaker 1: could handle taking acid and being an m r I machine,
Speaker 1: which we already have mentioned as weird and loud and claustrophobic.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that's a good point. That was very
Speaker 1: wise of those guys. Yes, So the upshot of it
Speaker 1: was that we now have brain scans of people under
Speaker 1: the influence of LSD for the first time in human history,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really kind of opened up some new
Speaker 1: ideas for what's going on an acid trip. And you
Speaker 1: should see the difference of these, like the comparison to
Speaker 1: control and the one on acid. It's like you don't
Speaker 1: even have to read the caption to know which one's which,
Speaker 1: Like one is like, okay, I'm I guess I'm thinking
Speaker 1: I'm aware of myself my toe, which is uh, am
Speaker 1: I gonna pay the water bill this month? And then
Speaker 1: the other ones just like yeah, like that. It's amazing
Speaker 1: what they said. I'm just gonna read it because they
Speaker 1: say it better than I ever could. Um. They said.
Speaker 1: LSD simultaneously creates hyper connections across the brain, allowing the
Speaker 1: functions of seemingly unrelated regions of the brain to ooze
Speaker 1: into one another. At the same time, the drug apparently
Speaker 1: chips away at organization within networks. Like all of this
Speaker 1: sounds like right on the money, uh, including a system
Speaker 1: the brain differs to at rest called the default mode
Speaker 1: network yeah, which normally governs functions of such as self reflection,
Speaker 1: autobiographical memory thing and mental time travel bing bing. Right.
Speaker 1: So what what the what they're saying is is that
Speaker 1: the idea that you see things differently, that you think
Speaker 1: about things differently, that you understand concepts like the universe
Speaker 1: and reality and your place in it differently than you
Speaker 1: normally do is accurate. Like LSD changes literally the way
Speaker 1: you think about the world by changing the connections in
Speaker 1: your brain. Yeah. And notably they point out, um, in
Speaker 1: the sixties, you would always hear a lot about the
Speaker 1: ego and the sense of self. Uh. They think they
Speaker 1: have proven through brain scans that LSD literally makes you
Speaker 1: forget that your sense of self for that time, right,
Speaker 1: and and it allows you to do something that LSD
Speaker 1: is very famous for, which is makes you feel connected
Speaker 1: to the universe, to humanity, to the gazelle population, to everything,
Speaker 1: just feel connected. And again it's called um ego dissolution, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of the you know, it supports the
Speaker 1: notion that when you take acid with somebody, you have
Speaker 1: this bond with them, uh, perhaps even a lifelong bond.
Speaker 1: They also found that the effects, the psychological effects in
Speaker 1: the individual as well have lasting impacts as well, So
Speaker 1: it's not just like you're on the drug. You're under
Speaker 1: the influence of the drug. What you're thinking and feeling,
Speaker 1: um is temporary. It actually creates a pronounced and most
Speaker 1: commonly positive change in the individual's outlook on life in
Speaker 1: stace of well being, which is pretty amazing. But now
Speaker 1: we have brain scans of it. The brain scans just
Speaker 1: in every way seemed to support everything everyone has always
Speaker 1: said up. Not everyone, but the people that weren't making
Speaker 1: up stories about acid, but about acid, the people who
Speaker 1: never said, oh, I see a pink elephant in the room.
Speaker 1: The people who never went up to somebody and like
Speaker 1: wave their hand in front of their face. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: somebody do that. Like a couple of summers ago at
Speaker 1: my neighborhood pool, there's a stew behaving strangely and I
Speaker 1: was like, I wonder, and then somebody went up and
Speaker 1: went like that. So I was like, oh, no, I know.
Speaker 1: So super promising research, and I think it's awesome that
Speaker 1: they're looking into this stuff again. Um, are they doing
Speaker 1: this in the United States? That all? Yet? Because it
Speaker 1: didn't they sort of allow it again. Yes, three years
Speaker 1: ago there was a two four um study with like
Speaker 1: twelve terminally ill patients with cancer in the United States,
Speaker 1: but it's still like very small groups of scientists are
Speaker 1: probably working on like like twelve oh yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're using very small study populations. But the results that
Speaker 1: they're finding, like in this case, um that the cancer
Speaker 1: patients reported even twelve months on a more positive outlook
Speaker 1: on life despite the fact that their life was coming
Speaker 1: to an end prematurely in their opinion, um, because of
Speaker 1: the acid. They're finding like all of these the studies
Speaker 1: that are being carried out are are finding such sweeping
Speaker 1: um conclusions about the potential for LSD to positively impact
Speaker 1: people's lives that um there all of them are like,
Speaker 1: we need more studies, more studies, more studies, we need
Speaker 1: more people involved in I'm like, let's get back to
Speaker 1: studying this, which we left off of like forty fifty
Speaker 1: years ago for no good reason. And forty and fifty
Speaker 1: years ago is when the scientists thought like they were
Speaker 1: on the cusp of making some real breakthroughs. When everything
Speaker 1: gets shut down, um, and back then, like the way
Speaker 1: they do the studies now, it seems like our way better.
Speaker 1: They didn't have controls back then, but they didn't use
Speaker 1: controls in most of these experiments. Timothy Leary was carrying
Speaker 1: out these studies. I mean, give me a break, all right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about acid flashbacks. Yeah, I mean, Shanna calls
Speaker 1: it very controversial among LSD users and researchers. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say false outright, because there's zero evidence that it's
Speaker 1: a real thing and that the body actually retains some
Speaker 1: bit of LSD. What you've heard, you know, the rumors
Speaker 1: like it's in your spinal fluid. Uh, it's in your
Speaker 1: fatty deposits, and years later you can be sitting in
Speaker 1: a meeting and have a full on hallucinatory acid flashback. Right.
Speaker 1: There's no mechanism that this could be carried out by
Speaker 1: where there's like just yeah, like your your body stores
Speaker 1: some acid for later and you start to trip again suddenly.
Speaker 1: There are people who have reported it, Um, but it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that they're mentally all right, or it's entirely
Speaker 1: possible they're suffering from something called hallucinogen hallucinogen hallucinogen persisting
Speaker 1: perceptive disorder. This sounds pretty awful if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this I did a little more research. Apparently this
Speaker 1: is linked to persistent LSD use. Um, someone who's done
Speaker 1: a lot out of acid, and it is even then,
Speaker 1: it's still not due to a build up of LSD
Speaker 1: molecules in the body. So what maybe they rearranged their
Speaker 1: neural connections. Well, it's where they also predisposed to mental illness. Well,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times it's as current medical
Speaker 1: opinions divided as to the cause. Uh, some people think
Speaker 1: it's a form of PTSD. Other people think there were
Speaker 1: changes in the brain morphology because they did so much acid.
Speaker 1: But it's still not like the old story, like you
Speaker 1: had acid in your body from a trip long ago.
Speaker 1: It's just reactivated, just like burned out sitting in the corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and supposedly where this was all born. At an educational
Speaker 1: meeting for a d A agents in San Francisco, a
Speaker 1: speaker said, Uh, he suggested that the rerelease of LSD
Speaker 1: hidden in the bodies of users led to untimely psychotic flashbacks.
Speaker 1: And no one has tape of this, but there are
Speaker 1: people that wrote about it, and all evidence points that
Speaker 1: like this is where the acid flashback myth. Myth was
Speaker 1: born just from this one speaker, that's that's really interesting
Speaker 1: the way to go dude. So um, again, we were
Speaker 1: talking about like there's a lot of hysteria surrounding LST.
Speaker 1: People have died on LSD. What's what's that issue is? Well,
Speaker 1: a couplefold One. Is there a lethal dose of LSD
Speaker 1: that's never been proven Despite the millions of acid trips
Speaker 1: that people have taken, it's never been conclusively shown that
Speaker 1: LSD led to the death of a human being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would assume, like there's a lethal dose of water,
Speaker 1: So I would assume if you drank five gallons of
Speaker 1: LSD you might die. But then it it's so out
Speaker 1: of the realm of believability. It's just like why even
Speaker 1: talk about it? Right? And there have been cases of
Speaker 1: people ingesting massive amounts of LSD. So the minimum dose
Speaker 1: is a quarter microgram, which is um like twenty five
Speaker 1: thousandths of a graham I believe. Is that like what
Speaker 1: an ascid hit is these days? I think it's that's
Speaker 1: about a half of a hit. It's a mild hit
Speaker 1: from what I understand. So if you go splits these
Speaker 1: with your girlfriend the fish concert, then you'd have like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that kind of dose. I guess right, So, um,
Speaker 1: the that that's a that's a very small amount, like
Speaker 1: thousandths of a graham. Some people have taken like, no,
Speaker 1: thousands of a milligram. I'm sorry, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: Some people have taken milligrams of this stuff accidentally. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a group of people in and at a
Speaker 1: party and they thought they were snorting cocaine, but it
Speaker 1: turned out they were snorting powdered LSD. And one person
Speaker 1: which shown to have had seven have ingested seven milligrams
Speaker 1: of LSD. So that's like seventy thousand times the minimum
Speaker 1: dose something like that. Yeah, and I think this is
Speaker 1: actually in the Western Journal of Medicine. And they most
Speaker 1: of the people just boom. It knocked him out immediately
Speaker 1: and they passed out. The people that were awake, well,
Speaker 1: everyone went to the hospital because it was by all
Speaker 1: accounts an overdose of LSD, but every everyone was fine.
Speaker 1: So that's what it was. It's like seven thousand micrograms
Speaker 1: and a minimum dose is a quarter of a microgram.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like twelve hours later they were fine, and
Speaker 1: twelve years later they five of them were examined for
Speaker 1: years for long term issues. UM, and no one had
Speaker 1: any issues at that party. At least there's another one,
Speaker 1: another person who shows up in one study. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the case was around it, but the person
Speaker 1: survived in justing forty milligrams, which is forty micrograms UM
Speaker 1: and apparently survived. So so the toxic dose, the LD
Speaker 1: fifty dose, which is where half of the people who
Speaker 1: took that dose would be expected to die. UM, it's
Speaker 1: never been established. We don't know what it is, but
Speaker 1: it's it's huge, it's massive. So the pharmacological deaths from
Speaker 1: LSD have probably never happened. What what is what has
Speaker 1: been documented is behavioral deaths. People who UM took risks
Speaker 1: potentially that UM they wouldn't normally have under the influence
Speaker 1: of LSD. If he went swimming in a place they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have normally gone swimming, maybe jump from a building,
Speaker 1: not because they thought they could fly or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but because I think I can make it to the
Speaker 1: ledge and go party over there, Whereas if they were
Speaker 1: under normal conditions, they wouldn't have engaged in that behavior.
Speaker 1: So the Pore judgment basically right. But again those are
Speaker 1: pretty few and far between, although when they do happen
Speaker 1: they're there tragic. Yeah, and there there are also cases
Speaker 1: of like heart attacks and strokes, but um, with something
Speaker 1: like that, there's used the other drugs involved, and you
Speaker 1: can't conclusively say, like the LSD caused the heart attack.
Speaker 1: There's also apparently no documented, confirmed, confirmed report of somebody
Speaker 1: committing suicide under the influence of LSD. It's more like
Speaker 1: art link letters daughter somebody who had taken ls D before,
Speaker 1: and the l their their previous LSD use was blamed
Speaker 1: for it. But there's from what I could find, not
Speaker 1: a documented case of someone who was on LSD and
Speaker 1: went nuts and killed themselves. And even then I think, uh,
Speaker 1: it was It's a that's a difficult thing to prove
Speaker 1: that something caused something because then you start digging into
Speaker 1: that person's uh closet and find out that they were
Speaker 1: suicidal anyway, and this was a long time coming. Um,
Speaker 1: who knows. It's it's a tough thing to prove. The
Speaker 1: upshot of it is that the documented evidence of the
Speaker 1: positive effects that LSD can have on the human psyche
Speaker 1: um vastly out number the recognized tragic events that have
Speaker 1: taken place as a result of LSD. Can I read
Speaker 1: this one part about heavy LSD users because I thought
Speaker 1: this is kind of funny. Heavy LSD users can develop
Speaker 1: profound social problems, completely ruin their sleep cycles, and lose
Speaker 1: interest in eating and personal hygiene. They turn into hippies,
Speaker 1: is what they're saying. Yeah, And and she says something
Speaker 1: I do take issue with that there's no one and
Speaker 1: and rehab for LSD. That's not true. There are people
Speaker 1: in rehab for LSD. It's not common because she rightly
Speaker 1: points out that when you do LSD and then you
Speaker 1: do it again the next day, you and then the
Speaker 1: next day and the next day you become uh, you
Speaker 1: build up a tolerance really fast, and you just need
Speaker 1: more and more LSD and it doesn't work after a
Speaker 1: very short time. Right. Well, like I said, things normalize
Speaker 1: and you don't get the experience you're looking for. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like more most other drugs, it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: drug that you usually see people doing a lot of
Speaker 1: day in and day out all the time. Right. And
Speaker 1: what she's also saying is there's no no means for
Speaker 1: becoming psychologically or physically dependent on it, which makes it
Speaker 1: a non addictive drug, although the FEDS have it under
Speaker 1: Schedule one, which means that it has a high likelihood
Speaker 1: for abuse addiction and that it has no medical usefulness whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So both of those two, Um, but that's false for
Speaker 1: for both um, both of the reasons that, yeah, both
Speaker 1: of the criteria for a Schedule one drug. Um. She
Speaker 1: also points out, and this is something I never considered,
Speaker 1: but I think it makes a lot of sense. Um,
Speaker 1: the effects of LC aren't dependable, like you never know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna get, and addicts crave that dependability. They
Speaker 1: want to know, like cocaine will do the same thing
Speaker 1: to me every time, that bottle of Jack Daniels will
Speaker 1: do the same thing to me every time, or that cigarette. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, I don't know what I'm going to get
Speaker 1: out of acids, so it just doesn't lend itself to
Speaker 1: that sort of addictive nature. Pretty interesting. Plus it's also
Speaker 1: further interesting that a lot of people have used I
Speaker 1: don't want to say a lot. I have no idea
Speaker 1: of the number, but I know it's been used in
Speaker 1: the past. People have used LSD and other psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: to quit addictions like cigarette smoking, like alcoholism. And um,
Speaker 1: again you mentioned our can you treat mental illness with
Speaker 1: Psychedelics episode, which was awesome, but we talked about that
Speaker 1: in that that episode two. All right, Josh, let's I
Speaker 1: know this is a long one. Plus we got the
Speaker 1: hodgment that this is gonna be our first two hour show.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. But we can't finish the show unless
Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about the cultural history. Uh.
Speaker 1: Notably someone you mentioned, Timothy Learry. Dr. Timothy Leary actually
Speaker 1: worked at Harvard almost single handedly is responsible for the
Speaker 1: initial boom turn against LSD by the public and science.
Speaker 1: He took. He took what was a legitimate field of
Speaker 1: inquiry and um made it completely illegitimate. Like he's almost
Speaker 1: singlehandedly to blame for acid being first science turning its
Speaker 1: back on acid. Yeah, he had He had a loud
Speaker 1: voice and talked about a lot of like hippie dippy
Speaker 1: things that people didn't like, Scientists didn't like them, associating
Speaker 1: it with LSD. He founded a church where LSD was
Speaker 1: the sacrament of it, the League for Spiritual Discovery. Previous
Speaker 1: to that, though at Harvard, he and his colleague Richard
Speaker 1: Albert Um we're actually trying to study it a little
Speaker 1: more legitimately. That he got fired from Harvard and sixty three,
Speaker 1: and that's when he sort of went full bore towards uh,
Speaker 1: you know, tune in, turn in, drop out, which he
Speaker 1: regrets that phrase, he he and he he should not
Speaker 1: be blamed for that because he said later on that
Speaker 1: he did not mean like drop out of society and
Speaker 1: like don't he said that it was taken like, um,
Speaker 1: that people's people took it to mean get stoned and
Speaker 1: abandoned all constructive activity, and that that's not at all
Speaker 1: what he meant. That he went when he was saying
Speaker 1: turn on, he was saying, like, you know, turn on
Speaker 1: your brain. Yeah, turn on your brain, like turn on
Speaker 1: your potential, like like let's get things going. Um, tune
Speaker 1: in to uh, interact harmoniously with the world around you,
Speaker 1: and then drop out with it becomes self reliant, not
Speaker 1: dependent on the man or so basically an after school
Speaker 1: special that he was trying to make sure basically the
Speaker 1: more you know, and it was taken you know, people
Speaker 1: take things like water like they're looking for the path
Speaker 1: of least resistance in a lot of ways, so they
Speaker 1: took it to mean like, oh, it's great, Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: just gave us all license to like not do anything
Speaker 1: useful and really upset all the crew cuts over there
Speaker 1: who are carrying everybody right now. Then there was kin
Speaker 1: Kisi Um, author of many books, uh, notably One Floor
Speaker 1: with the Cuckoo's Nest Um, which that alone makes him
Speaker 1: a yeah or just like a major contributor to popular
Speaker 1: culture culture even yeah, just that agreed. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: notable for being a part of the Mary Pranksters, which
Speaker 1: um it's documented in the Great Great Tom Wolf book
Speaker 1: The Electric kool Aid Asset Tests. His favorite books required
Speaker 1: reading really good um and it documents in Mary Prankster
Speaker 1: was basically a school bus, uh, psychedelically painted full of
Speaker 1: hippies driving around with gallons and gallons of acid at
Speaker 1: the time when the cops had no idea what acid
Speaker 1: was or when it was not yet illegal. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he got into acid because of the CIA. He was
Speaker 1: a volunteer in the late fifties to dose himself. And
Speaker 1: uh he was what did she call him here, an
Speaker 1: acid populace that he was one of those that thought
Speaker 1: everybody needs to do this and it will be a
Speaker 1: different world. Uh. And then uh, finally, Mr Owsley Stanley,
Speaker 1: all the dead heads out there just went you about
Speaker 1: time they were so mad. While they never get mad,
Speaker 1: but get mad because they they have a profound social
Speaker 1: interaction problems. He was a chemist who was in hate
Speaker 1: Ashbury and San Francisco, studied at cal Berkeley, and he
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I'm taking a lot of
Speaker 1: bad LSD and so I'm gonna start making it myself.
Speaker 1: He was a self taught chemist, did you say that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he got really really good at it. And Asley
Speaker 1: l s D became the standard for good clean acid
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and they used them
Speaker 1: at the acid tests which um can KESI used to
Speaker 1: hold in San Francisco and the Grateful Dead used to play.
Speaker 1: And Osley Stanley was also the sound engineer. Did he
Speaker 1: create the Wall of Sound? Was that him his doing? No,
Speaker 1: that was Phil Specter. But he was the Dead's original
Speaker 1: sound man. And what he got known for was he
Speaker 1: was one of the first people to mixed concerts lie
Speaker 1: and in stereo and plug right into the board. So
Speaker 1: all those old you know, deadheads love to trade the
Speaker 1: old bootlegs. Those bootlegs sounds so good because of Owsley. Um,
Speaker 1: because he was you know, he was an innovator as
Speaker 1: a sound man, and he was one of the first
Speaker 1: investors in the Dead financially and because he was a millionaire.
Speaker 1: Alicet Millionaires said he made like ten thousand or ten
Speaker 1: million hits of acid in his lifetime. Uh, he gave
Speaker 1: away a lot of it, though there was one there
Speaker 1: was a sit in I can't remember what it was
Speaker 1: called where he gave out and by all accounts, three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people took acid all in one place where
Speaker 1: I had to be San Francisco. Uh. And he also
Speaker 1: designed the Steely with Bob Thomas. The very famous lightning
Speaker 1: bolt skull logo on the Grateful Dead album Steal Your
Speaker 1: Face Right off of Your Head was designed by Owsley.
Speaker 1: Did not know that, yep. And now all the dead
Speaker 1: Heads are going, Okay, you mentioned the Steely. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we got some two and a half hours in um
Speaker 1: and acids making a bit of a comeback in San
Speaker 1: Francisco to among all the little technocrats that took that
Speaker 1: town over and raised they're tripping and stuff, not really
Speaker 1: tripping their micro dosing there. Basically, Albert Hoffman had the
Speaker 1: idea that UM taking minuscule amounts of LSD could improve
Speaker 1: cognitive function, so basically they're they're getting better at coding.
Speaker 1: They're taking it and going to work and um, not
Speaker 1: fully tripping, but just having it's having some effects. Supposedly
Speaker 1: that's like the new thing with acid yea. And that
Speaker 1: is another reason I want to punch San Francisco in
Speaker 1: the face. You're not the town you used to be.
Speaker 1: So and they all know it, so don't get mad
Speaker 1: at me. They it's true. They there's also some other
Speaker 1: stuff chuck, Like, apparently if you buy LSD these days,
Speaker 1: there's a really highlight lihood that you're actually getting something
Speaker 1: called n bomb dash n B O m E. Is
Speaker 1: it just another chemical. It's like a much more intense
Speaker 1: psychedelic that's very similar to LSD, but it does have
Speaker 1: shown toxic effects, Like people actually have died from overdoses
Speaker 1: on this style. Thinking that they had LSD does not cool. Man.
Speaker 1: You don't sell something saying it's one thing stay away
Speaker 1: from the orange sunshine. Um. And then there's also some
Speaker 1: other thing called one p LSD and it's LSD with
Speaker 1: an extra pro pion il bond that technically makes it legal.
Speaker 1: That apparently it's open season on the internet with that
Speaker 1: stuff right now. Kamaliohnny, the great comedian and friend of
Speaker 1: the show, has a great bit about some designer drug
Speaker 1: which is heroin and thailan al or thailan al cold edison,
Speaker 1: oh codeine. Yeah, like with heroin. Okay, it's just funny.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're already doing heroin. It's like the heroine
Speaker 1: is enough thailand. Yeah, it's just this. It just seems like, um, well,
Speaker 1: these are like waxing nostalgic for the good old days
Speaker 1: of just acid. But it seems like if people are
Speaker 1: dying on something they think is acid, then maybe you're
Speaker 1: not doing it right. There you go, So, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: think that's it. That's LSD man. This could have been
Speaker 1: a two parter. It could have been, but we're not greedy.
Speaker 1: We stayed just one. Yep. Uh. If you wanted more
Speaker 1: about LSD, just type those three letters into the search
Speaker 1: part how Stuff Works dot Com and it will bring
Speaker 1: up this great article. And since I said search part,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. That's right, very special listener
Speaker 1: mail featuring Mr John Hodgman right here, right now. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so here we are with an audio listener mail. Because
Speaker 1: as I read previously in the teaser. Judge John Hodgman
Speaker 1: a k a. John Hodgman of The Daily Show a
Speaker 1: k a. Hog Right is here and he refused to
Speaker 1: send us anything in the print, so he just said,
Speaker 1: why don't you have me on and we can do
Speaker 1: get out over nostalgia once and for all. Hello you guys,
Speaker 1: Hey John, nice to talk to you both. So John,
Speaker 1: it's good to talk to you too. I think fondly
Speaker 1: about the times in the past when we have spoken before,
Speaker 1: but I always look forward more to the times when
Speaker 1: we may speak again. Because time moves in one direction,
Speaker 1: and that is this, that is forward, and that is
Speaker 1: the direction I'm interested in. That's the little included um
Speaker 1: intro to Happy Trails. The song is that. So time
Speaker 1: moves in one direction, and that is what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: It's known as and then if it's followed by into one,
Speaker 1: Uh said John, you listen to the to the Nostalgia
Speaker 1: episode right when we were were pretty hard on you.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I don't know what you guys were so
Speaker 1: mad at me about you, especially I feel we're stung
Speaker 1: by the premise that I have stated frequently as settled
Speaker 1: law on my own. Judge John Hodgman podcast available at
Speaker 1: maximum fun dot org for free or on iTunes. That
Speaker 1: nostalgia is the most toxic impulse. And I admit that
Speaker 1: I've I employ a little hyperbole in that statement, but
Speaker 1: I think at its core, I believe that it is
Speaker 1: true that nostalgia. My point of view is that nostalgia
Speaker 1: that is a yearning for the past, is at best
Speaker 1: unproductive and at worst poisonous. So John, we talked about this, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Chuck introduced your radical views about nostalgia on the Nostalgia episode, right,
Speaker 1: your leftist theory. Right, Well, how did you do? How
Speaker 1: did you come to this conclusion about nostalgia? Like where
Speaker 1: you in nostalgizing and um like bit your tongue off
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, what what happened to make you
Speaker 1: feel this way about nostalgia? If I may ask? I
Speaker 1: don't know that there was any one particular turning point
Speaker 1: because and the truth is that I I am a
Speaker 1: guy who likes old timey things, right, and this is
Speaker 1: not to say old timey things are bad. I grew
Speaker 1: up going to the Coolidge Corner movie House in the
Speaker 1: Coolidge Corner Recline, Massachusetts, where I which is my hometown.
Speaker 1: You wrote a Penny Farthing to work. I did not write.
Speaker 1: I did not write I'm not that kind of loathsome
Speaker 1: but you know, at that time, all they would do
Speaker 1: is show old Marx Brothers movies and the Thin Man
Speaker 1: marathons and even even you know, more recent old movies
Speaker 1: as it were. And I love, I would love going
Speaker 1: into so called nostalgia stores to pour through uh old
Speaker 1: movie posters, and I love used bookstores. I love the
Speaker 1: trappings of seeing culture what it was like at a
Speaker 1: time that was different from the way it is in
Speaker 1: my own life. I love to I love to rummage
Speaker 1: through junk stores and thrift stores and find stuff. And
Speaker 1: I come in listening to your podcast, I completely UH
Speaker 1: felt with you. I guess that is called empathy. That's
Speaker 1: different feeling with and No, I mean empathy and nostalgia
Speaker 1: are different. No, But I felt empathy for uh, for
Speaker 1: you your individual expressions of the things that give you
Speaker 1: that that whispy feeling of nostalgia. Um and and how
Speaker 1: that is, how that is in a personal mode of
Speaker 1: very comforting feeling, because I can speak honestly that you
Speaker 1: know I went when I went through when I when
Speaker 1: my mom passed away about fifteen years ago I went.
Speaker 1: I could not go. I could not engage with any
Speaker 1: culture that was more challenging, um than reading the Dorling
Speaker 1: Kindersley books that of Star Wars vehicles like that was
Speaker 1: the only thing I could read before going to sleep
Speaker 1: because I was in such emotional pain in the present.
Speaker 1: Had you had you read those as a younger, lad Well, no,
Speaker 1: because I mean no, but because I didn't exist. But
Speaker 1: those dek books of the of the Star Wars vehicles
Speaker 1: that sort of give you these cross sections of all
Speaker 1: the vehicles, you know, it was not I was not
Speaker 1: engaging with new culture per se. I was just revisiting
Speaker 1: my feelings about Star Wars, do you know what I understood?
Speaker 1: So I was exactly playing with old toys in like
Speaker 1: playing with playing with my old at. I never had
Speaker 1: the ad at, nor did I have the melting I'm falling.
Speaker 1: I never had either one of those two, and I'm
Speaker 1: still I'm a little bitter about it. Still. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know those were those were the big ticket items. But
Speaker 1: from my point of view, storage was a problem with
Speaker 1: those things, very untidy well they served as storage um
Speaker 1: boxes themselves. Really, Yeah, but you couldn't put the ad
Speaker 1: at into the millennium falcon and none of the none
Speaker 1: of them fit into any good sized shelf. And and
Speaker 1: even as an even as a nine or ten year
Speaker 1: old neurotic only child, I had real tidiness issues. But
Speaker 1: I will say that, you know, um, I wasn't at
Speaker 1: a point where I would be playing with my old, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, my old my old lobot, figuring it was
Speaker 1: my favorite in bed as a grown man, next to
Speaker 1: my wife to fall asleep. If I would certainly read,
Speaker 1: I would certainly read about the propulsion mechanism of a
Speaker 1: best pined twin cloud car, for sure, and really and
Speaker 1: dig into those weeds and and and prod those feelings.
Speaker 1: And indeed, today you know it's still the case that
Speaker 1: I have two things on my nightstand because night night
Speaker 1: is the time when when you and going to bed
Speaker 1: is the time when you might be most prompted to
Speaker 1: feel nostalgia, because on the one hand, you're trying to
Speaker 1: ease yourself to rest, and on the other hand, as
Speaker 1: you grow older, in particular, you realize that every going
Speaker 1: to sleep time is a rehearsal for your own death.
Speaker 1: So whatever you're anxious about can really come out at
Speaker 1: night or in the middle of the night, right when
Speaker 1: you wake up during second sleep, which is a concept
Speaker 1: that I've heard about first on the Great Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know podcast available on the How Stuff Works Network,
Speaker 1: right the Plugs and so on my dead side table,
Speaker 1: both real and virtual. I have two sets of culture right.
Speaker 1: One is new stuff that I've never read before or
Speaker 1: or encounter before, or watched before, whatever it is that's
Speaker 1: going to be challenging or interesting or provocative, even if
Speaker 1: it's only because I've never seen it or read it
Speaker 1: or listen to it. And then there's old, the older
Speaker 1: stuff that's gonna reconnect me with a feeling that I
Speaker 1: might have had in the past. But even in the
Speaker 1: older stuff like I got a pile I got a
Speaker 1: pile of old Avengers comics from the seventies, but which
Speaker 1: are which are dumb, profoundly unchallenging and remind me to
Speaker 1: some degree of what it felt like to be a
Speaker 1: little kid buying comics on i RAQ. But even those
Speaker 1: are comics that I've not really read before because they
Speaker 1: were before my times even then. But it's like I
Speaker 1: get it. I totally appreciate and was illuminated, I should say,
Speaker 1: by your podcast for pointing out um that that this
Speaker 1: therapeutic personal therapeutic aspect of transporting yourself or giving yourself
Speaker 1: a good feeling by by uh re encountering um or
Speaker 1: or imagine reencountering culture from your past or thinking about
Speaker 1: good times from your past. He's real and measurable and
Speaker 1: and uh scientific, right, that's part of that was part
Speaker 1: of your conclusion, correct, Right, So I get I am
Speaker 1: on board with you for that that nostalgia from a
Speaker 1: personal point of view, can be a truly soothing therapeutic tool,
Speaker 1: uh that can can help calm you during periods of
Speaker 1: stress and and this disorder in your life. And that
Speaker 1: sounds like a drug though, right, And it's like all drugs,
Speaker 1: it should be used in moderation like and there. And
Speaker 1: there's a reason for that specifically because I think that
Speaker 1: it is a uh when overused, it as a drug
Speaker 1: that can cause truly deltarious effects and the happiness of
Speaker 1: your life. And here's the reason why, No, is this
Speaker 1: the crux off? Well, Look, I'm going on along. I'm
Speaker 1: going on a long disquisition in part because I love
Speaker 1: the sound of my voice and in part because you
Speaker 1: guys called me up because I refused to write any
Speaker 1: of this down for free just because you mentioned my
Speaker 1: name in a podcast, So you can either take the
Speaker 1: free essay or not. But if you'd like, if you'd
Speaker 1: like to jump in and challenge me on any of this,
Speaker 1: I'm always glad to do this in a more back
Speaker 1: and forth manner. Well, no, that's so the reason neither
Speaker 1: one of us challenges because you you've so far totally
Speaker 1: agreed with everything we believe about nostalgia. Basically, here's where
Speaker 1: it turns dark. When it turns toxic is well is
Speaker 1: in overuse or over application. And and there are two
Speaker 1: ways that that can happen, but figuratively poison to oneself
Speaker 1: or to society at large. And here's there. Here is
Speaker 1: the reason why it is a dangerous drug. Nostalgia is
Speaker 1: founded on a fallacy, on a delusion that is has
Speaker 1: two parts, one that the past was better not true,
Speaker 1: and to to not true not true? Are you you no? No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not go ahead, right okay, quite right, quite right, chuck,
Speaker 1: Not true, because man, I'm my brain just stripped out.
Speaker 1: There is no there is no rosy past that you
Speaker 1: could in your life or in your imagining of your
Speaker 1: societal life that does not have counter examples of why
Speaker 1: it was actually far worse. So you agree with that?
Speaker 1: Sorry to interrupt, John, Do you agree with that, don't you? Chuck? No,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I fully disagree with. Sometimes
Speaker 1: things were better in the past. Okay, pick a time, huh,
Speaker 1: pick a time. No, No, I'm not talking about in
Speaker 1: an era. I'm talking about personally in someone's life. There
Speaker 1: were times that are better than others, of course, So
Speaker 1: you're talking about as an era, yes, okay, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: where I misunderstood you. Yeah, the the so okay, you
Speaker 1: could you could make an argument like my my experience
Speaker 1: of say, uh the nies. Yeah, you could say that
Speaker 1: my experience of the nine eighties was a good was
Speaker 1: better then my experience now, And that might be true
Speaker 1: for your personal um for your personal experience, but that
Speaker 1: might not be true, Uh if you were a gay
Speaker 1: man dying of bates. Okay, Yeah, it's just been diagnosed.
Speaker 1: I think I've misunderstood you've all the all these years,
Speaker 1: and that you were always saying, even on a personal
Speaker 1: level level, times were not better. Uh. And it's just
Speaker 1: you know, a misremembering of the past. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: sounds like everything John is saying we covered on the
Speaker 1: on the podcast on this nostalgia episode, Well, this is
Speaker 1: exactly right, because I've explained all of this to check
Speaker 1: before and he obviously misremembered it from the past, because
Speaker 1: memory is absolutely selective, and the things and and and
Speaker 1: even and and I think the common aspect of nostalgia
Speaker 1: that we can agree on is that there is one
Speaker 1: constant to one's reimagining of the past. It is reimagining
Speaker 1: of a time when you were younger. And that's always
Speaker 1: better than being older. Sure, just because you're too dumb
Speaker 1: to know what is really going on, you don't have
Speaker 1: the responsibility you know that you that you're settled with
Speaker 1: as an adult, that you can make a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of cases that for the average person, childhood
Speaker 1: was easier and you know, more enjoyable than adulthood, you know,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Quite so for the average person,
Speaker 1: that's quite that's quite true, I think. And also even
Speaker 1: if that person had, even if wasn't had a terrible childhood,
Speaker 1: there were still at a time when their whole life
Speaker 1: was laid ahead of them and they could have dreams
Speaker 1: and ideals. But now that we're getting into our late
Speaker 1: teason and for me mid forties, you know, it's all
Speaker 1: just coming to an end. That's how optimistic about the future.
Speaker 1: But the second part of the delusion is that the
Speaker 1: past is attainable in some way. And I don't think
Speaker 1: either of you are suffering from this particular nostalgia. But
Speaker 1: let me say this. The thing that turned me against nostalgia,
Speaker 1: I just remembered what it is in some ways, is
Speaker 1: that one of the things I was comforting myself, and
Speaker 1: it was it was I had two big body blows
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand and then the year two
Speaker 1: thousand one, and that was the death of my mother
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand and then the World Traits
Speaker 1: Center attacks in the year two thousand one, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of Star Wars reading and taking of
Speaker 1: valium that I had stolen from my mother's medicine cabinet
Speaker 1: after she passed away in order to get through those
Speaker 1: it's a fair game. Well, you know what, Nostalgia is
Speaker 1: a comforting pill to take, but there are actual comforting
Speaker 1: pills to take, and if you take too much of them,
Speaker 1: it's a problem because on a personal level, you might
Speaker 1: become mired in nostalgia to the point where you you
Speaker 1: become depressed with your everyday life and you because you
Speaker 1: know on a level you can't regain the past that
Speaker 1: you have convinced yourself was better and more glorious. That is,
Speaker 1: that is a bad state to be in. And if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about that, listen to Dana
Speaker 1: Gould's incredible monologue about about Buddhism and its rejection of
Speaker 1: the past and it's disconcern with the future and the
Speaker 1: embrace of the present on his own podcast, The Dana Gueldaur,
Speaker 1: especially the episode Happy Sad Right. But the other thing
Speaker 1: that I was engaging with was um, a movement of jihad,
Speaker 1: which is hardly unique but was on my mind at
Speaker 1: that time. That is founded on a principle of nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Radicalized jew bodies right like like a lot of radicalized
Speaker 1: right wing terrorists in the United States, believe that the
Speaker 1: past was better and that the present is corrupt and
Speaker 1: that we can do something to get back to the
Speaker 1: way it was. And well, John, not just with Jihad,
Speaker 1: I think with any conservative and especially ultra conservative movement
Speaker 1: in not just religion but also politics, economics, just about
Speaker 1: any anybody of of ultra conservative people seem to harken
Speaker 1: back to the past and want to bring it back
Speaker 1: so that the future is more like some idealized past,
Speaker 1: not more not more like, not more like exactly like
Speaker 1: and and and you know the thing that's and and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even I wouldn't even say that it's a
Speaker 1: far right impulse. There's certainly far left utopian impulses that
Speaker 1: expressed the same sort of if we just get back
Speaker 1: this is where we went wrong, and if we go
Speaker 1: back here and and freeze here, um, it will be
Speaker 1: better now. But I don't have any problem. I don't
Speaker 1: have any problem with by Anyone can do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: People like what they like. And if you, as a
Speaker 1: society want to isolate yourself from contemporary society, like the
Speaker 1: Mennonite movement or the Amish movement or what have you,
Speaker 1: and and and try to try to hold your own
Speaker 1: ground in contemporary culture because you think that is a
Speaker 1: better way to live, go for it. As long you're
Speaker 1: not hurting anyone else, that's great. But don't be deceived.
Speaker 1: Star Wars is itself and an entire story premised on nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Things were better before the Empire, And if we blow
Speaker 1: up enough human beings. We can make it good again.
Speaker 1: We can make the galaxy great again. And does that
Speaker 1: rhetoric have any echoes with today any one presidential campaign
Speaker 1: ring a bell when I say we can make the
Speaker 1: galaxy great again. We're gonna win so much against the
Speaker 1: Empire that is gonna make your head spin. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's Star Wars is uh and I have I
Speaker 1: think I've had this fight with you guys before. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's there's a reason Star Wars isn't science fiction. It's
Speaker 1: pure fantasy because it is a It is nostalgic by
Speaker 1: by in its very DNA, and that makes it a
Speaker 1: great story. Right. But as soon as you start having
Speaker 1: political movements founded on the idea that we actually can
Speaker 1: turn back time, then I feel that that was the
Speaker 1: moment I suppose that I began to feel like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to close this Star Wars
Speaker 1: book because I can't go back to that. I'm in
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable new present and my job as a human
Speaker 1: is to make the best of it now, and so
Speaker 1: I did, although I still dip back into it from
Speaker 1: time to time. So now you just watch the Force
Speaker 1: awakens basically is what you're saying. Well, I feel like
Speaker 1: I had a cultural obligation to watch The Force Awakens,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed and I enjoyed it once but the but,
Speaker 1: but the thing that I enjoy about it the most
Speaker 1: is that it is attempting to move the story forward,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to care about characters in a in
Speaker 1: a very familiar world. But I'm happy to care about
Speaker 1: characters that I that I've never seen before and be
Speaker 1: concerned about what's going to happen for them in the future.
Speaker 1: As contrasted to the to the prequel trilogy um which
Speaker 1: still exists no matter what people say, which completely you know,
Speaker 1: misunderstood a lot of things. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that misunderstood was that if you have a movie that
Speaker 1: is founded if you have a movie like Star Wars
Speaker 1: or Empire or Jedi one big trilogy but has founded
Speaker 1: on nostalgia, that that the past before, that the past
Speaker 1: was better than the present, and if we blow up
Speaker 1: enough stuff we can get back to that wonderful past.
Speaker 1: Then you cannot show the story of the past because
Speaker 1: all the past will reveal is it was terrible then too.
Speaker 1: People were just as corrupt, you know, there, there's just
Speaker 1: as much bad stuff going on, and and you there
Speaker 1: is no good past to get back to. So in
Speaker 1: many ways that they were, those three I mean, those
Speaker 1: three prequel trilogies were dark in the sense, even even
Speaker 1: in their lightest moments, in the sense that they were
Speaker 1: basically about uh, you know, the corruption of uh foreign
Speaker 1: interventionism as a policy, and you know, misusing military for
Speaker 1: personal agendas and all sorts of weird crypto critiques of
Speaker 1: the George W. Bush administration, for which those movies don't
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of credit because they're terrible and
Speaker 1: not fun to watch. But they were. But they were
Speaker 1: much there. They are much more rooted, not surprisingly in
Speaker 1: a middle to elderly aged man's appreciation of what life
Speaker 1: is really like, that is to say, George Lucas than
Speaker 1: the first three trilogy. The first the original trilogy was
Speaker 1: when he made it at a much younger age and
Speaker 1: he could afford to be nous algae. Wow, mine's blown, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I do all day. He just blow mind.
Speaker 1: That's right. Alan Josh was threatening to auction off my stripe.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not scared to tell you. It's Hodge
Speaker 1: hyphen Man. Oh yeah, you go. If you catch me
Speaker 1: on Skype and I feel like picking up, I'll blow
Speaker 1: your mind too. You're like weird Al Yankovic Hodgeman. Why
Speaker 1: does he answer his own phone? He once tweeted that
Speaker 1: he was like hanging out and I think the Minneapolis
Speaker 1: airport and here's the number for a pay phone he's
Speaker 1: standing next to so give him a call and some
Speaker 1: fan call. Then he talked for like twenty minutes. What when?
Speaker 1: When was this a couple of years five years ago
Speaker 1: when they were payphones. However, there's a time when there
Speaker 1: was Twitter and pay phones. Yeah, there was like a
Speaker 1: six month period and Weirdale made the best the best
Speaker 1: of it. Well, he's nothing if not resourceful. That was
Speaker 1: a great those are great days. I remember once. I was, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you know what, that's true? It really was.
Speaker 1: It was a golden age for Twitter. It wells we
Speaker 1: need to get back to that. Yeah, that's where that's
Speaker 1: you know what. I can acknowledge that there was a
Speaker 1: golden age for Twitter, um when it was different and
Speaker 1: a little bit more playful because it was so much smaller,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? But there's no way
Speaker 1: to go back, and you've just moved forward, haven't you.
Speaker 1: You've gone from Twitter to to Instagram now is your jam?
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Well? I I enjoyed. I still use
Speaker 1: I use all of the social meds my Instagram, my
Speaker 1: my Tumbler, and my Twitter, uh and all for different things.
Speaker 1: I still have a I still have a deep fondness
Speaker 1: for Twitter. I don't I don't do anything with Facebook.
Speaker 1: And I apologize y'all you snap chatting, No I didn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get into that. I couldn't add another thing
Speaker 1: to my portfolio has already overburdened. And Facebook I have.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a Judge John Hodgeman Facebook page which
Speaker 1: is wonderfully maintained by Max fund. There's an official John
Speaker 1: Hodgman fan page which is wonderfully maintained by a fan
Speaker 1: of mine, Benjamin and San Francisco, and I'm grateful to
Speaker 1: him for it. And all of my social medias feed
Speaker 1: into those things. And if you're on Facebook and you
Speaker 1: want to follow him, you can find him or whatever.
Speaker 1: But but my social media sort of declination is Instagram
Speaker 1: to Tumbler to Twitter. But sometimes I just get deep
Speaker 1: into Twitter again because just for the old times, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. You want you on Fishbob, you on?
Speaker 1: Are you on deck chair? Am I? Am I on
Speaker 1: toggle Switch, am I on and I on matchbook car,
Speaker 1: am I on Cybord gape Right, I'm just subscribing. Am
Speaker 1: I on Bottle of sand, am I on profit Cobe. So, John,
Speaker 1: I think in closing, I think the one thing I
Speaker 1: would ask is that you revise your your mantra to
Speaker 1: UH nostalgia can, for many people sometimes be a toxic impulse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good mantra. Check or it sounds like it should should
Speaker 1: be revised to something like nostalgia is the most toxic
Speaker 1: impulse society as a whole can engage in. Oh. I
Speaker 1: like that one, Josh, Sorry, Chucks, that's a nice full sentence.
Speaker 1: It needs some work. I'm gonna go on fish Bob,
Speaker 1: but I stand behind it. Thanks John, Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure to talk to you. You know.
Speaker 1: You know I'm such a supporter of UH stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know podcast, this very podcast, and I'm grateful always
Speaker 1: for the support that you offer me. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: will see you in New York right at our Bellhouse shows,
Speaker 1: both of them. I assume, Yeah, you want to announce
Speaker 1: when those are Uh. Yeah, well we already have already
Speaker 1: sold out, you know June. Well, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about something that isn't sold out. June nine. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will be appearing at Largo at the Coronet. Oh we've
Speaker 1: done that. It's fun, wonderful, wonderful theater. Uh. They're on
Speaker 1: La Sienega. Uh for a one night only performance of
Speaker 1: my latest stand up, talking, funny, storytelling personal story show,
Speaker 1: which on vacation Land. Oh we've seen that. It's good,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Yeah, we we You guys saw
Speaker 1: it in Atlanta when I was down there, and uh,
Speaker 1: I am bringing it to Los Angeles for one night
Speaker 1: only before the Max Fun Con, which is the thing
Speaker 1: that is involved with the Maximum Fun dot org podcast
Speaker 1: network where you can hear my judge John Hodgman podcast.
Speaker 1: So those are all things you can find out about
Speaker 1: at John Hodgman dot com. Or just remember what I
Speaker 1: said and remember it was the thing you've ever heard
Speaker 1: and you wish you could hear it again. Hey, and
Speaker 1: you and I will be doing our annual trivia part
Speaker 1: bar trivia show at I know, but you know what, now,
Speaker 1: you're just making people sad because because it's all. So
Speaker 1: that's all sold out. The only thing you can the
Speaker 1: only thing you can do, people, is buy tickets for
Speaker 1: my show at Largo on June nine. It's the only
Speaker 1: ticket available. Where do they Where do they go to
Speaker 1: buy those? John? They go to John Hodgman dot com
Speaker 1: slash tour and there's a link directly to the Largo
Speaker 1: ticket page from there, or even I think it's Largo
Speaker 1: hyphen l a dot do do what I said, Go
Speaker 1: to John Hodgman dot com slash tour. Yeah, and everyone
Speaker 1: we can attest that that will be a very good show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can find John and all this social meds.
Speaker 1: I'm nostalgic for the time when we called it social media.
Speaker 1: Well we're moving on. Oh good now it's not even
Speaker 1: called social meds now, it's called Sonny. All right, lovely
Speaker 1: to talk to you guys. I will uh, I will
Speaker 1: sign off now. That is all I I chok. Was
Speaker 1: not expecting Jihad to make an appearance in that were you.
Speaker 1: I was not expecting Jihad, Donald Trump or Darth Maul
Speaker 1: to make it as here. But thanks a huge amount
Speaker 1: to Hodgeman. We appreciate it for coming on. The next
Speaker 1: time we have some sort of disagreement, we'll have them back.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure. Uh. And if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with this in the meantime, you can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff Works dot com.