Is Content Overload Killing Real Learning? Let's Find Out with Pardis Mahdavi

We kick off nervous and end up in one of our boldest chats yet. Our guest, Pardis Mahdavi, has stared down traffickers, survived 33 days in detention, and spent 18 hours in a sealed shipping container with 31 women. She breaks down human trafficking, higher education, and resilience with honesty and sharp insight.

We dive into meditation, psychedelics for healing, and practical ways to build agency and make better choices.

Packed with wild stories, real talk, and life lessons, this episode will stick with you. Hit play, share with a friend, and leave a review.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Interview Nerves
• 2:10 What Anthropology Really Looks Like
• 3:35 Dubai Fieldwork And Human Trafficking
• 6:40 Beyond “Taken”: How Trafficking Actually Works
• 9:15 Contractual Sterilization And Stateless Babies
• 12:20 The Shipping Container Ordeal
• 14:10 From Fieldwork To University Leadership
• 16:10 Higher Ed’s Crisis And Student Suffering
• 19:20 Meditation, States Of Mind, And Resilience
• 22:15 Psychedelics 101: Chairlift Vs Hike
• 25:20 Ibogaine: Addiction, PTSD, Brain Change
• 28:40 Safe Use, Integration, And Intentions
• 31:10 Community, Salons, And Learning Culture
• 33:05 A Call To An Iranian Friend
• 35:20 Iranian Culture, Warmth, And Poetry
• 37:10 Horses, War Logistics, And Smuggling
• 39:30 Turning Wild Lives Into Books And Films
• 41:20 Writing Process And New Fiction Projects
• 44:00 Mystery Schools, Powers, And Campus Drama
• 46:30 Closing Reflections And Gratitude

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. Hervous I am to interview you. I am.

SPEAKER_02: 0:30

Are you kidding?

SPEAKER_00: 0:31

No, I'm dead serious.

SPEAKER_02: 0:32

Why?

SPEAKER_00: 0:33

Because I made this mistake. I've said this, I've made this mistake a couple times on this podcast. Absolutely. Right? But I also like don't want to research because if I research and I feel like like I saw this interview with Larry King, and Larry King was like, you don't ever want to ask a question that you don't already know the answer to, which I think is silly. No offense, Larry King. May you rest in peace. But I want to like there's things about you that I don't know that I just want to come out. But it's like I could Google it. And then so but so I was driving here and I was talking to my sister. Yeah. And my sister's like, we talk quite a bit, and she's like one of the smartest women I know. She's just brilliant, smartest people I know. And I was telling her, Oh, I'm on the way to do a podcast. I was gonna go, who you interview? And I told her, and she's just on the phone, she starts Googling, and I'm like, What? Oh my god. And I'm like, I'm so out of my comfort zone talking to you. I'm so out of my intelligence bubble.

SPEAKER_05: 1:29

No way. Yes. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31

So like I'm gonna say things that are probably gonna sound stupid. Because she goes, she goes, she goes, wait, uh uh at what what's your at ASU your title was when I oh I was Dean.

SPEAKER_04: 1:42

Dean of uh social sciences.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44

Oh, I thought she did anthropology or something.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46

That too. Well, it was all I had 11 schools under me. So anthropology was one major in one school, but I had 11 schools under me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04: 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:55

Well, I was just like, I think that's a clothing store. It's also a clothing store. I wonder quite easy, where's anthropology since you're like the dean of anthropology?

SPEAKER_04: 2:05

Yeah. My PhD is in medical anthropology, which sounds super esoteric, but it's a lot more fun than it sounds.

SPEAKER_00: 2:11

See, just talking to someone that uses the word esoteric clearly like that is a little uh but okay. So wait. So if you if you studied anthropology, that's like if all kidding aside, that's like uh humankind, right?

SPEAKER_04: 2:24

That's like uh Yeah, it's sort of the study of of people and cultures and you know why people do the things that they do. So it's so funny though, when I say anthropology, people immediately want to think Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones. Right. And I'm like, okay, no, that's archaeology. I'm like, think James Bond. Like James Bond. We end up in strange, like I have ended up in a shipping locked in a shipping container in a port off the coast of Dubai with a bunch of trafficked women, actually, and three dead bodies, you know, or I found myself in Madagascar, you know, trying to get repatriate 47 Malagasy women, get them home with their babies in time for Christmas. So, you know, we end up in these wild places. I ended up in Rappa Nui, which is Easter Island. Uh, but Rappa Nui is what um the the the islanders call it's a tiny island off the coast of Chile. It's where the big heads are, you know. That's Rapanui. So I ended up there. That's why I say think James Bond.

SPEAKER_00: 3:27

But it's also that's got a hint of Indiana Jones. It does. Traveling all over. I mean, you're in Easter Island, there's the whole archaeology of the statues, where they came from, who put them there.

SPEAKER_02: 3:36

That's true.

SPEAKER_00: 3:36

But can we get to the shipping container? You just kind of go over that. What's this? Just throw that out there. Well, yeah, yeah. How are you in a shipping container with people? Like, what's that background of that story?

SPEAKER_04: 3:46

So I've written 10 books. Um, after my first book, which was on Iran, it was on sexual revolution in Iran. That's a whole story. I got pulled off stage. I got, you know, kicked out of my home country. So then I shifted my field site to Dubai and I was working on trafficking in Dubai, human trafficking. Um, I initially had gone to Dubai because I was following Iranian sex workers uh who would go to Dubai for three months a year and make just more money in three months than I have ever made in my career in the sex industry. So I started following them. But of course, I got to Dubai, and the thing that that was most noticeable to me was that there were people, men, literally in chains, like actual chains, you know, because they would bring them in to build these huge skyscrapers, primarily men from India, actually, Carolina. Um, and I was like, this is nuts. And, you know, when I look at the definition as an anthropologist, when I look at the definition of human trafficking, it's force, fraud, or coercion. And I'm like, you know, there are a lot of men being trafficked here in Dubai and women being trafficked into the domestic work industry. On the other hand, a lot of the women in the sex industry are saying that they are coming there to make a living. Now, back then, this was like 2007. Me saying this was very controversial. I'm like, you know, men can be trafficked, and people are like, men aren't trafficked. And I'm like, these men are definitely forced, frauded, coerced. They are definitely told that they're gonna come make a certain income. They're definitely told thinking they're gonna come do a certain job. And then they arrive in in Dubai and they're working 36-hour shifts in 125-degree weather. Us Phoenicians can relate to that. They're outside working these long shifts, and they live in these labor camps, John Jay. And then these labor camps were just, I mean, really, really sad situations. So I started writing about that, and I was writing about women being trafficked into the domestic work industry. And to write these books, though, I had to interview traffickers. I had to get myself smuggled, basically, to see what it was like. And so I was following a particular trafficking ring that was trafficking women from India.

SPEAKER_00: 6:05

So you went undercover?

SPEAKER_04: 6:06

Pretty much, yeah, to write the book.

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

As a like as a sex worker?

SPEAKER_04: 6:11

Um, I was just like, hey, what's this like? What's this experience like? Tell me about it. Uh and uh and what happened? Well, I found myself in a because I was trying to figure out how and why people were continuing to come to Dubai after so much abuse had been taken place.

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

Because Dubai in 2007 is way different than Dubai right now. Correct. Because everything I see about Dubai right now is amazing. But then again, that's probably what they want you to see, right? Because I know I have friends that are there right now, as a matter of fact. Right. In fact, I'll probably never now I'm afraid to ever go there because if anyone ever sees this interview in Dubai, they're probably gonna want to blacklist us.

SPEAKER_04: 6:47

Well, we can just edit this part.

SPEAKER_00: 6:48

No, heck no. Um So you had to go undercover. So were you like uh walking into a convenience store and someone kidnaps you and takes you away?

SPEAKER_04: 6:59

That's actually not what trafficking is. That and that's a lot of the work that I've done. You know, I gave a TED talk on this. People think trafficking is sort of like that movie, you know, taken with Liam Neeson, where he was like, I'm going to save you. And the reality is that's actually not what most trafficking is. Most people are trafficked by a relative, somebody who knows them, or they find themselves in these situations out of desperation. You know, I would interview trafficked persons and they would say, Look, I had to make a very painful choice between watching my kids starve to death and taking a risk and taking a chance that if I went to this other country, I would make money and I would be able to send it home.

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

But the the um you said these women were going to Dubai and making more money than you ever seen in your life.

SPEAKER_04: 7:41

Those were the so these were the Iranian sex workers. Right. So that's so that's that's what's so funny.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

So that's upscale and pleasant.

SPEAKER_04: 7:48

Well, by by choice. Now here's the interesting thing. Back in 2007, when you said the word trafficking, the word itself was like a rubber band. It stretched wide enough to include everybody in the sex industry, whether they were trafficked or not, but then it shrunk to exclude everyone outside the sex industry. So men, for instance, who were in construction work or women who were domestic workers, okay? So it wasn't serving anybody. The sex workers who were like, hey, I'm making this decision, not an easy decision, but you know, some of them were like, listen, Pardis, I'm too pretty to scrub toilets in Tehran. I'm gonna go do this and make a lot more than you'll ever make. It was complicated. It was hard, you know. So I was sort of trying to get my head around that. But then you had people on this other end who said, you know, I I remember this guy I was interviewing, actually from um the near Acom in India, and he was telling me that he had been told to come and work as a, he was going, he was, he had been told he was gonna come work as a cook, right? As a cook in one of these fancy hotels in Dubai. Well, he gets there and suddenly he's told, no, you're actually working, uh, you're going to be uh uh in the construction industry, you're going to be working these long shifts, you don't have a place to stay or live, you're gonna live in this tent, you're sleeping on the floor with you know 40 other men, there's no toilet. I mean, he didn't know. So, yes, he consented to go to Dubai. Yes, he consented to leave India. But what he did not consent to was his working conditions or the fact that, you know, his passport was being held, he wasn't getting paid what he was told he was going to get paid. But of course, at that point, he, like many people I've interviewed, they had leveraged, they had leveraged their family's money and all their belongings just to pay for the trip. Because the problem is traffickers, these unscrupulous middlemen, they charge the person. They're like, hey, you know, give me a thousand dollars, I'll take you to Dubai or wherever.

SPEAKER_00: 9:41

I mean, I'm picking on just like the coyotes with Mexico.

SPEAKER_04: 9:44

That's exactly right. Right. That's exactly right.

unknown: 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

But the hotels hire the workers. So when you say traffic, because I think whenever I think of human trafficking, you always think about sex trafficking.

SPEAKER_04: 9:54

And that's the that's the big problem, is that we can't always get restitution for people who are trafficked who aren't in the sex industry. But there are a lot in the United States, for instance, there's a great group called the Coalition for Amockley Workers. They've blown the whistle on a lot of trafficking cases in, for instance, um the agricultural industry. So, for instance, there's a there was a whole case of the people who men who were coming over to the United States, they were picking the tomatoes, being pistol whipped and having their wages held, you know. So it happens everywhere. Um, but it's often that people are trying to make a really tough decision between two pretty crappy like options. And for me, I I was trying to understand, you know, I I I I interviewed men, but then with the shipping container, I was trying to understand the trajectory of the women, particularly who were coming over to work as domestic workers or nannies in Dubai. I was trying to understand their trajectory, what was making them say yes, and then were they able to go back? In particular, one of the things I was interested in, which that's what took me to Madagascar later on, was because of the way the law is written in the Gulf states, it's I call it contractual sterilization. Women are told by contract they can't have sex during the time that they're there in country to work. Migrant women are told they can't have sex, but then their employers rape them sometimes. And then when the women show up pregnant, that's a visible marker that they've broken that law. And you know, which employer is gonna come forward and be like, Yes, I raped my maid. And um, so the women are often arrested and incarcerated and they have their babies in jail. And then the babies are stateless because citizenship in the Gulf passes through the father. And again, the father hasn't come forward, right? They don't have birthright citizenship. So now you have a situation where the woman is deported home to India, Madagascar, Ethiopia, but the baby remains in country stateless. So the way I ended up in Madagascar was we had this case of these 47 Malagasy women who were incarcerated in Kuwait. I was doing field working in the jails in Kuwait because they would let them stay while they were nursing the babies. The baby turned one, the women were deported. But I was very adamant at this point I had my own babies. And I was like, these babies should be able to go home because there were I had met and interviewed so many stateless kids in the Gulf. And I'm like, they should be able to go home. And they're like, Well, citizenship passes through the father, and it passes through the father at home. And so we went to the South African embassy and we were like, Can you just give us white passports just so we can get these kids home, back home to Madagascar with their moms for Christmas? And we did.

SPEAKER_00: 12:45

Wow. Now, is this in a book? Yeah, that was a book. Is this going to be a movie? I don't sound like it should be a movie.

SPEAKER_04: 12:50

A lot of my I feel like, you know, I have written a couple books that were probably more cinematic than that.

SPEAKER_00: 12:56

You gotta get these to some people. Okay, wait. So you're in the shipping container with 47 women, is what we said?

SPEAKER_04: 13:02

No, the 47 was Madagascar. I was in a shipping container with 31 women. Unfortunately, four of them were corpses by the end.

SPEAKER_00: 13:10

So how long were you in the shipping container?

SPEAKER_04: 13:13

Well, it was uh we went, let's see. I was probably because it was supposed to be past. So at this point, that that particular episode was about 18 hours.

SPEAKER_00: 13:26

And are you in the shipping container and it's being shipped?

SPEAKER_04: 13:28

It was getting ready to be shipped.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

Getting to to be workers somewhere.

SPEAKER_04: 13:32

It was actually there were workers who were gonna be being shipped from Dubai to the Comoros Islands because uh we actually were banging so loudly on the edge of the can that uh somebody came and got us out.

SPEAKER_00: 13:46

My God. Yeah, that is incredible. Yeah, it was a crazy. And then somehow you become president of a university.

SPEAKER_04: 13:51

That's right. That many years later, and then now I'm a recovering academic.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

Well, so wait, right now, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_04: 13:59

Right now, I the way I describe myself is first and foremost as an author. I spent a lot of my days writing, um, but I also am doing crisis communications for higher education, and I'm starting a university.

SPEAKER_00: 14:13

You're starting a university?

SPEAKER_04: 14:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:15

Like an online university?

SPEAKER_04: 14:16

Actually, it's gonna be a blend.

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

And do you have you have a name for it? Is it already started? Do you have students?

SPEAKER_04: 14:22

Uh we don't have students yet. We are lining up our faculty. Uh, and our approach is really because higher education today is broken. Uh for me and my own experience. So after I did all that wild, crazy medical anthrop medical anthropological work, the James Bond life, I uh I came back and I started to um kind of rise the academic ranks because I started to get focused on education and kind of what the education system was about. Um, what motivated me were really two things. One of them was my parents. My father, you know, I'm I'm Iranian American. We we came to the United States uh during the Iranian Revolution. And uh we were, I ended up, you know, my I was in utero when the revolution was happening. So I was born in Minnesota, that's where we were for a few years, and then we moved to California. Um, but you know, when we moved from Minnesota to California, my dad said something to me in that move, and he said, you know, Pardis, people can take everything from you. They can take your belongings, they can take your home, they can even take your country. But the one thing no one can ever take from you is your education. So that always like stuck with me, you know, as as the world was becoming topsy turvy. And I'm like, you know, I gotta help other people get that which can't be taken away. But probably the bigger impact for me was when I was a professor and I was just becoming, you know, department chair. Up in one particular year, we had three student suicides. And up until that point, I didn't know what it meant to award a posthumous degree, a degree to somebody who had died. And one of the suicides was a student of mine, and she was a student I was very close to, and it hit me really, really hard because that was the moment when I realized how inaccessible education had become for so many people. So I dove in headfirst. I became a dean, I became a you know, a dean at you know, at the University of Denver, and then I was dean at Arizona State, and then I was a provost at the University of Montana, and then I was president of the University of Laverne, and every move I made was really about helping more and more people get access and also figuring out how do we reform this system. So many people are suffering, so many people are in a suffering state, you know, to use uh uh the language of Krishnanji. And, you know, yet nobody was really addressing it. The numbers back this up. As we sit here today, it's the first time in American history where the the next generation, my kids' generation, will be less educated than their parents. It's the first time in American history where more than two-thirds of Americans believe college is not a good use of time, let alone money.

SPEAKER_00: 17:05

I hear that a lot now.

SPEAKER_04: 17:07

And it's the first time in American history we have 43 million Americans who started college but dropped out. We have 43 million dropouts.

SPEAKER_00: 17:15

Well, part of that also you keep hearing about who uh Zuckerberg, you hear about Elon Musk, you hear about Jeff Bezos, all these guys that are billionaires, and they all dropped out.

SPEAKER_04: 17:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:26

But you kind of go, that could be me too.

SPEAKER_04: 17:28

Yeah, there's that. And there's that pull, but there's always just like migration, there's always push factors and pull factors. So that's a pull. But I think there's also like we have to be honest with ourselves. You know, education has become totally inaccessible. I mean, look at tuition prices. I had students sleeping in their cars because you know their parents couldn't afford it.

SPEAKER_00: 17:50

Well, the the one student who the suicide was that because of the demands of the class? Was it did you ever find out why?

SPEAKER_04: 17:59

Yeah, you know, I talked I had talked with her before. I had talked with her friends, I spent a lot of time with her friends. She and her friends articulated feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt that that their families had mortgaged their homes so that they could be there. And they're like, if I'm not getting straight A's, like I'm letting my whole family down. And it was a combination of that guilt and not being able to see a path forward. So not being able to connect the dots and say, okay, this degree that my parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, am I certain it's gonna get me a job that's gonna support my family?

SPEAKER_00: 18:44

Let me ask you this. Are your parents still around?

SPEAKER_02: 18:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

How do your parents feel? I mean, your dad must be like, my god, my daughter. We came from another country in utero, and uh she's the president of a university in America. Like has he ever pulled you aside and told you how amazing that is?

SPEAKER_04: 19:07

Uh you know, he was on stage at my inauguration, and I think it was a big day for him, but it was a mixed bag for him because um, you know, he saw that my career trajectory was really hard on me. And the higher up I I rose in the ranks, the unhappier I became.

SPEAKER_00: 19:30

Really?

SPEAKER_04: 19:31

Why? Because I got closer and closer to the pain. You know, like I somehow the pain of the students mirrored my own. And um I was just trying to achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. And I kind of saw that they were going through the same thing, but feeling like things didn't make sense, feeling like the structures didn't make sense. And so by the time I became a president, I I was, you know, it was a lot had happened. I, you know, I when I was a dean here at ASU, I, you know, got divorced, and that was really hard on me and my my kids. I'm a single mom now. And um, and it, you know, it all that had happened and all of the things I had seen up close really took a toll on me. And it was hard to be inside the system and realize. I mean, look, this is what I this is what I explain to people today. It's like if you take away nothing else from our conversation, students don't need more content. They need context. They need context, not content. And so here I was in a system that I knew was broken, watching people suffer. I was also suffering. It just didn't make sense. I I couldn't, and you know, it it it took a real toll on me.

SPEAKER_00: 20:53

How has meditation helped you? Because I knew you meditate with my wife in the mornings, right? I do.

SPEAKER_04: 20:58

I love seeing her beautiful face and your pups, the dogs also. I believe the dogs are meditating with us.

SPEAKER_00: 21:04

Um how did you discover the meditation program or the that group, Krishna G and Pristur?

SPEAKER_04: 21:08

Yeah, I think I just I got connected to them through our friend, Ian, uh, our spiritual gangster, the great connector.

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

He was just here last week.

SPEAKER_04: 21:17

Was he? Yeah, he's uh he's he's the best. He's just the best. Um, I mean, I'm in YPO, so you know, I'm I got connected to him through that. But I had I had done some work when I had studied in India before. Um, and you know, I I meditation has always been something that like I kept trying to do and I knew I should do, but I I couldn't, it couldn't, I couldn't make it stick uh until I was introduced to to this work, to ACOM. And really I think it's the community, to be honest. Really, I think it's waking up and getting to see people like Blake and the pups. And and and um, you know, it's a it's the approach that the that our teachers, that Krishna G and Pritaji, like that approach of, you know, you wanna you want to come into your life from a beautiful state and not a suffering state, you know, it really opened my eyes. And, you know, when they said to me, you know, think about the decisions you've made from a suffering state, how well have those turned out as opposed to the decisions you've made from a beautiful state. And I realized that all of my books had always been written from a beautiful state because even though they were hard and I ended up locked in shipping containers and pulled off stage and interrogated and all these things, it was still a beautiful state because I really believed in what I was writing, you know, and I really believed in fighting for the causes that those people were about. So I came to it with that purity of heart. But a lot of the decisions that I was at times forced to make or that I was making, you know, as an administrator were coming from fear. And we know fear is a suffering state.

SPEAKER_00: 22:55

Okay, so I saw you speak at this little thing, right? Yeah. We were at, I don't know how many six, seven, eight months ago. And you talked about getting pulled off stage and that whole story.

SPEAKER_05: 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

And what was interesting is I know you and I wanted to ask questions, but I don't want to ask questions in front of people. But like you're on stage and you get the freaking hood over your head pulled out like uh pulled off like in the movies, and they kept you 33 days. 33 days you need to have a series of movies. And listen, you can argue with me, but you are Indiana Jones. Indiana James Bond is upscale tuxedos and fancy cars. That's true. Indiana Jones is shipping containers, and although the the the uh the methodology of you and met and in Indiana Jones is that the storyline for you is a little bit more serious.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Well, there are people who are alive, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:47

Yeah, right. So uh so when you got 33 days, were you beaten? What were you what'd they do to you for 33 days? It was all psychological.

SPEAKER_04: 23:56

Yeah, it was all psychological. Yeah, it was, you know, and you just the problem is you just don't know. Like you don't know when you're gonna get out. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know if you're gonna survive this. And yet somehow it makes this is the really weird thing, right? It made more sense. I think the people always ask me, like, how did you get through that? Or how did you get through being in a shipping container? How do you get through those things? How did you get through those things? But then being an administrator in higher ed broke you.

SPEAKER_00: 24:29

That's a really good question. I should have asked you that. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_04: 24:32

But you led me right to it. I mean, it it's it's crazy for me to say that like being stuck in Iran wasn't as terrifying as being a leader in higher education.

SPEAKER_00: 24:44

That's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04: 24:45

And I'll tell you why, though. Because, and it was the same when I was in Iran, when I was in, you know, throughout the Middle East. Um, it made sense to my brain, like, okay, they see me as the enemy, right? I had charges against they saw me as somebody who was trying to foment a velvet revolution. Because I my book was called Passionate Uprisings, Iran's Sexual Revolution.

SPEAKER_00: 25:10

And you're in Iran talking about it.

SPEAKER_04: 25:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

The ball's on you.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

I know. I think it was youth. Yeah. I was like, well, of course I'm gonna talk about it in Iran.

SPEAKER_00: 25:20

I'm afraid to go to Dubai now after this interview.

SPEAKER_01: 25:23

No, it's great. I'm I'm sure it's great.

SPEAKER_04: 25:25

I I unfortunately for me in Dubai, I see those tall buildings, and all I can see are all the men I've interviewed who've lost their lives, you know. But it, you know, it's it's it there are things to be said for it. If you want to go to the Middle East, let's have you go to Egypt. Let's do that instead. Um, but Iran was it it's weird to say this, but you know, I kind of understood why they were mad at me. I understood why they were they they thought I was either this basically, they thought I was either fomenting a velvet revolution or they thought that I was somehow involved in a prostitution ring, which, okay, like not ideal in a country where, you know, premarital sex or extramarital sex is illegal, truly. You cannot have, you know, and um, they saw me as this marker of immorality. So I kind of understood it. It was awful, it was terrifying. But intellectually I understood it. And same thing with traffickers, like you understand their motive. I think the hardest thing for me about being in higher education was I'm like, why is everybody trying to tear me down? It didn't make sense intellectually. I'm like, I'm on your side. We are trying to advance the cause of education. We are trying to prepare the next generation, you know, to be informed citizens in society, to be able to meet the needs of workforce. Like, hey, we're just trying to, we're just trying to do right. We're all on the same side. So I think that that's it was a cognitive disconnect that put me in a suffering state.

SPEAKER_00: 26:54

But the mental torture is what they for 33 days they were on is mental torture. So were you in a house? House arrests in a room, like a nice house, a two-bedroom condo? Like what kind of thing?

SPEAKER_04: 27:04

No, I mean everything was, you know, it was sparse, everything was taken away. It was it was my it was my apartment, but everything had been everything, everything.

SPEAKER_00: 27:10

So if you're in your apartment and there's like one guy at the door, inside, outside?

SPEAKER_04: 27:14

Well, outside at times, inside at times. I mean, everything had been taken away. Everything had been taken away.

SPEAKER_00: 27:19

And did you talk to like do you have one guy that you were talking to the whole time?

SPEAKER_04: 27:22

Mostly.

SPEAKER_00: 27:23

How come it was like how come you made it? Like how could I hear stories of you know, this person wore lipstick and something terrible happened?

SPEAKER_04: 27:30

Yeah, so actually, but you know, and I was writing about this in my book. It was called a lipstick jihad because that's a great example, John Jay. At the time, if you wore red lipstick, your lips could be slashed by a razor from the morality police. I mean, that's serious consequences.

SPEAKER_00: 27:45

But how come nothing like that happened to you?

SPEAKER_04: 27:47

Well, first of all, I think it was the timing, you know, 2007. But I also think that at that time, I wasn't a big enough fish to fry. I hope, potentially. Honestly, I I don't know. I'm just grateful to no, I can't go back.

SPEAKER_00: 28:01

You can't go back. I can't go back. Do you still have do you have do you have an American passport? Do you have a both?

SPEAKER_04: 28:06

Uh my uh I don't I don't have my Iranian passport, um, but I have my American passport because I was born here. Um I uh no, I I can't go back.

SPEAKER_00: 28:15

Are your parents there?

SPEAKER_04: 28:16

My parents are here in California. Oh, every other day.

SPEAKER_00: 28:21

It's been like that for a long time?

SPEAKER_04: 28:22

Yeah. So when you were gone for 33 days, or when you're in a shipping container, or they're like, Oh, well, they always know well, they always know where I'm off doing some kind of crazy thing.

SPEAKER_00: 28:32

Are you like, hey, I'm gonna go to Madagascar for a little bit? Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_04: 28:35

And is your dad or your mom just like well no, but let me tell you though, the funny thing is that at first when I was in Iran and I was doing my research, you know, between 2000 and 2006, 2007, I was doing my research, but my research entailed like going to parties and like raves, and and you know, I write in my book about observing like sex parties and things like that. And my parents were like, let me get this straight. You're getting grants to go over and party? Like, how do we get that job? And also parties. Exactly. That's exactly right. But uh, you know, they're they're like, you are at Columbia University getting a PhD and multiple masters, and somehow they're paying you to go to Tehran and go to parties. Like they couldn't understand that. That was like a cognitive disconnect for them. But then when they're like when I faced consequences, they're like, What were you thinking? You know. Um, and then later when, you know, shipping containers and all that started to come into play, they were just like, Are you ever gonna settle down?

SPEAKER_00: 29:34

You know, but now you kind of have.

SPEAKER_04: 29:36

Yes and no.

SPEAKER_00: 29:38

Are you going any adventures?

SPEAKER_04: 29:39

I think uh I I mean I think I go more on inner inner adventures. And then of course, you know, I I feel like, you know, the writing that I'm doing takes a lot bigger risks now. Cause I write fiction and I so I can take bigger risks now, and I can write more weirdly enough, I can write more honestly as a fiction writer than as a nonfiction writer. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 30:00

So you went to sex parties?

SPEAKER_04: 30:02

I did. In Iran and Dubai.

SPEAKER_00: 30:04

So how do you get invited to that? And what do you see? Is there a code to walk in the door? Is it is there like eyes wide shut?

SPEAKER_04: 30:10

I don't think Blake would let me give you the code.

SPEAKER_00: 30:13

But what's like do you just walk in and you're just an observer and they're like, you've got a notepad out?

SPEAKER_04: 30:18

Like how how So this goes back to what is it to be an anthropologist? People are like, well, what do you do as an anthropologist? And I say, Well, our method of work is called ethnography. What is ethnography? It's participant observation. So you go, you observe a phenomenon. Yeah, you take notes, or you kind of do a little voice recordings and you go to the bathroom where you kind of surreptitiously are like, okay, there's, you know, 45 people here, 30 of them are having sex. You know, you kind of are surreptitious, you know, not always like clipping.

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

They don't think you're hey, come on in over here.

SPEAKER_04: 30:48

Well, they knew what I was doing. They knew that I was researching. Well, I was very, I was, you know, these were young people involved in what they called a sexual revolution, right? Right. This was their movement. And I was trying to give a voice to their movement. I was trying to give them a platform to speak to the rest of the world. You know, at the time, 70% of Iran's population was under the age of 30. Highly educated, lots of young people, very disillusioned by the regime. They didn't buy the rhetoric of the regime. They're like, this is nonsense. So they were speaking back to the regime by using their bodies and their sexuality. See, you gotta understand, this is a regime that came to power under a fabric of morality. And my favorite example of this, you're gonna listen, like, this is my favorite example that demonstrates for you how the situation really was. Okay, so I had this interviewee, and he was telling me about the, you know, the the Islamist regime in power. So they're facing high unemployment rates, terrible traffic and infrastructure. But instead of trying to resolve that, they had sat around and they came up with a law. There's a law in the books, and the law says that if there is an earthquake and a man from an upstairs apartment falls into a woman from a downstairs apartment and she gets pregnant, that the child is not a bastard and is an act of God. Now, who is sitting around thinking about that kind of a sex? Like, who? How? What?

SPEAKER_00: 32:15

Now somebody got caught doing something in the children.

SPEAKER_04: 32:17

I just want to know, like, if there's an earthquake, or is everybody ready? Like nobody's I don't know. But the the young people were saying to me, listen, like these folks are more concerned about things like that. This is the language that they understand is morality and sexuality and West toxication. So we're gonna use that language to speak back to them. We're gonna use our bodies to resist the regime. That was the sexual revolution. So they're like, please come to the sex party and write about it.

SPEAKER_00: 32:45

Um, you went to Columbia University.

SPEAKER_04: 32:47

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_00: 32:48

Um was that a scholarship? Was that just you got in and your parents paid or you took student loans?

SPEAKER_04: 32:55

Well, so when you do a PhD program, at least at the time, PhD programs are you're paid because of course you're also a TA, you're working.

SPEAKER_00: 33:02

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 33:03

Uh so you know Did you undergrad somewhere else? I did undergrad at Occidental College. Oh wow. I did the Barack track, Barack Obama, Oxy to Columbia. So he did the same thing, Oxy to Colombia.

SPEAKER_00: 33:12

I have a friend of mine that did that too.

SPEAKER_04: 33:13

Yeah, yeah. So I went to Occidental, and then as soon as I graduated, well, while I was there, I worked for the UN for a bit, and then as soon as I graduated, I know. You are I know, it's insane. It's I know, I know. And I so I kept working for the UN when I was at Columbia. So I was TAing, I was working for the United Nations, and I was at a uh at a certain point, I spent a couple years working for the National Institute for Drug Abuse, where because I was a medical anthropologist, medical anthropology sits at the intersection of sex and drugs, right? Or sex, psychedelics, and the superconscious. And I was uh part of a study, I was doing helping do research on um club drugs. So it was literally my parents were like sex, drugs, and then you w.

SPEAKER_00: 34:00

So did you get the experiment in the psychedelics?

SPEAKER_04: 34:03

Uh at the time I was just writing about it.

SPEAKER_00: 34:05

But now you have.

SPEAKER_04: 34:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 34:09

And and did you do that with uh like a shamans only yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 34:14

Outside of the country.

SPEAKER_00: 34:15

And did it change your life? Like I totally did it totally you said no.

SPEAKER_04: 34:19

Completely changed my life.

SPEAKER_00: 34:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 34:20

Completely changed my life.

SPEAKER_00: 34:21

But in what way? Because I've heard that from so many people, and it excites me to kind of want to try it, but then I'm also afraid because I kind of like what I got going on right now.

SPEAKER_04: 34:30

Well, it touches parts of you and it excavates things that no amount of hours or years on a couch with a therapist is going to do. But like what?

SPEAKER_00: 34:38

Like what's uh like when I I so our our our friend told me about this girl that does the psychedelics or the the mushrooms or right?

SPEAKER_04: 34:47

Uh-huh, mushroom journeys or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 34:49

Yeah. And I she I it was so hush hush and under the table, and she came in and I met her in a room and she made a tea. Oh wow, yeah. Right. And I drank the tea, and then she was gonna take notes, and I was supposed to tell her everything that I that I was feeling. And I'm a pretty big guy.

SPEAKER_05: 35:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:09

And I think that I didn't get enough of the dose because I didn't really feel I felt like uh I was placeboing myself. Okay. Like I felt like, okay, because generally speaking, like if I just sit down and and close my eyes or whatever, I I can let the visions come that are pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_02: 35:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

And I was saying things to her and she was writing it down, and we were there for like three or four hours or something.

SPEAKER_02: 35:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 35:30

And I I didn't think anything was different. I I felt when I go back, I feel like I kind of made it up.

SPEAKER_04: 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:36

Because I don't think I got enough. Possibly. I've talked to so many people that did ketamine that, and that my god, you gotta do this. It's the cra, it's the most amazing thing. And now my wife, she's really because she's had some little bit of trauma that she wants to unpack somehow. Yeah, and the meditation is helping her tremendously. Um, and I'm kind of like, I I I'm afraid for her to do it because what if she doesn't like me anymore? Or what if she doesn't like it?

SPEAKER_01: 36:04

I don't A, I don't think that's possible.

SPEAKER_00: 36:06

She's like, what am I doing here?

SPEAKER_01: 36:08

No, I know. I know. A lot of people say that.

SPEAKER_04: 36:10

A lot of people say that that that's their worry. But first of all, I mean, she knows, you know, we all the meditation is also getting you there.

SPEAKER_00: 36:18

She said that too.

SPEAKER_04: 36:19

Yeah. I mean, the meditation is getting you there. The way I describe it, and the way I, you know, I had a shaman who once described it to me, like that the plant medicines are like a chairlift to God, right? They're like a chairlift to kind of some of your inner work. Whereas meditation is like you're hiking up that mountain. You're both, you're both things are gonna get you to the top. Do you want to chairlift it? Some people need to chairlift, and some people are like, no, I'm gonna walk it. I'm gonna walk it so I know like there's a little ridge over here, there's a cactus over here. So when I'm coming down, because see, that's the thing, nobody talks about coming down the mountain. Everybody's always talking about peaking and getting higher and higher and elevating and elevating, but the integration is so important. And that's where the meditation is so helpful because if you've gotten up to that point by walking it yourself, right? Climbing it through the work that we do, it's just it's I mean, you're you're able to walk it down, you're able to integrate those peak moments where you have these huge downloads and these huge connections to the divine, you're able to like make more sense of it. Whereas sometimes it can be, and this is something I've studied, right? As a medical anthropologist, I also have studied extensively. I've studied with shamans. And one of the things that people will say to you, I've studied with people who've also partaken of all sorts of plant medicines. Uh, and one of the things people will say to you is, you know, it can be challenging. You take this, like let's say ibogaine, right? The ibogaine is the big one right now. You know, Rick Perry's all over talking about Ibogaine in Arizona. You know, we had um Kirsten Cinema talking about it. And last year in the Arizona legislature, they passed a bill that's, you know, supplying millions of dollars to support ibogaine research. So let's let's talk about the iboga plant, which which makes ibogaine. Iboga comes from.

SPEAKER_00: 38:05

I'll say right now, I've never heard of any of this right now. Really? Unless it's called something else on the street.

SPEAKER_04: 38:09

Nope, it's uh it's ibogaine.

SPEAKER_00: 38:10

Ibogaine?

SPEAKER_04: 38:11

Ibogaine. Never heard of it. Yeah, Ibogaine.

SPEAKER_00: 38:13

To be honest with you. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 38:14

And what's fascinating still?

SPEAKER_00: 38:15

Is it a mushroom?

SPEAKER_04: 38:16

Well, no, it comes from the root of a the iboga plant, which is from Gabon.

SPEAKER_00: 38:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 38:22

And it's considered the strongest psychedelic there is at the moment, uh, even more than five Me O DMT, which we can talk about that one. That's buffo. Um, but Ibogaine, interestingly, the loudest proponents of Ibogaine today are uh people in the Republican Party. Rick Perry, former governor of Texas. Uh actually, uh Governor Abbott of Texas passed a bill uh last year that funded something like$50 million for Ibogaine research. What does it do? It's a very powerful psychedelic, and right now it's being used on uh former military, uh, so veterans, uh, former Navy SEALs, first responders.

SPEAKER_00: 38:59

PTSD.

SPEAKER_04: 39:00

Yeah, so the two biggest things Ibogaine does is it helps cure addiction. So people who are massive heroin addicts, they do one time in Ibogaine, never touch it again. Wow. Isn't it fascinating? It's fascinating. This stuff is fascinating.

SPEAKER_00: 39:13

NAD was for to help people get off of heroin, but it was eight-hour drips and yeah, and it's in NAD doesn't have the same.

SPEAKER_04: 39:19

I mean, when you look at the studies, and and the other thing Ibogaine does, so there's the Stanford Brain Study. There's a number of studies right now, but the Stanford Brain Study actually, and Rick Perry was part of it, it actually measured people's brains before and after ibogaine. Now, we know from our teachers in India that our brains also change with meditation because they're also studying that. There is a difference in white matter. With one round of treatment, just one round of ibogaine treatment, people's brains are dramatically changing.

SPEAKER_00: 39:51

Permanently? Permanently.

SPEAKER_04: 39:54

Permanently.

SPEAKER_00: 39:54

So is it a pill, an injection?

SPEAKER_04: 39:56

So you can take it as a tea or you could take it as a pill. This is ibogaine. Now we could talk about other psychedelics. Five MEO DMT is smoked. That's the Sonoran toad venom. We could talk about different ones. Ibogaine is just really fascinating because the data are so incredible. What we're seeing is that, you know, addicts who've who had tried everything, people who've been heroin addicts for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, one round of ibogaine, they never touch it again. Five years, 10 years later, they still haven't touched it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:27

Wow, I've never heard of this before.

SPEAKER_04: 40:29

And these military guys, well, you I mean, you know, there's a lot of research being done. I can connect you with folks. It'd be interesting. You know, you can you can interview one of my friends, Dr. Martin Polanco. He is a doctor who's been doing this research for 25 years.

SPEAKER_00: 40:42

Have you dabbled in ibigaine?

SPEAKER_04: 40:43

Ibigaine, I have not, because it is really for very, you know, but a lot of the people I work with have. I work a lot with first responders and Navy SEALs and Green Berets.

SPEAKER_00: 40:52

But let's say you don't have trauma. You don't have, can it be used for anti-aging or longevity? Can it repair brain cells? That's what people are studying as we speak. So I take it and I do I do you go, oh my ugly, or do you have to do it?

SPEAKER_04: 41:04

Well, no, it's actually you're not tripping. So these are also, I mean, here's the thing: people think psychedelics are all hallucinogens. They're actually not. So there are classes of of uh psychedelics that are what we would call empathogens or entheogens. They allow you to be either like MDMA is an empathogen. It allows you, you're not hallucinating, you're not tripping, like the leaves aren't changing or anything. But when you take MDMA, your empathy, your heart opens up. You have much greater capacity for empathy.

SPEAKER_00: 41:32

So everyone at these concerts, I love you.

SPEAKER_04: 41:35

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, there's that. So there's so there's also a difference between that's a great point, actually. There's a difference between taking these drugs and going to a concert, and whereas versus taking them as medicine with a shaman or with a provider or with a health care practitioner or a shaman who's going to do a ceremony around it and then invite you to go inwards. Yeah. With MDMA, it's being used a lot for couples therapy, which is actually what it was invented to do. When Sasha Shulgin, Alexander Shulgin, and his wife invented MDMA, she was a couples therapist. They invented this medicine for couples counseling so that people could drop into their hearts and open their hearts to each other.

SPEAKER_00: 42:17

And you remember when you come out of it?

SPEAKER_04: 42:19

Yeah, yeah. MDMA you remember often.

SPEAKER_00: 42:21

But what about what's it called? Imagine Imogen. Ibegaine? Ibogaine.

SPEAKER_04: 42:24

Ibegaine is different. You remember it because the experience of Ibegaine is when you take it, you it you close your eyes and you see your life like you're watching a movie. So you see, you see scenes from your childhood. So I've had people tell me about, you know, thinking that they were gonna go in there, people who were, you know, they were serving in the war on terror, right? Because, you know, one of my books is about the war on terror. We, you know, horse subs we were smuggling horse sperm into Afghanistan. And we could talk about that. But horse sperm. I know, it was crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 42:53

Why do we have to smuggle horse sperm in?

SPEAKER_04: 42:55

To continue breeding the horses that the United States Green Berets rode when they were fighting the Taliban during the war on terror. They actually rode these horses that my grandmother helped to breed.

SPEAKER_05: 43:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_04: 43:06

I know it's a crazy story. So I have this deep connection to the Green Berets and to a lot of former military. And when I talk to them about Ibegain, they often tell me, you know, I went in there thinking I was just gonna see scenes from Afghanistan, etc. And they say that a lot of the scenes they saw was from childhood and things like childhood abuse and things like, you know. But trauma. Trauma.

SPEAKER_00: 43:28

I'd like to know what happens if you had no trauma.

SPEAKER_04: 43:30

I think if you had no trauma, then I have actually interviewed people who have no trauma, they get to see like the things that they love. They get to like have memories that they forgot, like maybe a hug from their dad that they had forgotten about. And one of one of one of the guys I interviewed recently, he said, I got to be with my cat and my aunt, my two favorite who had both passed. He said, I got to spend eight hours with my cat and my aunt.

SPEAKER_00: 43:54

In real time, like not flashback.

SPEAKER_04: 43:57

Yeah, I mean, it was sort of in in their mind, they were having a conversation with their cat and their. I mean, so I guess you could see it sounds a little trippy, but it's it's kind of more working it on an energetic plane. I think it was some people say that they got to say things, they got to have conversations that they didn't get to have. I I interviewed somebody who um their sister had died, and they hadn't had a chance to say something really, really important to their sister before she died. And they did a different medicine, it wasn't ibogaine, it was a different medicine, but they did a different medicine and it allowed them to speak to their sister.

SPEAKER_00: 44:31

And that gave them peace when their medicine wore off.

SPEAKER_04: 44:34

Yeah. And it has like five years later, they they feel so much lighter.

unknown: 44:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_04: 44:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 44:39

Or you can do the work and climb up the hill and get there when you get Ibogaine.

SPEAKER_04: 44:45

It it's you know, it's different. See, it people are at different places. So, you know, I I think about this, I I don't judge, like, you know, some people might say, well, that's a shortcut, you know, take a chairlift to God, that's a shortcut. And I'm like, listen, different people need different things at different times. If you are somebody who's just come out of the military and you have suffered a great deal of trauma, or I think about first responders. You know, I work with a lot of first responders here who are just, they've, you know, seen so much death and destruction and trauma. For them, it's harder to get them to still themselves to meditate, you know, suddenly somebody who's just been adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline, go, go, go, go, go. They're programmed in a certain way. Now you tell them, okay, have a seat and go into the beautiful state. Right. Let's be honest, John Jay. I mean, but after the ibogaine, they all are able to do that. Whereas before the ibogaine, they weren't, as an example. Or for some people, it's ayahuasca. You know, it it it depends. Yeah, ayahuasca is, you know, people are talking a lot about ayahuasca. The data on ibogaine are just staggering because you have so many people studying the the, I mean, the fact that it treats addiction the way that it does, people literally don't touch the substance ever again. Or, or people who've been drinking alcohol their whole lives. Like that was Rick Perry was saying, you know, he's like, I wasn't an alcoholic, but I did ibogaine and I do not want to drink ever again.

SPEAKER_00: 46:07

You know, because it's bad for you, and it automatically tells you that's not like all of a sudden it makes you do things that are just good for you.

SPEAKER_04: 46:12

Well, we don't know exactly how these plants work, but what we do know is for thousands of years they've been used. I mean, I think about the plants that were being used in Iran by my ancestors thousands of years ago, or the plants that were used in ancient Greece. I mean, plants have been around a lot longer than we have.

SPEAKER_05: 46:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 46:27

I mean, just think about that, right? They've been around a lot longer than we as humans have. And so we're just right now starting to figure out how do these plants work? And to me, that's a really important area of education that we need to be leaning into right now. Because if these plants and these medicines are having the effects that we they seem to be, and again, we don't know. We don't know exactly, right? We don't know exactly how they work. To your point, it's like, well, how do they work? And can they have adverse effects? Sure. You know, can you have a bad trip on ayahuasca? Sure, sure. I mean, we hear we hear tons of stories about a friend who does mushrooms like every day.

SPEAKER_00: 47:05

And he'll tell me sometimes that he does a just trip, or I'm like, God, that sounds so yeah unappealing. Like, I kind of like being in somewhat control of my thoughts in my brain, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 47:13

Yeah, yeah. And I think that again, there's that, and you we mentioned you mentioned like the people at the concerts. I mean, there is to me a distinction versus therapy, using Yeah, as as medicine, or in the shamanic realms, or you know, coming to the medicine with an intention and saying, Hey, I'm hoping that you will open my heart to my partner, or I'm hoping that you will help me find clarity of purpose.

SPEAKER_00: 47:37

I'm gonna bring it up on the my radio show tomorrow and see if anyone's ever taken it. I bogaine. I bagain. I bogaine. I bogaine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 47:45

It's fascinating. I mean, and it's it's one of those that you're not just taking to get high. No, but it's not like mushrooms. It's not like because it is really hard on you know the body, right? Because you're seeing all these things and people do purge, like ayahuasca, they do purge. So this is not one of those that people are taking just to get high. It's all it's done, you know, with professionals. It's done in a typically, typically it's done in a clinical setting or in a shamanic setting.

SPEAKER_00: 48:10

So I had um, I've been doing this podcast now for a while, and I've had some guests that I think are like awesome. You're absolutely one of them. But the other one was Joe Polish.

SPEAKER_01: 48:19

I love Joe.

SPEAKER_00: 48:20

And I was so curious. Joe Polish is like a connection to every single person that I've wanted to interview or have interviewed. How do you know Joe Polish?

SPEAKER_04: 48:28

I met Joe. This is actually directly related to the conversation we were just having. A group of folks. So, you know, one of the things that's popular in Arizona are these salons, right? People like to organize ever since I was dean at ASU, I got connected to this community of people who like to host salons in their homes. Salon, like a what's like a learning, like a like a gathering. Like a mastermind.

SPEAKER_00: 48:49

People use the word mastermind now. Yes, a salon to me sounds like hair.

SPEAKER_04: 48:52

Well, I know, I know, I know. I I I love it because it's kind of similar to the far Persian word, but but it's different from masterminds because it's it's more casual. You come to somebody's home, there's food, there's wine often, you know, or whatever. It's in the evenings and it's you know, two, three hours, and people gather and they ask people to come and and talk about something that they want to learn about. So I first got connected to the salon community, if you will, back in 2019 when someone said, Hey, Pardeez, we don't understand human trafficking. You gave a TED talk on human trafficking. Come tell us about it. Like we realize that we don't understand what it is. So I went and I did that.

SPEAKER_00: 49:29

So you're like someone's house, 20 people there.

SPEAKER_04: 49:32

Uh probably 40, 40 or 50 people.

SPEAKER_00: 49:33

Hey, I was in a shipping container.

SPEAKER_04: 49:35

Pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:36

Pass the uh cheese.

SPEAKER_04: 49:37

Yeah, pretty much. But but it I actually I really love that. You know, I love that people are are coming together and saying, hey, we want to learn about something. I love that, you know. I love that that that friend, it's one of the things that makes me love Arizona. You know, I've lived in seven different countries and seven different states. People always ask me, what's your favorite place you've ever lived? And I'm like, Arizona. And I think that that this this curiosity, this like thirst for knowledge is one of the reasons I love living here. Um, but so back to your question about Joe, uh, I was asked to do a salon on plant medicine because one of these same communities was like, hey, we want to understand this, we want to learn about this, and we want to learn about it from an expert. You know, I have a PhD in medical anthropology and I've studied it quite a bit. And I'd written a number of articles that, you know, had had actually got, you know, my articles had been translated into like five languages and they were appearing in 40 countries. I can send you my plant medicine pieces. And uh they said, Okay, would you come do a salon on plant medicine? And I said, sure. And somebody invited Joe Polish. And so I'm up there and I'm talking about plant medicine. I'm talking about how it's so helpful for recovery. And of course, you know, he has genius recovery. And I'm talking about how we're these data are showing these staggering results, you know, in the recovery space. And we met and realized very quickly we are fellow tribal, like we are such kindred. It's sort of like you, you know, it's like I feel like we have people who were just kindred spirits. Like we're curious about the same things. And to me, what we're curious about is this sort of realm of the superconscious, right? Like, what is this energetic thing that binds so many of us? And there's so much more out there. Like, how do we tap into all the more, all the more that's out there? So, yeah, that's how I met Joe.

SPEAKER_00: 51:18

That's fascinating. He is fascinating.

SPEAKER_04: 51:20

He is fascinating.

SPEAKER_00: 51:21

And so if you have an ailment, an ailment, do you go to plant medicine? You don't go to pharmaceutical, or all you have both, they're connected.

SPEAKER_04: 51:29

Yeah, so I'm the daughter of a daughter and the granddaughter and the niece of doctors, MDs. Like everyone in my family is an MD. Almost. I mean, my father's a doc, my brother's a doc, my uncles are all docs, all MDs. Um, my youngest brother's a political scientist, so he was like the black sheep like me, the the two PhDs. But um, everyone else are MDs. And so it's funny that I kind of taken this path. I I think look, there's a place for Western medicine, certainly. You know, like if I need a new pair of glasses, I'm going to an eye, you know. Um but the glasses is a good example. Like, if I need a new pair of reading glasses, I'll go to the I'll go to the IDoc. But if I want to really see something that I feel like I'm not seeing, then I'll go to plant medicine. Like ketamine, for instance, that you you know you're talking about ketamine, ketamine helps you to see things from a different perspective because you're out of your body. And so you can see and experience things like that. Is that a plant?

SPEAKER_00: 52:28

Ketamine?

SPEAKER_04: 52:29

Ketamine is a psychedelic. Uh it's it's uh yes, I have. It is legal here in Arizona.

SPEAKER_00: 52:36

And do you love it, or is it just something like I tried it?

SPEAKER_04: 52:38

Um, I I I I think it's really powerful and I think it's really profound. Yeah. But again, it's not something I would do just like, hey, it's a Saturday night. Let's go. No, I just button.

SPEAKER_00: 52:48

He goes, dude, I just did a ketamine IV drip. It was the most I've done every drug in the world. Yeah. And this thing was the best trip. And this guy's very successful business guy. I have a lot of respect for him. And I was he was like, it's the best. And I was like, I've never done drugs.

SPEAKER_03: 53:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 53:03

I don't, I don't, I don't care to do that. Yeah. But if it does something to you, uh you know, like I try I try to be as healthy as I can. Absolutely. But if it's something that's gonna make me healthier, like stem cells. Yeah, like I talk about stem cells in this podcast all the time. But that's like I I I I look into that as much as I can to help me live longer and healthier. Are you into stuff like that?

SPEAKER_04: 53:22

Like longevity and biohacking. Yeah, too. I mean, to an extent. I like you, I try to be really healthy. I I have to say though, that since I came back to, I I say came back to because I was studying all these different kinds of roads to consciousness. But ever since I came back to what I would call the shamanic realm, so meditation, yes, but also the different, you know, uh uh allies, you know, psychedelic allies or or what have you, I'm a lot healthier. Um, I dropped 20 pounds. I was able to really find clarity of purpose. I have a way better relationship with my children and my family than I ever have.

SPEAKER_00: 54:01

Really? Way better. When you say you dropped 20 pounds, is it exercise or you stop the meditation helped you? I mean, what everything.

SPEAKER_04: 54:07

It was you, you the meditation, but all the other work that I was doing too, it helps you really see that all the ways in which we all try to numb out. And sometimes it's just eating. Like we're just trying to numb out.

SPEAKER_00: 54:21

Yeah. Imagine that. Ibogaine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 54:24

So I've had I've worked with two people who the Ibogaine actually made them stop eat like eating when they didn't really want to. Like they realized that it what it half the time what these what these medicines do is they take a mirror that's pushed up so close to your face and they just pull it back far enough for you to be able to look at yourself in a different light and be like, huh, I didn't realize I did that. And then once you see the pattern, once you see it, you can break it.

SPEAKER_00: 54:52

Right. So let me ask you, this this is stupid, but I have to tell you. No, you know how like um uh like if you have a friend that's single, oh you gotta meet my other friend that's single, even though there's like nothing in common, or like my friend got married and and oh you're gay? Oh, here he's gay. Like, so I I have this very good friend of mine who's from Iran.

SPEAKER_05: 55:13

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00: 55:13

Yeah, and I and he's he is the most beautiful human being. Not trying to set you up, I mean inside, beautiful human being. He is uh he he he's from there and he came to this country and he loves this country so much. It's so patriotic and he's such a beautiful man. I texted him and said, Hey, I'm gonna call you. I've never done this before, but I want to call I wanted to call him on the podcast. Yes, let's do it. His name is David Kalaj. You don't happen to know him, do you?

SPEAKER_01: 55:38

No, but let's do it. Let's speak a little farcy.

SPEAKER_00: 55:40

Yeah, I oh I yeah, he is I love it.

SPEAKER_03: 55:44

He is my countryman.

SPEAKER_00: 55:45

He's such a wonderful man. Like, if there was ever like a level of joy that you can have at a 10 at all times, that's him.

SPEAKER_04: 55:52

Really? Okay, but wait, has he read my book where I'm talking about the orgy and Iran? Because I might be able to do it. I don't know if he's read the book.

SPEAKER_00: 55:58

You can ask him, but I'm just gonna I just want to cold column. I mean, I told him I was gonna call it.

SPEAKER_04: 56:01

This is great.

SPEAKER_00: 56:02

I love this. How do you what's the best way to go speaker? This is when he answers the phone. He's just so I bet you're so happy.

SPEAKER_04: 56:07

Hey, but I'm a speaker. Oh, it is.

unknown: 56:10

Hello, it's David.

SPEAKER_00: 56:11

David Collage.

unknown: 56:13

Yes, how are you, my good friend?

SPEAKER_00: 56:15

Hi, I do I'm uh I'm doing the podcast right now, and I said say hi to my friend Pardeez.

SPEAKER_03: 56:21

Hi, Paris, how are you? Paris is Pardeez, no, no, Pardeez. Yes, my pardis hasam, hollow sham. I'm gonna give you back to my dear.

SPEAKER_04: 56:38

We're all he's just we're in the middle of this podcast, and uh he's interviewing me, and I, you know, I don't I've written a bunch of books, uh, I've written a few books about Iran. Uh I of course spent a lot of time there uh in our our homeland. Um yes, yes. Where are you from in Iran?

unknown: 56:57

I'm from Tehran.

SPEAKER_04: 56:58

Okay. I'm from Tehran, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 57:00

And but I have to tell you, you are in the most beautiful company that you can. It's he's a he's been a friend of many, many years and very consistent and always willing to help a good man.

SPEAKER_04: 57:13

I love it. I love it. You you you you know you know who's even more beautiful than John Jay? Is his wife.

SPEAKER_05: 57:20

Oh, she's at a different level.

SPEAKER_04: 57:23

Blake is just the most incredible human ever.

SPEAKER_00: 57:27

She's got a good heart that's so doesn't have to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_01: 57:29

Yes, yes. They're a beautiful.

SPEAKER_00: 57:31

Oh, I wanted you guys to talk about each other.

unknown: 57:35

I didn't know I was on a speaker.

SPEAKER_00: 57:36

Yeah, you're on speaker phone.

SPEAKER_05: 57:39

No, but uh they are extraordinary people.

unknown: 57:42

And of course, his wife, she's from a great incredible pedigree and the most loving human being you meet.

SPEAKER_00: 57:49

So they're gonna be able to do it. Okay. All right, I'll talk to you later. I love you, Papa Shakuli. Does he say that?

SPEAKER_03: 57:54

Khili Koshbahta.

unknown: 57:56

Do you need to talk to me anymore?

SPEAKER_00: 57:57

No, I'll call you later. I'll call you later. Okay, I'll give you a little bit of a little bit of a little bit. I love you. Bye-bye.

unknown: 58:02

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00: 58:03

He's such a nice guy.

SPEAKER_04: 58:04

I love you see, but this is like Iran, the people people always say to me, like, oh my gosh, Iran, whatever. And you know, you grow up with this notion of like Iran as the axis of evil and this and that and the other. And the reason I wrote the book I wrote is because Iranian people are so warm and loving. Yes, I mean, that's a great example. You know, I I tell people, I'm like, you know, I come from the land of like Hafez and Rumi, these amazing poets. And, you know, our teachers in India, they use Rumi all the time, the mystic poets, you know, and Shiraz, like the city of wine and love. Like it's this old, old culture, right? Persian, like it's this old, beautiful culture, and and there's this richness and this pride and the heritage.

SPEAKER_00: 58:51

And and well, isn't it the original Garden of Eden?

SPEAKER_04: 58:53

That's that's what that's what they say. You know, my name, pardis, means paradise because it was the and and in Hebrew, pardais means Garden of Eden. So, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 59:04

So I have to tell you one thing that he did. He's such a beautiful man. So he has been known for years and years and years, had this big thick mustache, big thick mustache. And my mom got brain cancer and she she died, and he said, I'm shaving my mustache off for your mom. And to him, and he it's never grown back. That was in 2011.

SPEAKER_04: 59:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 59:23

And he's had a mustache since he was four years old.

SPEAKER_04: 59:25

No, I mean, yeah, I know Iranians. Yeah, right. And he's like, isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_00: 59:29

Like he did that, and I and it's so weird because it it means nothing, but it means everything at the same time. Do you know what I mean? Like I was just like, I can't believe he did that for my mom.

SPEAKER_02: 59:37

Like it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 59:38

Yeah, he's such a nice guy.

SPEAKER_02: 59:39

Wow. So you've known him a long time.

SPEAKER_00: 59:41

I've known him a really long time.

SPEAKER_02: 59:42

How did you meet him?

SPEAKER_00: 59:43

Uh uh How did I meet him? I don't know. Oh, um, I know that he was a he's like a big time real estate agent. Okay, like here or here. He lives in Chandler. Oh wow, I mean he's a real estate agent. I mean, he's he sold Larry Fitzgerald's house, he bought him house, he sold a bunch of our friends. Around this and then wow, I wonder how I met him. That is a great that's how long ago it was. He's just kind of always been in my life.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:07

I love it. Does he meditate? You should invite him on the meditation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:09

I don't think he can meditate. That dude is a level. I've never seen that's the most calm I've ever heard him, by the way. I was expecting him to come out at a level like I love it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:16

Well, I mean, I disarm him with the Persian. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but he should meditate with us. Because you know, sometimes that big energy gives us energy too. I mean, that's why I like meditating with the group because you know, somebody comes on with this big, great energy, and then you're like, wow, like you really feel it when you're when you're meditating. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:36

Should I invite him? Yes, it would be a good idea. But then I'd have to send him the link to what you guys do.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:39

I'll send him. Yeah, I'll send it to you. You send it to you. I'll make you in. Yeah, I'll send it to him. It's great. It's great. Sometimes, you know, you you you get insights about somebody without uttering a single word. Like it's amazing. You know, I have friends that I've met through this meditation, and we sit there basically not talking to each other for 28 minutes every morning. And I feel like I know them more deeply than friends of mine that I talk to all the time. That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:05

That's what I was saying.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:07

Yeah. Yeah, I feel it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:09

And I don't think like there's some of you guys don't miss, right? You guys just you guys do a live every morning, right? Big group. Correct. Sometimes for whatever reason she can't make it live and she'll do it right after on her own. Me too. Yeah. Oh, you do?

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:21

I'm the same. I I have I have it downloaded. And if I can't make it because I got kids, you know, there's times when I gotta get the kids to school early or what have you, or if I'm traveling and the time doesn't line up, I always I haven't missed a single day of meditating in 18 months.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:37

Is that when you started 18 months ago?

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:39

Yeah. That's great.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:39

It's trained transformed my life.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:41

Have you been to Aikham?

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:42

No, not yet.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:43

Or the one in Sweden?

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:45

There's one in Sweden I've been to. I went this summer. Yeah, I went this summer. Um, it was beautiful. You'll love this. The the monastery where they do it at was uh funded and owned by ABBA.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:56

I talked to them about that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:58

Is that the funniest thing ever? Yeah. The the space was really beautiful. Um, you know, and it and it gives you that time to to go inwards. You know, it's it definitely felt like the climb of the mountain. It definitely felt like, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:15

Yeah, they're beautiful people. I did this thing for them in um I was on it. Oh, you were on that thing? Yeah, I listened to it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:21

You were great.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:22

So they asked me to do it again.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:23

You should definitely do it. I gotta tell you, so I had my mom watching that, right? And you know, my mom is like, you know, she is who she is, and she gets, you know, she has her her thoughts and her judgments. But every time you came on, she's like, Great, he's back.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:37

She loved listening to you. And I told her, I said, I know him. I said, I meditate with his wife, and she just loved every time you came on, she was just so excited.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:45

So, how did how did I do this interview? Was I okay with this interview?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:48

Are you kidding me? You're like best. I can't believe I was so excited that you even want.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:52

I gotta tell you, I was nervous. I'm like, I am not as interesting as anybody who's been on his show.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:57

Are you out of your mind? Are you you the only person I know that's ever been in a shipping container is Dexter from the TV show Dexter?

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:06

Totally. But has he carried horse sperm into a gun battle?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:10

No, so you smuggled horse spermin, you yourself? What your mother was like, get this over there. I need you to smoke.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:16

No, no, no, no. So I was with a group, I was with a group of women um who were helping to breed these horses. So actually, the oldest living breed of horses on the planet today are Caspian horses from Iran. Okay. I'm sure Dave knows about them. When you when you call him back, you tell him, in here, I think I have a Caspian horse around my neck right there. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's the oldest living breed of horses on the planet. Uh, Cornell horse genealogists have confirmed this.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:42

And they're known for their sure-footedness. And so, you know, they've been crossbred with all different kinds of horses. Well, there was a movie by Jerry Bruckheimer called Twelve Strong. Did you hear about this movie? It was about the American horse soldiers, American men who were first deployed into Afghanistan, and they defeated the Taliban shortly after 9-11 on horses because, of course, much of the terrain in Afghanistan you cannot navigate on a tank. And so uh at a certain point, we know the war was going on and on and on, and you know, there we just needed more horses. And um that particular group, you know, uh was getting a lot of the horses that had been trained by a group of women that my grandmother had helped to train. So it helped to smuggle from Iran to Afghanistan. But you had to keep the breeding of the horses.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:32

So you had to smuggle the sperm in and then get the horses pregnant and then breed. How many horses would like were there 30, 40 horses at a time?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:41

More, more. Oh, oh, born at a time. Well, yeah, I mean, you you could only impregnate, you know, so many. So you're just constantly doing it, right? Because they have to gestate and all of that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:50

But what where were you when the sperm was collected?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:53

Like where what's the sperm was often collected in Iran and then smuggled over there to Afghanistan.

unknown: 1:05:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:01

So those horses, those Caspian horses are happy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:03

Yeah, sure. I mean, what horses aren't you?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:05

But they'd be like, no, like, all right, yeah, who's ready to collect the sample?

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:09

Who's next? Next, the stallions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, when they weren't just Caspian, they were all kinds of horses, but having a little bit of the Caspian in them, I think, helped them.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:18

So do you carry it? Is it like little tubes or is it like a bigger one?

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:21

Oh, like vials, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:22

That's so crazy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:23

I know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:24

Totally crazy. You have about seven movies in you that I think could be blockbuster movies. Like, I want to when this podcast drops, yeah, I want to take clips and send it to certain people I know in the business because there this should be a movie. You should be a movie.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:36

Oh my god, I love you for that. From your mouth to God's ears. Seriously, this is like my dream.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:40

You gotta meet my sister. She's got the ears to the connection to all those things. I'd love to meet your sister.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:45

No, I mean, really, like the movie about the women um in Afghanistan, like the women who were actually training the horses. I mean, that should be a move. I wrote a book about this.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:53

Who would play you?

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:55

Uh uh probably there's an Iranian actress, and she she's amazing. Her name's Gol Shifte Fadahani. She's an Iranian actor, she's been in a bunch of things. Oh, yeah. I've probably seen her at all though. You've probably seen her, and there's another one, Shoda Al Toshlu. She was in House of Sand and Fog. I think she was in 24.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:10

Like, yeah, there's a it's funny you say that because I was going mainstream Hollywood actress.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:14

Oh, who do you think should play me?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:15

Well, I can see like a Sandra Bullock, but I think she's a lot older now. But uh or I can see Natalie Portman playing you.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:20

Oh, maybe.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:21

Maybe but I also think Salma Hike, I wish. There's also like um like you'd probably you probably need an up-and-coming person, but they probably want to tie they probably have to tie a star to play like the guys. Yeah, something in the world. The guys, probably.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:39

I don't know. It's really interesting. I really want to get involved in that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:42

Oh my god, yeah, that would be a gift. Well, and I mean I'm writing two fiction books, which are one is a young adult novel, it's gonna be part of a series, and one is an adult novel, which is like sits at the intersection of sex, psychedelics, and the superconscious.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:57

Okay, so when you do that, you just got your laptop open and you just go off the top of your head. Is that how you write a book?

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:02

Actually, in my case, a lot of it's based on my own experiences. A lot of it's based on what I observed. So it's actually more based on my own notes that of things that so, for instance, um, the young adult novel is about uh four, 16-year-olds, and they're in this stuffy elitist school where they're being suppressed, and there's this like evil hive mind trying to numb out their brains, and they discover a mystery school in Sedona that they're taken to by a herd of horses, right? So you can see some of those same themes there. And it's really about uh having an alternative education system that teaches you to trust yourself, that teaches you to harness your gifts and your powers. And they each have powers tied to an element. So one of them does hydroglyphics, she works with water, one of them is pyromancy, one of them is air, one of them is an earthworker. And they go to this mystery school and they're able to use their gifts and come back and save their classmates. The adult novel is a campus drama where it's set on a college campus after there's been a really terrible suicide. And the the the dean of the college is herself kind of dealing with all of the fallout while she's kind of going into these sort of trippy world of psychedelics. She finds out that there's a secret society, this underground secret society of male faculty that are kind of hazing male students, and that's what's leading to the suicide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:24

So these are the two. So when you write a book, you have in your head the beginning, middle, and end already. It's not like you sit down and just start going and then editing and going and editing.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:34

You outline, outline, outline. I mean, the biggest thing I say to write a book. Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:39

So you don't go, like I always picture, like whenever I interview musicians, yeah, like a Taylor Swift or somebody, I always ask them, How do you write the songs? Like, do you get a yellow pad out and a pen and use right? Are you in a laptop and like I remember Taylor said one time she did it on her phone on her notes?

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:54

Um I can't remember who most of them yellow pad.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:58

That's me too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:59

Oh, so you when you write your book, you're yellow, you're you're writing like all my outlines are are yellow, yellow pad.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:04

And then I have I cut out, or I actually use index cards, to be honest. I write scenes on index cards, I write characters and I write scenes on index cards, and then they're put up all around my office.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:14

And then at some point you got to put it on the computer?

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:17

Uh well, you outline, outline, outline, and then you type up your outline because I will usually share it with my agent. So I send it to my agent and I'm like, here's where I'm going with this. What do you think? And she'll be like, a little more here, a little more here, a little more here. Um, like for instance, in one version of the adult book I'm writing, which is called Sexistential Tripping. In one version of Sexistential Tripping, they go and there's a shaman. She's like, We're cutting the shaman.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:40

So I was like, okay, you know, so what gives her the credibility to do that? You're the talent.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:45

She's an amazing agent.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:47

Is she an agent or an editor?

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:49

She's both.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:50

You know, I would think like to I'd be like, You're the talent. I want to hear your story. Who's this person that's editing that out?

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:56

Well, the problem is that the book publishing industry, as you know, is a tough industry right now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:00

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:01

Um, I mean, young adult is is better than other ones.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:04

But how many books have you sold? Is there a number? Do you know the number overall? You've written 10 books, like have hundreds.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:09

I mean hundreds of thousands. Like tons, yeah. I mean, I don't I don't keep track. Honestly, I don't keep track.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:15

But so like when you in the book, there's so obviously there's sex in the book.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:19

Uh the new one, the fiction one?

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:20

Oh yeah. So that's gonna be like when we read when I read that, it's gonna be reading something that you experienced.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:25

Not necessarily. I mean, you you you base it on stuff that you experienced. Well, no, I mean, listen, some of it's but remember the horse worm. Well, exactly. But and remember, like, I observed sex parties, right? I observed all these things for years and years and years. And so, you know, sometimes it's based on something I've seen, or or a lot of the times the characters are for in the fiction novel, they're kind of composites of people that I've known, right? So there's a whole chapter and scene where they're at Burning Man, and she runs into like one of her students at Burning Man.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:59

Have you been a Burning Man? Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:02

Who hasn't, right? But of course, you know, she's there, she's at Burning Man, she's like, you know, she's tripping on mushrooms, and she runs into one of our students. So, you know, like there's there, and that and that student is like, you know, that's a composite, or like it's the you know, you you sort of take people you've met along your along your lifetime and and you start to put them together into these characters. And for instance, for my young adult novel, a lot of it's I have a 15-year-old daughter, and you know, she's 15, 16. A lot of it's based on her and her friends, you know, and how they speak. And and I actually show it to them.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:33

Did you put that in the book? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:35

I'm like, um, is the whole world on the in on the six-seven joke, which by the way, I still don't understand it. Like, everyone's in on this joke, but what is it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:42

Webster's actually put it in the dictionary now as a word six. Really? Yeah. It is uh it's it's an internet sensation, stupidity, yeah, but it's become a thing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:53

I mean, we gotta learn it. Yeah, it's a thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:55

Well, thank you for being on my podcast, Bob.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:57

Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:00

You're awesome. Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show.