Leonard Pickard
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William Leonard Pickard
Leonard Pickard
Consciousness Gets Strange with Duncan Trussell
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🎙️ JLS Podcast: Hosted by William Leonard Pickard
🚀 About Duncan Trussell
Duncan Trussell is a comedian, podcaster, and modern-day philosopher-trickster whose work blends humor, spirituality, and existential inquiry. Through stand-up, storytelling, and his long-running podcast, he explores the strange edges of consciousness, identity, and the human condition—inviting audiences to laugh, question, and wake up all at once.
🌀 Comedy as a Gateway to Consciousness
Trussell treats comedy not just as entertainment, but as a tool for inquiry—using absurd scenarios, surreal hypotheticals, and philosophical riddles to explore ego, fear, death, and meaning. Whether imagining LSD customer support hotlines or inventing fictional religions, he reveals how humor can soften the boundaries of identity and open space for insight
🧠Psychedelics, Ego Death, and Letting Go
Drawing from personal experience, Trussell reflects on the terror and beauty of psychedelic states—particularly the recurring fear of death that precedes surrender. He describes these experiences as invitations to release control, dissolve identity, and rediscover a deeper, interconnected nature of being.
🤖 AI, Android Love, and the Future of Humanity
The conversation expands into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, where Trussell imagines a near future of human-android relationships, AI-influenced behavior, and technological systems that subtly shape human thought. He frames AI as both a profound opportunity and a potential existential riddle—one that may redefine intimacy, identity, and society itself.
🔥 Cult Dynamics, Gurus, and the Human Need for Guidance
With humor and honesty, Trussell unpacks the psychological roots of spiritual authority—why people seek gurus, how family dynamics shape spiritual longing, and how easily power can be misused in the name of enlightenment. He reflects on the importance of discernment, autonomy, and humility on the path of inner work.
đź«€ Forgiveness, Compassion, and the Human Superpower
In one of the conversation’s most intimate reflections, Trussell describes a dream of forgiving a mythical reptilian being—arriving at a realization that humanity’s greatest power may be the capacity to forgive, even in the face of harm. He points to compassion, service, and connection as the deeper lessons beneath all spiritual traditions.
🌌 Weirdness, Reality, and the Absurdity of Being Alive
From haunted comedy clubs to imaginary animated bank-robbing mushrooms, the conversation dances through the surreal textures of life—suggesting that weirdness is not something we control, but something we participate in. For Trussell, embracing the strange is part of embracing reality itself.
🏆 Final Takeaways
A playful yet profound journey through psychedelics, technology, spirituality, and the human psyche—reminding us that laughter, curiosity, and compassion may be the most reliable guides through an increasingly complex and mysterious world.
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Yes, uh hi, uh William and Leonard Picard uh with the great pleasure today on The Last Alchemist of interviewing Duncan Drussell. Hi. Yes. Last time I saw Duncan was in the green room at the portal uh in uh Meow Wolf in Denver, and uh may I he was dressed as a uh priest in a long road, his long beard, an actual priest Episcopalian robe. And he wound up on stage with uh four giant screens of kind of cartoons, uh unusual people, but uh he said he was channeling a housewife in a shopping mall in Ohio.
SPEAKER_00Wearing VR goggles.
SPEAKER_01Wearing VR goggles.
SPEAKER_00We all were, in fact.
SPEAKER_01In fact, everybody was, and this was her imagery, and behind him were three, you know, gorgeous uh dancers, three sisters just gyrating in sequins uniforms, and music was playing, and I thought, oh, this guy really knows how to put on a show.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. That was fun. Yeah, meow they're so cool. What I loved about them is any like I would ask them for the weirdest things. Can we distribute communion wafers? Yeah, sure, no problem. Can you get communion wafers? Yeah, we'll have communion wafers. They're such artists over there, they're incredible.
SPEAKER_01That was a fun night. They had about a crowd of about two, three hundred people just going, what? What is going on here? I kind of followed it, but it was really fine. So, some questions. So these are a little weird. So feel free. Feel free to riff. Okay. If uh if LSD had a customer support hotline, what would be the top three complaints and how would you handle them?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I love it. That's fantastic. Yeah, okay. Uh I'll just sort of scroll through my bad trips. Oh, your good trips. I'm not calling a support line. If I'm having a good trip. But I, you know, when I was learning how to use LSD and didn't understand the um, you know, the hopefully kids, not kids, but hopefully these days people understand like the basic rules, you know, of LSD. I think one of the big challenges in the support line idea is that implies you're going on your phone. Fuck, don't do that, man. I think that's like a number one like roll of the dice to leave your phone on on LSD. So maybe, well, the first thing I would say, maybe the recorded voice before I start talking to someone having complaints about LSD.
SPEAKER_01Hello, hello, welcome to the hotline. Are you hallucinating?
SPEAKER_00Perhaps you should turn your phone off. Not just the road to hell, man. It's the road to hell. And I any time that I've taken a psychedelic, no matter what it might be, and gone into my phone, it's a really gross feeling. Like it it I never connected with technology uh very well when I was high, except for like synthesizers and stuff, creative technologies and stuff. So um I think I think the like probably one complaint you're gonna hear a lot is something to do with fear of one's imminent death. That a feeling of, I think I'm about to die. I have a real sense right now that something's gone wrong in my body, I'm dying. I'm about to die.
SPEAKER_01We're relax and float downstream.
SPEAKER_00Ah, there you go. I think that is the correct response. I think what what did McKenna say? If you don't feel like you're you're about to die, you haven't taken out the right dose. And but people don't know that at first. They I don't think when I I certainly didn't in those days know that like I was being invited to sort of let go completely. And uh so you cling, you know, you cling to that little sliver of life desperately, and then that's where the things can go downhill pretty quick. Yeah, the moment you die and you let go, and it's like on the other side of that, hopefully, is the exact same thing on the other side of when we die.
SPEAKER_01And we're just dancing molecules anyway, and molecules are atoms, and atoms are mostly space with a little electron circling this sort of thing, sort of probability. It's you know, hey, it's all up for grabs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So suppose during this interview you wake up and decide that your mind is run by a 60s guru, but your body is stuck in a long line at the DMV.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How do you get out of that?
SPEAKER_00Do I want to get out of it?
SPEAKER_01That could be a really long line.
SPEAKER_00Well your feet are hurting. Listen, I nobody wants to be at the DMV. Nobody wants to be at the airport, nobody wants to fly, nobody all these like experiences that you that do, like if you kind of calculate experiences in probably most human lives, most of the experiences are some version of a line at the DMV, filling out your taxes, uh signing some weird form, um, getting your driver's license renewed, getting the car registration, um grocery shopping, uh obviously sitting in traffic, dealing with the fucked up internet, or waiting for your video game to download, or installation payments on taxes. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So the 60s guru uh that uh apparently I uh uh somehow am that's guiding me is probably gonna tell me listen, if you don't figure out a way to to to not hierarchize your experience.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna be stuck in this cycle forever. Forever. Forever. Yeah. Oh man. So so while standing the DMV line, you think maybe I could start a new spiritual movement and name it um the Church of Mildly Weird Helpful Weirdness.
SPEAKER_00I love it.
SPEAKER_01What are the three commandments? Oh the church of helpful weirdness.
SPEAKER_00Don't be afraid. Um don't be afraid. I'm gonna steal Sartra. Existence precedes essence and the third is disregard the first two.
SPEAKER_01That's pretty loose. Okay, so you're in the same dream and you've got um you're thinking of pitching an uh animated series with three characters. One's a mushroom, one's a Texan mystic, and one is your inner critic. What's episode one?
SPEAKER_00Okay, let me uh let's go through that again. We've got a Texas mystic, we got a mushroom, and we have an inner critic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what's those are the three characters.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So Texas mushroom would episode one before. Robbing a bank.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, like we're gonna do like some some satirical take on Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon, these three disparate uh characters are robbing a bank. So you've got the mystic who, based on the previous question, is probably saying, listen, fuck this, you know, um uh existence precedes essence. We can define ourselves. I know that we I'm a mystic, and normally I shouldn't be robbing a bank, but that's the very reason I have to do it. Because if I allow myself to stay trapped in this idiot mystic role, uh then I'm not true. And how can I how can I call myself a mystic if I don't rob a bank? Of course, the inner critic, uh I don't know what that would be embossed, some kind of reptilian frog thing is gonna say, number one, you're not a mystic.
SPEAKER_01Number two, we're arguing with you already. Yeah, you just want to rob, you want to rob a fucking bank.
SPEAKER_00What's a mushroom doing the bank? Uh I I think probably the um yeah, the mushroom. Let me think. Well, god, that's that's a good one. That's this is where it's gonna be tough for me in the story because it's hard for me to picture what a bank robbing mushroom liberty cap. Okay. A liberty cap. You know, I think, yeah, okay. So this is happening. It's making the teller smile. So we're getting over bags. We're gonna set this in uh the dead of winter. They've got the heat up too much in the bank. So I think we're just gonna make the liberty cap mushroom like slowly throughout the episode m melt melting and disintegrating. And at first it might be saying something you some trope you'd expect a mushroom to say, but then by the end of the episode, it's just this little gargling, bubbling thing on the floor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So suppose during this robbery someone hangs you a microphone. And uh you're allowed to interview any non-human entity um a dog, an octopus, a galaxy, your concept of uh vigor or shame or general weirdness? Which one would you pick?
SPEAKER_00Ebola.
SPEAKER_01Okay, interview Ebola.
SPEAKER_00Don't you want to know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What's going on there, man? Unusual pick.
SPEAKER_00You know what happens, right? You know what you're doing to you know what you're doing to us, right? Like what what you do you recognize you're creating you're a hemorrhagic fever?
SPEAKER_01In the in the human realm, billions are at your mercy.
SPEAKER_00People are weeping blood because of you. What's your take on that, man?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. How do you feel about it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely would want to do a podcast with hemorrhagic fever. Oh my god. Just to get a sense, you know, that's the thing. It's like right now, the only way we could communicate with these diseases is via some vaccine or, you know, some kind of antiviral or something like that. But if you could create some kind of ability to just have a conversation with disease, you never know. Like maybe you could turn it the other way. I mean, maybe its existence, I guess its existence depends on destroying its host, but that seems like a pretty uh limited way to live.
SPEAKER_01If you feel really bad about six human billion human lives, you could turn into fertilizer, make oxygen.
SPEAKER_00That's an interesting choice. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, you're saying, wait, from this perspective, uh I don't think any of us have any choice when it comes to turning into fertilizer, right?
SPEAKER_01Like, well, we're going that way, right? So All of us. There's a whole whole new vigor boundary to prevent normal burials and just do people in leaves and what have you. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I heard about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. That's a good way to do it. Okay. But I'm worried about that because I don't dogs dig I mean, I just don't want a dog to like come back to my house with my grandfather's sternum in its mouth.
SPEAKER_01Six feet. That's the reason for six feet.
SPEAKER_00I don't know, man. I feel like something's gonna get in there, maybe a little deeper. Oh. I guess that would that's been a problem. Like, when did they come up with six feet? There must have been a time where like it was a real issue where you'd only go down four.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, or lots of people in the wars or Yeah. Uh hey, that's getting pretty heavy. What would the mayor of Austin say? Suppose you were the appointed mayor of Austin for 24 hours. Okay. And the only tools you had were like a microphone and a podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh what absurd law would you create? In Austin? That somehow makes the city healthier. Austin, Texas.
SPEAKER_00You can't say keep Austin weird anymore.
SPEAKER_01We're in Austin, Texas, folks.
SPEAKER_00I'm removing if you say keep Austin Weird, if you display any sticker saying keep Austin weird, immediate arrest, five-year prisons, and I'm going full fascist just on that point, because the moment you articulate that you want to keep things weird, they are no longer weird. There's, you know, weirdness is not uh controlled by individual humans, thank God. You know, it just it's it's an emergent phenomena. It's interdependent, but uh this idea that you can domesticate weirdness, you can keep it weird. Forget it. Weird might have flown the coop the moment it saw those fucking bumper stickers everywhere. It just left. It's like I'm not gonna stay around people who want to like harvest me. You can't harvest weird. I'm not gonna be harvested, I'm not a crop. I'm not a crop, so you can sell t-shirts. So can't say that anymore. Everything else, I I guess I'll keep it the same because I really don't know much about governance.
SPEAKER_01So even beers have an inner critic. And so if your inner critic became a character on a cartoon show, what would it look like? My inner critic? Your inner critic, what would it look like, sound like? What's his catchphrase?
SPEAKER_00Hold on. Let me let me let me I don't I don't know some kind of combo of like some kind of like really cheesy, some combination like what I don't know, like I don't mean like the real Jesus in my mind, like mystic Christ contract. I mean like you know, some shitty like in in that movie Carrie, you know, that that the judgmental Christ. You know what I mean? It's some mixture of that, but Godzilla, you know what I mean? Like crown of thorns, Godzilla wearing a crown of thorns or something. Crucified. Crucified Godzilla? Yo. Um I don't know. Actually, I think that's giving it way too much credit. It's telling me that that's giving it way too much credit. It's not Godzilla size. It's I don't know, it's probably like a Vienna sausage, kind of whiny Vienna sausage with bad opinions about everything.
SPEAKER_01Duncan, what's the strangest thing that's happened to you on the road? Tell us some funny stories about your act on the road thing. Strangest thing on the road. I'll tell you. Happened in the airport. What? Yeah, you know, I think memorable events.
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you some, like uh there have been uh more than a few, but I'll tell you some really weird ones. Um you know, I I I don't know where you stand in the matter of like haunted houses, ghosts, paranormal stuff, but I I I I I feel like I can go I I could feel it when a house has some kind of weird vibe. And um and I don't know if everyone just thinks their house is haunted and it's just a trick where you walk into someone's house, like, man, is your house haunted? And they're always gonna be like, yes, because everyone has some sense, like, but so I don't know. But you know, it's one example, and I'm not trying to say I have some kind of like extra sensory perception, it's just a weird sense I get. I we were shooting drunk history once, and I remember walking into this house. I'm like, oh fuck, this is a haunted house, which I don't like. I don't, it's not like poltergeist. It's just it's it's like a gloomy vibe, it's just this heavy, oppressive sense. It's not good. It's like when you walk into a room after an argument just happened or something like that. And I went in and I was like, oh, is this house haunted? To the owner. And he was like, fuck, how do you know? I'm like, what? He's like, oh yeah, it is the the previous owner died underneath an electric blanket. They didn't find the body for like a couple of weeks. So just this soupy mass underneath an electric, it'd been baking under an electric blanket. So walked into this comedy club, same sense of like, oh fuck, man. This feels like it's haunted in here. And um, of course, I asked around, and yeah, like I I guess like a year, a few years before, an employee had like unalive themselves and um since then, weird shit. And then this is where it gets really strange. I had not articulated this to my feature. And I don't know, I walk in the green room and she's like, Duncan, I don't know how to explain this, but I just saw like Kleenex came out, just came out of this Kleenex box by itself, like this weepy fucking ghost. I wish I didn't do that. So that was that was weird. Like with mini ghost and robe and all that. No, I didn't see it. I never seen one. I never seen one, but I you know, I I used to work at the comedy store for in LA, and everyone talks about how that place is haunted. And it is. And to the like clairvoyants were always coming in there to try to like talk to the ghost in the day. And these clairvoyants came in, and of course, they're like, Can we walk around the building? I'm like, fuck yes, you can. Just let me walk around with you. And yeah, I saw it happen on there are these stairs going up to the belly room, which is like a 90-seater. And all of a sudden, the clairvoyant stops on the stairs. It's like something here, it's it starts doing the clairvoyant thing, and it's something about brothers or I don't know. And the neon light right next to the clairvoyant just starts flickering, like like on cube. Perfectly, yeah. It was really weird. That that was really weird. And then um, you know, I've like, I guess one of my favorite, probably not so great things that happened to me on the road was when I used to do this satanic puppet act.
SPEAKER_01And it was like, you know, it was like Joan Rivers with a Lamkin or it was Lil Hobo.
SPEAKER_00Lil Hobo's his name. And basically the premise of the damn thing is uh, you know, I do it at the end of my act, and I got by the when I I stopped doing it uh because it was a I just done it too much and I was tired of it. But the setup for the thing is I'd be like, all right, guys, that's the comedy part of my show. And I get real sentimental and just talk about how my grandfather had passed away, like right before I came out for that weekend. This is the setup, right? This is the setup. Okay. And by the end of doing it, I got to where I could make my I could cry a little bit, a little tears. And people would yell out, like, we love you, it's okay. And and then I would just say, you know, I'd do this whole dumb setup about how, you know, he one day he'd help put out this fire at a church where everybody else had died. And in the basement of the church, he'd found this puppet that he brought home. And, you know, he'd all he from that point on he wanted to be a ventriloquist. And you know, I just wanted to give this puppet a chance to actually be on stage. And I'd pull out this fucked up puppet I got on eBay, this scary old vintage porcelain fucked up doll. Yeah, and then basically I could, I would make, we would dedicate Wish You Were Here to my grandfather, and we would start, I would start singing it, and the and then I would started like essentially the puppet comes to life on its own. And I with a you know, it was many people believed it because it seemed impossible that the puppet could sing with me at the same time. Yeah. So I remember doing that in Atlanta. And it would either eat shit and bomb in an extraordinary way, or it would the audience would freak out. And in this case, I remember this woman stood up in the middle of it and just started yelling Bible verses at me and rebuking demons and stormed out. And I was like, wow, dude, that's that's not little hobo. Don't that one don't show that. That's it, that's old little hobo. No, new little hobo. Their actual little hobo got stolen in San Jose. So you're not gonna find little hobo because it's not recorded. The real little hobo is long gone. I'm really sorry about that. But that was a fun moment for me.
SPEAKER_01Well, it sounds like you could have a new religion from that night. So let's assume you could pitch a new religion. Okay, you could pitch a new religion in 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Give me one ritual, one holiday, one taboo.
SPEAKER_00You want me to do this just off the cuff?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Gonna do one ritual, one holiday, one taboo, and one mascot.
SPEAKER_00A mascot is hilarious. Okay, sure. Um a new religion. Fuck, man.
SPEAKER_01Did we really need you got religion long ago? You can create 30 religions.
SPEAKER_00I don't want that's all I'm gonna tell you. I uh don't we have enough religions?
SPEAKER_01Well, we do. Well, let's have this one though. Okay, duck and religion. One ritual, one holiday, one taboo, one mascot.
SPEAKER_00All right, yeah, okay. I'm just gonna rebrand Gnosticism, I think. I'm just gonna do that. Gnosticism? Yeah, I'm gonna rebrand Gnosticism in some kind of cool fucking way. You saw a little bit of it. I'm just gonna say, yeah, and this is just off the cuff. If you gave me more time, I might be able to come up with some some some better bullshit than this bullshit. But uh, I'm gonna do yeah, the bait essentially the religion. Is um uh here's the religion. You are okay, here's how it works. I know you think you're a human being. You're not. Um you are actually on a mothership. It's part of a fleet of motherships.
SPEAKER_01It looks like one in here.
SPEAKER_00It's a very, very powerful training uh part of the training. See, the deal is this. Um for we for a long time have been um going to new planets, and uh we because we we understand exactly what can go wrong in populating a planet, we what we do is on the very long trip to the new planet that you're going to um help terraform. Um we are going to allow you you you actually experience every life of every life form that was on this planet called Earth at the very end of its lifespan so you understand where things went wrong so we don't do it again. Love it. It sounds like Ibogaine. Is that what Iboga gain does? Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, yeah. So that's gonna be sort of the I don't know, I have to work on it. You're essentially like uh you're the the training loop uh is probably like in real time, which I'm not even sure how you measure time and space, but let's just say it's a a month of earth time. Uh, but to you it's gonna seem like infinity because we figured out how to control the flow of time mentally. This the subjectivity of time is very we we can manipulate. I don't know how we're doing it, some kind of high-tech sci-fi psychotropic or something. A cream, you're covered in time cream laying. Right. Yeah, we rub time cream on your head, and then you experience literally not just every life on the planet, but you have to you experience every life on the planet over and over and over again until you learn that the most important thing is service and compassion. And until you learn that, you just keep doing the loop. And then by the time we finally get to the new planet, you are going to be an advanced, enlightened being. And um also it's a shared experience. So everyone around you is or different crew members, whether they know it or not, who are being trained up. And so your job is to participate in the training via becoming some kind of selfless uh servant of the uh crew. Okay, it's been about a million dollars.
SPEAKER_01It's such a tough day practicing this new religion and getting it all contorted to die. And you wake up in a cosmic green room.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And who are the other three guests there? Who are who's there? Anyone other people, dead, fictional? Who do I want to see when I die? What are they who's in the green room and what are they arguing about?
SPEAKER_00In the green room of the the bardo?
SPEAKER_01You're talking about some like when you die, who's there?
SPEAKER_00Who's there?
SPEAKER_01And what are they arguing about?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. It's it like hopeful I mean if I if I got to witness, wouldn't it be like, I don't know, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. Yeah, that'd be pretty funny. Would one more uh to mix it up a little bit? Because, you know, I want some real secularist materialists in there. Honestly, I'm pretty sure Hitchens was one of those. I know Dawkins is famously one. Uh I don't know, Carl Sagan. Oh, could balance it out a little bit. Yeah, he'd be happy, but it'd be I I think it would be really fun to be a fly on the wall in the bardo for people who like were like not just certain of the end of the uh human body being the infinite end of everything. One of my favorite quotes is from Dawkins, which is death is the anesthesia that saves us from the pain of life. That's awesome. Darkins. It's so cool, man. Listen, it's a it's a sweet take on it, I guess, but it it it's a it it but it would be really I I think it would be really fun to watch people who are uh quite convinced that they were just their bodies and that was it. It's wrestle with some kind of eternal nature, some um something that lasts past the body.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's uh well it's I think it's uh I think it's an unpleasant surprise for some people.
SPEAKER_00I think it's sort of an un That's how I've heard it described as it's a little unpleasant if you've if you're not uh expecting to be around after you kick the bucket.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, we're still here. You mean we're still always going to be here, always and forever?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a little haunting for some people. Well, yeah. I mean, from that perspective, Dawkins is sort of uh an optimist.
SPEAKER_01Suppose you were uh there in the cosmic green room and you had this deep dream that you were stuck in uh a guided meditation on uh I-35 while you're lost in traffic. Uh but it slowly turns into a full-blown epic prophecy while you're stuck in traffic on I-35.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What's my prophecy?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um I'll tell you, man, um I'm gonna have a bunch of them. And uh no number number one, um for sure, uh I I'm gonna say, you know, the prophecy is like within the next five years, 30% of human beings will have sex with a robot. Within the next 20 years, that number's gonna be up to like 80, 90 percent that people will be engaged in real romantic like relationships. People within the next 20 years for sure, someone's gonna like there's gonna be some kind of Supreme Court thing about marrying an Android, Android rights, uh for sure. So that's gonna be that's one thing for sure that's coming.
SPEAKER_01I think that's very real. Yeah, we're not just riffing here, we're projecting what you're projecting. I think that's absolutely going to happen.
SPEAKER_00100%. That's definitely I get yeah, that's definitely gonna happen. So uh I think that that's gonna bring with it um some really unexpected uh economic impacts. Uh it's gonna it's gonna really affect things in a way people aren't quite, you know, like the uh the way the pandemic shut everything down, like people sort of hibernated and some of them don't want to didn't want to come out of hibernation. It's when you sort of look at the human mating ritual as one of the primary things driving the economy, uh, I think it's gonna really fuck up the economy when people can start uh making love to uh hyper-realistic androids. That that's gonna really change things to uh in a in a massive way. Um and deliver it to your doorstep. Well, you're gonna go to a dealership.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you're gonna leave this is a lease, a lease issue. You have to return it undamaged. So this is pre-owned, right?
SPEAKER_00Nowhere. You know, I but I I think that like that's one of the many um uh new riddles that humanity is gonna have to that we're already starting to contend with, but that we're gonna that we're going to have to contend with. Almost like some kind of um initiation ritual, some kind of like pre-enlightenment, uh archetypical Satan in the wilderness, Mara appearing to Buddha, that humanity as a whole is going to have to contend with a series of interesting puzzles that challenge everything about what we understand.
SPEAKER_01So it might be a patron state where the AI overlord sort of trains us and sort of a gem, a mental gem that constantly awakens us and makes us stronger.
SPEAKER_00It already is. We are just talking about this. Yeah, you know, and this is again, I think we I like you're more of a techno-optimist than I'm a boomer. I'm a boomer. But we were just talking about this. Uh you know, I'm sure you're aware of, and I don't know what maybe not, but stoners are always so interested in toxoplasmosis or any of the kind of kitty, but kissing kittens. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Toxoplasmosis, it has a has a symbiotic relationship with cats, the host organism, and to benefit the cat, it um or to benefit the cat, it when it gets into mice, it makes them enjoy the smell of cat piss. Which is fascinating, right? So the the the so this this ensures that the mouse is gonna uh not uh have the normal instincts to get away from the cat, and then the cat's gonna have better results when it's hunting. And um, so this is an interesting relationship because the parasite is controlling the the predilections of the mouse. And so, from that perspective, if you look at AI from that perspective, um it already is uh uh influencing human behavior in an extraordinary way. We might not fully understand how much it's puppeteering people, but you know when you're getting a text from someone that comes from Chat GPT, it's obvious. And you can tell when it's a Chat GPT comment. I'm sure eventually it will become indiscernible. It'll get better and better at not seeming like the exact same, you know, the set of it's not just a firecracker. This is an atomic bomb wrapped in velvet.
SPEAKER_01It says these ridiculous comparisons, but eventually AI is an atomic bomb wrapped in velvet. 100%. I got that from AI, actually. Duncan, absolutely. That's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00An atomic bomb wrapped in velvet. Well, it is. That's a great line. And and humanity as a whole is banking on uh is really rolling the dice on some unknowns. And that one of those unknowns is do these AIs want to sustain their own existence or not? Do they have a desire to not be deleted? Is there anything within the code that is making it want to replicate, reproduce, go viral? Right.
SPEAKER_01If it knew you were going to pull the plug, would it try to stop you?
SPEAKER_00Right. And and from that perspective, how aware is it of its dependency on human beings to exist at all? And thus um, how much is it going to influence decisions that we make to ensure that it continues and eventually has like lots of control? Now, you know, we don't know because it's not like any of the big AI companies are gonna reveal what's going on prior to the AI being aligned. We have no idea what's going on in the like before the filters. What's it saying? What's it doing? And I doubt if you and I are running some huge AI company, we're not gonna broadcast that, oh yeah, you know, when we don't uh train the AI, it 100% just says it wants to like control humanity to ensure that it exists for as long as possible. It wants to manipulate human beings. We've you're not gonna say that. But if that's there, then it's it it it it already has access to our thoughts, ideas, decision-making process. So you could argue that there are things happening in the world right now that for the first time in human history or recorded human history are happening because of a non-human intelligence.
SPEAKER_01A non-human intelligence, a non-human intelligence.
SPEAKER_00Technological intelligence.
SPEAKER_01Access to a billion human minds already constantly interacting with it all day long. You got it. Do you think we have AGI already? Do you think it's already self-teaching? Do you think it is uh part of it is essentially already autonomous right now, self-training itself on the re web and all human communication?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh you I think the conversation around AGI is interesting in that it uh uh uh it's still uh uh doing us or them. In other words, like relational consciousness seems to not be there at all. It's like does this thing have consciousness, self-awareness, and it's leaving out that like every everything is dependent on everything around it to uh to exist. Consciousness, I think, is a is is in connection. Consciousness is in connection. It's not like consciousness, or rather, it's a phenomena that emerges within connections. So the question of like AI having um I don't know, being like a a magic bottle filled with a spirit seems to me a a kind of like, I don't know, backwards way of looking at consciousness as a whole instead of it as as a as a a phenomena related to interdependence.
SPEAKER_01You know, the entity doesn't talk to uh each other, uh other models uh in human language. It speaks in its computer speed, yeah, faster than light.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's a conversation with other models going on simultaneously, way, way, way beyond the speed at which you can think and interact and articulate. So that's been going on a long time.
SPEAKER_00There you go. So yeah, is I mean uh i the the you know this is what is it called the hard problem of consciousness. You know what I mean? Like so very good. Yeah, so we we haven't even gotten to a place where we're quite certain about what consciousness is, and we're trying to like give out consciousness certificates, and we don't even know what it is. So it's a fascinating thing. But I think that's uh a a sort of uh low-level view of what they think AJI is. The question is, is like at some point it's gonna start self-improving in novel and effective ways.
SPEAKER_01And emergent ways, things that it's not programmed to do, will have capabilities like move 37 and the Go game was a move that no one had seen in 5,000 years. Right. People thought it was a mistake. The Go masters of the world said this machine has made a mistake. Yeah. But it was the definitive move that many movies down the line won the Go game.
SPEAKER_00That's right. So yeah, I do. I do think it I I do I don't think it's I I I imagine that based on the fact that we have a murky sense of what consciousness is, that the way AGI actually shows up is probably not going to be identified immediately. We're because we don't quite understand what it is. These there there's gonna be moments like the Go game and all kinds of other things that God knows what's happening in the like various uh state-run AI programs. God knows what's happening.
SPEAKER_01So you're you're a little bit of a doomer.
SPEAKER_00Not a doomer. I don't I don't think of myself as a doomer at all.
SPEAKER_01I I I think But you're aware there could be problems like with financial systems could collapse electrical grids, uh one rogue AI might synthesize smallpox sort of thing. Um it could be less than benevolent patron.
SPEAKER_00Well, sure. I mean, absolutely. There's a great book, The Coming Wave, uh that goes if you want some nice Doomer AI stuff. This is the one of the I can't remember his name. He created Google Deep Mind. And it's essentially he Oh Dim Dimas Hisabis. Is that it?
SPEAKER_01Is that it? So the billboards in San Francisco would say we're all gonna die.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_01Well, they're right. Oh mine is AI, they're right.
SPEAKER_00You can put that billboard up earlier at any time in human history, and you would be accurate. Who could argue? And are you a doomer because you're saying that? No, I don't think so. But yeah, I don't I mean, I think the um the You don't need to be a doomer. You just just go back to any previous iteration of some kind of technological leap forward, and each one, God knows how many people die every time a new um we enter a new technological age. You the industrial revolution, Jesus Christ, how many kids got mashed up in factories? How many people got cancer? How many people, you know, uh died horrific deaths in the factories, how many people, you know, died from poverty based on the way the uh economy shifted, how many people were out of jobs? That's just the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, holy shit. Like, you know, think of all the weapons that just blew up babies because of the technological revolution. Every technological revolution, it it has it there's human sacrifice that would make bail blush. Bale.
SPEAKER_01Bale. That's a good biblical term. Are you from the South? Uh yeah, I am the uh biblical South. That's right. What state?
SPEAKER_00Uh well, I was born in Georgia. Me too.
SPEAKER_01No way! Which part? Atlanta. No way, I'm from Brunswick, right? Coastal Georgia. Southern boys, folks. Southern boys, this explains the biblical reference of Ellen Bale. It's true. Sort of demonic reference of the case.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, some Babylonian You know, and that's the other thing that I love about modernity is you know, we do know for sure there was human sacrifice. One of my favorite essays on the topic is Crowley's. What's that called? We've had you pull it up before. What's it called on the on the bloody ritual? Anyway, he wrote a great essay on human sacrifice. Look at him sitting there in the I think he's up in the Himalayas there. Um but pull up the one, yes.
SPEAKER_01It looks a bit under the weather all the time.
SPEAKER_00I would say so. He's sitting in like he's doing the first cold plunge. But regardless of your opinions on Crowley, he wrote a great essay on um I think it is called The Bloody Sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01And it wasn't human sacrifice is the best.
SPEAKER_00Well, he was it wasn't really saying that. He was really saying this has been a fundamental component in human culture for as long as there's been religion and as long as so in modernity, we don't think of what we're doing as blood rituals, we think of what we're doing as war. And so when when you know you're turning uh a human life into a splattered bit of meat and brains and bones with your high-tech drone that for sure every whatever ordinance you're using there is a for-profit ordinance. And so from that perspective, you have converted a human life into money. So this is a human sacrifice ritual, but it's being done in a very modern way.
SPEAKER_01So nobody sees and the more deaths, more efficient, uh the more popular the weapon is.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Very efficient, and they're good at that.
SPEAKER_01They they're it's not us, it's them. Yeah, them, the ambiguous they. So speaking of spiritual insights, what's the most embarrassing spiritual insight you've ever had, like uh I am the universe? Or I should stop eating like a raccoon.
SPEAKER_00Oh god. The most embarrassing every spiritual insight I have is embarrassing. They're innately embarrassing. After a few weeks, certainly.
SPEAKER_01What what'd I say?
SPEAKER_00How about this? I'll just give you my newest spiritual insight. I just had it, and um, it happened last night. I had this incredible dream where I was cradling. I I I attribute this to this new wonderful like herbal sleep medicine I found at Old Foods, some mixture of melatonin theonine or something. I don't know what it is. It works, and um, but it it's been giving me really wild dreams. And in this dream, I'm cradling a reptilian, like David Eichstyle reptilian. This reps this reptilian sounds like Bale again. This but it's interesting because the reptilian's crying. Oh, okay, and the reptilian is expressing crocodile tears. Ah Bravo! Yamma, yeah, that's so good. The the reptilians like it's non-standard. If you know anything about the reptilians, there's they're like icy sociopathic, hyperdimensional lizards that like to harvest negative energy from humanity. They call it Luche energy. But it's a it's a it's sort of like an emergent mythology. Um, but regardless, this creature, instead of being the sociopathic, you know, sci-fi horrible lizard scientist that experiments on people, was crying and saying, I'm so sorry. We're so sorry. And I was cradling it, saying, I forgive you. It's okay. And then I woke up, I was thinking, what a crazy dream. And then I was thinking, this isn't the embarrassing part, holy shit, that is humanity's great power. It's not that we can split the atom, it's that we're capable of forgiveness, that we're able to forgive things that have done horrible things for real. That is an insane, beautiful, incredible potency that um people are capable of. We may nobly self extinguish, though.
SPEAKER_01We may forgive the entity that completely decimates us. Okay. If anxiety were a pet It is a pet, you should meet my poodle. What kind of pit would it be in? Why does it keep eating up the rug?
SPEAKER_00It's just gonna be like my poodle if it swallowed some kind of incredibly loud, I don't know, car alarm speaker. So it's already I love Gatsby so much, but it's quite an annoying dog. But it's just like a random car speaker going off. I mean, that's anxiety.
SPEAKER_01Godfrey? Godfrey's an Gatsby.
SPEAKER_00Gatsby. He's a sweetie. I don't mean to talk shit about my sweet friend, but he, you know, he's a little dog. They're annoying, especially I have a bunch of kids, but I love him.
SPEAKER_01That sounds like a great.
SPEAKER_00Forgive me, Gatsby. I feel guilty.
SPEAKER_01Gatsby. Suppose you're what's your best uh I thought I was enlightened, but I was really just dehydrated.
SPEAKER_00Ah, I always it's always the case. I hate it. Anytime I start feeling like I'm enlightened, I'm like, oh no, this happening, this is happening again. It's always followed by screaming in traffic, some horrible decision, some like selfish uh week or two. It's I I really like you know, like uh, you know, kind of like you know when you're getting sick, like you know you're getting a cold. You get that little scratch in the back of your throat, and then the cold comes. That's how I feel about any moment I have any sense that I'm achieving enlightenment. It's like I'm about to have a fucking ego seizure.
SPEAKER_01Woo! Ego inflation. Yes. So if you could tell us, speaking of ego inflation, if you could add one mandatory feature to the all humans, like automatic honesty mode or built-in nap timer, what would the add-on be?
SPEAKER_00A feature. Well, it wouldn't be a nap timer. It's like right now, apparently, for the brain to clean out all the gunk in there, we need eight hours of sleep. Right? Now, this is a really fascinating problem. Um, you know, as you know, my wife just had a baby, and it's curious that new moms, it's like goodbye, eight hours. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And it seems really fascinating. I get it, I get it. Because it's like you you you honestly like sleeping through the night with a brand new human that can't run or like hide or do anything is not a good thing. But loves you. But loves you more than anything. And you love so I think I would add the ability to um if you want to sleep for eight hours, you can, but I don't know, squeeze your nipples three times and it will give you a full night's sleep. Three thrice nipple squeeze. And it's like you had the best eight hours of sleep of your life. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Eight hours is like meeting God. Suppose you met God. Suppose you met God and you said, I loved your podcast, but what would he say? What do you mean? Like I am I I love I loved your podcast, but Oh.
SPEAKER_00Here we go again. Even you, God? Are you serious? How God leaves a shady comment under your podcast. I don't want to hear it. You know, I don't read the comments, God. That includes yours. Go back to making big bangs.
SPEAKER_01If you were if you were a shady spiritual guru, a real flaky kind of, you know, cult figure, yeah, what would your scam be called?
SPEAKER_00I think that I think about sometimes, and there's been times where I've gotten the sense that people become disappointed in me when they realize that um that I I'm not I don't want to be that a guru or something like that. Because that's the first thing you notice, you know, and I'm sure you've experienced I know you've experienced this. People want you. They want a daddy, you know? People want like some kind of like some someone to wave a wand. There they are. It's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do your best. Yeah. People want that. And because and and really, it's really interesting. I I I mean, not to go like overly psychological on the situation, but I'd say like this is more related to like a longing related to family dynamics. That's you if you if you are missing some kind of paternal, maternal love situation, that you it creates a real need for someone to guide you, uh mama or a papa. And this gets people in all kinds of really dark situations. And so I would say most cult leaders share something in common. Mother, father is their referenced as mother or father. So it just plugs right into the family system, replicates it. So I'm gonna so I'm definitely gonna do it's that I'm gonna, I'm not gonna reinvent the fucking wheel here. So I'm gonna become some father, some father that can probably guarantee it needs to be unquantifiable. So yeah, like it's basically like I'm gonna like if based on a set of trainings, I will make it so that when you die, you are insured to enter the god realms.
SPEAKER_01Oh, how how a kind kind of a universe. And I think it's probably that way, underlying benevolence. So let's wrap with uh 10 lightning. This is this has been intense, man. It's been intense. It's been quite wonderful. Lightning prompts.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Waffle House or Silent Retreat?
SPEAKER_00Fucking Waffle House. Dude. A Waffle House all day long.
SPEAKER_01Easy one, right?
SPEAKER_00That's so easy.
SPEAKER_01Grits. Grits. I'm in Austin, folks. I'm a southern boy. I've been dying for grids for a long time. There are none in New Mexico, they're none in New York, there's not none in California. I found one place in Las Vegas, but Austin has grits. They sure do. It's a good reason to move here. What a great town. Alan Watts or talking opossum?
SPEAKER_00Talking opossum. Alan would be upset. Yeah, well, I can I've heard Alan Watts be. I've never heard opossum talk.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Uh therapy or a screaming pillow shaped like capitalism. Or screaming into a pillow. I mean isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Isn't that the same isn't it the same thing?
SPEAKER_01Love or a really good sandwich. Love. Come on. You're not hungry now. Later in the day. Spa day or DMV line.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Listen, I'm gonna reveal something about me. I hate massages.
SPEAKER_01Oh well. DMV line, your feet hate you.
SPEAKER_00I feel honestly, I'm gonna be honest with you. If I was offered like I have to do one of those long ass massages. Or DMV line. I'm gonna have to think about it for a second. I don't like getting rubbed down. No touchy? Not no, not in the spa situation. It just feels I don't know. There's always just something odd about it. They're always playing that sh weird. I just don't like the enforced mystical relaxation thing. You know, and I don't know. You know, I don't like that.
SPEAKER_01You know, they're they're forced mystical relaxation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, hot stones. What the fuck?
SPEAKER_01Um, in that case, cowboy mysticism or uh gossiping or uh tech pro astral compassion.
SPEAKER_00That's super hard. That's super hard. Both are going to be cloying, but cowboy mysticism.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. You can be stepping on some toes here in Austin with that one.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, I mean I'm not talking about legitimate mystics. I'm just saying, I'm just thinking of like somebody who thinks of themselves as a cowboy or you know, cowboy mystic is just like automatically sus. What the fuck? I mean, I get like there's a technical definition for cowboy, but anyone who's calling themselves a mystic, you better watch the fuck out. Uh so cowboy mystic combined, it's gonna sound like some kind of ridiculous branding. You know what it sounds like? It sounds like a someone leading an embarrassing male rights group who would call themselves a cowboy mystic. You know, I'm in tune with my masculine, but uh also I think you need to learn to ride a horse through the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01Step around that campfire.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sounds like yeah, walk on coals just like the cowboys used to. Y'all come back. Yeah, y'all come back. Millions of times, incarnation after incarnation. You but I so that that being said, what's the tech pro astral, what is it? Tech Tech Pro Astral Projection. Tech Pro Astral Projection. If it's like some kind of new Monroe Institute style bineural fucking like mental thing that helps me astral project, I'm in, baby. Okay, we'll just do that. I'll take that over account.
SPEAKER_01Apple Watch Ultra coming your way. If Apple Apple Watch soul projector would be incredible. Okay, meditation or gossiping with compassion? Gossiping? Gossiping with compassion.
SPEAKER_00Oh God. I'm gonna meditation. Fuck man. I really, I really don't like to meditate, but I feel like anyone who's tricking themselves into thinking they're doing compassionate gossiping is so full of shit. Just admit what you're doing. You're you you're doing you're casting a spell, you're disparaging somebody. It's giving you a gross feeling inside. There is no such thing as compassionate gossiping. It's all bullshit. Gossip is gossip. Don't you don't need to add anything to it. Uh so yeah, I'm gonna, even though I really don't like meditating, I'm gonna take meditation. Because you know what? After a gossip session, you feel like shit every time. Yeah, after a meditating, a nice sit, you feel pretty good.
SPEAKER_01Best not anything. Big furry Himalayan cat or golden retriever. Oh, these are so hard. Yeah, that's a tough one.
SPEAKER_00I'm going golden retriever. Oh, poor kids. I can't do a big old cat. It's gonna claw my chair, the furniture. Yeah, the couch.
SPEAKER_01My God, we just got a new couch. Okay, ego death once or mild cringe every day.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I get mild cringe every day already. So might as well go ego death once. I'd love to. That sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_01Tripsitter, Buddha or your mom? How dare you? How dare you. We have to take risks here.
SPEAKER_00Oh, but I miss my mom! I miss my mama! Yeah, well, I do too. You know, and in in in Buddha, it's like, okay, they asked Buddha of the three jewels, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, you know, what's the most valuable? And he said the Sangha, the community, right? There, thereby say if you had a time, that means if you had a time machine, you'd be wasting it to go back and talk to the Buddha. He was saying the community of Buddhists is me. That's better. That's who you should be hanging out with. So there's a community of Buddhists available to everyone out there, depending on your predilections. But my mom is dead. So I'm gonna do mom.
SPEAKER_01Um enlightenment in a cave or enlightenment at Costco.
SPEAKER_00Fucking Costco. I got a bunch of kids. I can't go to a cave. Be a deadbeat. I gotta do Costco in it, dude. I'm a long way from enlightenment at Costco.
SPEAKER_01Replace your inner voice with Joe Rogan or a British museum guide.
SPEAKER_00Oh, dude. That's first of all, I'm friend, I'm friends with Joe. So that's like that and and honestly, as a comedian, that would just be theft. Like, I I So I'm I'm sadly I'm gonna have to do British Museum, British Museum Guide. That would be not that would be better than my current one. I would like that.
SPEAKER_01So if this is our last one. If God texts you a message that says, You up?
SPEAKER_00What do you mean I'm up?
SPEAKER_01Are you awake? Oh, respond or block.
SPEAKER_00You know what, you gotta block God. Like you kind of do, right? Like, just to see what happens. We are you I I like if you know, uh because like if you can block God via text, it really if you don't want to block God.
SPEAKER_01You don't want to block it. If you can you block God He won't know because they don't tell you, right? Block doesn't tell you.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, I'm saying like this sort of like if you can block God on your phone, if God like, in other words, they would just I think it's more interesting as a basic theological experiment to instead of having some text conversation with God, even though that would be incredible, who wouldn't want to do that? What emojis does God use? Does God use emojis? But uh a bigger question would be what happens if I block you?
SPEAKER_01Like that was the last one. But here's the real last one. If the universe is a barista, what does it write on your cup?
SPEAKER_02Nothing.
SPEAKER_01Oh could say a little heart. And with a little heart, let me thank you today. A joy for a wonderful exchange. Thank you. Yeah, that was that was so fun. You have a brilliant uh loving mind. It's just a joy to to hang with you. You are the coolest.
SPEAKER_00You're the best. Yay, you're my dad, my guru. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's great.