Joe Rogan Experience #2403 - Andrew Gallimore

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.

Joe Rogan 0:10 (heavy rock music plays) Joe Rogan, Andrew. How are you?

Andrew Gallimore 0:15 Um, splendid, how the devil are you, sir?

Joe Rogan 0:17 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 0:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:18 I think it's the first time anyone's answered "splendid" when I ask how you doing.

Andrew Gallimore 0:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:24 So, um, tell me about your book, man. Let me see the cover of it, first of all. Death by Astonishment.

Andrew Gallimore 0:30 Death by Astonishment.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Which is the famous Terence McKenna quote, right?

Andrew Gallimore 0:34 Yes. He was asked-

Joe Rogan 0:35 "The only thing you have to fear is death by astonishment."

Andrew Gallimore 0:36 Exactly, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:38 You know, the first time I did DMT, I literally heard his words, "Do not give in to astonishment."

Andrew Gallimore 0:44 ... astonishment.

Joe Rogan 0:44 I literally heard those words fr-

Andrew Gallimore 0:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:46 It's almost like whatever's over there-

Andrew Gallimore 0:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:49 ... wanted me to hear that.

Andrew Gallimore 0:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:51 So I could, like, sink in or whatever, 'cause I had already heard it before, you know?

Andrew Gallimore 0:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:57 Like, so they wanted to say it to me as well. It was very weird.

Andrew Gallimore 1:00 Yeah, it's sage advice, I think, because-

Joe Rogan 1:02 Oh, it's the only way.

Andrew Gallimore 1:03 (laughs) It's the only way. Because if you freak out, w- well, it's like that's a good thing, it's good advice in most of life. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10 Like, don't give in to the freak-out.

Andrew Gallimore 1:12 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13 Um, Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug. How did you get involved in this?

Andrew Gallimore 1:18 DMT?

Joe Rogan 1:19 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 1:20 Oh, so you have to go back to my teenage years, really. So, I mean, I first heard about DMT through Terence McKenna, a friend gave-

Joe Rogan 1:31 Like most of us.

Andrew Gallimore 1:31 Yeah, like most of us.

Joe Rogan 1:33 Probably.

Andrew Gallimore 1:33 But this was, like, this was during, like, the dawn of the internet.

Joe Rogan 1:37 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:37 So-

Joe Rogan 1:38 Long before you were a scientist.

Andrew Gallimore 1:39 Long before I was a scientist.

Joe Rogan 1:41 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:41 Right? So, a, a friend gave me this magazine, it had this interview with this bearded, cheeky-looking bearded fellow on the back called Terence McKenna. And, um, he spoke about this thing called DMT, uh, which of course I didn't know what that was, but, you know, the stories that he was telling, that you were gonna meet these insectoid aliens and, uh, transdimensional machine elves jabbering in an indecipherable tongue and singing impossible objects into existence, I mean, it sounded ridiculous. Um, but I was kind of, I was hooked. I thought, "This is it. This is, this is the most fucking incredible thing I've ever (laughs) read in my life." Uh, and so I was, I was like 15, 16 years old, and there w- there was one computer in the school that was hooked up to the, the World Wide Web. So all of, like-

Joe Rogan 2:31 What year was this?

Andrew Gallimore 2:33 '96.

Joe Rogan 2:34 Oh, early.

Andrew Gallimore 2:35 Giving my age away here, but-

Joe Rogan 2:37 Early days of the-

Andrew Gallimore 2:38 Early days.

Joe Rogan 2:39 ... internet.

Andrew Gallimore 2:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:39 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 2:40 Yeah. So I spent all my time just, you know, going onto AltaVista. Remember AltaVista?

Joe Rogan 2:47 I do.

Andrew Gallimore 2:47 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:48 I didn't r- I didn't remember it till you brought it up, now I remember it.

Andrew Gallimore 2:50 There we go. (laughs) Yeah, just kind of trying to find out as much as I could about this. And that was what triggered my decision to study chemistry and pharmacology, my kind of academic journey was, was triggered by, "I wanna know." You know, it's such a cool thing, the idea that you can, you can put a molecule in your brain and it, it doesn't just change how you feel, but it completely changes the entire structure of your reality.

Joe Rogan 3:16 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 3:17 Your entire world is, uh, is, is obliterated and replaced with one that is completely alien, that isn't-

Joe Rogan 3:24 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 3:24 ... a relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world. That's incredible, and I kind of wanted to try at least to understand how that actually works. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:34 Well, the weirdest part about that molecule is that your brain makes it, and so then you have to go, "Why?" And, "What's the purpose of that?" And, "What are we, really?"

Andrew Gallimore 3:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:46 You know, what is, what is consciousness and what is, what is normal consciousness? What's the purpose of it, and why does this chemical exist? Why does this molecule exist that's produced by the brain that changes everything, and seems to transport you to a place that's more real than this physical reality that we find ourselves in right now?

Andrew Gallimore 4:08 Exactly, and that is kind of the great mystery. And I don't, I think most people who, ev- even people who've kind of learned about DMT, even scientists, I mean, I, I speak to scientists, um, I en- I engage with scientists, um, neuroscientists often, and they will say, "Oh, this is just hallucination, this is just your brain kind of making it up." Uh, and I don't think most scientists realize how confounding and how difficult to explain the DMT state is. I think it is one of, um, one of life's true mysteries. It is not simple to explain, uh, the DMT state, although I-

Joe Rogan 4:48 No, I think it's almost irresponsible to try to explain it without experiencing it. It's not gonna kill you.

Andrew Gallimore 4:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:53 It's not gonna kill you. It'll last 15 minutes. Stop being a pussy.

Andrew Gallimore 4:56 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:56 Just do it, and then tell me it's just a hallucination.

Andrew Gallimore 5:00 (laughs) That's it, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:00 Just do, do a big one.

Andrew Gallimore 5:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:02 Three giant hits, come back, tell me this is normal.

Andrew Gallimore 5:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:06 Tell me this is just a freak-out.

Andrew Gallimore 5:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:08 'Cause it d- it sure doesn't seem like it, does it?

Andrew Gallimore 5:10 No. And, um, I mean, that was what, I mean, I first learned about DMT, as I said, when I was 15 or 16, but my first experience was probab- well, close to a decade later. Um, and I thought, before I took it, I thought I kind of knew what to expect. I mean, I'd listened to all the Terence McKenna lectures I could find, I c- I'd read all the books, I'd read all the trip reports, and I thought, "Okay, I'm kind of ready for this. I kind of know what's gonna happen." And I wasn't ready, and I was shocked, I was, uh, horrified in a sense, I was appalled. I mean, this was like, "This is impossible." This was an impossible experience. I was confronted with an, what seemed to me to be the, the undeniable hand of some kind of intelligence. Um, and not just any kind of intelligence, but a supremely advanced, ancient, um, and yet highly technological intelligence. And that was undeniable to me in those first few moments, within sort of 30 seconds of that drug hitting my, uh, my, my brain (clears throat) I knew that this is, this is something else. And I was...... at first, horrified. I was shocked. Uh, I just thought, "This ... What is this?" And then when I finally kind of came back, I was, I was ... I remember lying on my bed on my back, like, shaking to my very bones and j- all I could say was, "Oh, my fucking God," because I was completely confounded, you know. I mean, and by then, I was a chemical pharmacologist. I was a scientist. I should've, actually-

Joe Rogan 6:50 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 6:51 ... I should know, uh, what's going on here, but I had no idea what was going on and I thought, "This is, this is it. This is what I need to get to grips with."

Joe Rogan 6:58 It also gives you a very, like, an u- a, an unusual understanding of the mechanisms that you interface with the world, like, uh, w- like, ego and logic and reasoning and rational thinking. It gives you, like, this understanding that those are kind of just these weird tools that you use to get by and you're left without them in there. It just, they a- they evaporate and dissolve. And then when you come back, you're like, "What am I doing?"

Andrew Gallimore 7:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:38 "The way I talk, like, what i- what is my ... What's my purpose of interacting with people? Like, what i- how much of the way I talk to people is this weird social dance, weird, um, y- y- ego-performative sort of, uh, like, the way I structure sentences, the way I communicate?" It all seems so clunky-

Andrew Gallimore 7:59 Mm.

Joe Rogan 7:59 ... when, when you come back and you just go, "Wow, we're a mess. Like, collectively as a species-

Andrew Gallimore 8:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:04 ... we're so ... Without some sort of awakening or some, some kind of experience, some sort of a psychedelic profound breakthrough experience, like, you're so hampered by your physical existence and this sort of ancient tribal programming that we have th- that we're running through this maze of life with. And you come back and you go, 'God, this is so weird.'"

Andrew Gallimore 8:30 Yeah, I think what DMT does is, is show you that everything, everything you n- thought you knew about how reality is structured and what's, what's real and what's not real, what is fantasy, what's possible and what's not possible-

Joe Rogan 8:43 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 8:43 ... all of that is, is completely kind of extirpated in an instant, uh, and you realize actually, we don't, we don't have a fucking clue about the way things really are. Um, I- I think DMT just demonstrates that. Whether you understand it, whether we can, we can really understand what's going on in the brain and h- why and how this experience is even possible, it just shows you how little we really understand about th- uh, the nature of, of reality.

Joe Rogan 9:11 So, you've done some, like, legitimate studies with, uh, DMT.

Andrew Gallimore 9:19 Right, yeah. I mean, I work, um, mainly kind of, I guess you could say, theoretically, uh, in that I do more quantitative and qualitative analyses of the DMT state, uh, and try to understand, try to use the tools of neuroscience to try to understand, um, how DMT elicits its, its effects. So, uh, we can kind of get into, if you wa-

Joe Rogan 9:45 Sure.

Andrew Gallimore 9:45 If you wanna go really deep-

Joe Rogan 9:46 Yeah, sure.

Andrew Gallimore 9:46 ... I can give you a kind of a, uh, a neuroscience lesson.

Joe Rogan 9:50 Yeah, please.

Andrew Gallimore 9:50 And we can talk about ... So, so, you know, if we wanna understand DMT, we kind of have to start with the, the basic observation, uh, you know, before you take DMT, um, you are experiencing a world, right? Whenever you're awake and conscious, you're experiencing a world, the normal waking world. This is the world w- that's kind of familiar to us. When you take DMT, that world is transformed. It disappears. It's obliterated and it's replaced with one that is, um, altogether stranger, shall we say. Uh, and so, so what I want to do is kind of understand, first of all, how that happens, what's actually going on in the brain to cause that transition, and why that happens. Um, and you can't do that unless you have a, a decent understanding of the normal waking world. So, what is the normal waking world? It's a model. It's an interface generated by your brain. So, you have this world-building machinery on the outer layer of your brain called the cortex and this is generating your world all the time. Uh, all the features of the world that you're experiencing are represented within, um, the cortex. Um, and that applies whether you are just normal waking life. It applies in dreaming. Uh, it even applies in the psychedelic state. The world you experience is, is always constructed as a model, uh, by the brain. And so what that means is that psychedelics, what they're doing is they're man- they're perturbing the brain. They're manipulating the brain, um, and altering that model. Now, for example, with, let's say, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, um, psilocybin binds to this, uh, receptor in the brain called the 5-HT2A receptor, which you're probably familiar with, the c- serotonin receptor.

Joe Rogan 11:51 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 11:51 And so this is a, it's, uh, it's called an excitatory receptor. It stimulates these neurons, uh, which y- your cortex is constructed from, and makes them more excitable, makes them more likely, uh, to fire and share information between, uh, to other neurons. You get this kind of loosening up of the, the world model that your brain is constructing. So, the walls start to breathe. Objects seem to kind of change their identity. Everything becomes more fluid and dynamic. And if you put someone into an MRI machine, for example, you can actually see that. In the normal waking state, you can see the neural activity. It's, it's dynamic, but it's, it's kind of organized and well-orchestrated. You give someone psilocybin, let's say, or LSD, uh, and you start to see the activity becoming sort of more random and fluid.Uh, so you get this, this state of slightly increased disorder, as if the, the, the, kind of the tuning dial between order and disorder in the brain has been slightly nudged towards disorder. But then with DMT, something remarkable happens. In the, the early stages of the experience, you get this, um, kind of quite chaotic state, suggesting that th- the brain is entering this more disordered, um, state. But then, it kind of collapses into this brand new order. So, you go from the order of the normal waking world to this disordered state, and then vroom, you collapse into this completely different type of order. So, the brain is effectively constructing an entirely different model of reality. It's no longer the normal waking world model, which acts as kind of an interface, uh, with the environment, but it's constructing a, a completely different world model, uh-

Joe Rogan 13:44 When you say constructing-

Andrew Gallimore 13:45 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:45 ... why do you use that term? Why, why do you use, "The brain is constructing?"

Andrew Gallimore 13:51 Because you're ... Well, okay, so, so if you think about, you know, how does the brain interact with y- how do we interact with the environment using our senses, right? So, light information comes through the eyes, uh, through the retina, and it stimulates the, the very back of the brain. You have an area ... Oh.

Joe Rogan 14:09 Oh, you brought slides.

Andrew Gallimore 14:10 I brought slides.

Joe Rogan 14:11 Here we go.

Andrew Gallimore 14:12 Yeah, maybe the next one, Jamie, is a bit easier to see. There we go. So at the right, the back of the brain here, you have an area called V1, which is the primary visual cortex. That's your interface with the world. Um, sensory information comes and strikes, it activates patterns of neural activity in V1, but it's very, very messy. It's like lines and patches of color and, you know, lines moving in certain directions. It's a mess, right? It's very noisy, it's very messy, it's incredibly dynamic. It doesn't make any sense. And so what your brain does is it has another level above V1, um, that kind of has a bird's-eye view and is looking for patterns, uh, within this neural activity in this lowest level. So, it's looking, saying, "Oh, those lines kind of could be a triangle," or, "This could be a circle." It's trying to find patterns to try and generate, uh, order from this messy level in V1.

Joe Rogan 15:08 Can I ask you this?

Andrew Gallimore 15:09 Hmm?

Joe Rogan 15:09 How do we know it does that?

Andrew Gallimore 15:11 That's a good question. Um, well, there are a number of things. So, th- the earliest evidence came from a, uh, one of the earliest forms of evidence came from a guy called, uh, W- Wilder Penfield. Are you familiar with?

Joe Rogan 15:24 No.

Andrew Gallimore 15:24 So, Wilder Penfield, he was interested in, um, um, treating, uh, epilepsy. And he invented, uh, something called the Montreal Procedure, where he would remove a part of the brain that was the focus of epileptiform activity, uh, the idea being that it would kind of cure someone's epilepsy. But before he could do that, of course, he needed to make sure that he wasn't removing, you know, important parts for someone's function. So, what he would do is he would cut the top of their skull off-

Joe Rogan 15:54 Ugh.

Andrew Gallimore 15:55 (laughs) When they're still awake.

Joe Rogan 15:57 Ugh.

Andrew Gallimore 15:58 Yeah (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 15:59 Ugh.

Andrew Gallimore 15:59 And kind of expose their brain, and then he would zap different parts of their brain (laughs) and say, you know, "What's happening," right?

Joe Rogan 16:06 Oh, my God.

Andrew Gallimore 16:07 (laughs) Can you imagine?

Joe Rogan 16:09 Isn't it crazy that that's how we have to find out-

Andrew Gallimore 16:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:14 ... h- what works?

Andrew Gallimore 16:14 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:14 We have to, like, it's ... The aliens probably look at us and go-

Andrew Gallimore 16:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:18 ... "Oh, my God, you guys are still doing that?"

Andrew Gallimore 16:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:20 It's like-

Andrew Gallimore 16:21 Nowadays, things have moved on a bit, right?

Joe Rogan 16:23 I'm sure.

Andrew Gallimore 16:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:24 But, I mean, this is not that long ago, right?

Andrew Gallimore 16:25 No, no.

Joe Rogan 16:25 How long ago was this?

Andrew Gallimore 16:26 1950s.

Joe Rogan 16:27 Yeah, okay.

Andrew Gallimore 16:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:28 Not even 100 years.

Andrew Gallimore 16:29 Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:29 So, 100 years ago, they were literally taking your skull and turning it into a hat.

Andrew Gallimore 16:33 They would turn-

Joe Rogan 16:34 Popping the cap off.

Andrew Gallimore 16:35 Popping the cap off.

Joe Rogan 16:35 And just, uh, "Okay."

Andrew Gallimore 16:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:37 "Let's see what this does."

Andrew Gallimore 16:38 E- exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:39 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 16:39 They would zap it. And what he noticed is that when he would zap right at the back of the brain, so this is the, this primary visual cortex-

Joe Rogan 16:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 16:46 ... that's receiving information from the environment, they would, th- his patients would say, "Oh, I see flashes of light, I see lines, I see colors." It was very simple kind of things.

Joe Rogan 16:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 16:55 But then he would move forward, um, to kind of higher levels that we know now are kind of high levels, and then they'd say, "Oh, I see triangles," or, "I see an orange circle," things like this.

Joe Rogan 17:06 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 17:06 And then he'd k- keep going higher and higher, and then they'd say, "Oh, I see people," or, "I see cops and robbers." Uh-

Joe Rogan 17:13 Hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 17:13 ... and then right at the top, you reach an area called the hippocampus, which you may have heard of, involved in memory.

Joe Rogan 17:20 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 17:21 Uh, and the hippocampus basically keeps an eye, it's got a bird's-eye view of the, all of this world model your brain is constructing. And it's kind of following and looking for, you know, interesting or important patterns. Um, and when he stimulated that, um, his patients would actually report memories. They would say, "Oh, uh, uh, I hear somebody talking to me. You know, this happened this morning when I was leaving the house. My mother was telling me something about, you know, 'You've got your coat on backwards,' " or something like this.

Andrew Gallimore 17:52 Um, so you have these levels o- of the cortex that go from the very simple, um, um, kind of v- very funda- low-level, uh, visual data at, at the bottom end. And then at the very top, you've got kind of higher order things, such as, you know, faces or people. This is sitting at the top. Um, now interesting, have you ever, when you are dreaming, right? So when, when you ... Let's think about dreaming for a second, uh, it's quite instructive, I think. When you're dreaming, right? The brain is actually constructing the world in basically the same way as it does when you're awake. Dreams are kind of selective simulations of the waking world. The difference, of course, is that there's no sensory inputs. So, if you scan someone's brain while they're having a dream, you'll see that this back of the brain, this primary visual cortex, is kind of quiet. Uh, but the brain is kind of using-... what it's learned about building the world in the normal waking state to construct, uh, the dream world. So the dream world is built in exact-... it's built from exactly the same stuff, um, as the normal waking world. However, there's some interesting features. If you've... In a dream, have you ever, um, tried to use your cell phone or-

Joe Rogan 19:12 No.

Andrew Gallimore 19:13 Not- not many people have. Um, what about read a book in a dream?

Joe Rogan 19:17 I don't think so. Uh, one, uh, one thing I have learned to do is to... I think I saw it in a movie, if you knock on a door, you'll realize that you're in a dream. And you can-

Andrew Gallimore 19:26 Is this Waking Life?

Joe Rogan 19:27 I don't remember what movie it was.

Andrew Gallimore 19:29 Yep.

Joe Rogan 19:29 But the... it was a, a guy who was instructing how to lucid dream-

Andrew Gallimore 19:36 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:36 ... and that if- if you make a habit of walking through a doorway in your home, and every time you walk in a... through a doorway in your home, tap on the door- d- the doorway-

Andrew Gallimore 19:45 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:45 ... knock on it with your hand, and say, "Am I awake?" Knock, knock, knock.

Andrew Gallimore 19:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:49 And then you'll g- get i- in a habit of doing that every time you go through a doorway. And if you go through a doorway in your dream, you'll do it. You'll say, "Am I awake?" And then as you go to knock, knock, knock, you're like, "Oh, shit, I'm dreaming."

Andrew Gallimore 20:02 There we go.

Joe Rogan 20:03 And then you realize, and if you don't give into astonishment-

Andrew Gallimore 20:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:08 ... you can maintain that dream.

Andrew Gallimore 20:09 You can maintain-

Joe Rogan 20:10 Right?

Andrew Gallimore 20:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:10 It's... That's the thing. It's like, "Oh, my God, I'm dreaming."

Andrew Gallimore 20:12 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:12 "I can't believe this is..." And then you wake up, right?

Andrew Gallimore 20:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:14 You get too freaked out and you wake up. But if you don't do it... And I've only been able to do this a few times 'cause I don't really knock. I did it for a while after the movie.

Andrew Gallimore 20:21 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:22 I saw the movie. I tried it for a while.

Andrew Gallimore 20:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:23 And I did have a dream like that, where I went through a doorway and I said, "Am I dreaming?" And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I'm dreaming." And then I, I realized I was dreaming, and then I was, like, flying, I was doing a lot of weird stuff.

Andrew Gallimore 20:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:32 But then it went away, and then I stopped doing it.

Andrew Gallimore 20:36 And you lost it.

Joe Rogan 20:36 And I've always been like, "Why don't I practice lucid dream?" I'm, I'm... I've always... I've thought about it, like, a dozen times at least.

Andrew Gallimore 20:42 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:42 Like, "Why don't I just get a book on lucid dreaming and really try to attempt to learn the techniques?" And, and I never do.

Andrew Gallimore 20:48 Yeah, it takes commitment. But now, there's actually a simpler way of... That kind of reality tests. Um, a simpler way now is to get out your cellphone occasionally, open up the, the calculator, and do a, do a few calculations, and just check everything's working.

Joe Rogan 21:04 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 21:04 Right? Or open up a book, um, and, and try to read it. Because the thing about the dream world is... Again, just like the normal waking world, it's, it's, it's constructed over kind of levels of a hierarchy, from the highest level models. So your brain can construct a high-level model of a, uh, a cellphone quite easily.

Joe Rogan 21:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 21:25 But all of the fine details of how it functions, that's all represented at the lowest level of the cortex. That's really dependent on sensory inputs. So you can dream of having your mobile phone in your hand and doing things with it, with it. But as soon as you try to do something, uh, with it, to actually... Your brain has to kind of construct that function, and it do- it can't do it unless it has access-

Joe Rogan 21:51 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 21:51 ... to sensory inputs. And so that's how you can test if you're lucid dreaming.

Joe Rogan 21:55 Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 21:55 Yeah. Uh, and which is why the DMT state is so fascinating, is because it's, it's nothing like the dream state. People say, um, you know, that, that perhaps DMT is released, um, when you're dreaming and that it actually triggers. I mean, this, this goes back to, um, the 1980s.

Joe Rogan 22:14 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 22:14 There's a, a, uh, uh, a theoretical paper published by a guy called Jace Callaway, and he said, "Oh, maybe DMT could be produced, uh, during REM sleep, because it's closely related to melatonin structurally, uh, both kind of tryptamine structures." Um, but when you analyze the, the phenomenology, you know, the actual experience of DMT, it's nothing like dreaming. You know, dreaming is generally the brain making use of what it knows about how to construct the world in the waking state and doing so in the dream state. So that's why if you ask people... Um, you know, the... many studies have... on dreaming have shown that people, when they dream, they dream about people, they dream about dogs and cats, uh, they dream about, you know... The, the amount of time they spend talking on the telephone or watching TV is actually similar to what it is in waking life. Um, so dreaming is more like a selective simulation of the waking world. It's not that difficult to explain, um, because your brain, from the moment you were born, your brain was learning to construct the world as a model of the environment. This is... this world is the only world that your brain knows how to build or should know how to build. And yet, when you introduce this molecule, dimethyltryptamine, into the brain, the brain suddenly starts constructing a world it never learned to construct. It's like the brain is build-... uh, speaking a language it never learned to speak and doing so flawlessly. These worlds are of beautiful, crystalline clarity, perfectly finessed, staggeringly complex narrative complexity, um, that I think is very difficult to explain. There's no simple explanation of why the brain should shou- should suddenly become capable of constructing these worlds unless, unless, and this is where things become more contentious, uh, we are indeed interfacing with some kind of intelligence. That's my... that's the explanation that makes sense to me, is that somehow DMT is gating access to some kind of... the, the flow of information from some kind of intelligent agent that is directing, um, the DMT experience. So it's not a sensed world, it's not a kind of a dreamt world, it's actually a directed world. I always say you don't break through, um, into the DMT world, the DMT world breaks through into you. It's like this intelligent agent has commandeered your neural machinery, the world-building machinery of your brain-

Joe Rogan 24:55 Hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 24:55 ... and is, is directing, um, everything that you see. It has complete control.

Joe Rogan 25:01 It's interesting that you use the word construct rather than observe.

Andrew Gallimore 25:05 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:05 So you're using, you're using terminology that seems to indicate that you believe that you're constructing reality.

Andrew Gallimore 25:14 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:15 Not that you're just observing reality.

Andrew Gallimore 25:18 No. Because it's not... If you think about perception in the same way of, like, looking, like, a video camera, just take- taking imagery, images of the world, that's not how it works. Um, the brain must actively construct a model of, of, of the environment. That's all, what it's always doing, it's always constructing a model. Um, and it is constantly using that model to make predictions, um, about, um, the way that... Kind of predictions about the, the evolution of sensory information. It's constantly saying, "Okay, if this is... if this model that I'm currently using is good, then this should happen next. This is the pattern of sensory information that I should receive next." So if I, for example, um, move this bottle of water across your s- your perceptual field, even if you close your eyes, you could probably tell me where the water's gonna be in a couple of seconds, because it's, it's moving. You- your brain has a model of the water, um, and it is using that to make predictions. And it's only when something surprising happens, you know, if the water, if I do this and your brain detects, um, that there's something... I- its predictions start to fail, and you get these error signals, and these are what flow into the brain. And the brain uses them to kind of update its model until the errors decline. So you're never, you never have direct access to the world, or to the environment, should I say. You only have direct access to this model that your brain is constructing.

Joe Rogan 26:53 Hmm. That's where it gets weird.

Andrew Gallimore 26:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:55 'Cause I'm assuming your model and my model are very similar.

Andrew Gallimore 27:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:01 That would be... If we could ever get to a ch- a p- point where we could at least temporarily enter into someone else's consciousness and see how they see the world-

Andrew Gallimore 27:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:10 ... I think we're gonna get a lot of answers. We're gonna be like, "Oh, you guys live in a totally different fucking world."

Andrew Gallimore 27:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:16 "No wonder why you think we should be communists and we should..." (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 27:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:21 You know, like-

Andrew Gallimore 27:21 Well, it's true, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:23 I mean, every, wha- whatever your chemical makeup is, your life experience, your biology, whatever contributing factors, I, I'm as- I always assume that your construction of the world is the same as my construction of the world. But every now and then, I'll get a text message from a friend about some world event and their take is so crazy that I'll just kinda go, "Wow, this person is living in a completely different world than me."

Andrew Gallimore 27:48 I mean, they are.

Joe Rogan 27:48 They are.

Andrew Gallimore 27:48 I mean, yeah. I mean, their, their brain, the structure of their brain, the organization of their neural networks-

Joe Rogan 27:53 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 27:53 ... and it's all different in everyone.

Joe Rogan 27:54 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 27:54 Everyone has a unique brain. And so in a sense, everyone has to construct an entirely unique model of reality. But we agree on certain things. We reach this kind of consensus-

Joe Rogan 28:03 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 28:04 ... about what we call things. But we, you know, if I point, you know, something that-

Joe Rogan 28:08 Television.

Andrew Gallimore 28:08 Yeah. I can say that, "Oh, there's..." I can describe the colors.

Joe Rogan 28:11 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 28:11 I can describe the people. Um, but again, we're all using our own personally constructed model-

Joe Rogan 28:17 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 28:17 ... um, and that's what we experience.

Joe Rogan 28:19 Well, that's what's weird, you know, because we're, again, it's this, this assumption.

Andrew Gallimore 28:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:25 So your, your take is that when you're dreaming, you're trying to construct this world and that you don't really have the tools to leave a book where you can read, you don't have the tools to use a calculator. You just know what a calculator is. And so if you're, in- in the absence of an actual calculator, your brain's not capable of creating one.

Andrew Gallimore 28:47 Yeah. So, so, so again, you have at, at the highest level, you have a calc- a calculator model, which is kind of a broad idea of a calculator. It doesn't have all the details. All the details are at the lower end. Uh, actually, we can show this. Can... Sorry, Jamie. Can I use Jamie like this?

Joe Rogan 29:03 Sure. Anytime.

Andrew Gallimore 29:04 (laughs) Um, can you go to the picture of Margaret Thatcher?

Narrator 29:07 Yeah, no prob-... I was gonna bring this up in some way. I think it's supposed to play a video maybe.

Andrew Gallimore 29:11 Not yet.

Narrator 29:12 Well-

Joe Rogan 29:13 Oh.

Narrator 29:13 ... the videos don't seem to be playing in the Keynote. There's three-

Joe Rogan 29:16 Oh, really?

Narrator 29:16 ... or four of them, and none of them play.

Andrew Gallimore 29:17 Oh, really?

Narrator 29:18 Yeah. I figured you were gonna get here at some point.

Andrew Gallimore 29:21 Oh, okay.

Narrator 29:22 I don't know how to... It's, it's just

Joe Rogan 29:24 Is it formatted for Windows?

Andrew Gallimore 29:26 No.

Narrator 29:27 No. Oh, yeah, okay.

Andrew Gallimore 29:28 There we go. Okay. Go back. Go back.

Joe Rogan 29:29 Jesus.

Narrator 29:29 I didn't know that was gonna happen. Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 29:30 Okay, yeah.

Narrator 29:31 So it's still-

Andrew Gallimore 29:31 Perfect.

Narrator 29:32 All right.

Andrew Gallimore 29:32 Okay, so go back one. (laughs) Okay, this is kind of really interesting, right?

Joe Rogan 29:37 Yeah, I've seen this.

Andrew Gallimore 29:38 So you've seen this, right?

Joe Rogan 29:39 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 29:39 This is really-

Joe Rogan 29:39 Not with Margaret Thatcher, but I've seen, seen it with other faces.

Andrew Gallimore 29:42 Yeah. So the original was with Margaret Thatcher.

Joe Rogan 29:45 Right. Well, let's explain it to people that are just listening-

Andrew Gallimore 29:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:47 ... because there's still quite a lot of people.

Andrew Gallimore 29:48 So this is called the Thatcher Effect. So when you're looking at this image of Margaret Thatcher or anyone, your brain is constructing a model of this person, right? A model of their, their face. And as I said, it's constructed over a hierarchy. So you have the overall idea, the overall concept of Margaret Thatcher, right? The whole face-

Joe Rogan 30:08 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 30:08 ... the whole thing.

Joe Rogan 30:09 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 30:09 And then you have... At a lower level, you have the eyes and the mouth and the nose, and they're kind of separate. And then go- going further still, within the eyes, you've got circles and patches of color and all this stuff. And right at the bottom, you have this really messy system of lines and things that don't make any sense, right? Um, and you can actually show how this hierarchy is constructed. At the moment, it's, it just looks like Margaret Thatcher and you, you can't really break it down. Uh, but if you flip over like this... So just leave it there for a second, Jamie, please. Yeah. So now you see, um, what we've done is we've basically... We've weakened this highest level model, right? Of the whole face. Because the brain isn't very good at building models of faces that are upside down, right?

Joe Rogan 30:56 Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 30:57 Uh, and so this looks... There's something wrong with the image clearly.

Joe Rogan 31:01 ... but it looks like Margaret Thatcher upside down.

Andrew Gallimore 31:03 It looks like Margaret Thatcher, but it's... Actually, what's happened is the whole face has been flipped over, but the mouth and the eyes are actually the correct way up.

Joe Rogan 31:11 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 31:12 Right? But to the brain in this configuration, it's not that surprising because the eyes kind of look as they should, the mouth looks as it should. You're seeing the whole image in its pieces, if you like.

Joe Rogan 31:24 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 31:24 You're seeing that lower level fragments. And it's only when you flip it, that it becomes-

Joe Rogan 31:31 Horrific.

Andrew Gallimore 31:31 ... horrific, right?

Joe Rogan 31:32 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 31:33 So now you've reestablished that high level model, um, of Margaret Thatcher and the brain goes, "Fuck. This is completely wrong." And this is why-

Joe Rogan 31:41 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 31:41 ... you get that, that... It's immediately obvious.

Joe Rogan 31:43 With the upside down eyes and the upside down mouth. It looks completely insane.

Andrew Gallimore 31:47 It does.

Joe Rogan 31:47 She looks like a demon.

Andrew Gallimore 31:48 She looks like a demon, right.

Joe Rogan 31:49 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 31:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:49 Which is really weird.

Andrew Gallimore 31:50 (laughs) Which is really weird.

Joe Rogan 31:51 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 31:52 It's called the Thatcher effect. (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:53 It's so... It, it... Was she the original person that they used this idea?

Andrew Gallimore 31:56 Exactly. That's why.

Joe Rogan 31:57 Who came up with this?

Andrew Gallimore 31:58 Who... Oh, good question. But this is fairly old now, I think at least a couple of decades old.

Joe Rogan 32:04 It's just so funny that they figured that out. It's a, a great insight into how the mind works.

Andrew Gallimore 32:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:10 Because the upside down Thatcher with the upside down... With the correct eyeballs and mouth-

Andrew Gallimore 32:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:16 ... the second one, Jamie, that does not look crazy at all.

Andrew Gallimore 32:19 No.

Joe Rogan 32:19 That's what's so weird about the third image, 'cause the third image really looks psychotic. Like if it was a monster movie-

Andrew Gallimore 32:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:26 ... and then someone got bitten by a zombie and then that was what they looked like and then they came running after you, you'd be like, "Oh, fuck, she got bit."

Andrew Gallimore 32:32 (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 32:33 Her eyeballs are upside down.

Andrew Gallimore 32:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:34 Her mouth is upside down 'cause that's what it looks like.

Andrew Gallimore 32:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:37 Weird. Like the... For people listening, the big teeth, your above teeth, they're, they're below, and the little tiny teeth are above, and the eyeballs are... The eyelids, the top part are on the bottom and it really looks like a monster.

Andrew Gallimore 32:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:51 And it's weird that it looks like a monster 'cause it looks so damn normal upside down.

Andrew Gallimore 32:55 Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 32:57 Weird.

Andrew Gallimore 32:58 So yeah, it's just... It's, it's, it's revealing this hierarch-

Joe Rogan 33:02 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 33:02 ... this structure of, of this world model that your brain-

Joe Rogan 33:05 Got it.

Andrew Gallimore 33:05 ... is always constructing, you see.

Joe Rogan 33:06 That's a good way to describe why it's constructing rather than observing.

Andrew Gallimore 33:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:11 That's clearly an am- example of you're constructing normalcy in that upside down face. It's not normal at all.

Andrew Gallimore 33:18 Not normal at all. Right.

Joe Rogan 33:19 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 33:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:20 Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 33:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:21 So, do we know what's going on when you're dreaming? Is it p- potentially... Is there a release of DMT 'cause DMT is exogenously... It's produced in the brain.

Andrew Gallimore 33:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:32 It's produced in the liver and the lungs, right? It's produced in a b- a lot of other areas. So w- we know the body makes it, right?

Andrew Gallimore 33:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:39 And we also know that melatonin plays a role, and there's a lot of other things going on. Is it possible that DMT is one of the ingredients in the soup? This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the platform I used to build my website. Thanks to their design intelligence, you can create a stunning personalized website tailored to your needs. It's like having two decades of design expertise and cutting-edge AI in your corner. Need to manage payments? Squarespace Payments makes it simple with options like Apple Pay, Klarna, and more. Go to squarespace.com/rogan for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use the code ROGAN to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Andrew Gallimore 34:24 Well, um, so I think the problem is, um, as I said, is that, yes, it's possible biochemically. Um, now, the pineal gland is what people often refer to, right?

Joe Rogan 34:38 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 34:39 Uh, because the pineal gland has this long history in mystical traditions, the seat of the soul, the third eye, all this kind of stuff, so everyone wants DMT to produce... To be produced by the pineal gland.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 34:51 Um, the problem is, is first of all is that the pineal gland is very small. It's about the e- size of the end of my, my pinky. Um, and it's designed or evolved to produce, mm, n- nanograms, micrograms of melatonin, very small amounts you need. Um, so the idea that this gland can suddenly start pumping out milligrams of DMT to achieve a kind of psychedelic state in the dream state is, is quite an ask. Um, there ha- there have been some studies, or one study in particular actually looked at DMT levels. So we've known since the 1950s that DMT is produced by, uh... Is, is a product of mammalian physiology and it's produced by humans. Um, in, in those days, they tried to kind of pin schizophrenia on DMT-

Joe Rogan 35:42 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 35:42 ... uh, the idea that if there was some, uh, fault, some problem with tryptamine metabolism, instead of producing serotonin, which is 5-hydroxytryptamine, um, the brain could instead start producing elevated levels of N,N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT. And so they started looking for differences in DMT levels in, uh, psychotic patients, schizophrenic patients versus normal people. And there have been more than 100 studies that have looked at levels of DMT in the, in the blood, in urine, in cerebrospinal fluid, but there's, there's no convincing, consistent evidence, um, that suggests that DMT is, um, the cause-

Joe Rogan 36:26 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 36:26 ... of, of psychosis or dreaming, in fact.

Joe Rogan 36:28 Can I... In, endogenous production-

Andrew Gallimore 36:30 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:31 ... what, what are the... What's the mechanism? Like what is producing it?

Andrew Gallimore 36:35 Okay, so it's actually produced from tryptophan. So DMT is an alkaloid, uh, uh, uh, the... And alkaloids are all produced from amino acids. So tryptophan, uh, is first, um, converted to tryptamine. This is called de- decarboxylation. You remove a carbon dioxide molecule and you got tryptamine.

Joe Rogan 36:53 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 36:54 Now here, you can go in a number of different directions. You can go to serotonin, which is 5-hydroxytryptamine, uh, or you can go to DMT, just simply add two methyl groups, two carbon atoms.

Joe Rogan 37:06 And so what is adding these things?

Andrew Gallimore 37:09 So there's an enzyme called, uh, indole ethylamine N-methyltransferase, or INMT for short. This is the key, um, enzyme for DMT production. It adds these two groups.... these methyl groups to tryptamine, which is produced from tryptophan, to produce DMT.

Joe Rogan 37:27 And tryptophan is produced from?

Andrew Gallimore 37:29 So, it's ... Tryptophan is one of the essential amino acids, so it's, it is something you consume.

Joe Rogan 37:34 Do you, do people take tryptophan as a dietary supplement in order to increase the potency of their experiences?

Andrew Gallimore 37:41 Um, some people do. Uh, I, I don't think it would have an appreciable effect.

Joe Rogan 37:48 Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 37:48 But I mean, people take tryptophan for, for, for lots of reasons.

Joe Rogan 37:51 So, this process, what makes you think that this is a size-dependent process? Because if, just because this gland is so tiny-

Andrew Gallimore 38:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:01 ... why can't it do it?

Andrew Gallimore 38:03 Okay, well there's a number of things. First of all, uh, it's, it's, it's just ... There's orders of magnitude. I mean, a gland that is designed to produce nanograms or micrograms of something, to ask it to produce 1,000 times more of an entirely different molecule is quite an ask. However, that's not the only reason, that ... There's actually been a study recently, in the last, I think, three or four years, that looked at DMT levels in, uh, rat brains in real time. So, not in humans, but in rat brains. They actually have a technique now called microdialysis, where they can basically measure in awake ... uh, uh, an aw- an awake, moving, you know, normally behaving rat, they can measure the levels of DMT in its brain. And what they found was that the levels of DMT, first of all, were surprisingly high. So, similar levels to things like serotonin and dopamine. Um, but al-

Joe Rogan 39:00 Which is unusual.

Andrew Gallimore 39:01 Which is, yes, which makes you think w- ... that it must have some kind of function. But importantly, they also, in some rats, they removed the pineal gland. They kind of cut it out-

Joe Rogan 39:11 Mm.

Andrew Gallimore 39:12 ... and found that it didn't affect. Um, so it ... Uh, we don't need the pineal, in other words. All brain cells, all neurons, can probably produce, uh, DMT. The lungs can almost certainly produce DMT.

Joe Rogan 39:23 Why do you think that the pineal gland had this role in ancient mysticism? Why, why did they have-

Andrew Gallimore 39:31 Mm.

Joe Rogan 39:31 ... this appreciation of it as being this very sacred organ that, I mean, is, I mean, it's the Eye of Horus, right?

Andrew Gallimore 39:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:39 I mean, it certainly looks like it. It looked ... Like, the Eye of Horus looks exactly like a cross-section of the pineal gland.

Andrew Gallimore 39:46 Yeah, I mean, it sits right in the center of the brain as well.

Joe Rogan 39:49 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 39:49 Um, so it ... And it looks, it's kind of unusual, as you say. It, it looks like-

Joe Rogan 39:54 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 39:54 ... a little tiny pinecone.

Joe Rogan 39:55 Like, how did they, where did they come up ... It's, whenever there's ... I mean, it's, it's very easy to dismiss-

Andrew Gallimore 40:00 Mm.

Joe Rogan 40:00 ... like, ancient mysticism and ancient ideas of what, what things are sacred about, you know, the human body, and what, what, what areas of the mind are producing these, uh, the third eye.

Andrew Gallimore 40:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:12 Like, that's how it was always described. But I, I don't want to ... I, I ... It's too weird, so I, I l- I go, wait a minute. Before you dismiss, 'cause it's fun to dismiss things, like-

Andrew Gallimore 40:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:23 ... "Oh, they didn't know anything." Like, how do we know that they weren't onto something? Like, maybe there is a role that that plays in not normal DMT production, but in the big dump that you get before you die.

Andrew Gallimore 40:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:39 Like, when you have a near-death experience-

Andrew Gallimore 40:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:41 ... maybe that has to be, maybe that's the kill switch. Maybe that's the big dump switch.

Andrew Gallimore 40:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:47 You know what I mean? Like, if like-

Andrew Gallimore 40:48 No one's ever put it like that before, but yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:49 'Cause if you think about, it's the seat of the soul.

Andrew Gallimore 40:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Right? If, if that is where the soul is, like, connected, that's where the soul is, like, anchored into this physical reality. And if you're gonna die, if you have a near-death experience, something has gotta go, "All right, boys. This is not a drill. Let her go."

Andrew Gallimore 41:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:10 And then, I mean, that's what a lot of people think is happening.

Andrew Gallimore 41:13 They do, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:14 When, when people have near-death experiences, there's a lot of very bizarre aspects of it, but one of them is the uniformity of their experiences. There's a lot of very similar experiences. Very similar. Um, you know, you have, with anything, you have variables that people may or may not be adding onto their own, because people love to tell a good tale.

Andrew Gallimore 41:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:36 You know? And why miss out on a chance, when you've had a near-death experience that was profound, to maybe add a little to it?

Andrew Gallimore 41:43 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:43 Make it a little bit more exciting. But the overall kind of framework of the experience is very similar. And I often wonder, like, what is that? Like, I, I have a friend who was in a car accident and had a f- a near-death experience, and said that when they came back, they had no fear. Like, for that moment. I mean, they got fear now, but like, no fear at all about dying, no fear at all about life, and that this was this very weird transformative journey where they went to another place, and then they returned.

Andrew Gallimore 42:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:15 But it was very real. It felt very, to the point where all their anxiety, even about the car accident, being knocked unconscious and all that stuff, all went away.

Andrew Gallimore 42:24 Yeah, I think the, the, the near-death experience connection to DMT is, is very interesting, because Rick Strassman, of course, in the '90s, when he wrote DMT: The Spirit Molecule, he hypothesized that, in fact, uh, at the point of death, DMT is released by the pineal and it kind of acts as the conduit by which you, uh, you ... the soul exits the body and enters the afterlife.

Joe Rogan 42:47 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 42:47 And of course, that was p- ... you know, largely speculation. It was just a hypothesis. But in recent years, there's been some really fascinating work showing that DMT actually ... If you, if you take some neurons, a culture of neurons, for example, brain cells, which are very sensitive to oxygen levels, so if you deprive neurons of oxygen, they die very quickly. This is why strokes can be so rapidly devastating. If the brain becomes deprived of blood, uh, and oxygen, then the brain cells start to die. But in the presence of DMT, they live a lot longer.... so they're kind of protecting the, the, the brain against hypoxia. Now, when does the brain enter a hypoxic state? During the dying process, right? This is when, as your cardiovascular system starts to collapse, your respiratory system collapses, the brain becomes deprived of oxygen. And this is precisely the time when you want the brain to be flooded with DMT, just in case you come back, to protect the brain, uh, from, um, the, the lack of oxygen. So, that suggests a clear and obvious link. And if you kill rats, actually ... A- again, I was referring to this microdialysis experiment. If you kill a rat whilst measuring DMT levels, uh, well, as the rat dies, the DMT levels spike. Um-

Joe Rogan 44:11 Hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 44:12 ... so it suggests that the rat is also maybe having a- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:14 Tripping balls.

Andrew Gallimore 44:15 ... an actual death experience. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:17 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 44:17 Um-

Joe Rogan 44:17 I wonder if they come back as a person.

Andrew Gallimore 44:20 Yeah. I don't know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:22 Come back as a-

Andrew Gallimore 44:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:22 ... healthcare executive.

Andrew Gallimore 44:22 But it does suggest, right, it does suggest that there is maybe some link there. But what it doesn't explain, of course, is why you would need ... why this molecule would be-

Joe Rogan 44:32 (coughing)

Andrew Gallimore 44:32 ... does ... why this molecule would be so profoundly visionary.

Joe Rogan 44:36 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 44:36 Um, that's still kind of a mystery. You know, are you g- being kind of given access to wherever you go-

Joe Rogan 44:44 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 44:45 ... after death? You know, is, is it a vision, uh, uh, uh, uh, of what happens to you later on?

Joe Rogan 44:49 That's the ... But the question to me, my question rather-

Andrew Gallimore 44:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:52 ... was b- ... not ... it's, are we sure it's a vision or is it a gateway? Or is it are you entering into a nonphysical space that has its own laws, that it's very different, but it is a reality? And it's not that it's a vision, that, not that it's a hallucination, or a visionary representation, or that you're even constructing this reality, but you're, you're entering into a completely different dimension that has laws that are very different than the dimension that we find ourselves in right now?

Andrew Gallimore 45:24 Okay. So, what I think is that I don't think with DMT that you're going anywhere, as such. Um, I think ... You know, as I said, the m- ... the world you experience is always represented in the brain, and that must apply, I think, in the DMT state. If you, if you're experiencing an altered world, there must be some reput- re- uh, representation of that within your, uh, cortical machinery, within your cortex, within your brain.

Joe Rogan 45:54 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 45:54 I think that has to be the case. Um, however, I don't think, uh, and I think it's a g- a great mystery, is, is how the brain is actually capable of constructing that on its own, in the same way that the brain constructs the dream world, because the brain knows how to construct the waking world. So it's, it's simply using its stored models. The same with hallucinations. If you look at, um, case reports of hallucinations in psychotics, you go through the psychiatric literature, the vast majority of hallucinations are normal appearing, normal-sized people, normal animals. The ... It's like waking dreams, if you like.

Joe Rogan 46:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 46:30 But with DMT, it's not. Your, the brain is somehow constructing a world that has no relationship whatsoever. Nothing is taken-

Joe Rogan 46:38 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 46:38 ... from the normal waking world. It's like the brain is, is suddenly has switched to speaking a language that it never learned. And I think that suggests that actually what's happening is you're not going somewhere, but you are in this more kind of fluid and dynamic state that psychedelics induce. Um, you're kind of, you're making the brain much more sensitive to being commandeered. I think it's a, an ... I think what you're seeing, uh, is what this intelligent agent, as I recall, uh, as I tend to call it ... I don't call it spirits, or aliens, or anything like that. I think s- there's some ... it's clear to me that there's some kind of intelligence, and that intelligence is interacting with our brain in some way and, and showing us kind of what it wants us to see, if you like.

Joe Rogan 47:27 Does that assume that consciousness resides in the brain, though? Or is ... I mean, when you take into account the possibility of consciousness being something that the brain tunes into, and that it forms its own version of reality based on its biology, its life experiences, eh, et cetera, et cetera, but that it is just a radio, and it is just forming its version of consciousness, but that it- ... it is actually tuning into consciousness, and that consciousness is sort of a universal thing that exists not just in people, but maybe in other life forms as well, certainly animals and maybe plants. So, one of the weirder things about people who trip, I'm sure you know this-

Andrew Gallimore 48:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:12 ... is they experience communication from plants.

Andrew Gallimore 48:16 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:16 Like, tree hugging becomes a real thing.

Andrew Gallimore 48:19 Yeah. (laughs) I, I've-

Joe Rogan 48:19 Like, ch- ... Tree hugging is a very different thing. It's like-

Andrew Gallimore 48:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:22 ... "Oh, you're alive."

Andrew Gallimore 48:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:24 "Hello."

Andrew Gallimore 48:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:27 You know? And we know that trees and plants in general, like especially house plants-

Andrew Gallimore 48:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:33 ... when people interact with them, they grow better. They, they, they're healthier plants. Like, you can prove it. It's interesting. You play music for them, communicate with them, say nice things. We also know that plants in, like, abusive households where people are alcoholics-

Andrew Gallimore 48:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:47 ... and cigarette smoke, they do, they're gonna do terrible.

Andrew Gallimore 48:49 Yeah. I think that ... As soon as I start talking about ... First of all, I, I, I think consciousness is absolutely fundamental. I don't think that the brain generates consciousness. Um, I think consciousness is, in some way, the only thing that really exists. You know, I think that it-

Joe Rogan 49:06 Hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 49:06 ... it's the fun- ... it's the absolute ultimate reality is consciousness itself.

Joe Rogan 49:10 Do you think everything is conscious?

Andrew Gallimore 49:12 I think everything is consciousness.

Joe Rogan 49:15 Everything is consciousness. Interesting.

Andrew Gallimore 49:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:17 Um, do you think that there's a state that maybe inanimate objects achieve that is very different than our interpretation of consciousness, but yet they're still conscious?

Andrew Gallimore 49:30 I think in, in-

Joe Rogan 49:32 Which is why, 'cause I say this 'cause Jamie has O.J. Simpson's golf clubs. I feel like they have, uh-

Andrew Gallimore 49:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:38 ... some consciousness attached to them.

Andrew Gallimore 49:41 (laughs) I mean-

Joe Rogan 49:42 It's probably bad, right?

Andrew Gallimore 49:43 Those clubs didn't exist in the '90s. They're, like, only 10 years old.

Joe Rogan 49:47 That's bad voodoo, bro. You got-

Andrew Gallimore 49:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:49 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 49:51 Yeah. You gotta watch out. Um, I think, you know, what do we mean by when something's conscious? In, in, in Buddhism, they have this, they ha- they have this idea of things that exist from their own side, which I really like, you know?

Joe Rogan 50:03 From their own side?

Andrew Gallimore 50:04 Yes. So you exist from your own side. In other words, presumably, I can never prove it, there is someone, a, a subjective perspective there-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 50:16 ... that's actually model- you know, that's experiencing me and I'm- and, and Jamie as well. Everyone has- it's like a perspective, um, that, you know, I exist from my own side.

Joe Rogan 50:25 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 50:25 Whereas, does this skull exist from its own side? Is, is, does it have its own unique perspective? I would say probably not, but I don't know.

Joe Rogan 50:32 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 50:32 And consciousness is kind of like the interaction, you know, uh, reality kind of emerges by, by the interaction of all of these perspectives, these conscious agents, if you like, everyone, all these points of subjective perspective.

Joe Rogan 50:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 50:46 I think that's probably closer to what ultimate reality is. Um, but I think it's very difficult. You know, I'm a neuroscientist, so I focus on not consciousness per se, but on what I can get my teeth into. I can get my teeth into the content, into the structure, um, the actual meat and potatoes-

Joe Rogan 51:07 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 51:08 ... um, um, of... I've never used that phrase before. Uh-

Joe Rogan 51:11 It's a good phrase.

Andrew Gallimore 51:12 (laughs) Yeah. The meat and potatoes of the DMT experience, things that I can talk about and analyze. That's, you know... I'm- what I'm trying to do, I think, is I'm, I'm not trying to tell people what I think DMT is. I'm just trying to convince them that it's not what they think it is, that it's not just hallucination, that it's not... these are not dreams. Um, that kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 51:33 I really feel like to be talking about the subject, you should experience it, like I said before.

Andrew Gallimore 51:37 Oh, yeah. Agreed.

Joe Rogan 51:38 I think it's so silly that there's very serious people that are academics, that are brilliant people that are dancing around what this thing is without doing it.

Andrew Gallimore 51:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:51 Because I've never met anybody who's done it, who comes back and goes, "Eh."

Andrew Gallimore 51:54 Yeah. No. (laughs) It's impossible to do.

Joe Rogan 51:56 No big deal.

Andrew Gallimore 51:57 I was-

Joe Rogan 51:58 No, it's, it's-

Andrew Gallimore 51:58 I was interacting with a guy on Twitter and, um, or X, um, who referred to entity encounters as illusory social events, ISEs.

Joe Rogan 52:08 Oh.

Andrew Gallimore 52:08 Which to me was just the most absurd, watered down... I mean, this guy had obviously never encountered a fucking DMT entity or he wouldn't... but the idea that this is just an illusory social event just seemed to me absurd and...

Joe Rogan 52:20 Had he had any experiences?

Andrew Gallimore 52:21 I, I've, I very much doubt it, and he was a prominent neuroscientist.

Joe Rogan 52:24 Sometimes... But here's the thing. Sometimes people have s- low dose experiences.

Andrew Gallimore 52:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:27 Like, I talked to a friend once that had a very... I'm like, "How many hits did you take?" And they're like, "One." I'm like, "Oh."

Andrew Gallimore 52:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:34 Yeah. You need two more.

Andrew Gallimore 52:36 You need two more.

Joe Rogan 52:37 You need two more. (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 52:38 Take the third hit.

Joe Rogan 52:39 Yeah. You missed the gate.

Andrew Gallimore 52:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:41 You didn't hit the gate. You're on the outside going, "This place is kind of weird."

Andrew Gallimore 52:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:44 But if you go through, it's a lot weirder than you think.

Andrew Gallimore 52:48 It's a lot weirder than you think.

Joe Rogan 52:49 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 52:49 Yeah. Oh, it's, I think it's a lot weirder than Terence McKenna always used to say, you know, "Stranger than you can suppose."

Joe Rogan 52:55 Can suppose.

Andrew Gallimore 52:55 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:57 He had a really amazing video that I think I posted it on my Instagram, uh, of McKenna like in the 1990s, I believe it was-

Andrew Gallimore 53:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:07 ... talking about the upcoming decades-

Andrew Gallimore 53:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:10 ... and what's going to happen in terms of how weird the world is going to be with technological innovation and what we're going to be seeing, artificial intelligence, alien contact. I, I mean, he basically nailed it.

Andrew Gallimore 53:24 Yep.

Joe Rogan 53:24 I mean, fucking nailed it. He nailed it to a T. I think he might have predicted time travel, but here's the thing. If they are capable of time travel, when are you gonna find out about it? When are they gonna r- if, if... let's say DARPA-

Andrew Gallimore 53:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:41 ... is working on some defense project-

Andrew Gallimore 53:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:43 ... and, uh, part of it involves, like, you know, one way to stop a war would be literally to go back in time five minutes and kill everybody who was about to start the war.

Andrew Gallimore 53:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:52 Right? You know-

Andrew Gallimore 53:53 Kill Hitler, that kind of idea.

Joe Rogan 53:54 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 53:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:55 Or, or stop a bomb from being switched on. You would literally go back in time and stop the bomb, stop the missiles from launching. Would you... when would we learn about that? When would... first of all, it, very, highly unlikely that it exists outside of the quantum stage right now. Right? I get it. But if it did, if we're talking about 100 years from now or 200-

Andrew Gallimore 54:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:18 ... would we know? We would not.

Narrator 54:20 Do you want me to play it?

Joe Rogan 54:20 The, yes, this is it. This is it.

Narrator 54:22 All right. I'll, I'll just check here.

Joe Rogan 54:22 This is amazing. I love this. First of all, I just love his voice. Had kind of the best voice.

Narrator 54:31 And it's going to rise excruciatingly, even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. (laughs) So, uh, I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. And at that point, novelty theory can come out of the woods, uh, because eventually people are gonna say, "What the hell is going on?" It's just too nuts. It's not enough to say it's nuts. You have to explain why it's so nuts. I look for the invention of artificial life-

Joe Rogan 55:13 Check.

Narrator 55:13 ... the cloning of human beings-

Joe Rogan 55:15 Probably check.

Narrator 55:16 ... uh, possible contact with extraterrestrials-

Joe Rogan 55:19 Probably check.

Narrator 55:19 ... possible human immortality, and at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, genocide, race-baiting, uh, homophobia, famine, starvation, because, uh, the systems which are in place to keep the world-... sane are in- utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed, uh, the collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the internet. These are changes so immense, nobody could imagine them ever happening. And now that they have happened, nobody even bothers to mention what a big deal it is. Uh, the mushroom said to me once, it said, "This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions. It's a fire in a madhouse." And that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time. This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension. The entire destiny of all life on the planet is tied up in this. We are not acting for ourselves or from ourselves. We are... we happen to be the point species on a transformation that will affect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion.

Joe Rogan 56:49 Nailed it. I think that's exactly what's going on right now. The only thing that he didn't quite get is ar- the artificial intelligence aspect-

Narrator 56:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:58 ... how much of a factor. But I mean, how could you predict all that in 1998?

Andrew Gallimore 57:03 I think with, you know, um, we, we live in a very thin sliver. If you look at the development of an intelligent civilization, right? Over hundreds of thousands of years, um, we live in this, this thin sliver, this kind of technological phase. Um, and once you enter that phase that we're in now, you know, the computer age, the information age, or whatever it is, you're probably only a few 100 years away from departing for the stars, uh, or something like this, of complete... or even completely transcending our biology. Uh, and this isn't a crazy idea anymore, you know. Many sensible astrobiologists and other, um, intelligence theorists think, yes, probably what's going to happen in the next few 100 years is that we will become post-biological.

Joe Rogan 57:56 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 57:57 Um, and so if you think about the universe more broadly, if we're looking for aliens, quote unquote "aliens," as being kind of wet-brained, wet-bodied biological beings, we're probably only looking for a tiny fraction of the intelligence in the cosmos. And the vast majority of intelligence in the cosmos is likely to be post-biological, to have completely dispensed with the biological form. Now, what's interesting about that... Uh, Jamie, sorry. Um, there's an... Have you heard of... You've heard of the Kardashev scale, right?

Joe Rogan 58:33 I don't think so. What is it?

Andrew Gallimore 58:35 So, the K- Kardashev scale was generated by a guy called Kardashev, r- and he was Soviet guy. And he kind of hyp- theorized, uh, as intelligences progress and develop, they go through a number of phases. Um, so you have a Type 0-

Joe Rogan 58:51 Okay, I have heard of this scale.

Andrew Gallimore 58:52 Yeah, you've got it, right?

Joe Rogan 58:53 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 58:53 So, we're kind of a Type 0, Level 1 on the Kardashev scale. And in Level 2... Um, sorry, we're Level 0. So, Level 1 would be when we, for example, are able to harness all of the energy from our neighboring star. Uh, then the next level, when we can harness all the energy from the galaxy, et cetera. So it's, it's, it's an expansionist way of thinking about it, the idea of climbing the Kardashev scale. There we go, you see.

Joe Rogan 59:18 Here it is.

Andrew Gallimore 59:18 Yeah? But in the 1990s, a, a British cosmologist called John Barrow, he said, "Actually, if you actually look at how an intelligent civilization, such as ourselves, the only one we know, we actually spend a lot more time going not to larger and larger scales, but smaller and smaller scales," right? We go down to, you know, doing chemistry, uh, the Large Hadron Collider, we're looking at the structure of atoms and the, the structure of subatomic particles and that kind of thing. We're actually spending more time and more energy and more money going deeper and deeper. Now, the reason that's significant is because if you take, um, the, um, the human sits in the middle, if you take the scale of a human, and then you compare the scale of a human to the scale, let's say, of a hydrogen atom, and then you compare it to the scale of the observable, as- ob- observable universe, humans sit almost exactly in the middle of that scale, from the hydrogen atom to the observable universe. But below the hydrogen atom, there is probably 100 million to a billion times more scale, deeper and deeper down. Richard Feynman, the Nobel, you know, the legendary physicist, always used to say, "There's, there's plenty of room at the bottom. There's much more room at the bottom." Um, in other words, as an intelligent species, an intelligent civilization progresses, they're not likely to kind of become space-faring as such, you know, and kind of exploring the cosmos. They're much more likely to go deep down and kind of instantient- instantiate themselves at the lowest levels of reality. That's where all the space is. It's not out there, surprisingly.

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 1:01:05 All the space is downwards. Now, once a, an intelligence achieves that, and you have to imagine that probably, um, there are probably billions of these civilizations that had, had already achieved this before we even popped into existence, before we, you know, evolved as a species. Um, they would effectively disappear. They would, they would become effectively part of the fabric of, of spacetime itself, um, exploiting the fundamental computational structure of the lowest level, uh, of, of reality, basically. And that's where they reside. Um, and there are probably far, far more, probably millions or billions more of those types of civilizations than there are ones like...... I say you and me, like us, as humans, right? Um, and so then you ask, well, if that's the case, you know, if we're interested in contacting so, quote unquote, "extraterrestrials," why are we focused on this tiny subpopulation of beings that are likely to be, you know, sh- floating around in metallic disks or whatever? We should in fact be focusing on the- the much more abundant ones that are perhaps at the deepest levels of reality. And how would we do that? How would an intelligence that has completely transcended its biology and even completely transcended its physical form entirely, how would such an intelligence communicate with us? It would do it through our brain. That's the most obvious thing, uh, because the brain is how we interact with the environment, it's how we interact... it's the interface by which we interact with what there is. Um, and I think DMT, uh, I'm not saying that these DMT entities are necessarily these post-biological beings, but it's not out of the question. I'm not straying too far from fairly standard now modern scientific discourse when I say that it's perfectly possible that there are very large numbers of these supremely intelligent civilizations that are everywhere and nowhere, and that we can somehow interact with using our brain, and that D- DMT generates this kind of highly susceptible, highly sensitive, um, neurological state that allows us to interact with them. This is why, perhaps, when you go into the DMT space, it's immediately obvious, it's undeniable, undeniably apparent that you are interacting with some kind of supremely advanced intelligence. Could that be some intelligence that has existed long before we arrived on the scene and that we're now kind of discovering this technology? And I- I consider DMT- T to be some kind of technology that we have discovered that we are now learning to use to interact with these, um, intelligent agents that perhaps have been here for- forever in human terms.

Joe Rogan 1:04:06 The... it's an interesting term, the term g- go there.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:10 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 You know, because that's what it feels like.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 It feels like you're- you're traveling somewhere, like you're going somewhere. But the reality is that place you're going is probably right here.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:22 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 That's where it gets weird because it's around you all the time. You just don't have the ability to tune into it all the time-

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:28 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:04:28 ... because you wouldn't be able to function if you did.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:30 Exactly. And- and these beings, they probably don't even have a true form that you could represent visually, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:37 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:37 So when you see an insectoid alien, um, or a machine elf, you're probably not seeing, or almost certainly-

Joe Rogan 1:04:43 I've never seen a machine elf.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:44 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 1:04:44 Have you?

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:45 (laughs) I've seen... I don't know if I've seen the- the archetypal kind of McKennaing, McKenna (laughs) McKenna-esque machine elf.

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Yeah, the way she described it was very odd.

Andrew Gallimore 1:04:53 But I've seen certainly a multitude of beings, very, very s- kind of sc- sc- screechy, squeaky... Like jabbering, jabbering.

Joe Rogan 1:05:03 You know what I saw once? A bunch of jokers giving me the finger.

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:06 Oh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 They were all giving me the finger and they were going, "Fuck you," and they were jokers with like little tassels on-

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:11 ... with the bells in the end of it.

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 And it made me very aware that I was taking myself too seriously and they were like, "Yup."

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:17 Yup.

Joe Rogan 1:05:18 And they said it to me and they pointed their finger at me like that.

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 And I was like, "You're right."

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:21 Yeah. It's interesting, actually. I- it reminded me of something. Um, there's this weird effect, um, that people who- who use DMT a lot, they get this... you know, they might use DMT regularly, uh, and- and- and one day, um, they- they take a hit as they normally do with the same batch of DMT and they get a joker or a jester and it wags its finger and says, "Not today." Um-

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 You've done too much.

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:47 Yup, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:05:48 I've heard that before, yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:48 And- and it shuts off. Um, a guy wrote to me and says that he- he saw a jester, um, as he often does, and it fucking punched him in the face.

Joe Rogan 1:05:58 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:05:58 And he felt it. He felt... And it knocked him back into this world, and so the- the effect was gone instantaneously.

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 Oh, wow.

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:06 Now that is not easy to explain because it- it is not tolerance. DMT, first of all, doesn't exhibit subjective tolerance, unlike the other psychedelics. It's kind of weird. You can inject someone with DMT every 30 minutes perpetually, uh, and they will... the intensity of their experience will always be the same.

Joe Rogan 1:06:23 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:23 It's not a tolerance, and tolerance anyway is a gradual thing. It- it increases gradually over time.

Joe Rogan 1:06:29 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:29 So it's not an off switch. Um, I was speaking to someone... We- we're probably gonna talk about DMTX later, which is kinda my thing, uh, but she was undergoing DMTX, which is this infusion-

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:40 ... where they- they keep the brain level of DMT constant. Um, and she-

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 That's a tease to the big buildup-

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:46 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 ... of DMTX.

Andrew Gallimore 1:06:47 There we go. (laughs) Yeah. Uh, and she was in the DMT space interacting, you know, the infusion machine was running, pumping her brain with DMT at a constant rate, keeping the DMT levels in her brain constant, and she was interacting with these entities. Uh, and then at some point, after maybe, you know, 30 minutes or whatever, when the machine was still running, they said to her, or impressed upon her, they said, "Okay, we're- we're done. We're done today," um, and the visions stopped.

Joe Rogan 1:07:16 Whoa.

Andrew Gallimore 1:07:17 But the machine, the brain was still being pumped with DMT, and yet the visions had stopped. So what that suggests (laughs) to me is that they do indeed, as I said before, they have control. They are directing the information into the brain. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 Oh.

Andrew Gallimore 1:07:32 ... and people, you know, describe things like downloads and Graham Hancock actually in- in his book Supernatural, in his first DMT experience, he described this, um, this download of highly complex, entirely non-human, uh, information into his brain as if he'd locked in to some kind of advanced computational processor that was- that was beaming information into his- h- his brain. And many people describe that as like a download-

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 1:08:01 ... an- uh, of- of- of- of complex mathematical structures and strange geometries entirely...... entirely non-human stuff, uh, as if there's kind of ... Not that they expect you to understand it, but as if to say, you know, "We know a lot more about reality than you do. We know a lot and you don't know fucking anything." And that's the message they're kind of trying to impress upon you by directing it. And they can control it. They can, they can shut it off if they s- so decide.

Joe Rogan 1:08:29 Mm, they.

Andrew Gallimore 1:08:31 Well, (laughs) you've picked up on the they.

Joe Rogan 1:08:34 Yeah, it's a weird one.

Andrew Gallimore 1:08:36 Or it.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 Whatever it is.

Andrew Gallimore 1:08:37 Yeah. Whatever it is.

Joe Rogan 1:08:38 Yeah. Um ... This idea that we all evolve along a similar pathway is strange to me, that, um, the concept is, uh, we assume that intelligent life everywhere else evolves along similar pathways and that most of them eventually become some sort of a biological digital hybrid, if not completely digital, and then most of them, uh, probably figure out how to harness the power of the star and the sun.

Andrew Gallimore 1:09:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:09 But one of the ... The weird thing about us is that not just that we are evolving and that we have evolved, but yet we have this, th- but that rather, we have this insatiable desire for technological innovation.

Andrew Gallimore 1:09:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:22 Technological innovation and, um, to make things better. We're constantly improving upon everything we make, we're making better versions of every computer, every phone, every year, even though it's not really necessary for most people, you're always buying them. It, it's a very strange desire that we have, that I think sinks hand in glove to materialism, because materialism is also s- so stupid for an intelligent life form that has a finite lifespan.

Andrew Gallimore 1:09:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:53 To not be aware that collecting things does you no good (laughs) because you're gonna die.

Andrew Gallimore 1:09:57 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:57 Like, but yet you want to collect things more than anything and you wanna show people the things you've collected. Well, what better way to facilitate innovation and growth than to have a built-in instinct for purchasing better things all the time-

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 ... and possessing better things all the time, which will force people to work literally into the grave-

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:18 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 ... in order to get these things done.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:21 Yeah. I think it's, it's psychotic. It-

Joe Rogan 1:10:23 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:23 I- it is. It-

Joe Rogan 1:10:24 But that, that's just us.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:26 Like, it doesn't have to be like that. If you think about the hundreds of billions of stars just in this galaxy-

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:33 ... the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe, the, the endless possibilities of when intelligent life emerged, if in fact it did emerge anywhere. We have no evidence it emerged anywhere else but here.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:45 Right? We're just guessing.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:46 We assume, but if we were right, like, it could b- have taken an infinite number of forms. It could have evolved completely non-physical.

Andrew Gallimore 1:10:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:59 Like, intelligent life that's completely non-physical, that's not ... It's not contained to a cellular structure and bones and organs, that it's plasma-based, that it's some sort of an in- in- intelligence that communicates with some sort of a universal language. We, we don't ... We're just guessing that everything's a monkey. We're just guessing everything's a curious monkey that keeps making a better spaceship.

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:28 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:28 But that might even be true. Which by the way, I went to the SpaceX.

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:31 Jamie and I both did. How dope?

Narrator 1:11:33 So ...

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Pretty dope. We went to see the SpaceX launch.

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:36 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:11:37 We were ... How far do you think we were? Were we a half a mile, quarter of a mile? What do you think?

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:40 Uh, I call it a mile, mile and a half, maybe two miles.

Joe Rogan 1:11:43 Oh, you think a mile? More than a mile?

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:45 Really? Okay.

Andrew Gallimore 1:11:46 Could've been.

Joe Rogan 1:11:46 So let's say we're a mile away. Let's just guess. Well, let's just, uh, throw it into Perplexity.

Narrator 1:11:50 Now I can search. I can look.

Joe Rogan 1:11:51 Throw it in Perplexity. Ask our sponsor, Perplexity, how far is the distance between Starbase and the SpaceX rocket?

Narrator 1:12:01 Between the Starbase ...

Joe Rogan 1:12:04 And the SpaceX-

Narrator 1:12:06 ... launch pad.

Joe Rogan 1:12:06 Yeah, launch pad.

Narrator 1:12:09 SpaceX in Texas, just to be specific.

Joe Rogan 1:12:14 Yeah, because there's one in Florida as well.

Narrator 1:12:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:18 So they have their own town down there. It's like a legit town. It's like a military town. Like, they took over a place, like a, a military installation, these little tiny houses, fucking security everywhere. There's so many Cybertrucks. If you have a Cybertruck, you're fucked. You can't find ... You have no idea." (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:12:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:33 You better remember your parking spot, bitch.

Andrew Gallimore 1:12:35 Yes.

Narrator 1:12:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:35 Everybody has a goddamn Cybertruck.

Narrator 1:12:37 Estimated at less than one mile.

Joe Rogan 1:12:39 Let's see. Okay.

Narrator 1:12:42 Right here.

Joe Rogan 1:12:42 Okay. Main entrance to Starbase to the actual launch pad infrastructure is estimated less than one mile. Public viewing sites. Okay, there's public viewing sites.

Narrator 1:12:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:51 But we were there. We were at Starbase. We weren't at, like, a public viewing site. We were at the actual rocket factory and when that thing takes off, you feel it in your chest.

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:03 It's nuts.

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:04 So it's roughly a mile away and you have to wear earplugs. It's a mile away-

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:09 ... and you gotta wear earplugs and you feel it in your chest and Elon's son was like, "I want to go home." (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:15 (laughs) Like, there was a video. There's a video that I put, and you can hear him in the background. It's so funny because my wife was like, "Are the babies okay?" Because women that have children, like, they, they ... that's immediately what they go to. Not, "Wow, that rocket's really cool." It's like, "Oh, are the babies okay?"

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:32 Because you could hear him going, "I want to go. I want to go." He was like, "I want to get out of here," because it's that freaky.

Andrew Gallimore 1:13:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 The power of it is just so nuts. You get that you feel... And then you see it and you realize, like, God, how many people have seen a rocket launch? Like, how cra- This thing's going into space. And then I went upstairs and I got to sit in the command console, or whatever you would call it, the command center. Mm-hmm. And I get me and Elon and all of the engineers and we get to watch it land in Australia 35 minutes later. So we watched-

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:04 35 minutes?

Joe Rogan 1:14:05 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:05 From?

Joe Rogan 1:14:06 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:06 From?

Joe Rogan 1:14:07 From Texas-

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:07 From Texas.

Joe Rogan 1:14:08 ... to Australia. (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:09 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:14:10 It's crazy. And we're watching all these cameras in real time that are all connected to Starlink satellites, so there's dozens of cameras.

Narrator 1:14:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:20 So you're watching.

Narrator 1:14:21 Yeah, about two miles is what this says.

Joe Rogan 1:14:22 Oh, two miles.

Narrator 1:14:23 Straight across.

Joe Rogan 1:14:24 Okay.

Narrator 1:14:24 So that seems so close.

Joe Rogan 1:14:25 It seemed really close.Okay. Two- even crazier.

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:30 So two miles away and you feel it in your chest. It's nuts. I mean, it's really nuts. It's, uh, the power that it has is so nuts. But it's so old school.

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:40 Right? It's just, you know-

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:42 It feels old-fashioned in a weird kind of way.

Joe Rogan 1:14:44 Yes. It's the most modern version-

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:46 ... of, like, a V8 muscle car. (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:50 It's crazy, right? If you think-

Joe Rogan 1:14:51 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:14:51 ... like, 100 years ago, at the end of the, beginning of the 20th century, um, how different we would be in 100 years as, as we are now. Um, it's, it's unfathomable. When you compare the rest of human history, it's- it's- it's like an exponential thing. You know, we- we've gradually been developing and technologically improving.

Joe Rogan 1:15:13 (laughs)

Andrew Gallimore 1:15:13 And then we hit some point in the last century, uh, where we reach this kind of technological, computer, informational age and everything is accelerating. Exactly like Terence McKenna was saying-

Joe Rogan 1:15:25 Yes.

Andrew Gallimore 1:15:25 ... things speed up-

Joe Rogan 1:15:27 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:15:27 ... very, very quickly. And it feels like we're on the cusp either of killing ourselves, which is one option-

Joe Rogan 1:15:34 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:15:34 ... um, or undergoing some profound transformation as a species. Whether it be, whether it means becoming a space-faring nation, uh, sorry, a space-faring civilization, or whether it means going in the opposite direction and becoming some kind of post-biological civilization that, um, exists beyond space and beyond time-

Joe Rogan 1:15:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 1:15:56 ... perhaps, um, and kind of joining the crowd, uh, of these intelligences that have made that transition, um, perhaps billions of years ago, you know? Um...

Joe Rogan 1:16:06 Do you, uh, think that this chaos is the only way that things get done? See, this i- this is my th- my thought.

Andrew Gallimore 1:16:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:14 If everything, everything's perfect and everything's wonderful and fine, there's very little motivation for radical change. And radical change is what you need to escape the primate instincts that we have.

Andrew Gallimore 1:16:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:29 The, as McKenna had the great quote of, that we're territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons.

Andrew Gallimore 1:16:35 There we go. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:35 It's such a perfect way to describe us. Um, that is what we are, right?

Andrew Gallimore 1:16:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:39 So in order to escape that, things have to almost be so ch- chaotic that it demands radical change. It, it demands, like, you're, we were literally, like ... And this is how we look at many things. We l- even things that aren't totally warranted, like climate change or COVID or anything, like, we look at it like, "Oh my God, it's an existential crisis."

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:02 "Like, we have to do something right now." And this is how also we approach political dissent or political disagreements.

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:08 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:08 If the left wing wins, the world is over.

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:11 If the right wins, the world is over. And it's like this ... Like, it's almost like this is how we have to function in order to really get things done. And as things are getting more and more crazy in, in terms of technology and in terms of the consequench- consequences of our actions, post-nuclear bomb-

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:32 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:32 ... post-fusion, post-Hadron Collider, post-AI-

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:38 ... is where it gets really weird. We have to kind of be like, "We, we really gotta get going, guys."

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:44 "We really gotta do something." And we have to figure out what's the right way to proceed in order to not blow ourselves up.

Andrew Gallimore 1:17:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:51 Like, h- and I feel like this is maybe the only way that you motivate this kind of extreme change which seems like our destiny. Our destiny is some sort of a very bizarre extreme change-

Andrew Gallimore 1:18:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:05 ... that seems to probably be happening within your, your, and my lifetime.

Andrew Gallimore 1:18:09 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:09 Something's happening-

Andrew Gallimore 1:18:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:10 ... right now that is gonna be different than anything that's ever happened before, which is the birth of artificial general superintelligence.

Andrew Gallimore 1:18:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:17 Right in front of our eyes, some sort of a digital supreme being is going to exist. And we're gonna h- we're, we're gonna have to figure out society. We're gonna have to figure out everything. We're ... It's gonna be a compl- This idea of, like, having bullshit congressional candidates that are full of shit and paid off by these companies and they're gonna make laws that screw you over again, all that's out the window when no humans control anything anymore. And that's entirely possible inside of our lifetime, and I think more likely than not. Because if you look at all the harm we've done to the rivers and the ocean and the world and all the stupid shit we do on a daily basis, if artificial intelligence comes along and says, "All of this is completely unnecessary. Just let us take the reins and we'll solve all of your energy problems, all of your inequality problems, all of your famine. We're gonna solve it all very quickly. And we're gonna stop all wars." You'd have to be a fool to say no. I value freedom more than I fear nuclear war. There'll probably be some fat, sweaty, right-wing guy-

Andrew Gallimore 1:19:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:30 ... who's on TV with an American flag on his lapel and he'll tell you that.

Andrew Gallimore 1:19:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:19:34 "Freedom is more import- We have gotten to 2025 because of free-"

Andrew Gallimore 1:19:39 You sound like Alex Jones.

Joe Rogan 1:19:41 Alex Jones is right-

Andrew Gallimore 1:19:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:43 ... about most things. Um, I feel like maybe that's the only way things get done is through chaos, like, that we have to have a motivate-

Andrew Gallimore 1:19:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:19:52 Like, what is the best motivation for success? I think it's poverty. When you, when you grow up poor, y- people that grow up poor have an extra gear.

Andrew Gallimore 1:20:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:20:04 They get things done. Like, uh, uh, in terms of, like, athletes, certainly in terms of fighters, um, I would s- I would say the vast majority of elite MMA fighters had a bad childhood. Not all of them. There's a lot of really great guys and really great fighters that have wonderful parents and they just love competition and they just have it in them.

Andrew Gallimore 1:20:23 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:20:23 But that's, that's the outlier-

Andrew Gallimore 1:20:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:20:26 ... really. The, the common one is a w- someone who was beaten up a lot as a child, gangs, beaten into gangs, like, been around violence a lot, had older brother, maybe abusive fathers. That's a big one.And those people, because of that, have a motivation to do something that other people don't. They can push harder. They can f- they can solve complex combat sports problems that other people don't solve as quickly. I wonder if that's the case with everything, that like in order to really get things done, like you have to have a chaotic society that would e- even accept AI.

Andrew Gallimore 1:21:04 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:21:04 Like, in order for AI to... Uh, if we were of some peaceful Buddhist civilization that was living completely in harmony with the Earth, with regenerative farming everywhere, no use of plastics, all fossil fuels are either eliminated or reduced down to some sort of bioavailable recyclable material that we then, you know, put back into the mulch or whatever the fuck we do, and then someone came along and said, "We're gonna develop artificial intelligence and these nerds in Simi Valley are gonna control it." You'd be like, "What? What are you talking about?"

Andrew Gallimore 1:21:41 (laughs) Yeah, I think, I mean- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 We're gonna have some Silicon Valley guys with autism and they're gonna be the ones that are in charge of the destiny of the human race 'cause they're gonna create a digital god. You'd be like, "No."

Andrew Gallimore 1:21:52 No.

Joe Rogan 1:21:53 "Slow down, hold on."

Andrew Gallimore 1:21:54 You don't need that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21:55 But if you're in a place where you look at Gaza is getting destroyed, and, you, the, you'll see what's going on in Ukraine, they're putting 60-year-old guys on the front line, and Russia, and they're using drone bombs with monofilament line behind them because they, they don't want anti-drone technologies. They're coming up with new ways to kill each other. Like, maybe AI is the solution because it's so crazy. Everything is so nuts. You look at India and those rivers that are completely choked with plastic, plastic bottles, and garbage, and you look at China, the places where they make blue jeans where the entire river is blue from our stupid fucking genes that they manufacture for us, and you go, "Wow," like maybe it kind of has to be this fu-... Maybe we have to... In order to accept the fact that we need help-

Andrew Gallimore 1:22:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:22:44 ... maybe we have to fuck it up first. Maybe we have to fuck it up so bad on our own, and if we didn't fuck it up, we would never have the need for it. We'd be like, "Well, as a person, my goal in life is to achieve enlightenment and to be a better version of me." And that's not... Ugh. Having something that's digital that has no emotions and feelings and no empathy whatsoever, unless I program it into it, like have that have supreme control over all the available resources on Earth? Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that.

Andrew Gallimore 1:23:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:23:12 That sounds like a bad idea.

Andrew Gallimore 1:23:13 I mean, (laughs) I think that, that generally there's a, uh, there's a, a fundamental principle that the most interesting things happen at the edge of chaos.

Joe Rogan 1:23:22 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:23:23 You know? And this applies, it applies to the brain. The brain actually sits at the edge of chaos. In its complex systems, we have lots of interacting parts. They can, they can, they can display behavior from perfect order all the way to complete chaos. Now, perfect order is boring. Nothing happens.

Joe Rogan 1:23:42 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Gallimore 1:23:43 Um, complete chaos is useless because it's, it's, it's, you know, it's not actually technically random, but it, it's complete, it's a complete mess. Whereas, when you get that balance right, you reach a point that's called the edge of chaos where order and disorder are perfectly balanced. Psychedelics, they, they, as I said before, they nudge the brain into that slightly disordered state, um, but all things, all cells, all living organisms, uh, complex society, ant societies, they oper- operate at the edge of chaos. So, I think what you're saying kind of resonates with the idea that, that interesting things happen globally within civilizations not when everything is perfect-

Joe Rogan 1:24:23 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:24:24 ... but when things are, have, are close to going out of control, but they don't.

Joe Rogan 1:24:30 Yeah.

Andrew Gallimore 1:24:30 And you ha- you have to push it as far as you can push it without it descending into... We, we're o- we're always on the edge of everything collapsing. And we're probably closer to that than we un- we, we actually realize.

Joe Rogan 1:24:42 Right.

Andrew Gallimore 1:24:42 Um, and so I think that's kind of what happening, and I think with, when it comes to