Joe Rogan Experience #2403 - Andrew Gallimore

1. 0:00 – 1:20

   Terence McKenna, “Death by Astonishment,” and why DMT demands composure

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:10

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

   5. AGAndrew Gallimore0:15

      Um, splendid, how the devil are you, sir?

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      (laughs)

   7. AGAndrew Gallimore0:18

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      I think it's the first time anyone's answered "splendid" when I ask how you doing.

   9. AGAndrew Gallimore0:22

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:24

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

   11. AGAndrew Gallimore0:30

       Death by Astonishment.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Which is the famous Terence McKenna quote, right?

   13. AGAndrew Gallimore0:34

       Yes. He was asked-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       "The only thing you have to fear is death by astonishment."

   15. AGAndrew Gallimore0:36

       Exactly, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:38

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

   17. AGAndrew Gallimore0:44

       ... astonishment.

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       I literally heard those words fr-

   19. AGAndrew Gallimore0:46

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       It's almost like whatever's over there-

   21. AGAndrew Gallimore0:49

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       ... wanted me to hear that.

   23. AGAndrew Gallimore0:50

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       So I could, like, sink in or whatever, 'cause I had already heard it before, you know?

   25. AGAndrew Gallimore0:57

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       Like, so they wanted to say it to me as well. It was very weird.

   27. AGAndrew Gallimore1:00

       Yeah, it's sage advice, I think, because-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       Oh, it's the only way.

   29. AGAndrew Gallimore1:03

       (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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Like, don't give in to the freak-out.
2. 1:20 – 5:10

   Gallimore’s origin story: teenage McKenna, early internet rabbit holes, and choosing pharmacology

   1. AGAndrew Gallimore1:20

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:31

      Like most of us.

   3. AGAndrew Gallimore1:31

      Yeah, like most of us.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:33

      Probably.

   5. AGAndrew Gallimore1:33

      But this was, like, this was during, like, the dawn of the internet.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:37

      Right.

   7. AGAndrew Gallimore1:37

      So-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:38

      Long before you were a scientist.

   9. AGAndrew Gallimore1:39

      Long before I was a scientist.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:41

       (laughs)

   11. AGAndrew Gallimore1:41

       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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:31

       What year was this?

   13. AGAndrew Gallimore2:33

       '96.

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:34

       Oh, early.

   15. AGAndrew Gallimore2:35

       Giving my age away here, but-

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:37

       Early days of the-

   17. AGAndrew Gallimore2:38

       Early days.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:39

       ... internet.

   19. AGAndrew Gallimore2:39

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:39

       Yeah.

   21. AGAndrew Gallimore2:40

       Yeah. So I spent all my time just, you know, going onto AltaVista. Remember AltaVista?

   22. JRJoe Rogan2:47

       I do.

   23. AGAndrew Gallimore2:47

       Yeah. (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan2:48

       I didn't r- I didn't remember it till you brought it up, now I remember it.

   25. AGAndrew Gallimore2:50

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan3:16

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AGAndrew Gallimore3:17

       Your entire world is, uh, is, is obliterated and replaced with one that is completely alien, that isn't-

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:24

       Yeah.

   29. AGAndrew Gallimore3:24

       ... 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)

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:34

       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?"
3. 5:10 – 6:58

   First breakthrough shock: “impossible experience” and confronting apparent intelligence

   1. AGAndrew Gallimore5:10

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan6:50

      Yeah.

   3. AGAndrew Gallimore6:51

      ... 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."

4. 6:58 – 9:11

   Ego tools evaporate: what DMT reveals about language, social performance, and human programming

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:58

      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?"

   2. AGAndrew Gallimore7:38

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:38

      "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-

   4. AGAndrew Gallimore7:59

      Mm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:59

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

   6. AGAndrew Gallimore8:04

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:04

      ... 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.'"

   8. AGAndrew Gallimore8:30

      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-

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:43

      Yeah.

   10. AGAndrew Gallimore8:43

       ... 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.

5. 9:11 – 13:44

   A neuroscience framework: cortex as world-modeling machinery and psychedelics shifting order/entropy

   1. JRJoe Rogan9:11

      So, you've done some, like, legitimate studies with, uh, DMT.

   2. AGAndrew Gallimore9:19

      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-

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:45

      Sure.

   4. AGAndrew Gallimore9:45

      If you wanna go really deep-

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:46

      Yeah, sure.

   6. AGAndrew Gallimore9:46

      ... I can give you a kind of a, uh, a neuroscience lesson.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:50

      Yeah, please.

   8. AGAndrew Gallimore9:50

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan11:51

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AGAndrew Gallimore11:51

       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-

6. 13:44 – 17:51

   Why “construct” not “observe”: predictive processing, Penfield’s brain stimulation, and cortical hierarchies

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:44

      When you say constructing-

   2. AGAndrew Gallimore13:45

      Hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:45

      ... why do you use that term? Why, why do you use, "The brain is constructing?"

   4. AGAndrew Gallimore13:51

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:09

      Oh, you brought slides.

   6. AGAndrew Gallimore14:10

      I brought slides.

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:11

      Here we go.

   8. AGAndrew Gallimore14:12

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      Can I ask you this?

   10. AGAndrew Gallimore15:09

       Hmm?

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:09

       How do we know it does that?

   12. AGAndrew Gallimore15:11

       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?

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:24

       No.

   14. AGAndrew Gallimore15:24

       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-

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:54

       Ugh.

   16. AGAndrew Gallimore15:55

       (laughs) When they're still awake.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:57

       Ugh.

   18. AGAndrew Gallimore15:58

       Yeah (laughs) .

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:59

       Ugh.

   20. AGAndrew Gallimore15:59

       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?

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       Oh, my God.

   22. AGAndrew Gallimore16:07

       (laughs) Can you imagine?

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:09

       Isn't it crazy that that's how we have to find out-

   24. AGAndrew Gallimore16:12

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       ... h- what works?

   26. AGAndrew Gallimore16:14

       Hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       We have to, like, it's ... The aliens probably look at us and go-

   28. AGAndrew Gallimore16:18

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:18

       ... "Oh, my God, you guys are still doing that?"

   30. AGAndrew Gallimore16:20

       Yeah.
7. 17:51 – 34:24

   Dreaming vs DMT, lucid-dream ‘reality tests,’ and why DMT doesn’t look like REM

   1. AGAndrew Gallimore17:51

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:12

      No.

   3. AGAndrew Gallimore19:13

      Not- not many people have. Um, what about read a book in a dream?

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:17

      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-

   5. AGAndrew Gallimore19:26

      Is this Waking Life?

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:27

      I don't remember what movie it was.

   7. AGAndrew Gallimore19:29

      Yep.

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:29

      But the... it was a, a guy who was instructing how to lucid dream-

   9. AGAndrew Gallimore19:36

      Hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:36

       ... 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-

   11. AGAndrew Gallimore19:45

       Hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:45

       ... knock on it with your hand, and say, "Am I awake?" Knock, knock, knock.

   13. AGAndrew Gallimore19:48

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:49

       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."

   15. AGAndrew Gallimore20:02

       There we go.

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:03

       And then you realize, and if you don't give into astonishment-

   17. AGAndrew Gallimore20:07

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       ... you can maintain that dream.

   19. AGAndrew Gallimore20:09

       You can maintain-

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:10

       Right?

   21. AGAndrew Gallimore20:10

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:10

       It's... That's the thing. It's like, "Oh, my God, I'm dreaming."

   23. AGAndrew Gallimore20:12

       Yeah, yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:12

       "I can't believe this is..." And then you wake up, right?

   25. AGAndrew Gallimore20:14

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:14

       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.

   27. AGAndrew Gallimore20:21

       Hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:22

       I saw the movie. I tried it for a while.

   29. AGAndrew Gallimore20:23

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:23

       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.
8. 34:24 – 44:49

   Endogenous DMT: pineal myths, INMT biochemistry, rat microdialysis, and links to dying

   1. AGAndrew Gallimore34:24

      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?

   2. JRJoe Rogan34:38

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AGAndrew Gallimore34:39

      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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan34:51

      Yeah.

   5. AGAndrew Gallimore34:51

      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-

   6. JRJoe Rogan35:42

      Right.

   7. AGAndrew Gallimore35:42

      ... 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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan36:26

      Right.

   9. AGAndrew Gallimore36:26

      ... of, of psychosis or dreaming, in fact.

   10. JRJoe Rogan36:28

       Can I... In, endogenous production-

   11. AGAndrew Gallimore36:30

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan36:31

       ... what, what are the... What's the mechanism? Like what is producing it?

   13. AGAndrew Gallimore36:35

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan36:53

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AGAndrew Gallimore36:54

       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.

   16. JRJoe Rogan37:06

       And so what is adding these things?

   17. AGAndrew Gallimore37:09

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan37:27

       And tryptophan is produced from?

   19. AGAndrew Gallimore37:29

       So, it's ... Tryptophan is one of the essential amino acids, so it's, it is something you consume.

   20. JRJoe Rogan37:34

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

   21. AGAndrew Gallimore37:41

       Um, some people do. Uh, I, I don't think it would have an appreciable effect.

   22. JRJoe Rogan37:48

       Okay.

   23. AGAndrew Gallimore37:48

       But I mean, people take tryptophan for, for, for lots of reasons.

   24. JRJoe Rogan37:51

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

   25. AGAndrew Gallimore38:01

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan38:01

       ... why can't it do it?

   27. AGAndrew Gallimore38:03

       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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan39:00

       Which is unusual.

   29. AGAndrew Gallimore39:01

       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-

   30. JRJoe Rogan39:11

       Mm.
9. 44:49 – 52:57

   Is DMT a gateway? Consciousness as fundamental and the “intelligent agent” hypothesis

   1. JRJoe Rogan44:49

      That's the ... But the question to me, my question rather-

   2. AGAndrew Gallimore44:52

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan44:52

      ... 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?

   4. AGAndrew Gallimore45:24

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:54

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AGAndrew Gallimore45:54

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:29

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AGAndrew Gallimore46:30

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

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:38

      Right.

   10. AGAndrew Gallimore46:38

       ... 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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan47:27

       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-

   12. AGAndrew Gallimore48:12

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan48:12

       ... is they experience communication from plants.

   14. AGAndrew Gallimore48:16

       Hmm.

   15. JRJoe Rogan48:16

       Like, tree hugging becomes a real thing.

   16. AGAndrew Gallimore48:19

       Yeah. (laughs) I, I've-

   17. JRJoe Rogan48:19

       Like, ch- ... Tree hugging is a very different thing. It's like-

   18. AGAndrew Gallimore48:22

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan48:22

       ... "Oh, you're alive."

   20. AGAndrew Gallimore48:24

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       "Hello."

   22. AGAndrew Gallimore48:27

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan48:27

       You know? And we know that trees and plants in general, like especially house plants-

   24. AGAndrew Gallimore48:33

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan48:33

       ... 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-

   26. AGAndrew Gallimore48:47

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:47

       ... and cigarette smoke, they do, they're gonna do terrible.

   28. AGAndrew Gallimore48:49

       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-

   29. JRJoe Rogan49:06

       Hmm.

   30. AGAndrew Gallimore49:06

       ... it's the fun- ... it's the absolute ultimate reality is consciousness itself.
10. 52:57 – 1:16:06

    McKenna’s future-weirdness clip and a pivot to post-biological intelligence and the Kardashev/Barrow “downward” turn

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:57

       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-

    2. AGAndrew Gallimore53:06

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan53:07

       ... talking about the upcoming decades-

    4. AGAndrew Gallimore53:10

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JRJoe Rogan53:10

       ... 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.

    6. AGAndrew Gallimore53:24

       Yep.

    7. JRJoe Rogan53:24

       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-

    8. AGAndrew Gallimore53:41

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJoe Rogan53:41

       ... is working on some defense project-

    10. AGAndrew Gallimore53:43

        Yeah.

    11. JRJoe Rogan53:43

        ... 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.

    12. AGAndrew Gallimore53:52

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    13. JRJoe Rogan53:52

        Right? You know-

    14. AGAndrew Gallimore53:53

        Kill Hitler, that kind of idea.

    15. JRJoe Rogan53:54

        Yeah.

    16. AGAndrew Gallimore53:54

        Yeah.

    17. JRJoe Rogan53:55

        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-

    18. AGAndrew Gallimore54:17

        Mm-hmm.

    19. JRJoe Rogan54:18

        ... would we know? We would not.

    20. NANarrator54:20

        Do you want me to play it?

    21. JRJoe Rogan54:20

        The, yes, this is it. This is it.

    22. NANarrator54:22

        All right. I'll, I'll just check here.

    23. JRJoe Rogan54:22

        This is amazing. I love this. First of all, I just love his voice. Had kind of the best voice.

    24. NANarrator54:31

        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-

    25. JRJoe Rogan55:13

        Check.

    26. NANarrator55:13

        ... the cloning of human beings-

    27. JRJoe Rogan55:15

        Probably check.

    28. NANarrator55:16

        ... uh, possible contact with extraterrestrials-

    29. JRJoe Rogan55:19

        Probably check.

    30. NANarrator55:19

        ... 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.
11. 1:16:06 – 1:32:22

    Chaos, AI superintelligence, and the “edge of chaos” principle applied to brains and civilizations

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:16:06

       Do you, uh, think that this chaos is the only way that things get done? See, this i- this is my th- my thought.

    2. AGAndrew Gallimore1:16:14

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:16:14

       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.

    4. AGAndrew Gallimore1:16:28

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:16:29

       The, as McKenna had the great quote of, that we're territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons.

    6. AGAndrew Gallimore1:16:35

       There we go. (laughs)

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:16:35

       It's such a perfect way to describe us. Um, that is what we are, right?

    8. AGAndrew Gallimore1:16:39

       Yeah.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:16:39

       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."

    10. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:02

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:17:02

        "Like, we have to do something right now." And this is how also we approach political dissent or political disagreements.

    12. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:08

        Hm.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:17:08

        If the left wing wins, the world is over.

    14. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:11

        Yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:17:11

        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-

    16. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:32

        Hm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:17:32

        ... post-fusion, post-Hadron Collider, post-AI-

    18. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:37

        Mm-hmm.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:38

        ... is where it gets really weird. We have to kind of be like, "We, we really gotta get going, guys."

    20. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:44

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:44

        "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.

    22. AGAndrew Gallimore1:17:51

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:51

        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-

    24. AGAndrew Gallimore1:18:05

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:18:05

        ... that seems to probably be happening within your, your, and my lifetime.

    26. AGAndrew Gallimore1:18:09

        Hm.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:18:09

        Something's happening-

    28. AGAndrew Gallimore1:18:10

        Yeah.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:18:10

        ... right now that is gonna be different than anything that's ever happened before, which is the birth of artificial general superintelligence.

    30. AGAndrew Gallimore1:18:17

        Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 2:35:17