Rick Perry & Hubbard on Joe Rogan: Why $100M on ibogaine

1. 0:00 – 0:02

   Intro

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      [upbeat music]

2. 0:02 – 4:57

   Texas commits $100M to the Ibogaine Initiative after a last-minute legislative push

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music] Gentlemen, great to s-- Yeah, put 'em on. Slap 'em on. What's happening? Good to see you, gentlemen, again.

   4. RPRick Perry0:19

      Taking off.

   5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard0:19

      Good to see youse, Will.

   6. RPRick Perry0:21

      One more time.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      Yeah, one more time.

   8. RPRick Perry0:23

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      So, uh, what is the latest? Give me the latest. Where are we at?

   10. RPRick Perry0:29

       Why don't you take it, Bryan? You just kinda-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Yeah.

   12. RPRick Perry0:32

       You, you are the, uh, you're the most current on where we are, what's going on. Man, there has been a lot of stuff happen in the 15 months since we were here.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Yeah.

   14. RPRick Perry0:42

       I mean, like, stunning amount of stuff. So let's not waste any time. Tell him where we're at.

   15. WHW. Bryan Hubbard0:46

       All right. Well, the last time we came to visit with you, I believe, was on December the 27th of 2024. We were just on the front end of having organized 30 committed Texans whose own families had had experiences related to trauma, addiction, alcoholism, and the wounds of war, who, after hearing a plan that was developed for the state of Kentucky to bring Ibogaine to the American people as an FDA-approved medication and breakthrough treatment for addiction and trauma, committed themselves to using their time, their talent, and their network to achieve what had never been done before, and that was to convince an individual state to undertake drug development to create a therapeutic medical breakthrough for public health crises within its borders that are representative of the national reality. After you released the interview with us on January 2nd, 2025, we pursued a five-and-a-half-month blistering campaign to convince 188 blank-slate Texas legislators to fund the single largest psychedelic research and medical development project in history, that being the $50 million Texas Ibogaine Initiative. We had the assistance of some in-state allies, one of which was Texans for Greater Mental Health, led by a dear friend and brother of mine, Logan Davidson, who was my right hand, going to meet with legislators continuously while I set up shop at a hotel here in Houston and lived here just about part-time, wearing the shoe leather off, sweating, and making sure that everybody who needed to be introduced, educated, and motivated to get behind this would do so. At the end of this five and a half months, we secured the votes of, yes, of 181 out of 188 legislators between the Texas House of Representatives and State Senate. There was one individual who we had to persuade at the 11th hour to get behind this project. On May the 14th, 2025, just 36 hours before the Texas budget was finalized, this bill that would create the first unified FDA drug development trial with Ibogaine in U.S. history was not funded. I woke up that morning, and I'm not some... I believe very much in keeping your prayers in the closet, as Jesus taught, and not getting out there parading about it. But on that morning, uh, I got a call, and it was, "Hey, we're getting to the 11th hour. We don't have money to secure this. It may not make it. We've done everything that we can." And I just, I literally got down on my hands and knees and said, "God, please let this happen. And if it cannot happen, help me understand why." Three hours later, I got a telephone call asking if I could go and meet with the Texas House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I went at 4:30 in the afternoon on May the 14th and spent an hour with these two gentlemen going back and forth about what this project was, why it was so existentially necessary for Texas and the country. And on Friday morning, May the 16th at 10:00 a.m., we got a text message from Lieutenant Governor Patrick confirming that he would approve and fully fund the Texas Ibogaine Initiative. As we walk in here today, literally just 10 minutes before we walked into your studio, I can confirm that the great state of Texas is going to fully fund the Texas Ibogaine Initiative, originally intended to be a public-private partnership, but now has decided on its own to commit a full $100 million to launch the development of Ibogaine all the way through the FDA's drug development process for the benefit of the American people, to do so on its own without any drug development partner, and to do it for the good of humanity.

3. 4:57 – 6:52

   How Dan Patrick was persuaded: veterans’ testimonies, science, and a spiritual case

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:57

      That's phenomenal. So what did you have to say to Dan Patrick to convince him of this? And kudos to him for doing this.

   2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:03

      Well, uh, I had some very wonderful advocates who preceded my meeting.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:09

      Was he skeptical?

   4. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:10

      Oh, he was, uh, completely disengaged from the process, highly skeptical, as we learned through intermediaries. But we had two wonderful brothers on mission who happened to be twins, Marcus and Morgan Luttrell.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:25

      I know Marcus very well.

   6. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:26

      Marcus and Morgan Luttrell reached out to the lieutenant governor. They spoke to him very movingly and personally about their own experiences with Ibogaine, what it had done not just to save their lives, but what it was doing to save the lives of war fighters who had come to the end of being able to live. And as they explained to him what it did for them and what it has done for their brothers and sisters at arms who've returned to war, to broken government systems that can do nothing to cure what ails them at their core, he was persuaded to have an open-minded conversation. And through that conversation on May the 14th, we essentially went through whatScience suggests are the powers of the most sophisticated molecule on the planet to resolve physiological substance dependence and thereby create psychology within the human being whereby they believe they have ownership of themselves and their future and that that future will be one defined by choice rather than compulsion. And the most powerful aspect of the ibogaine argument, not just for the lieutenant governor and house speaker, but for most of these legislators who voted yes, is the experience endorsed by many that ibogaine confirms without question the reality of our individual human divinity. And that is the greatest truth conveyed by this fabulous plant.

4. 6:52 – 8:55

   Ibogaine 101: origins, history, and why it’s uniquely potent for addiction interruption

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:52

      Well put. And I don't think it's just ibogaine that confirms that. I think you could say the same about many other psychedelic drugs that are unjustly maligned and treated as if they're an escape from reality. But in the interest of this being a standalone podcast for people who don't know what ibogaine is and don't understand the efficacy of it and how unbelievably effective it is at especially treating addiction, could you please just go over that?

   2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard7:21

      Yes, sir. So ibogaine is an alkaloid that is derived from the iboga shrub. The iboga shrub originates in the central Congo Basin. Its native country is modern-day Gabon. It is the mother country of the iboga shrub, which has been used for centuries in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Bwiti, a group of spiritualists who include the Pygmies as well as the Bantu tribes that live there in Gabon. In the early 60s, it was discovered that ibogaine and iboga had a significant interruption effect on opioid addiction. There was an individual who had been addicted to heroin for a number of years. They took ibogaine, and not only did they not experience any withdrawal when they stopped taking heroin, they stopped having any desire to use any drug whatsoever. This touched off 60 years of open-label field studies that are mountains high and decades wide that firmly established that ibogaine has a unique and singular interruption capacity on physiological substance dependency, whether that's opioids, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, or tobacco. Recent evidence also suggests that it has a significant interruption effect on compulsive behaviors, anything that kind of impacts that brain's dopamine system and produces a rush.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:54

      Particularly gambling.

5. 8:55 – 12:33

   Veterans, TBI, and neuroregeneration: Stanford findings and broader healing claims

   1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard8:55

      Yes, sir. Now, in 2018, U.S. Special Forces special operators started going to Mexico for treatment of symptoms of traumatic brain injury expressed through treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Many of these veterans had gone through the VA system. They had been given an unbelievable amount of synthetic pharmacology that, in their end effect, essentially anesthetizes the soul and slowly euthanizes the body. And they were at the end. So as they were going to Mexico and would get ibogaine treatment, they came back with these just unbelievably just powerful recovery results that seemed too good to be true. So there were some scientists at Stanford University that were funded by a philanthropist who wanted to understand what was going on. And so what we have come to learn through a Stanford research study on traumatic brain injury for vets is that ibogaine has remarkable neuroregenerative capacities on the brain that are unheard of in the annals of Western science. And while information is still very small in amount and preliminary, there are individuals who have had ibogaine treatment for not just traumatic brain injury, but for multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, Parkinson's disease, post-surgical complications related to the removal of brain tumor who endorse a restoration of functionality and an ability to live that are otherworldly. And as we recognize that the opportunities to improve the human condition at scale are multi-lifetime in appearing, we believe that we have found one of those. And if we're going to do justice to the human species, it is incumbent upon us to take what appears to be a promising therapeutic improvement and deliver it with speed through the U.S. medical systems. And that's what Governor Perry and I have founded Americans for Ibogaine to do, just that. Achieve the moonshot of our time. And that is to bring ibogaine medicine to the American people as quickly as possible.

   2. JRJoe Rogan11:12

      Well said. And thank you again, Governor Perry, because if it wasn't for your involvement in this, I think a lot of people would be far more skeptical. You know, you being a former distinguished governor of the state who was a Republican, generally speaking, most people think of Republicans as being anti-psychedelics and that this whole thing is just a bunch of people trying to escape reality and poison their mind and, you know, tune out of society and become losers. That's the general consensus of people that are just, for lack of a better term, ignorant of the effects of these substances. They don't understand it. But if it wasn't for you, your open-mindedness, your willingness to engage in this and try to understand it and to speak to these veterans, I don't think people would be taken into seriously.

   3. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:06

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:07

      So thank you.

   5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:08

      Well, and thank you. As I've watched you over the last 15 months, seemed like every six weeks or so you would have a guest on here and you'd be talking about ibogaine in particular and what is the progress that we're making.

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:25

      Well, it comes up so often.

   7. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:27

      Yeah. Well, and it should.

   8. JRJoe Rogan12:28

      It should.

   9. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:29

      It should because this truly, I mean

6. 12:33 – 14:35

   Rick Perry’s personal motivation: Marcus Luttrell, suicide risk, and changing his worldview

   1. RPRick Perry12:33

      This is not what I came into the world for. This is not what I came to politics for. This is what, you know, I got led to this through that relationship with Marcus and in turn, Morgan Luttrell, and seeing those two boys literally, particularly Marcus, on the doorstep of committing suicide. When he came to live with us at the governor's mansion in 2007, we had met the year before just by the grace of God, and I told him, I said, "If you're ever through Austin, come by and see me," knowing that the chances of that would be pretty slim. Um, he knocked on that, uh, guard door in May of '07 and said, "The governor said if I was ever through here, come by and see him." They called. I let him in for dinner, and my wife, who's a nurse, she recognized this young man who was really troubled, uh, addicted to opioids, masking it with alcohol, really sick. And for the next two and a half years, he lived with us at the governor's residence.

   2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard13:34

      Wow. [laughs]

   3. RPRick Perry13:34

      And that started this long journey, uh, literally with, um, him and trying to find ways to heal him. We sent him to a host of different places, Cary Brain Center in Dallas. We sent him to, uh, what's called now Axios, uh, Athletes Performance in those days, but a, a great rehab facility down in the Panhandle of, of Florida. Uh, and, and they helped him, uh, conquer or, or le- he-helped him manage the opioid addiction, I will suggest to you, until he was treated with ibogaine, which did clean that completely away from him, uh, some years later. But the point is, he really struggled, and he has become like our son. As a matter of fact, I talked to him this morning. He said, "Be sure and tell Joe howdy for me." He, he just thinks the world of you as well. Uh, I talked to his brother the day before.

7. 14:35 – 24:11

   From “tough on crime” to reform—and from ‘Just Say No’ to ibogaine advocacy

   1. RPRick Perry14:35

      They understand how powerful this compound is from the standpoint of treating post-traumatic stress, uh, traumatic brain injury, addictions. Um, I mean, th-this... And, and, and as I became convinced, I'm-- One of my-- the things that I will, will, uh, will say that I've been... I've been open to change, just like criminal justice reform. In the early 2000s, I was kinda like, "Lock their ass up. Throw the key under the jail. You know, you break the law in the state of Texas, here's how we treat you." And I had a district judge in Fort Worth, John Cruzo, a Democrat district judge who I knew and had been friends with. Um, he said, "Governor, we got a program here that allows these individuals who have broken the law, you know, they've maybe, you know, got caught with an illegal substance or what have you, and rather than sending them to jail, sending them to the penitentiary where they become professional criminals, we give them a second chance. We put them in a rehab program. We put them in a treatment center. We put them in a boot camp. You know, gi-give them these options rather than sending them to prison where they're gonna become professional criminals, and the recidivism rate is gonna continue on." You know, I'm kinda like, "Nope, I'm, I'm tough on crime. That's what us Republicans do." But it really got me thinking. I mean, I'm, I am curious-minded about concepts and ideas. So that brought me to having conversations and, you know, long story short, that single conversation led to Texas leading the nation with criminal justice reform. Texas Public Policy F-Foundation that, uh, now Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was operating in the, uh, the mid to, uh, to late s- uh, 2000s. They came on board, saw this, supported it. We passed it through a very Republican, very conservative legislature, and Texas led the nation in criminal justice reform, saved us billions of dollars. We stopped building prisons. We stopped sending people to prison where they were becoming professional criminals.

   2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard17:05

      Mm.

   3. RPRick Perry17:06

      So that template, if you will, was what we took to Donald Trump in 2018, and he was just like me initially. "I, I'm tough on crime. I'm..." But he was open. He was curious. Brooke Rollins, interestingly, had come up and was his, uh, uh, domestic policy advisor at that time, and she made the pitch, and he was open, and that conversation led to him being open to federal criminal justice reform. And today, there are people who... I mean, you know, I, I... You may have different ideas about President Trump and what have you. I know that's the case. But on this issue of criminal justice reform, this man was curious, he was open-minded, and he's made a real difference in people's lives following the Texas model. The reason I sh-share that with you as a example, that's where I was on these compounds, these drugs, these psychedelics. I mean, I grew up in the '60s. Timothy Leary using LSD, marijuana, any of that kind of stuff, I mean, it was anathema to me. Absolutely and totally. I don't wanna have anything to do with it. This is crazy stuff. You get in trouble. They'll throw you in jail. You'll jump off of buildings. I mean, you-

   4. WHW. Bryan Hubbard18:36

      Right

   5. RPRick Perry18:36

      ... every story that you can imagine, uh, that people... And then think about-From the '60s forward, how, you know, I went into the Air Force, they, you know, we took drug tests at least monthly. So the idea of being involved with a drug was just totally and absolutely not on my radar screen. These are bad things. And we're reinforced in the '80s with Mrs. Reagan, just say no to drugs. Here's your brain on drugs. I mean, we have been browbeat as a society for 60 years. And when you add to it what Nixon did, President Nixon did in the late '60s, early '70s, with his war on drugs, he hated hippies, he hated blacks. And one of the ways you could go after them was to go make these compounds Schedule 1, which he did. Schedule 1 says there is no medical purpose for it and it is highly addictive. Ibogaine fits neither of those. Ibogaine is not an addictive compound by any sense of the imagination.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:48

      It's also absolutely not a recreational compound.

   7. RPRick Perry19:51

      No sir, at all.

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:51

      It's not something that someone's going to do at a party.

   9. RPRick Perry19:54

      And we are proving without a doubt to the Texas legislature, to legislatures across this country, in Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Arizona, West Virginia, that it does have a medical purpose, that there are some extraordinary things that can happen for their citizens who have PTSD, who have sexual trauma, who have addictions. I mean, saving lives by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, I will suggest to you, when this is approved across the country and we see it as a relatively easily studied and accessed by medical care compound. So that story of seeing these two young men who have given everything, literally, up to willing to give their lives, and a lot of their friends did, for our freedoms and our liberties in this country. And for us to say to them, oh, sorry, you can't have access to this because, you know, President Nixon said this is bad stuff back 60 years ago. And it was taken off the shelf as a Schedule 1 drug, put over here. And for 60 years, Americans have suffered through so many different eras. The late 90s, when the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma comes along. And we literally, I think one of the most demonic things I've seen in my public life is this family who used oxycodone and sold it to America as this be-all to end-all. And then our federal government in the mid-2000s, we didn't know how to deal with these young men who would be put in these horrible conditions and positions of being at war time after time after time, rotation after rotation, tempos that we'd never seen before. In the history of mankind, I'll suggest to you, I mean, Joe, we were at war for 20 years. 20 years during that period of time. There's, you know, special operators that were deployed eight, nine, 10 times. And then they come home and the governor gives them a sack of opioids and that makes them feel crappy and they mask it with alcohol. And we sit around and go, why did Bobby kill himself? Well, because the government failed in its great responsibility to take care of these young men and women, in my opinion. So we owe it to them. As a matter of fact, a dear friend of mine who just passed away within the last two days, he had worked with me for, gosh, 30 years. And when he first saw that I was getting involved with this psychedelic drug, this ibogaine compound, and we were having a conversation, he said, you need to be really careful with that. You know, you've got a great reputation. You've spent 40 years building that reputation up. He said, you don't want to throw it away on some cockamamie idea here. And I told him, I said, well, I don't think I'm doing that. I've studied this pretty intently. I've talked to a host of different people. And I said, so I'm comfortable about the science here that I'm seeing and what have you. And I said, I think it's worth going forward with. But I said, Ray, their lives are not worth more than my reputation. And that's what kind of continues to drive me. There are people that still kind of say, why are you doing this? Because I believe in it. I mean, I believe it to the point, Joe, that I'm willing to risk my reputation.

8. 24:11 – 28:47

   Sponsor break and movement-building: Americans for Ibogaine scales nationwide

   1. JRJoe Rogan24:11

      This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. A lot of people hit stretches where money gets tight. And it's not just the bills. It's the constant pressure, the mental load, the second guessing of every decision. And honestly, one of the biggest difference makers isn't some perfect budget. It's having a solid support system when things feel heavy. And if that support system includes therapy, even better. Because while it can't solve your money problems, it can change your relationship with finances. It can help you manage the stress, anxiety, and maybe even any shame you feel around money. A good place to find a quality therapist is BetterHelp. Plus, they do a lot of the work for you.Literally, all you need to do is answer a few questions and BetterHelp will match you with a fully qualified therapist online. They have an industry-leading match fulfillment rate, which is a fancy way of saying that they typically get it right the first time. But even if they don't, it's super simple to switch to another therapist. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/jre. That's better H-E-L-P.com/jre.

   2. RPRick Perry25:33

      I don't think you're risking your reputation at all.

   3. JRJoe Rogan25:36

      Me neither.

   4. RPRick Perry25:36

      I think that's foolish thinking.

   5. JRJoe Rogan25:38

      Me neither.

   6. RPRick Perry25:38

      I think it's people that don't understand the times.

   7. JRJoe Rogan25:42

      Yeah.

   8. RPRick Perry25:42

      This is a different world. We're, we're living in a d-- we're living in a world of information now, and you can't go by these false narratives that were adopted in the 1970s.

   9. JRJoe Rogan25:51

      Yep.

   10. RPRick Perry25:52

       And we're winning. I mean, I'm, I'm telling you what Americans for Ibogaine has done. And, you know, we started out, I tell people, I said, "You talk about a small group of people." I think there were six of us. He's the CEO, I'm the chairman. We got Dr. Ruland, uh, who's the, the secretary, uh, Anne Claire Stapleton, the communications person, and then Marcus and Melanie Luttrell, Marcus' wife, are the other two members of our little board. And we were this small little group kind of going along and doing what we were doing. We were successful in, in the Texas legislature and what have you. But it's exploded now. Uh, we have ambassadors, uh, Americans for Ibogaine ambassadors all over, uh, the, the United States now. This-- People have seen what we've been able to do in, in Texas. Mississippi followed suit. They've sent their, their governor a piece of legislation. I want you to talk about that.

   11. JRJoe Rogan26:47

       We're gonna do the roll call here in a minute.

   12. RPRick Perry26:49

       Yeah, and, and just, and, and share with, with Joe and his audience just the great, uh, progress that's being made. Um, and, and, and quite frankly, we've out-- I think about Michael Dell when he was selling computers out of the trunk of his car back in the late '80s and, and, and then his college [chuckles] dormitory. AFI kind of found itself like that, um, just a few months ago. And I'm not trying to say that, you know, we're Dell Computer today, but we are growing at such a leaps and bounds and, and, you know, and having the resources that we need to be able to put our people in various places. I mean, he's the-- travels all. You were in Cabo. I want you to tell them about the, the group that you met with in Cabo and, I mean, just two hundred of these extraordinary people down there. He travels all over the country and, you know, and we have to have the resources to, uh, to, to be able to, to do that. And, and, uh, um, you know, so I hope you're-- the folks that are listening are, you know, go to Americans for Ibogaine. You know how to tell them how to do that and, and help this organization because this is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. I'm seventy-six years old, and, uh, this is what I, I hope the Lord gives me a lot of years to make a difference because I know for a fact that what we're doing today, what you're helping us with, is making a difference. And if we can get these clinical trials to the conclusion, and, you know, thank you to the lieutenant governor and to the speaker for what they committed to today. I mean, uh, to, to know that we're gonna be able to go forward now with these clinical trials to show the world exactly what we know, but, but so that the, the, the naysayers out there, the skeptic, can look at that and go, "You know what? You can get eighty-five percent of the people who are s-- who are hooked on opioids clean in seventy-two hours."

   13. JRJoe Rogan28:45

       Isn't that an amazing thing?

9. 28:47 – 35:42

   Why it works (and why it’s not ‘fun’): neuroplasticity windows, withdrawal interruption, and hard experiences

   1. RPRick Perry28:47

      I mean, that's such a stunning thing to me. Dr. Gull Dolan, we were at South by Southwest, um, a week and a half ago. She was sitting on the stage. She's an MD, PhD, was at Johns Hopkins. She's over at, uh, um, Cal Berkeley now. And she gave a little primer, if you will, on the different psychedelics. There's a critical period that the mind opens up, and you're able to, uh, to go in and, and, uh, and if, if you will, the medicine treats the mind, I think, from my Aggie, you know, non-pharmaceutical, non-scientific mind here. But to go in and repair, reset the brain. The technical word is neuroplasticity. But ketamine has a critical period. I think she said forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Psilocybin has a critical period from fourteen to twenty-eight days. I'm, I'm-- I, I think I'm pretty close on these. But ibogaine, the critical period, the time when that neuroplasticity is active and the brain can be trained, uh, healed, reset, is from ninety to one hundred and twenty days. And then with the addiction, opioids, which I happen to think is one of the most addictive substances that's out there. I mean, this is some horrible stuff. You know, our, uh, you know, you-- this very current event with, uh, Tiger Woods and Tiger's accident, and, you know, he had Oxycontin in his, uh... I'm, you know, I'm not judging here, but I'm just kinda saying that may... When I, when I was, ran for president in 2011, I'd had major back surgery in July. I announced that, uh, I was running for president in August. I had six weeks to try to get over that major back surgery, and I had a, a terrible, uh, condition called, um, a neurological hyperfusion in my right leg. I've never had a pain like that. Felt like a blowtorch going down my right leg. And they gave me Oxycontin

   2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard31:04

      And I was taking that to cover up the pain. I was taking Ambien to go to sleep at night. And I was taking some stuff called Provigil to get back up in the morning and be focused. I laugh about it now. I'm surprised I did as well as I did in that presidential effort in 2011. Hell, forgetting that one thing, that third thing in that debate. Hell, I'm surprised I could remember any of them. Knowing what I know now about OxyContin and the incredibly nasty, addictive nature that it has. I mean, this stuff is just poison. And ibogaine, in 48 to 72 hours after one dose, one oral application of this compound, and that addiction is gone. Not only is that addiction gone, Joe, but Stanford has done functional MRIs on an addicted opioid brain and then treatment with ibogaine. And they have shown that brain from the addicted look that those experts, those postdocs that look at this, to a normal brain, a normal brain scan in 72 hours. If you were to go through the normal process of healing yourself of opioid addiction through an abstinence program, it would take you 18 months. And there are very few, I'm going to say single-digit people that are successful in being able to do that. But think about that. We got a compound here that has the ability to heal people of opioid addiction in 48 to 72 hours. And we're not doing everything that we can in our power to make that available? I mean, what the hell is wrong with us? How bad you got to hate people to not make that available?

   3. JRJoe Rogan33:23

      And with two doses, it's even more spectacular.

   4. WHW. Bryan Hubbard33:27

      98%.

   5. JRJoe Rogan33:28

      That is amazing.

   6. WHW. Bryan Hubbard33:30

      98%.

   7. JRJoe Rogan33:31

      That is truly amazing. There's nothing even remotely like it with standard practice addiction therapy.

   8. WHW. Bryan Hubbard33:38

      Nothing.

   9. JRJoe Rogan33:39

      Nothing.

   10. WHW. Bryan Hubbard33:41

       You know, he mentioned Americans for Ibogaine. We have ambassadors. And Joe, what you really helped us do on January 2nd of 25 was create a movement. Our organization is the custodian of that movement. We are a public policy and advocacy organization. And Governor Perry mentions keeping me on the road. Wherever there are state leaders, citizens of conviction and influence, whether that is California, whether it's Massachusetts, or whether it's Alabama, we exist to plant the seed of a scientific understanding, of a public policy framework, and of a spiritual understanding of the significance of what we have in our hands here. An opportunity to improve the human condition at scale. And while we have talked tightly about Ibogaine's impact on substance dependency and upon the wounds of war, our ambassadors reflect essentially the universal human condition and the way in which individuals who have tried every way to overcome various forms of trauma and debility find as the last step a redemptive restoration through Ibogaine treatment. It is not for everybody. It should not be a first resort. It is an exceptionally powerful medication that comes with a series of side effects that are highly unpleasant, as you previously mentioned. One of the selling points, ironically, in the Texas legislature was to say, you know, if your idea of a good time is being in a state of semi-paralysis for 12 to 16 hours and throwing up continuously through the process, you're going to have a real good time. And if there is the equivalent of being brought to the judgment throne of God on this side of life, it is an Ibogaine experience. That seemed to motivate a lot of support, especially for those who subscribe to puritanical notions of punishment for wrongdoing. That's not what I'm here

10. 35:42 – 41:14

    Stories across society: trauma survivors, first responders, moral injury, CTE, and pro sports

    1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard35:42

       to advocate, but certainly it is not fun. But what we know is that, for instance, we have two fashion model twins whose father sexually abused them for a decade. And the results of that horrific experience that they shared produced all kinds of psychological maladies that included an eating disorder for one, persistent neuroses in the other. They tried every form of talk therapy. They tried every psychotherapy modality known to try to overcome that. And it was Ibogaine that restored their lives and their capacity to enjoy the life that God has given them. We have first responders who are emerging in numbers. One who is a firefighter from Oklahoma who was demoted because of decades of alcoholism. His life has been restored by Ibogaine and he's back working full time. We have a gentleman who was a Charlottesville police officer who was hit in the face with a brick during the riots that occurred in Charlottesville. His life was restored by a single Ibogaine treatment and he has attained a level of functionality that he didn't think was possible, nor his doctors. We have a gentleman who was a pilot who unfortunately did a bomb and run on a village and killed a number of innocent people. He learned about this and this sent him into a spiral as many war fighters who are exposed to moral injury do.

    2. RPRick Perry37:15

       Ibogaine has restored this gentleman's life. We have a gentleman by the name of Robert Gallery, a former NFL player who exhibited all the signs of CTE in his post-retirement years. He was ready to kill himself so that he wouldn't harm his own family. It was ibogaine that restored his life. There have been other NFL players who are as yet unnamed, some incidentally, uh, that have been in the paper who have gone for ibogaine treatment to address similar symptoms. Players in the NHL, players in, uh, other contact sports that include soccer and rugby in the United Kingdom, where there is an emerging cohort of professional athletes who have reached out to us to say, "We want the United Kingdom for ibogaine."

    3. JRJoe Rogan38:00

       I would love to get you guys connected with the UFC.

    4. RPRick Perry38:03

       We would love to be connected to the UFC.

    5. JRJoe Rogan38:05

       'Cause that is obviously an issue-

    6. RPRick Perry38:07

       Yeah. Yeah

    7. JRJoe Rogan38:08

       ... with professional fighters.

    8. RPRick Perry38:09

       So, uh, Hughes, Matt Hughes, um, and, and Matt had, uh... I met Matt through Marcus, um, gosh, in like 2008 or so, and we went out for a fight, and then subsequently, um, Matt had a, I think a car accident of which he really had-

    9. JRJoe Rogan38:29

       He was hit by a train.

    10. RPRick Perry38:30

        Yeah.

    11. JRJoe Rogan38:30

        Yeah.

    12. RPRick Perry38:31

        Just an incredible, uh, traumatic, uh, brain injury, and, uh, I'd, I, I, I just wanna, I wanna have that conversation with him, and I'm, I'm sure you have great relationships with those. We know for a fact that cumulative, um, impacts on the brain are what lead to CTE. I mean, that's, I'm, I, I, I don't think that's even a question of-

    13. JRJoe Rogan38:58

        No

    14. RPRick Perry38:58

        ... here's how it happens. These multiple concussions have cumulative effect on the brain, and at some point in time, that, um, CTE has a long time effect, and this medicine has the ability to remove that trauma, to reset that brain, to heal that brain. I don't know how it works, Joe, but that's the reason these clinical trials are gonna be so important as we're going forward, and I, and I'm, I can't tell you, I'm ecstatic that the, the, the lieutenant governor and the speaker today announced-

    15. JRJoe Rogan39:41

        $100 million

    16. RPRick Perry39:42

        ... uh, the, their, their full Texas support behind these clinical trials. We're fixing to become the epicenter for a movement that literally can change the world. And I know that sounds kinda a little bit over the top, but if we have within our grasp here a compound that can heal our loved ones who have an addiction, uh, be it a substance addiction or be it a non-substance addiction. If we have the ability to heal people who have been traumatically impacted by concussions. If we have the ability to address PTSD in all the different forms that it comes. I mean, the, the hope that that can give to the society that we live in, and I'm not talking about just the United States. You think about what's going on in Israel, in Ukraine, in the Middle East today, and the trauma that people are facing. Uh, I mean, this truly can be an extraordinary gift to the world. And, uh, you know, I, I, listen, I think it's really interesting you ask a, a leading question about how did I come to this position of being able to be supportive as I am. And, and then when I think about my, my growing up, and I grew up in a very conservative Christian

11. 41:14 – 45:58

    Faith and psychedelics: Christian objections, scripture, and “A Christian’s Guide to Psychedelics”

    1. RPRick Perry41:14

       family. And, and I think one of the challenges we still have in, um, in our society is that the, the, the Christian-- the conservative Christian faith is like, "Stay away from that stuff. I mean, that's, that's bad. Do not, and under any circumstances, don't be going there. It's demonic." And there's a book that's about to be published. I think, is it about, I think the first week in April, so we're a-approaching it. There's an author by the name of Wendi Rees, R-E-E-S. And Wendi with an I. W-E-N-D-I R-E-E-S. And she, uh, not unlike the, the two twins, um, was sexually assaulted by her own father.

    2. JRJoe Rogan42:07

       As a pastor of a church.

    3. RPRick Perry42:08

       [sighs] Joe, I, I'm telling you, brother, I can't, I can't dream up in my worst nightmare a more evil thing than a father that would sexually assault their-

    4. JRJoe Rogan42:21

       A preacher father

    5. RPRick Perry42:22

       ... their daughter. And she dealt with it with ibogaine and has come to the conclusion that her great gift to give to the world out there is to write this book called A Christian's Guide to Psychedelics. Now, if you think that won't catch some people's attention when they're going through the bookstore and they go, "A Christian's Guide to Psychedelic? Holy mackerel." [chuckles] But this is a book about her experience, but it's also a book that I would suggest that every believing Christian go pick it up and read it because it talks about chapter and verse and, and gives you scripture about where God talks about these compounds, about these things that he's given the world, and he means them for good. All of them for good.

    6. JRJoe Rogan43:13

       Are you aware of the, um, scholars in Israel that are proposing that Moses seeing the burning bush was the acacia tree?

    7. JRJoe Rogan43:23

       Yeah. Like there's an acacia tree. The acacia tree, which is very common in the Middle East, is rich in dimethyltryptamine. And they believe that what they're trying to relay in this story was that Moses encountered God through the burning of this bush. So the burning of this bush, releasing the psychedelic compound dimethyltryptamine, allowed Moses to bring back the Ten Commandments.

    8. WHW. Bryan Hubbard43:53

       You know, thank you for mentioning that. I have been following scholarship around the use and the recognition that there's a lot of psychedelic allegory in Holy Scripture. That, I think, is the favorite, where that burning bush reveals the great I Am. And when Moses says, "Who are you?" "I am who I am." And the beauty about ibogaine and the other plant medicines are their capacity to reveal the I Am that is within each of us. And that I Am is our eternal creator who absolutely has engineered and placed these plants on this earth so that we can be affirmed in what our true identity and ultimate destiny is. And praise God for it.

    9. JRJoe Rogan44:39

       And then there's also The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, the John Marco Allegro book, where he was one of the ordained ministers that was-- his task was to decode the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he wrote this book that details what he believes is the use of psychedelic drugs in ancient Christianity.

    10. WHW. Bryan Hubbard45:03

        Hard for me to argue with.

    11. JRJoe Rogan45:04

        I mean, I just think our modern perception of it-

    12. WHW. Bryan Hubbard45:08

        Yep.

    13. JRJoe Rogan45:08

        ... which is very tainted by what happened during the Nixon administration, where they were trying to squash the hippie movement, the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement. And that's why they demonized these drugs and these compounds. And that's why they put them in this category of having no medicinal use, which is clearly not accurate. It doesn't mean that they should just be given to everyone and everyone should do them with no restrictions and no regulations. It just means we should understand that they have a long history of human use and have spectacular results on all sorts of things that our society is suffering from greatly. And to just pretend that that's not the case based on what happened in the 1970s is just insane. It doesn't make any sense.

12. 45:58 – 53:56

    Spiritual famine, AI-era abundance, and psychedelics as social cohesion technology

    1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard45:58

       I would suggest that one of the greatest lessons learned by Americans who are age 50 and younger, those of us who I call the bicentennial children, is that the most morally depraved criminal in America today is power. And the power of the human hand when it is wielded in its most abusive context will always seek to deny any access to individual human divinity and the liberty and autonomy that is conferred upon each of us as children of God. And insofar as we find ourselves at the precipice of what I believe is the emergence of a broad-based spiritual movement where all of us modernists within the empiricism of modern American society are able to see through the fog of all of our wealth and gadgetry and recognize we are in the midst of profound spiritual famine in the United States. You, I know, and forgive me for referencing age, remember back in the mid-'80s where we saw all these horrific images of starvation and distention and fly-covered death from mass famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, where millions of people starved to death because the malevolence of power forbade the delivery of any relief sent by the outside world. When we look at what's right in front of us in the United States today, there is no denying that we are in the midst of a terrible spiritual famine. And the malevolence of American power is feasting on our starvation. This is an emancipation movement for the mind, body, and soul of every human being in this country and across the globe who is lethally estranged from their own spirituality. The Ibogaine Mission is a mission to foment dramatic medical breakthroughs across a host of conditions that have no effective therapeutic answers. But above and beyond that, it is about the affirmation of the spiritual essence of life that can unify us as a species in a way that is necessary if we're going to navigate these changes over the next 20 years. Governor Perry mentioned this wonderful invitation that I received to go to what was called the Earth One Summit. Now, Joe, I come out of Hillbilly Holler, Virginia. And [laughs] it's a-

    2. JRJoe Rogan48:45

       I do. I rec-- I introduce him from time to time. I said, "Look, this guy, he looks like and he sounds like a hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains." And I said, "He is." But I said, "He's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life and one of the most extraordinary orators I've ever had in my life." So anyway, I wanted to-- I love you, brother, but you are a hillbilly. [laughs]

    3. WHW. Bryan Hubbard49:14

       Well, I'm much more comfortable with that than all that other stuff you said.

    4. JRJoe Rogan49:19

       [laughs]

    5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard49:19

       But when you come out of scratch nothing sometimes, there are certain sophistications that you lack. And I'm no exception to that. So there was this Earth One Summit. It was 200 thought leaders from across the world who came to basically discuss the future. And I was very honored to have received an invitation to come and attend the gathering to speak about what Governor Perry and I are working on through Americans for Ibogaine. And they presented me with the honor of being the closing keynote speaker for the gathering. And as I listened over the course of four days, I heard individuals who includedKimball and Christiana Musk, and I've read interviews by, uh, Elon Musk speaking about the advent of AI and the capacity of AI to solve the central dilemma that we as humans have had since we emerged from the caves, and that's the dilemma of scarcity. So as I was there listening to folks speak about being on the edge of a time when we can automate the means of production and essentially create an unlimited amount of abundance for every person on this planet, I couldn't help but think about where we are right now as compared to where these individuals see us being in 20 years. You cannot create and deploy this kind of godlike technology, which has the capacity to produce unlimited abundance, potentially usher in the Age of Aquarius, and drop it in to these Frankenstein monstrosity government systems that we currently have that are enthroned upon the helplessness of powerless people, that perpetuate problems that they are supposed to solve, and that monetize sustained human misery. So long as government makes its buck over keeping its foot on the necks of the American people, we are looking at a future that much more resembles Mad Max than we are Star Trek. And if we are going to create the degree of social cohesion that is necessary to hold these systems accountable and to create a system that can truly usher in that age of unlimited abundance to improve the human condition for all, it begins with a spiritual reawakening that ibogaine, first and foremost, and the rest of the psychedelics can seed and foment within American society. To that end, and then I'll be quiet for the next little bit. [laughs]

    6. JRJoe Rogan52:04

       No, you're good, man. We love, we love, we love listening to you. Um-

    7. WHW. Bryan Hubbard52:08

       There is a six-part docuseries that will come out next year called Psychedelics &, and it is, uh, uh, a series of interviews with a cross-section of leaders across the United States, uh, where they speak about their own quest for meaning, uh, and, and how psychedelics has helped them understand that we are more than just these material beings that get up and go to work every day and are a productive economic unit, go home and repeat. That there is a much higher sense of purpose that we are here to serve, and that the plants themselves have the capacity to enlighten us at scale in a way that's absolutely necessary if we're gonna make that age of abundance happen as those, uh, visionaries, uh, articulate and, and dream for.

    8. JRJoe Rogan52:56

       What I think is fascinating about the age that we're living in is that, uh, change comes very slowly, but it comes much faster when you have the kind of access to information that people have today. And I don't think this conversation was possible 20 years ago.

    9. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:11

       No. No way.

    10. JRJoe Rogan53:12

        And that's kind of amazing.

    11. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:13

        No way.

    12. JRJoe Rogan53:14

        It's kind of amazing, and I don't think that there was a format for this conversation 20 years ago.

    13. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:19

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JRJoe Rogan53:19

        This format has occurred because of the age of information, because of the internet, and because there's no gatekeepers anymore, and because people have the choice to decide what they wanna consume, what they wanna listen to. And to be able to be a part of that, to me, is an incredible privilege. And to be able to have you guys on-

    15. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:42

        Amen

    16. JRJoe Rogan53:42

        ... and to have this conversation and to recognize that the reason why this is possible is because with a, for lack of a better term, the world's waking up.

    17. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:52

        Yes, sir.

    18. JRJoe Rogan53:53

        It's just taking more time than we would like.

    19. WHW. Bryan Hubbard53:56

        Yeah.

13. 53:56 – 56:08

    Curiosity, media narratives, and identity: why minds change (and why stereotypes persist)

    1. JRJoe Rogan53:56

       But the world is waking up, and y- change happens. It just happens. It-- People have to change their opinions, and that's very difficult 'cause a lot of people identify with their opinions. They, their opinions become a part of their ideology, and it's just very difficult to get people to change their ideology. They, they identify with this.

    2. WHW. Bryan Hubbard54:21

       It's true.

    3. JRJoe Rogan54:21

       It is them. And I've always tried to tell people the way I try to approach things, "You are not your ideas."

    4. WHW. Bryan Hubbard54:29

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan54:29

       "You are not your opinions. These are just thoughts, and if you identify with them, you are trapped in them, and you, you will be held hostage by them. You will try to defend them even if they don't make sense. You will try to ignore evidence that points you in a direction that's contrary to what your current belief system is. Don't be your opinions. Don't be your ideas. Just sit in them. Be consistent, be honest, have ethics and morals that you adhere to, but the ideas are just ideas. And if you're wrong, you should be proud to say you're wrong."

    6. WHW. Bryan Hubbard55:04

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan55:04

       It's a, it's a sh- a sign of growth, it's a sign of intelligence, and it, it's a sign of you being an honest human being who cares about the truth, not about being right. 'Cause there's too many people in this world that they don't really have conversations. They have ideological sparring matches where they're just in- involved in these little intellectual tugs of war where they're just trying to be right, and this is not the time for that. This... It's just-

    8. WHW. Bryan Hubbard55:35

       So my, my going from hard no on criminal justice reform to a l- literally a leader on criminal justice reform in the mid-2000s, my going from [chuckles] hard no on, uh, any psychedelic drugs that could be used in any way, uh, to now being what I [chuckles] humorously ref- refer to as the Johnny Appleseed of ibogaine, um, is to your point

14. 56:08 – 1:33:21

    Scientific partnerships and Perry’s own ibogaine treatment: brain scans, atrophy reversal, and CTE concerns

    1. RPRick Perry56:08

       You know, be, be, be open. Be willing to say you were wrong. Uh, I know my wife would like to hear me do that more often. [laughs] But, hey, I, I, I, if you don't mind, I wanna take a, a minute and talk about how far this movement has come. And, uh, Brian talked about Americans for Ibogaine and our ambassadors all across the country and the growth that, that, that we've seen in this. And I wanna give you one example of, to your point of, that five years ago, uh, if you would've had an institution, uh, that had its own reputation dealing with brain health and brain science and those kinda things, uh, they would've just kinda moved you off to the side and said, you know, "No, thanks." But the Center for BrainHealth in Dallas, this is an extraordinary institution, uh, that's connected to the University of Texas Dallas. Matter of fact, it's just next door to UT Southwestern, which is one of the great medical facilities in the world, UT Southwestern. And Dr., um, Sandy Chapman heads up, uh, the Center for BrainHealth. Uh, and they've, they've done some, some, some great work. We went up and presented to her, I don't know, probably sixty to ninety days ago, and, and, uh, there was another, uh, organization called, um, Forward, uh- Forward Intent. Forward Intent. Forward Intent, uh, just a beautiful young, uh, man and his wife, uh, Alex Duran and, and his wife, uh, who have funded an effort. And what they're w- what they're doing with their resources, they're sending, I think, two hundred and fifty individuals down to Mexico, uh, to both, uh, I think a facility, uh, called Transcen and to Ambio. Uh, and Ambio is the, is that facility that I've been to, Brian's been to, uh, Marcus and, and, and, uh, Morgan Luttrell have been to. I think, you know, probably two thousand more fighters have been down to Ambio now. Uh, VETS underwrites them. Um, and just as an aside, this has blown up so big, and I'm talking about the, the ibogaine effort, the education of ibogaine, people, you know, there's some hope out there. And, and people are rushing to find where they can go to, you know, to treat the addiction that their loved one has or deal with their PTSD and what have you. And, and Ambio, uh, is, is just covered up. Uh, and I'm sure, you know, the other facilities, uh, uh, are as well down there. The, the, the organization VETS, which is really where I came into this, uh, I think Amber and, and Marcus Capone, um, they don't have, they don't have any openings anymore. I mean, they are completely covered up. Um, and, and, but I mean, that's a good challenge. I'm glad we have that challenge. But my point is, you've got a, an institution in Dallas, Texas, that just like the state, uh, is getting the signal, it's okay to be out there talking about this. It's okay to, uh, to be a leader. It's okay to get out there and, and, and lead the charge. And I wanna read to you, uh, what, uh, Dr. Chapman, um, 'cause I asked her, I said, "Do you mind if I talk about what you all are doing?" And she said, "Absolutely." And she said, "Governor, great to talk with you yesterday. Here are some comments to guide you in how to discuss our existing collaboration. Um, I'm excited to announce that we have begun a partnership with the Center for BrainHealth, the University of Texas at Dallas, Americans for Ibogaine, and Forward Intent to create the largest research study of ibogaine to date focused on understanding its impact on the brain among the veteran community. Dr. Francesca Filbe, an expert in cognitive and translational neuroscience, especially the use of neuroimaging to study brain behavior relationships, will lead the research. Our mission together is to move beyond the question of, does ibogaine help, and instead answer the more practical questions veterans and clinicians need. Number one, who benefits and why? How long do the benefits last? Which aspects of daily life functioning, i.e. cognition, sleep, substance use, and overall well-being, improve or worsen following treatment? And how are these changes associated with brain, uh, alterations? The three-year study will follow those treated with ibogaine over the course of eighteen months, which will allow us to create the first understanding of the sustained impacts of ibogaine on the brain across various treatment regimes. We'll be diving more into this topic on November the 19th at the Center for Brain Health's Brain Health Presents speaker series to share more. By bringing world-class scientific rigor to this space, we aren't just studying a substance. We're creating a foundation of knowledge that will expand safe, informed access for those who need it most." That is what Americans for Ibogaine is really all about. Making that type of s- penetration, having that type of success, seeing what Brian and, and the, the other folks have created here in the state of Texas, I'm gonna tell you something, brother, there is nothing that I've been involved with in my life that gives me more pleasure than to see what we're doing and knowing

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

       That there's a father out there, a mother out there whose child's gonna be saved.

    3. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:02:30

       You mentioned dogma. People are, in particular in American society, there is a quest for identity. There is a quest for belonging. So much of what we see on social media and in broadcast media that is rage and anger and disaffection is tremendous loneliness and a tremendous lack of, of, of belonging to something, uh, a- and a tremendous amount of trauma related to having, never having had anything that resembles unconditional affection within the context of a safe and, and stable familial relationship. That's at scale within the United States. Uh, and the degree to which dogma can thwart evolution is 100% right on, and I just use my own self as an example. I was a child of Reagan's America. I can remember I was about five years old when he and President Carter had their first presidential debate in 1980. President Reagan was like the Mother Goose to the gosling. He just imprinted on me. And whereas other young boys had pictures of Joe Montana and Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson all over their rooms, mine was wallpapered with Ronald Reagan.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:03:46

       [laughs]

    5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:03:47

       I was the president of the Teenage Republicans in high school. I, I wrote him fan letters all the time. He actually replied to one, and I put it in a, a, a, a frame in my room. It was written on my birthday. I was president of the College Republicans at George Mason University, and I mean, I aimed to be the king of conservative Republican conformity. That was my whole mission in life. And I used to joke that, uh, when people said, "Well, how did you get to this?" You know, "And what do you think about the fact that you're talking about it and you're so zealous in your advocacy?" I would kinda make a half statement and say, "Well, if 25-year-old me could come and see 50-year-old me, he would look and say, 'What in the world happened to you?'"

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:04:31

       [laughs]

    7. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:04:31

       And I would kinda yuk and yuk and laugh about it. Well, here's the answer: If 25-year-old me could come back and look at 50-year-old me and say, "What happened to you?" 50-year-old me would look right back and say, "You happened to me. You happened to me. Your youthful sense of certainty, your belief that you had it all figured out, your belief that you had no further greater evolution to achieve, sir. You, in your insolence of youth, you happened to me." One of the things that I have so enjoyed learning about Governor Perry and, as he and I have built relationship, the first time I really started following him was when he ran for president in 2012, and I believe that had he not had that back surgery, we'd have, we would not have had a second Obama term. He would've won that race, and I think he would've won it handedly. It's been remarkable to listen to this gentleman who has been so firmly identified with the conservative wing of the Republican Party be so willing to be curious and to have that human value of curiosity and a willingness to hear and a willingness to know and a willingness to entertain that perhaps everything that he had been taught about this particular subject was not correct. Curiosity is a prime human value, and if you allow dogma to shut off your curiosity, you have hobbled yourself. And I think it was Muhammad Ali who said, "If, if, if a 50-year-old man thinks the exact same way as a 20-year-old man as he did when he was 20, he's wasted 30 years of his life."

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:06:12

       Mm.

    9. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:06:12

       And that is, that is dead on right.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:06:14

        Dead on right.

    11. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:06:15

        Yeah.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:06:15

        Yeah, I could attest to that.

    13. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:06:16

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:06:16

        Uh, curiosity is my number one attribute. That's the thing that's led me in life, in everything I've ever done, is just being open-minded and curious. I'm very fortunate is that I didn't think I had things figured out when I was 20 at all.

    15. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:06:30

        [laughs]

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:06:31

        I was sure that I was a moron. [laughs]

    17. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:06:35

        [laughs]

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:06:35

        I was good at one thing, kicking people. That's it. And, and then, uh, from then, I realized that there's a lot to learn and that as much as I learned about martial arts, I could apply that sort of open-minded discipline. 'Cause you, you have to be open-minded to be good at martial arts 'cause you have to be able to listen. You can't think you already know. You cannot.

    19. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:07:00

        That's right.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:07:01

        You won't, you won't grow and you won't get better. You, you have to be listening to coaches, you have to be listening to instructors, you have to be listening to your teammates, you have to listen to everybody. If you don't listen, if you have, "Ah, don't tell me," those people don't go anywhere, and I learned that very early on. It's very fortunate that I found that path because I've applied that to virtually everything that I've ever done in life instead of having this belief that I have things figured out. I mean, I've, I've certainly, like, been more sure than I should have been at many times in my life, but always willing to stop and go, "Maybe I'm wrong." And if it wasn't for this podcast, it would've never gotten to where it is because I've fortunately been able to talk to brilliant people. And, you know, I grew up in, um, I lived in, uh, California for 26 years. Before that, I, you know, I lived in Boston and New York. I, I thought of people, the, the Southern accent in particular, right? And this is a, a standard thing that a lot of people on the coasts have. You hear people talk with a Southern accent, you think they're dumb. And it's a, it's a terrible stereotype that actually came out because of hookworm parasites. I'm sure you're aware of that story.

    21. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:08:23

        I, I'm not.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:08:23

        You're not?

    23. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:08:24

        Educate me.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:08:26

        The stereotype of the lazy, dull-minded Southerner came out of the fact that a large percentage of people in the South had contracted hookworms from walking around barefoot.

    25. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:08:40

        Mm-hmm.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:08:40

        And hookworm parasites will rob you of your intellectual capacity.

    27. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:08:46

        Oh.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:08:46

        They greatly diminish your ability to think and exhaust you. Y- y- you get slower and, you know, in quotes, lazier, but you're really just infected with a parasite, and it's an ex- an enormous percentage of the population in the 1900s were, were infected with hookworm, and in the South in particular.

    29. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:09:09

        How about that?

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:09:09

        Hot climates. And this is where this, this stereotype came from. When someone like you speaks with such insane recall, like your recall is bananas. Like your recall of dates and names and times and... I have a pretty good recall. It's nothing like yours. You're, it's extraordinary, and I love when I meet someone who's brilliant who still has a Southern accent.
15. 1:33:21 – 1:43:52

    Multi-state coalition and global/tribal expansion: bills, votes, Gabon partnership, and Native sovereignty questions

    1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:33:21

       scale, that if Texas did this, it would be joined by a number of other states who are no longer willing to sit and wait on an inefficient, often incompetent, and also incompetently corrupt federal bureaucracy that will not move in response to the genuine needs of the American people at the pace that it needs to. There are a variety of well-intentioned reformers within the current administration, Secretary Kennedy, Secretary Collins, and others, who have voiced their support for the advancement of plant medicine as breakthrough treatments primarily for U.S. warfighters, but also for other members of our society for whom these medications could help. We believe that these individuals are stymied by two realities. The first reality is the Byzantine complexity of the federal bureaucracy, the degree to which it has been compromised by the institutional capture of much of its functioning by companies that make money on keeping problems alive. We think they're probably also stymied by perhaps some other political crosscurrents within the administration that view psychedelics with skepticism and that are therefore willing to be indiscriminate in their resistance to the advancement of any of them, when in fact the advancement of this one is of existential critical importance as a breakthrough treatment for millions of Americans who need it now. And so to that end, Americans for Ibogaine, following the Texas success, convened a gathering of 200 people in Aspen, Colorado in November of last year. These individuals were invited, appointed, and elected state officials from 22 individual states and aligned citizens of influence who would be willing, as the Texans were here, to get behind efforts in state legislatures to create a partnership with Texas that by end result will form the unstoppable external force through the states that can crash through the federal wall using not just their resources, but their political influence to execute one unified FDA drug development trial and to force the federal government to be responsive to everything that is required to ensure it is successful. So as we sit here today, we have been working with elected officials in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, South Dakota, and California, each of whom have legislators who are willing to introduce and to pursue bills to join their states into Texas as this trial. Governor Perry and I spoke to the American Legislative Exchange Council as keynote speakers on December 5th of last year. This is an umbrella think tank organization for center-right, mostly Republican legislatures from across the country. In its entire existence, ALEC has taken two positions when it comes on the war on drugs. More prison, more penalties, more prison, more penalties. Ad if and atum. After we spoke about the necessity of Ibogaine's medical integration into the United States and the capacity of the states to force this reality into being, ALEC issued a formal position statement as well as model legislation endorsing what we call the American Ibogaine Initiative to bring the states all together to make this happen with one unified voice. And so now, as we sit here with you today, in the state of Tennessee, there are two bills, one each in the state house and the state senate that are making its way through that legislature to join Texas. Before we walked in here this morning, the Tennessee Senate Finance Committee voted 11 to nothing to move Tennessee's bill forward to the full state senate for consideration and what will I believe be passage. And I would like to give a shout out to a special sister by the name of Ricky Harris, who has led that Tennessee campaign. Right now, there are two bills in the Missouri legislature, House Bill 2817 and Senate Bill 1581, which are receiving good, considerate, deliberative thought by legislators there, but frankly need a little motivation. So if you're in Missouri and you want to see Ibogaine medicine for your family member, for your community, for your state, you call into the Missouri legislature and say, move the Ibogaine bill forward to join Missouri with Texas. Oklahoma, the Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed its Ibogaine bill. It is now pending in its Senate. In Louisiana, Senate Bill 43 has been introduced to join that state to Texas. And in what I can only describe as full circle justice, the Kentucky Senate passed Senate Bill 77 by a margin of 35 to 2 to join Kentucky where this all began with Texas as a state partner in this Ibogaine drug development trial. It is now sitting in the Kentucky House of Representatives. So you, if you are at home, please call the Kentucky House of Representatives and ask them to pass the Kentucky Ibogaine initiative so the state will not be left out. NowHere are some just unbelievable words that are going to come out of my mouth. The state of West Virginia, their House of Delegates, by a vote of 96 to nothing, and their state Senate unanimously passed their ibogaine bill to join Texas, and it has now been sent to their governor for signature. And the one that is the most poignant and moving for all the obvious reasons, the state of Mississippi, the crucible for the triumph of uniquely American hope over horror. Under the leadership of Representative Sam Creekmore, its State House of Representatives passed by a margin of 111 to one, and its state Senate passed by a margin of 51 to one. The Mississippi Ibogaine Initiative, which will tie the state of Mississippi with a $5 million appropriation from its opioid fund to Texas to develop the most powerful psychedelic on the planet as a breakthrough treatment for trauma and addiction for the people of Mississippi.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:39:53

       That's incredible.

    3. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:39:54

       It is going to be signed, actually has been legally signed by Governor Reeves, uh, Governor, uh, Tate Reeves.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:40:00

       Tate Reeves.

    5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:40:02

       And Governor Perry and I have asked for a special signing ceremony with Representative Creekmore, his legislative leaders there, to stand in Jackson, Mississippi, and see that signed into law as a matter of ceremonial formality. What a wonderfully redemptive opportunity that we have here to shepherd, and we hope and pray that our organization can be sufficiently resourced and sufficiently engaged over the next three years so that we can see this process to conclusion. I'll mention a couple of others since we're talking about the capacity to make this a broad-based humanitarian mission that improves the human condition. Just Friday, before traveling down here on Sunday, I received a letter from the government of Gabon naming Americans for Ibogaine as its official partner for the advancement of iboga medicine globally. Gabon has two point three million people. It's got a hundred thousand square miles of territory that's the modern Garden of Eden. I'd had the opportunity to take a trip there from, and I mean trip as in the geographic sense, not the psycho-

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:41:07

       [laughing]

    7. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:41:07

       [laughing] Not, not the iboga trip, though I hope that that will be on the agenda in the ceremonial way sometime within the next year. Uh, we traveled there from January 6th to January 20th, and if someone would have said, "When you go to Gabon, you're gonna have one of the most down-home experiences you've ever had in my life," it would have blown my mind. But it was a fabulous journey, one in which they were jubilant about our ability to demonstrate that what they call the sacred wood, in fact, is one of the most scientifically advanced substances that has perhaps ever been discovered. And we're honored that the government would choose us as their partner to move this forward. On Monday, after a conference call with Chief Gary, uh, Batton, I can confirm that the Choctaw Nation will seek to join Texas in the expansion of this ibogaine drug development trial onto their sovereign territory as the third largest Native American tribe in the country. On April the 7th, I will be traveling to Durant, Oklahoma, for what is being called the Inter-Tribal Council Meeting of what they describe as the Five Civilized Tribes. That's their name, not mine. This is a gathering of the leadership of the Chocsa- Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee, the Muscogee, and the Seminole. We expect a passage of a resolution that I will be there to lobby for, for the Five Civilized Tribes will declare their solidarity with Americans for Ibogaine for the integration of this divine emancipator into the U.S. healthcare system as expeditiously as possible and make all of their resources available to explore the extent to which we can operationalize ibogaine medicine as quickly as possible. It is my hope and aspiration that we will see all of Native America join this effort before the end of this year.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:43:07

       Can I stop you there? Would that make it so that they would be able to immediately establish retreats there, so similar to the way they have casinos? Because they don't have the same sort of regulations that some states do.

    9. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:43:21

       Tribal sovereignty is an area of the law with which I am not familiar. I would not be able to speak to the degree to which they could autonomously open a clinic. The most immediate issue would be related to the creation of a supply chain, because you have travel through interstate commerce in the U.S. states, which should theoretically restrict it. However, there is one spectacular opportunity not just to expedite the creation of ibogaine treatment access for Native America, but for all of America,

16. 1:43:52 – 1:57:53

    Regulatory choke points and the presidential ask: scheduling, Right-to-Try, and a 3-year ‘moonshot’

    1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:43:52

       and this gets into federal right to try legislation authored by former U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema and signed by, uh, the President during his first administration in 2018. And what federal right to try legislation or the law provides is that once any medication makes its way through phase one safety testing within the FDA's process, then anyone with a life-threatening condition for which that medication is being developed can request treatment with that medication and obtain it from a willing prescriber. What does that mean? That means that as soon as Texas or as soon as one of the native tribes effectively completes a phase one safety study, under the language of the lawAnyone who has a life-threatening condition for which this medication has been developed, first and foremost, opioid dependency, can go and request and get the treatment. We have one complication. Presently, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in keeping with the practice of many government agencies that use their arbitrary authority to interpret law, has asserted that federal right to try does not apply to Schedule 1 substances. This means that based on not the language of the law, but on DEA's interpretation preference of that law, once ibogaine clears through Phase 1, it would be disqualified for access under federal right to try because the DEA says that if Schedule 1 substances were intended to be included, they would have been specifically listed in the legislation. When Kyrsten Sinema, the author of the bill, explained to them that the language is unambiguous and it says, "Any medication," their response was insolence and a refusal to honor what the statute actually says, which is one of these numerous examples of the use of fictitious legal realities to do violence to legitimate reality. The DEA needs to be told to relent on its misinterpretation and extrajudicial interpretation of federal right to try, to interpret it as written, so that once any Phase 1 study on ibogaine is completed, delivery can be effectuated through the medical system immediately. And I might add, one of the challenges that, uh, I've seen over my 40 years of being involved in government is that bureaucrats, the easiest and the safest answer for a bureaucrat is no. Um, and I think that's part of what we're running into in, in DC with the DEA. Um, one of the issues that I, I certainly hope and, and, and pray and as we go through the summer and as we see what's happened in Texas and Mississippi and these other states, that, uh, we'll have the opportunity to sit down, uh, with President Trump and to just share with him what we're doing, what we're seeing across the, uh, the country, and that, uh, we could, um, potentially have a conversation about the rescheduling of ibogaine from one to three. Two. Two or three. What, you know, just y- you get it out of that Schedule 1, which it, th- th- there's no reason in the world, and you've talked about this many times, Joe, that ibogaine is on Schedule 1. It does have medical purposes. I mean, it's very clear it does. And secondly, it is not addictive. So the idea on its face that ibogaine is, um, shown as this Schedule 1 compound is just a fallacy. Well, the Schedule 1, the sweeping Schedule 1 Act of 1970- Right ... is just nuts. Yeah. They just threw a bunch of stuff in there, many of the things that aren't even psychoactive. A, a question, uh, the iboga tree, can it be grown in the United States? Theoretically, it could be. Is it climate dependent? It's, i- it's climate dependent. It's soil dependent. It is considered an entourage plant, whereby it absorbs, um, essentially the essence, not just of the soil around it, but of the other botanicals. Uh, one of the things we learned in Gabon is that much like we have grape varietals in California for all the different kinds of wine that they produce, there are different varieties of the iboga shrub. How it grows in the north of the country is very different than how it grows in the south. In terms of the amount of compound that's in it or the type of compound that's in it? Uh, the, the potency, the strength, uh, the nature of its effect on the person, uh, the way that it kind of, uh, facilitates the, the spiritual journey. There's some of it that will kinda have a, a dark angle. There's some of it that has more of, of a light angle. Uh, we are just really scratching the surface of knowledge as to all the, the ways in which it can vary based on how it grows naturally. One of the most fascinating things that we learned there, and this is gonna give you chills, we visited, uh, a five hectare, they use the metric system, uh, y- we visited a five hectare iboga plantation right in the center of Libreville, uh, that is run by one of their former prime ministers. It's an experimental farm to kinda understand, uh, how it grows, the, the optimal ways in which to grow it, and what different outcomes are. So as we were walking along, we came to these two small bushes. It takes for it about 10 years to come to maturation. We come along this pathway, and there were two shrubs, identical, growing just a couple of feet apart from each other. And they pointed those out and said, "Can... Now, what does that look like to you?" And I said, "Well, those are iboga shrubs." And they smiled, and they said, "Well, it would appear so," because they are identical. They said, "But in nature, when you find an iboga shrub, you're gonna have to be very careful to determine which one's which, because in nature it looks like they grow in pairs. One is the real deal. The other is its poison imposter." Ooh. "And they grow together." And they look identical? They look identical. How do you differentiate? It's not until they get fully grown into their 10th year, one bears fruit, which is the real deal, and the other does not. Wow. Now, how does that do you for the physical communication of a mystical spiritual reality? And so it takes 10 years for it to come to fruition to the point where it could be useful?Uh, no. Uh-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:50:59

       Though you could use it before then-

    3. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:51:00

       Yes

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:51:00

       ... but you don't know whether you're getting the real deal or you're just killing yourself.

    5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:51:03

       When you see them grow in pairs, that's correct.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:51:06

       Wow.

    7. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:51:07

       So there's one group of people who know how to differentiate. Uh, one of the things that we learned is that there is a healthy underground international market for the bark. Um, just like we use vitamin B complex or we use valerian root to help us go to sleep, uh, people in Gabon will use the i- the iboga bark for mental acuity and just like drinking a cup of coffee. I mean, to get the psychoactive effect, you have to eat, like, five big, huge heaping plates of this stuff over the course of time. It's so bitter it will burn your mouth. I mean, it, it's an Olympian ordeal.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:51:43

       This is the, the bark?

    9. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:51:43

       Yes, sir.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:51:44

        Yeah.

    11. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:51:44

        It's an Olympian ordeal to consume the amount of bark that's necessary to get that, that mystical effect, and you're sicker than a dog the whole time you're doing it. But apparently piracy i- in the country for the shrub is, is fairly prominent. And they explained that what poachers will do is that they will take the poison imposter and basically, like the street supply where you put pollutants in with, you know, cocaine or whatever here, they put that imposter bark in with the real 'cause you cannot visually differentiate.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:52:14

        Mm.

    13. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:52:15

        The Mbongo Pygmy, uh, who we had the privilege of meeting, who hosted us for an overnight ceremony of blessing and protection that was just phenomenal, they apparently can just taste the bark even when it's mixed together, and they can tell if it's adulterated with the imposter.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:52:32

        Wow.

    15. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:52:34

        But to, to know that-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:52:35

        They're sort of like sommeliers of ibogaine.

    17. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:52:37

        Yes. [laughs]

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:52:38

        [laughs]

    19. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:52:39

        That's a great way to put it. An ibogaine sommelier. Might have to go over and get tutored.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:52:44

        [laughs] Yeah, I wonder what that process is like. Boy.

    21. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:52:49

        [laughs]

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:52:50

        Well, it just, it seems to me that with the incredible effectiveness of this compound and it being adopted by all these states that you said, it, it almost seems inevitable that change is coming.

    23. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:53:03

        Well, here's what we need to make change happen. Um-

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:53:07

        We need the DEA to get on board.

    25. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:53:09

        W-well, we need the DEA to get on board, but we need one man to get on board, and that man is the President of the United States. We're here to recognize America in her 250th year. 25 of those 250, now 10% of time, has been spent at war, and there are conditions unique to war that only this medication can responsibly address in a way that nothing else can. If there is an opportunity to improve the human condition at scale, particularly for those who are even right now being marched in to go and fight yet another war, taking executive action that would direct ibogaine to be moved to Schedule II, that the provisions of the HALT Fentanyl Act be applied to the Texas Multistate Ibogaine Drug Development Trial, that the DEA be directed to interpret federal right to try so as to not exclude Schedule I medications that are in drug development, and that it be appropriately interpreted so that any medication that makes it through Phase I can be accessed by a person with a life-threatening condition, and then directing that federal scientific research agencies, whether they be within Health and Human Services or the Pentagon, come alongside the states in direct partnership to fund and foster the accelerated pharmacological development of ibogaine so that this medication can make its way all the way through the FDA's process with their supportive guidance within three years or less. It is the moonshot of our time, and if there's a humanitarian legacy to be left for the ages by a president who very much wishes to have a legacy that is well reflected upon by posterity, this is one of the most monumental opportunities he has to help folks at scale in a way that no president perhaps has before. We're at an inflection point in history, not just for this country, but globally.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:55:19

        Well, I certainly hope that this message reaches the President, and, uh, I will try to make sure that it does.

    27. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:55:25

        Thank you, sir.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:55:27

        I mean, I think i-i-in terms of the amount of people that it can help and the crisis that our country is enduring with opiate addiction, with PTSD, with all sorts of trauma, with CTE, with, from sports, from car accidents and, and what have you, I mean, this is, I m- it, it's astonishing that this is even a struggle. When you consider the effectiveness of this, it's astonishing that we have to plead and that you have to put in so much work, and kudos to you for doing that, and kudos to Dan Patrick for this recent adoption of it here in Texas. And, I mean, I just can only hope that momentum is on the side that's correct and that this, this is implemented through the entire country and that people wake up and realize, like, we can help people. And everyone at this point in time, because of the opioid crisis, everyone's touched by this.

    29. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:56:23

        Yeah.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:56:23

        Everyone has a family member. Everyone knows someone-
17. 1:57:53 – 2:07:30

    Kentucky origins and political grievance: town halls, trauma stories, and a sharp critique of Andy Beshear

    1. WHW. Bryan Hubbard1:57:53

       Um, [clears throat] he mentions the Kentucky experience. Um, before we rolled out the ibogaine initiative there and I ran the opioid comm-- stood at the Opioid Commission, I thought our first job was to go and to hear from the people of the state. You know, we were getting a billion dollars in settlement funds. This money was coming to us because thousands of their family members had died. So recognizing that confidence in government is at an all-time low, I thought it was important to go out and say, "Hey, here's who we are. Here's the job we've been given. Here's the resource we have. Tell us what need you have in your community that we can look to fund." Uh, this is something that needs to be accessible to grassroots organizations. It needs to be accountable to you as people, and we need to make sure we're transparent with how we use this money, but our first job is to listen. Well, over the course of twenty town halls across the state, Tuesday evenings from six PM until we wrapped up, what began as a fifteen-minute technocratic presentation of what this state commission does turned into these, these mass catharsis events where hundreds of people, thousands over the course of those twenty town halls, poured out the depths of their grief right at our feet. And after they did, the sum total of their response to us was, "We don't think that you have the competence or the integrity to do anything that's gonna make a meaningful difference in this life, in our lives, and we don't expect one cent of this money is gonna make the least bit of difference for us." At one of these town halls, I heard about a young woman by the name of Tamara, and the woman who told Tamara's story was a volunteer at a clinic for the survivors of child sexual abuse. This particular clinic made sure that children received appropriate medical treatment, that they received proper therapeutic counseling, uh, and that they were placed in family circumstances where they could perhaps have a chance to have a decent life. So this volunteer told about meeting a young woman by the name of Tamara when Tamara was ten years old, had been horrifically sexually abused by a family member. Tamara had to have a series of reconstructive surgeries because of how awful it was. And she said that she worked with Tamara for about two or three years, and that she went to her adopted family, and, uh, she hadn't been heard from since, and that she assumed that that was despite how awful her circumstances were when she came through the door, that she managed to get well and go on and have a, a relatively functional and, and happy life, as happy as one can to be a survivor of those circumstances. This same woman said that about ten years later, she was volunteering at the Perry County Kentucky Detention Center in, uh, the county seat of Hazard, and that she was offering mindfulness and yoga classes to inmates there just as a volunteer. And she said she went in one evening to teach her class, and that she saw this young woman sitting in the corner off to herself, kind of withdrawn. She didn't wanna come participate in any of the yoga exercises or anything, and that she was looking at her. And she said, you know, even though she was an adult, she looked kinda like what this young woman appeared, Tamara, when she was ten years old. She said, "So I walked up to her and knelt down beside her, and I said, 'Is your name Tamara?'" And she said that young woman looked up at her and recognized and eyes bright, and she said, "Yes. How'd you know?" She said, "I'm the volunteer who worked with you when you came to our clinic when you were ten. What are you doing in here?" And Tamara explained that because of the surgeries that she had performed to be reconstructed, they had given her opioids, and that what began to treat her physical pain, she continued to rely upon to treat her tremendous spiritual and emotional pain, and she had gotten busted buying oxy on the street by a deputy with the Perry County Sheriff's Department and put in jail. Now, you think about what I just said about how this young woman's life got started off, and the response of power to her was a prison. This is why what we're doing is so necessary, and Governor Perry mentions one other reality that's important. [clears throat] Some of your viewers may have seen a Politico article published on Sunday about a presidential aspirant by the name of Andy Beshear, who is the current Kentucky governor. Andy Beshear was the attorney general of Kentucky before he was governor. He is the son of his father, Steve Beshear, who was governor for eight years between 2007 and 2015.Andy's greatest accomplishment is being his father's son, because he has never accomplished anything outside of his father's lab. The legislature in Kentucky has been controlled by Republican supermajorities over the entirety of his term, and everything for which he claims credit actually belongs to them by way of accomplishment. There are a few things for which he can claim credit. One is shutting down the state of Kentucky harder than Gavin Newsom shut down the state of California, which resulted in the educational hobbling of an entire generation of Kentucky children who were already well behind national average standards on both reading and math. You could go to a liquor store or a strip club for months in Kentucky before you could send your child to a public school. Andy Beshear is responsible for that. He shut down the state's entire economy. He had an antiquated unemployment benefits system that he instructed the director of to make sure that his contributors and his family members were placed into the front of the line while regular everyday people at home got a busy signal for months on end and had no financial lifeline while his family and friends got valet treatment. When this was discovered, he scapegoated the director of the unemployment system for following his own instructions, a guy by the name of Muncie McNamara, and Mr. McNamara took his own life. But the most egregious reality about Andy Beshear and his father pertains to the fact that they were both law partners at the law firm that represented Purdue Pharma against the people of Kentucky in the litigation over OxyContin while they were law partners there. Andy Beshear and his daddy drew law partner paychecks off Purdue Pharma client bills while they were there. And the people of Kentucky should have received a billion dollars, but instead received a measly twenty-four million dollar payout from Purdue Pharma because Andy and his daddy's law firm malpracticed that case. The public record will establish that as part of the Purdue Pharma settlement, seventeen million documents were destroyed, the case was put under seal, and as a condition of the settlement, their law firm was allowed to cure their malpractice of the case, which resulted in a twenty-four million dollar settlement within days of Andy Beshear becoming the attorney general. Or the, uh, that's right, the attorney general. I said I've been a Republican all my life, and I have. My family's been Republican going back to the Civil War. I don't care if it's Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, that Illinois governor, Governor Pritzker. Any national Democrat who needs my time, my effort, whatever I can offer by way of volunteer resources to make sure that Andy Beshear never sniffs the sewer grate of the White House, they've got it. In this Politico article, Andy talks about, in much the same way as other, uh, performative public piety purveyors, that his life is guided by the Golden Rule and the Good Samaritan. He likes to wear his Sunday school and deacon affiliations on his sleeve, as so many other performative public piety figures do. If he were actually going to preach the part of the Bible that he has lived, he would talk more about Judas and the forty pieces of silver than he would any Golden Rule and the Good Samaritan. And I just wanna make sure that the people of home and the people of America know who this man is, as the national media takes up Kentucky media's grotesque narrative about his decency and tries to lie him into the White House. Thank you for letting me say that. It's been a long time coming.

18. 2:07:30 – 2:14:14

    Closing: a generational manifesto and a spiritual call to ‘bind up the brokenhearted’

    1. JRJoe Rogan2:07:30

       I understand. Um, anything else before we wrap this up? You think we covered it all?

    2. RPRick Perry2:07:36

       I think we hit it good. Thank you, Joe.

    3. JRJoe Rogan2:07:38

       Thank you.

    4. RPRick Perry2:07:38

       You have been a, uh-

    5. JRJoe Rogan2:07:39

       Thank you, Bryan

    6. RPRick Perry2:07:40

       ... really big, uh, supporter of this effort and...

    7. JRJoe Rogan2:07:43

       Well, I think it's just incredible. I mean, I, it's, I, I can't believe it's happening. You know, I'd always kinda given up hope that people would wake up to the powerful potential that a lot of these compounds have to change people's lives.

    8. RPRick Perry2:07:57

       Yeah. Well, I'm sure there were, uh, some teachers of mine back in, uh, the 1950s that, uh, the idea that that little burr-headed kid, uh, that is, you know, obviously, uh, not paying a lot of attention could somehow or another end up being the governor of the great state of Texas. And, um, uh, there, there's probably a long, long list of those, as a matter of fact. And I'm sure there are some people over the course of the last, uh, uh, fifteen years as I matriculated up through the political process that said, uh, you know, "The idea that this guy's gonna be standing up, uh, uh, putting his reputation on the line for something like psychedelics is, th-that, that ain't gonna happen." Uh, but it goes back to your point about be curious, be courageous, and make a difference.

    9. JRJoe Rogan2:08:51

       All right.

    10. RPRick Perry2:08:51

        And you're doing it, Joe Rogan. Thank you, man.

    11. JRJoe Rogan2:08:54

        Thank you. Thank you too, Bryan.

    12. WHW. Bryan Hubbard2:08:56

        Thank you, and do you mind if I share one last thing?

    13. JRJoe Rogan2:08:59

        Sure.

    14. WHW. Bryan Hubbard2:09:01

        And because it is the 250th anniversary of the country, this comes from the heartYou know, the bicentennial children have had the blessing of being the grandchildren of that greatest generation that overcame the Great Depression, defeated Nazism, killed Jim Crow, and crushed totalitarian communism. That greatest generation lived, suffered, bled, and died to leave us the shining city on the hill. Over the past 50 years, the bicentennial children, or those who are known as Generation X, have experienced the mass extinction of family and community. We are the first generational cohort of mass refugees from obliterated biological families who had to seek and build new families of choice based on the salvation bond of unconditional affection, rejecting only the superficial socialized separatisms of the skin suits into which we have been born. Over the past 30 years, we have watched truth, justice, and the American way be overrun by institutional deceit, white-collar criminality, and the thieving tyrant's will, an odious alignment of official depravity which has produced the opioid epidemic, the gravest engineered humanitarian catastrophe to play out within our borders since the end of the 19th century, and an epidemic which has disfigured this country. The 2008 financial crisis, which forcibly dispossessed millions of us from the American dream, including 52% of African-American homeowners, and sent us the bill for the cost of our dispossession, a bill that everyone under the age of 40 continues to pay through their lack of economic mobility. And finally, and most deplorably, 25 years of unremitting warfare which has taken exponentially more service member lives here at home by suicide than have been lost at battlefields abroad. Over the last 10 years, 1.5 million Americans have died from drug overdose, alcohol-related disease, and suicide, a figure that exceeds the total number of war casualties going all the way back to 1776. We've got 102 counties with life expectancies less than that of North Korea. 18% of respondents to a recent Pew Research Center poll said that they believe the federal government has the capacity to do the right thing, a figure that hasn't been above 30% since 2007. 80% of respondents to an October 2025 Wall Street Journal poll have said that the American dream is dead. Power has answered these unconscionable realities with a maelstrom of bureaucratic absurdity, impudent incompetence, and predatory corruption, all with the blessing of the law which has used its power to bind, torture, and kill the truth. In the decades prior to July 14, 1789, the French government had ruthlessly imposed its burdens, abusively imposed its costs, and ravenously consumed the future of its people. The arrogance of the aristocracy ultimately answered to the desperate determination of the peasantry and its guillotine blade. We are here to pursue one of the greatest humanitarian missions ever undertaken to serve and exalt the primacy of the human soul. As we sit here right now, there are millions of Americans who have no sense of greater purpose or of even why they are alive, who mourn to see the sunrise when it comes up and through their windows. And what they need to know is that they are indeed divine. There's only one thing that is known to produce iron, and that's the supernova of a star. The iron in our blood originated in a supernova eons ago. Every human being has stardust running through their blood. And the movement that Governor Perry and I are leading is one that aims to recognize the reality of that human divinity. We are desperate, and we are determined, and we will crawl the last mile to deliver good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Glory, glory, hallelujah. The truth is marching on. And thank you, sir, for letting us proclaim it right here on your platform, the Walter Cronkite of our age.

    15. JRJoe Rogan2:14:10

        That was a beautiful way to end it. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Bye everybody.

Episode duration: 2:14:29