"The Psychedelic Origin of Religion" - A Healing Journey with Matt Weintrub, a Former Tech Entrepreneur Turned Psychedelic Medicine Advocate

In this Can We Start Over episode, Britt and Lindsey dive into an interview with Matt Weintraub, a psychedelic medicine activist and author. They talk about Matt's journey from web developer to plant medicine advocate and his work advocating using plant medicine to heal trauma and PTSD in veterans.

Matt Weintraub, a former web developer, and successful product designer, realized he was unhappy despite having everything he thought he wanted. He turned to ayahuasca for guidance and found that the key to happiness was improving his relationships, not achieving more success. His spiritual and healing journey led him to write his first book, The Psychedelic Origin of Religion.

The hosts also announce a book GIVEAWAY of Matt's book, The Psychedelic Origin of Religion, and discuss their experiences with plant medicines.

Find out more about Matt's work by following him on Instagram and checking out his websites!
Matt's Instagram
HAYULIMA PLANT MEDICINE RETREAT CENTER
Earth Healing Community Project

This episode is recorded from Britt and Lindsey's new home in Ojai, California. They discuss their decision to put down roots and take a break from traveling.

Tune in for a fascinating and thought-provoking conversation! And listen to the end for silly outtakes. 

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Transcript

Britt: 0:15

Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Can We Start Over, the podcast. My name is Brit.

Lindsey: 0:21

And my name is Lindsay, the podcast.

Britt: 0:25

And we're coming to you from Ojai, California. Where we just moved

Lindsey: 0:29

yesterday. Yeah. Moved is so loose. I don't know why I feel uncomfortable with you saying that. Well, it's cause we're

Britt: 0:36

in an Airbnb for a month until we find a place to actually rent. I'm like, where did we move? I don't know if we officially, I mean, we're living and we're here. But, uh, yeah, I guess we'll see how that goes. This is where we plan to live. There you go. And we're not fucking leaving.

Lindsey: 0:52

We're not getting on a plane for a long time. I will say that. I have no plans to plane. Mhm. And this is where I'm alive. So that feels true. Right. Yeah.

Britt: 1:03

About two weeks ago, we decided that we wanted to be done traveling for a little while. Yeah, that we

Lindsey: 1:09

needed a break.

Britt: 1:09

Yeah. And so we're kind of putting down a little bit of roots here.

Lindsey: 1:13

Went back to the place that felt the best, and that was here in Ojai. Yeah. And it feels great to be here. I'm still getting my bearings after traveling across the world. A few times. A few times. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, you clip it and then you flip it and, you know. Yeah.

Britt: 1:31

About eight ish days ago, we were in the winter. The throes of winter. The

Lindsey: 1:35

throes of Melbourne winter. This is so mild, but I'm such a weenie that it was cold to me. And then we were in Hawaii, which is the throes of never winter. Mm hmm. And now we're here.

Britt: 1:49

Yeah. In California, where it is summer. It is, it is summer. If you're in a place that doesn't know, it's summer here in the United States. That's

Matt: 1:55

true. And it feels

Lindsey: 1:57

pretty damn good. It does feel really good to be here. It feels like, ah, like an exhale and. I'm feeling very positive, very great.

Britt: 2:08

Yeah, we're a little low energy because of all this traveling, but believe me on the inside, I'm jumping for joy. Yeah. And we've got a really great interview today with Matt Weintraub.

Lindsey: 2:17

Matt is a psychedelic medicine activist. He's a healer, an entrepreneur, and the author of The Psychedelic Origin of Religion. We talk all about his book. We talk about his incredible starting over story from. tech guy to plant medicine advocate and specifically how he advocates for the use of plant medicine and healing trauma and PTSD and veterans. And it's a really good interview. Yeah.

Britt: 2:46

We've also got a giveaway this week. One lucky person is going to get a copy of Matt's book, The Psychedelic Origins of Religion. All you have to do is go over to our Instagram page at CanWeStartOverPod. Give us a like, then go to our website, canwestartoverpodcast. com and sign up for our newsletter. That's it. That's all you got to do. And we're going to pick one person to get a book.

Lindsey: 3:10

Pretty cool. And if you're interested in psychedelics or religion. You're gonna love this book. It's super interesting. Yeah. Let's get into the episode. You got

Britt: 3:20

it.

Lindsey: 3:23

I'd love to start by hearing your story. You mentioned to me that you are a retired web developer. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey of where you were versus where you are?

Matt: 3:36

Yeah, it's a winding road, right? Life's a journey. When I was going to college, I had this ambitious idea that I was supposed to do what society wanted me to do and my parents wanted me to do. Which was to become successful and become an investment bank. Okay. That's what success was, right? By this time, I had gone to University of Columbia in Missouri. Okay. And I had gone with that intention, right? I was a finance major. That was going to be my life. But at the same time, I had depression. 100%. And by this time, I already had spent time in high school selling weed. I'd already been to jail once for selling weed. And my parents knew that I was a big pot smoker, but I also was a great student. I actually got an academic scholarship. And so when I got there, I joined AEPI, which is a Jewish fraternity. And the first night I was there, I met a friend. His name's Kevin. He actually just came to see me here in Dallas. And we tripped LSD my first night of college. Wow. Yeah. As you should, right? As you should. It was a beautiful baptism to college. That was my baptism into realizing that the world is not an evil place. The veil of life had kind of lifted and I realized there is beauty here. And so I dived head first into Kind of abusing psychedelic, because I didn't understand it, but I was tapping into something that I was like, wow, this is what I want to tap into. And so it was, it was really, it was beautiful and confusing, and it was just a lot of things, right, that can kind of happen when you're using medicine and not necessarily the safest container. But lo and behold, by the end of the year, I was in handcuffs being busted for selling LSD, and that changed my life. For the better, but at the time it was pretty rough because at that time I was a felon. I was that kid that everyone talked about in terms of friends and family and stuff. It was, you become a pariah and I was also significantly in debt. My dad was fortunate to know the right attorneys, but. Gave me the bill, took all my money and said, tough shit, kid. This is what you owe me. You're nothing to us, basically. And that tough love actually was, was effective. And so I left Columbia, Missouri by the grace of God. I got five years suspended, so I didn't have to go to prison, but I watched a girl with way less of a history than me. Go to jail for three years. And I moved back home. And I worked, went to community college, I got myself back together, but I remember moving home, and I looked in the mirror, and I was just like, who am I? Seriously, who am I? And I had opened up enough of my crown chakra, third eye, that I was really looking for spiritual practices to ground me. So I got really involved here in Dallas with Kundalini Yoga and Adrienne Wolfe became my teacher. I don't know if you ever knew Adrienne, but I've still studied with her and it's been 12 years. And That, and it opened up this whole path of yoga to me, so I got really into yoga, and then I went eventually to Texas A& M University, they took me in, I had a probation officer throughout all college, and I ended up majoring in horticulture, so I abandoned all my ideas about What success should look like in a way and the week before I graduated, the judge granted me my release from my sentence for time served and that was a really good moment. But I also at the same time I graduated, I had started a farm in college called the Howdy Farm. Which was a non profit, like 501c3 farm. And my dad said, what do you want to do? Because I had this degree in horticulture, which is the cultivation of high value crops. Fruits and nuts and botanicals, all this stuff. Marijuana is technically a horticultural crop. And I said, Dad, farming's hard and I love it, but I don't want to do it every day. And my buddy had become an engineer, a software engineer, and I had been building websites and stuff on the side, doing a minor in design. And he said, you should get into tech. I didn't really know anything about it. He said, you should become a product designer. And so I looked that up. I found a trade school in Seattle. And I moved to Seattle after school and learned how to become a developer and a designer. So I sobered up. I still, every once in a while did. But to manage my depression and just help me get through stuff. I just went back to the world and assume that ambitious ideology, get in the tech, get rich and make cool stuff. And I did that and I was really good at it and I was so good at design. I was part of groups. We raised over 30 million in early stage startups. That I was invited to come teach design at UCLA. And I was teaching this course, which had just launched and was a shit show. But I was giving detailed notes and feedback to the company of, Hey, here's how I'm restructuring the course for my students in real time. And they're like, we love this. We want to hire you as a consultant. And before you knew it, after a couple of months of consulting, they're like, we need you full time. And at that time, blockchain had just launched. So I was actually working on a blockchain project out of Paris. And again, it was just, it was too early. I worked on VR before it was too early. I worked on AR. So I was always early in super into tech and all these modalities. So I walked away from block the blockchain space, but I was like, Oh, this will be big in the future. And I helped build this company. I was, it was pretty early there. We scaled the company up to doing a couple hundred, close to 150 million in revenue. We sold courses to universities all around the country, Harvard, Columbia. Ended up teaching at Berkeley. My unit was doing eight figures, right? I was crushing it. Like I had everything. I was killing it. I had a penthouse in San Francisco. I was living the life. I was fucking unhappy, really. And I had good friends. I, you know, I had everything that I should have. And it's like, Why am I a wreck? I wasn't a good me because I was so obsessed with becoming the millionaire and having the job and doing all this stuff. And that's the value in the world. And I had let all my relationships just fray. Even my relationship with my girlfriend at the time wasn't healthy. And at that point in my life, I knew I needed ayahuasca. I actually had put off going to do ayahuasca because they had really come to give me another bribe to stay because they knew I was towards the ends anyways. They're like, stay. And I was like, all right, that's a lot of money. I'll compromise again. And when that all came to the end, I broke up my girlfriend and I went to Ecuador for this ayahuasca retreat and it truly changed my life.

Lindsey: 11:05

When you left the Bay Area, is that right? Correct. Were you leaving for an amount of time or were you leaving with I'm done with the Bay.

Matt: 11:15

Yeah. That's a good question. So I always lived a nomadic life for a long time, like two big suitcases and nothing else. Okay. Living in like Airbnbs or fully furnished spots. Mm-hmm. so it was very easy for me to move. Cause I never really held on to anything and I had, yeah, I had left like my lease was up. It was like a month. I was like, I'm done here. I hadn't actually really, I didn't know where I was going to go. I just knew I was going to Ecuador to do this and then I'm going to feel out what's next. Yeah. Where do I move? Cause I had moved from LA and did SF and, but I was at this like crucible cause I was working on another startup and it was like, are we going to get funding or not? So all these things were in there and. One of the things that happened to me during the retreat was I realized how much I loved my girlfriend and I didn't want to break up with her. I didn't have anywhere to go. She, she was the most important person in my life. She's my best friend at that point. And I would call her and talk about it. Fortunately, like things were already too damaged to repair the relationship, but I, that inspired me to want to go back to SF to make it right. So I ended up going back to SF, trying to make things work with her after.

Lindsey: 12:32

After the ayahuasca in Ecuador and how much time did you spend in Ecuador?

Matt: 12:37

So I was just in Ecuador for two weeks. Oh, really?

Lindsey: 12:42

Yeah. Yeah. And in that two weeks, what did you learn about yourself? What did you experience?

Matt: 12:50

I went to Ecuador with my typical goal mindset, ambitious mindset of I haven't felt as connected to my work. Since I was in college, and I was really doing something like, I felt like making the culture and having people invested in what we're doing. And I was going down there because again, such a work focused person, I thought, what's my purpose? What's my purpose here? Really begging God to tell me. And God was like, I don't care what you think, I don't care what you want. Grandma's ayahuasca was showing me that your relationships are not. They're not in alignment. They're not as vibrant as they should be, that the whole point of life is our relation. The messages I was getting was about my relationships with my mom and with my dad and with my sister and with my aunties and uncles, cousins, and friends. About me being a better son, brother, cousin, nephew, uncle. God was like, don't worry about the work. You need to worry about this part of you, because this is the whole part of you. And that really hit home for me. That was the work that I had gone down there to do. The comedy of it was that in ceremony, when you ask with an intention as they guided us to do, the curanderos there, is that the spirits cracked me up because they're like, Oh, no, you'll figure it out. I was like, I spent thousands of dollars. I come down to Ecuador, I'm doing all this work and you tell me, you'll figure it out. Right. It's like Fugazi. You're like, so typical, like your little child, inner child complex of, Hey, I want to, I want this. And the parents, their ancestors, spirits, angels are like. We know what you need, you don't know what you actually need.

Lindsey: 14:43

But then, you'll figure it out, like it can be, it's funny and it can be a little frustrating to be like, but I'm trying, I want to do the right thing, or like, I need to... It becomes a work in its way, like you can be ambitious about even healing, right? So it takes the, how you're describing your experience, it's maybe, don't take it so seriously. You're good. You're here already. You're do it. You're already doing it, which is so not what we get fed. In our culture, it's always achieve more, even healing can be like, achieve more, do better, but the medicine is telling you like, you're already doing it, right? Yeah. Is that what I'm

Matt: 15:31

hearing? Yeah. It takes a long time to decrypt the mind from a consciousness from which we come from in the Western world. Exactly. And that's really. what had infected me and the northern tribes of the Cree people. They call this WTICO. WTICO is a virus, a mind virus of selfishness and greed. And I had that in me, for sure, because WTICO extends to the idea of what's next for me. And that's not a healthy way to go about life. And so the medicine was trying to show me that. Temescal. I had probably the most impactful experience with the medicine there because I did get the answers I was looking for. But it was just amazing in a span of six days how much the medicine can open you up and start working on you because we know this about ayahuasca. It changes our DNA, cleans our blood, cleans our stomach, cleanses our mind. So it's really this purification ritual and so it's really helping you purge Whatever that looks like for a being that's really on that beam, but the ayahuasca purge is a lifelong process, right? Like even after I left there, I remember being six months in, like just feeling ayahuasca continue to move through my being. Reorient how I think. And I was like, great. I know what I need to do. And they're like, you do. So good work. And one of the first things I did was I got involved with Decriminalize Nature, California, because that was one of the things I wanted to basically do out of that, which is be an advocate for the healing of these sacred medicines. So I got involved with Decriminalize Nature, California, and That had really been the first part of taking action. The other parts of the process would still take me some time to decondition my mind from lack of faith. I didn't have faith in God right away. I didn't have faith in God to quit my job because money, I need money. I didn't have that faith that God would make sure things would work out for me. I didn't understand that communication. So I was really learning how to communicate with God on a deeper level and hear God. Because God was trying to talk to me, really hear God. And so I got really deep into my meditation space. And at the same time, I had these different visions, all of which I continue to work on. And what I learned is that I had this idea of the tech project. There's this technology project I wanted to do. So I started moving towards that. And I moved back to the Bay because I thought I'd get a co founder, a CTO there and get to work. A couple things happened. COVID hit. My dad was sick and it was time for me to leave SF basically right after I got there, which was uncomfortable because I really had bought just a ton of stuff and I just got rid of it within six weeks. Wow. But, so there was just a lot of transition going on for me, but the tech stuff really didn't take off. I actually took on a co founder who was a friend of mine who had already been paying contractors to do some work. Long story short, he lied to me, things fell apart. And I was like, Oh, this is a sign. This is a sign I'm not supposed to work on this right now. Yeah. And so I moved back to Texas. I moved with some friends. And that's when it really started to hit me that One of the things I was asked to do was write a book on the science of reincarnation. So I started doing that in my spare time and I was still working, still holding on. I was like, Hey, I'm quitting. No, I thought I'm quitting. And then they go, what if you just work part time? Cause my company is so great and I loved everybody there and they were so great to me. And even though sometimes I was a dick, they always took care of me. And they go, we want you to have your health care, work part time, whatever you want. And it was just a great setup. But again, my attention was fractured because I still had to do some work for them. And I, I finally did that fall, officially quit, or at some point we officially parted ways. And that really shifted me into this mode of creation. And that started the process of writing the book that we're going to talk about today.

Lindsey: 19:51

Within that time, is that when you started writing your book, The Psychedelic Origins of Religion, when did you connect with Indigenous communities more? And work on this book, and did those happen at the same time?

Matt: 20:05

Yeah, so one of the first things that happened, one of the things in the Temaskal Division I got was to work to make relations with the tribes of the North and the South. And that's all I knew. I just walked out of there like, okay, that's very vague, but interesting intent. Wow. Yeah. And so it was a culminative process of doing this research, getting stuck in certain places and then just diving back down into the medicine world and trying to connect with elders and learn and create relationships and it all started to weave together. But the original book that I started writing. It was a science of reincarnation, but it was too big. I wrote hundreds of pages of everything I'd ever read and learned about consciousness and stuff. And, and so I wrote all these hundreds of pages and I made this website and it's like a rough draft and I moved on to the next thing, which is the psychedelic activism and all these other things that I was doing with my time. And the interesting part of that. Was I got to a certain point years, like two years after that started where I go, I get this dream to publish this book. I was like, I'm not done with the book. And then the dream I'm having this conversation with myself or with an angel. What do you have? And I was like, the one chapter I wrote the most on 70 pages on the science of psychedelic. Medicine and Psychedelics and Religion, and I was like, oh, I should make that a book. Wow. Yeah. And so I really started hitting it hard over all 2022. Okay. 2022, I was talking to people, doing a ton of research, reading books left and right. Just building all of that out because I had this outline. I had 70, 70 amazing pages. It was like, okay, cool. Let's go find the rest. It's now 300 could be even bigger than that. And so that was a lot of 2022 putting that energy into that as part of creative projects. That's

Lindsey: 22:07

so amazing. What I'm, what I love about the idea of the psychedelic origins of religion is Okay, so for me, and this might be your experience too, because actually, I think you mentioned it in the beginning of the book, that a lot of people don't have religion anymore. And for whatever reason, that's fine. But I know a lot of people that identify as atheists or agnostic, and I've been there to let something go. But what's, I think that looking at religion from the standpoint of This connection with earth, medicine, can open up doorways where people can actually start to reuse religion in beneficial ways and get rid of the harm that's there or that's there present. In a lot of modern day religion, we can say for sure there's like a ton of harm happening. I guess I'm just, I'm interested, how can people take this information because you really do break it down. religion by religion. Here's how it was used in Islam. Here's how it was used in Buddhism. And it's so interesting, things I had no idea about. How can people take that and find their personal truth in it?

Matt: 23:27

With science today, true science, because there's the religion of science and then there's science. We can actually look to a lot of these practices through the lens of science. So the craziest part is, and I had this thesis before I could write the book, the question was, and in design thinking we teach this, how might we do something? Or how might we prove something? So the original thesis for me was, Is it true that every religion finds its basis in psychedelics and shamanistic practices? I don't know. I just went on to the research and the craziest part is that the answer is yes. I'm just saying that because I want it to be true. It's literally inspiring and incredible to see so many cultures have this practice, this ritualistic practice where they have a fire. They have a sacred fire. They say prayers around the fire. They have a communion, a type of holy communion with a psychedelic sacrament where they're Connecting with something beyond them in the ether, and that is informing the way they live their life. Yeah. It's informing their ideas on the philosophy of reincarnation, which now, even through the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, has done peer reviewed research on past lives.

Lindsey: 24:51

Amazing. That

Matt: 24:54

is mind blowing. It's fascinating and amazing. I think the question, to answer your question there, that... Everyone has to figure out what works for them. You got your thing that works for you. I personally think that religion keeps people from God. I think God hates religion because it separates. God having a relationship with you. Now I do believe in God. I believe God is love. Exactly. Christ taught that, John 3, 14. And I believe love is vibration. It's the highest vibration of consciousness. So that's what I believe God is at its most true form, but we have free will choice. So bad things can happen. It's all a matter of what's going on with us. Now, I also believe that you could prove that through quantum physics. I believe that you could prove the vibration of love. And the HeartMath Institute is an incredible institute of former MIT researchers, and they actually measure vibrational states generated by the heart. So I think as we get deeper into technology, studying these spiritual practices, we're going to be able to say without a doubt, what is that vibration of love, of God. And so my two cents is that what Christ taught is very different than modern Christianity, for example. So true. And the main teaching of Christ is again, is love thy neighbor and love God, two main things, which is love and kindness as the main teachings. And so all of these indigenous cultures, codified into religion, and then power got involved and manipulated religion for the purpose of power and et cetera. But if you go back to the truth, it's all about a way of life, living sustainable with nature. And the reason I got that insight is from being around the tribes, from learning from the tribes, from walking the path. I walk the El Camino Rojo, the red path. And so that's a path of indigenous healing and practices and a union with the divine. And that informed the two basis points of this book, which is, look, we've got psychedelic medicine today. I run Legalize Psychedelic Medicine. It's a national advocacy organization for giving people the right to heal with what I call God's natural medicines. And there are thousands of people in the movement, countless doctors. Special for Veterans, just in general, policymakers, et cetera, who've either all had experiences or, or have the data, clinical data that shows this changes us on a neuroscientific level, physiological level, the DNA I was talking about with ayahuasca, that's now science, it was published by Dr. Simon Ruffell. And so what we're talking about is not something etheric out there, it's that this is really science. And the next phase for me of, of that is, What is the science of these prayers? What is the science of a ceremony and can we make that a science? When you get into the research of reincarnation, and I don't get deep into this in this book, but I will the next one. It's a really fascinating topic and we can never truly know, right? Life is a mystery. We can never truly know, but the research is so incredible. First off, to understand that every single culture ever has believed in the. the existence of a soul or reincarnation except modern Christianity. And the irony here is that Christ being a Jewish man would have been exposed to the reincarnation teachings of the Zohar, part of Judaism, and other aspects of reincarnation as part of his life and his studies with masters in India. And so actually, if we know with discernment how to look at the New Testament scripture, we would recognize that Christ Does talk about it and in the scriptures that they left out the non canonical in the gospel of Mary, for example She talks about it because Christ talks about the noose, which is a Greek word alluding to that the research the body of research shows that Children up until ages seven have the capacity to remember their past life out thousands it's not like two cases three case thousands and Whether it's the Tibetan people that have that practice of finding the reincarnation of various masters who become the leaders of their state, that this has been going on a long time. And so the question then becomes when you look at that, what does that mean to me? It means that all of the teachings are, give us hope that heaven is real. Right? When we leave this, when we leave this earth, as some of the scriptures say, from the light we come to the light we return. Big bang. It was a big light. The whole universe was created. And so I believe that you can't take anything with you except your soul and the love you shared. Where does that go? I believe it goes to spirit world. I don't know fully what that is. I know that's real. That's my truth. I know that's real. And I believe that science can now explain. And we got to figure out how can we measure that? I don't know. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. I think that's what's exciting about science, when it gets aligned with spiritual truths. And if that's the case, as all these cultures and religions have taught, the concept of reincarnation is the idea that When you go back to the spirit world, there is judgment. It's not like the Christian devil worship fear paradigm. It's more like you sit down with your highest self. You ask yourself the question, was I the best me truly? And you can look at your life and go, no, I wasn't. All right. Would you like to be a better me? And you go, yeah, I would. Okay. How would you do that? I'd like to do a lifetime where I do this and that happens because that's outside the bounds of the third dimension space and time So that's how I understand that spiritual truth and it lines up with all these teachings But I don't think that I think it also lines up with the way we live our lives Don't we always like every week wake up and go, I want to not be a dick to my partner. Today I was a dick yesterday or like I yelled at my kids or I was just, I just didn't have it yesterday. So I think reincarnation is a theme of life. And to me, that gives me a lot of hope and love for God because life's a gift, right? It's just God, like people think God's like super heavy handed in the world. God, I think God is guiding all things. That's my belief. But at the same time, God has to give us the ability to fail, the ability to walk away from God. Because when we walk away from God, things start to fall apart and you go, life is so hard. And so for me doing these spiritual practices, meditation, which science shows is good for you, gratitude, science shows good for you, prayer, psychedelic medicine, all these things. I'm really happy and grateful and the product of all of doing all that spiritual work is I just want to help other people heal and make the world a better place and speak truth to power. If that's some type of evil, let's bring it on. Yeah, yeah,

Lindsey: 32:13

yeah. Oh, I love that. So tell us a little bit more about your organization. And I really. I want to know the healing aspect of, especially in cases you're like working with veterans and they're experiencing PTSD or CPTSD. What are you seeing the change in people?

Matt: 32:33

Yeah, so I'll start with what I advocate for. As somebody who's worked in politics, I have learned that if you want to make change, it requires compromise. We can all be idealists, and I do ascribe, and I have a lot of friends that are idealists and activists, and I love them to death. And we're not always successful. That's okay. Cause I love idealists. I'm one myself. But I also know that to create change requires practical compromise, and that's okay. And so what I advocate for is a simple rescheduling of various psychedelics that are scheduled under Schedule 4 by the government, which means they have no medicinal value, and I'd like them rescheduled, or maybe it's Schedule 1 or 2, and I'd like them rescheduled Schedule 4. Schedule 4 means a doctor can prescribe them. People can have access to it. That's it. I'm not saying anything crazy here. I'm saying like let's let people heal. Let's let doctors decide what's right for their patients based off evidence based medicine. We have the evidence. So that's what I advocate for. And the thing to note is that psychedelic medicine can help heal not just veterans, any soul suffering from anything from sexual assault to eating disorders, anxiety and depression, chronic addiction to drugs or other substances. And. That is all clinically backed research across the spectrum, usually with psilocybin right now and MDMA. MDMA PDSD, but psilocybin has been more studied on a broad spectrum, and that comes from mushrooms. Then we have the research from John Hopkins into the spiritual effects of this medicine, which go beyond even the suffering, and by the way, cancer patients who often become depressed and anxious really do well with psychedelic therapy, really helps them, because even if you survive that therapy. You get stuck in this, I'm going to die loop. And so really great just for the mental health spectrum, because we have an epidemic. One in four Americans have a mental health disorder. That's over 86 million, 44 veterans die a day from suicide. It's over 135 Americans a day. 135 people a day putting a gun to their head or taking a gun into a school and hurting kids and other beings, whether they're hurting themselves or their families or hurting others. They're hurting, right? Yeah. And in some way they're hurting and that's a preventable disorder. Now the second leading cause of death in children is suicide. 40% of children report. feeling hopeless in, in this society, American society. And the thing that's frustrating for me is that our supposed leaders in public health. Exactly. And they're claiming that medicine that has been on the market for 40 years, which is ineffective and has actually been epidemic or the SSRI paradigm, has been shown to be actually really fake placebo. It's not effective because it was effective, right? The effective way to measure is are things going up or down and everything is a hockey stick up and to the right. And so we have a serious problem, serious problem in a very preventable way. And so that's what we're advocating for. Just the right to heal. We're not doing anything else, but hey, you've made this illegal, which is what, what we've made illegal as a country. is natural medicine. Mushrooms grow naturally on the ground. Cannabis grows naturally on the ground. MDMA is synthesized from tree bark, a type of tree, sassafras tree, and all the various others, ayahuasca, et cetera. These all come from nature. And my, my issue now is that the system is getting ready to hand over patents to the big pharma players that have synthetic molecules. So they're going to have synthetics, MDMA, they're going to have psilocybin, and they're going to let that, that be a paradigm. And While I don't support that personally, I understand that we're all different, right? So I do publicly support that, but it's crazy because you still can't have access to the natural medicine without the threat of jail. That's insanity. It's insane. It's more than insane. I actually believe it's a form of what I think is evil, what I call evil is satanic. I think it's a sign of evil in this country that we've banned natural medicine and we only allow the synthetic medicine. We can get too into that, but I want to stick on the policy side, but that's what I advocate for. And what we had, what was created was bipartisan approach to change. We went to lawmakers and said, Hey, these veterans, you'll listen to them because they sacrifice for our country and they have been abused by the VA system. They're not well, but they're getting well, they're getting well outside of the United States. They're going to these. Use this indigenous medicine and they're coming back and they're putting their lives together and that's fucking amazing. It's amazing And now most of those folks who have been moved by that they started organizations There's countless organizations out there and they're advocating with lawmakers day in and day out across this country And now there's a coalition in Washington, D. C., that's knocking on the door of the White House, knocking on the door of Congress, introducing legislation saying, Hey, give us this right.

Lindsey: 37:48

So, I want to know how you merge your spiritual practice with this work in, Legalizing.

Matt: 38:00

Yeah, that one's a tougher topic for me because it hits home that I've made a lot of compromises personally in my advocacy work to help advance what is important is that people have the right to heal. That is the most important thing. But for me, for my religion. The way I practice my religion, which is the indigenous form of Judaism, indigenous form of Torah, I have to have, I have to spend my Sabbath with holy communion. It's psychedelic sacraments, and I can't safely do that in this country. Without

Lindsey: 38:38

the threat of jail, fines, all of those

Matt: 38:42

things. Without the threat of persecution, I've explored and I've talked to legal attorneys about it and importing medicine like ayahuasca is a risk, it's all a risk. And I, As I've explained, I've had experience in the justice system. I don't have the luxury of putting my personal liberty at risk. I've been to jail twice, charged twice. A third strike is like automatic in this country. You don't want to spend 25 years in jail. Because a prosecutor wanted to like prove it to the man. And so even though I could be protected under that statue, then from what I've been told, I would have to sue to the Supreme court of the United States to get them to adjudicate and maybe, or maybe not approve of the way I practice my religion. Cause again, they got to approve it. Why do I have to justify my religion to anyone in this country? When it was founded on this. And so for me, that's, it really hurts me because it's really, I understand why people left to come to America. Your reli like your way, religion is part of your way of life, right? Freedom is, is part of our way of life. And if I don't have that freedom, it's hard for me to live freely and it's difficult for me to not get bitter about being right, right? Mm-hmm. And I don't wanna grow into that person. So I, I may have to leave this country to practice my religion and I'm okay. Cause God is the most important person in my life. And helping others is the most important thing to me. And so I'll, I'm struggling with that straight up. That's probably what I'm gonna have to do. And so for me, like, I'll just tag onto this. In terms of advocacy, I don't advocate for that, right? Because I compromise. But really what I want to advocate for now, and I'm probably going to step away because we've been so successful with the advocacy work, is that I want to make it clear to my American family That I'm not free here. I can't practice my religion here. That I believe I practice true Christianity, and I can explain that. And that I'm not gonna, I basically can't come back here until I have

Lindsey: 40:51

that freedom. And that feels far away in this country? I don't know.

Matt: 40:55

That's up to the people, right? Like, I've learned that a small group of people can change the world. Yeah. And that, Baruch Hashem, thank God, like, that is a beautiful thing to learn. And we're all in this together. If we have a problem with our democracy, guess what? It's all of our problems. So all the bad in the world, it's our fault. All the good in the world. It's also our fault. Yeah. Let's make more good. And so my, I guess my message that I have to share is that we have to decide what is right. We have to demand change. We have to actually get off, get up off the couch, turn off the Netflix and get involved because that's the only way things are going to change. So that's where I'm at personally with it. And I struggle with that, right? Because I don't want to come off as this angry, bitter dude who's like, screw everybody, hate this place. I have those days, like for real. I have those days where I'm like, I hate this place. And then I'm like, I try and meditate on it and have forgiveness. Because there's just a lot of propaganda and lies, but I know God will make it work how it's supposed to work. That's what I'm praying for. I look forward to the day Where I can freely practice my religion in America. That's what I look forward to.

Lindsey: 42:06

Yeah, I'll speak for me, and I think this is probably true for Brit too, but we get, yeah, it can, especially when we're on this experience that we're having right now, where we are free, we're not tied down, we're traveling, we are about to leave the U. S. and we don't know when we're going to come back, that it's, it can be, it's really frustrating to be An American, and it can be really, it's disempowering, almost like it's designed to be disempowering. But, oh, that must be in the design that's happening right now. But holding both, it is a paradox and we have to hold both, like, exactly what you said, advocating for change and doing. What the heart is called to do, like with all of our heart, but also knowing when it's time to go somewhere else.

Matt: 42:58

Yeah, and I feel like I'm at that crossroads. Yeah. And just full disclosure, like y'all, me and Lindsey are friends and our friends in Dallas, we're all in the healing space. We all care about helping others. And we've been exploring certain ways to make it work. I've been trying to figure out ways to make it work. And they're all compromises that, that still exclude me personally from feeling like I can participate. There are workarounds that we can, we can make happen, but it still doesn't change the root fact that I'm not free to practice my religion here, and that's not okay. And so that's now the message I have to share right on the advocacy side is more like, it's not okay. And we need to start actually being like, it's not okay. Like the gun thing. It's not okay. It's not okay. Now, I understand there's a compromise. Let's figure out the compromise. And actually do it. Background checks, red flag laws. That's a compromise. It's not, I'm taking your assault rifle. No, you keep it, but now we're going to have background checks and red flag laws. And now we're going to see what that's effective.

Lindsey: 44:08

Or let's give all of them psychedelics and then see if they even want those assault rifles anymore. They won't be scared

Matt: 44:14

anymore. Yeah, that would be nice. I know

Lindsey: 44:17

that's very idealist and I'm just poking fun.

Matt: 44:21

No, no, it's good, it's good. It's just, yeah, I get in this serious place and it's like, no, what are we doing here? Like this isn't the whole point of life. And I read this in my book. Isn't the whole point of life that we make a better world for our children?

Lindsey: 44:33

Yes. And

Matt: 44:35

that is a big part of What else are we doing? Yeah. Do you want a worse world for your children? For your little babies when you've got so many beautiful ones?

Lindsey: 44:42

Yeah. That's exactly like what we're on this journey for. And it's really tough, yeah, to be parents of like school aged children. Now they're not in school, but to not feel safe was a huge part of being like What the fuck are we doing here?

Matt: 44:58

It's, it's, it's to speak to that audience because first off, I am from Texas, I've shot guns my entire life, all of my buddies have a cache of assault rifles, okay, I have a lot of friends who, God bless them, have served, and they're veterans, I like hunting. Yeah. I like all those things. But guess what? Love children more than I love. And I'm willing to make compromise on behalf of children. So this doesn't keep happening. And yes, part of it is a mental health epidemic. Absolutely. And I want that right tomorrow too. It's still about honing in. What are we doing here to give corporations more profits? And I think if you're a Christian person, and you truly understand the teachings of Christ, which is to love thy neighbor and to love God with all your heart, that you would have compassion and willingness to say, there's something I can do here. I can step up because I recognize that we're all children of God. Those little children of God, I'm going to step up here and say, I'm going to help them out. I can compromise here. I can, there's something I can do. That's a Christian thing to do.

Lindsey: 46:11

Really? Yeah. How can I find my own personal responsibility in everything and then say, okay, I'm going to be responsible for my end of the bargain.

Matt: 46:22

Yeah. And the NRA, some of my buddies are in the NRA. I know all their talking points because they tell me at poker. They're too extremist. The NRA is a much like. A lot of the crypto community, they're too idealist, right? Idealist is, hey, let us do whatever we want. No one's ever lived like that. Go live in the desert by yourself. And we all have to share, we have to share, so.

Britt: 46:51

Yeah, you can go out in the desert, and you and a hundred people can do that for a few years until it all falls apart, and then you can come back and learn about how you have to work with compromise.

Matt: 47:03

Yeah, we all have to live in the world, and we have to deal with. Yes, these mental health issues and really a backwards society that's leading to these outcomes. We got to take an approach to public health that makes sense. And again, I just want to make very clear, because I'm sure what Chop doesn't put it out. I'm not saying I'm not, I'm not for gun bans. I'm for sensible gun regulation. There's a difference.

Lindsey: 47:31

Finding the personal, finding the responsibility for all of us, that's, yeah, and being like this is the simplest thing we can do. So do you

Britt: 47:40

have any thoughts on pitching plant medicine to people that wouldn't even be in their field of view? Maybe veterans or someone

Matt: 47:50

that just comes from a background that had, knows nothing about

Britt: 47:53

plant

Matt: 47:53

medicine. How would you pitch that? Yeah, it's a really good question. Because I struggle with that. How do you actually communicate that kind of to the Western mind? And there's different approaches you can take. One is like the human performance angle of the business person. Hey, do you want to be more creative? Tap into certain parts of yourself that you don't have access to that could make you a better creator than you are today. Psychedelics can help you do that. And we actually have research that shows peyote helps induce creativity. That's been in the literature and maybe y'all can have some feedback, I can pitch different things. One is, you know, get in touch with your soul. That may be too esoteric, but we can help you do that with the medicine because we know it induces mystical states. And then when you're in touch with your soul, imagine how aligned you can be with Maybe your business ideas, your art ideas, whatever it is you like to create in the world, because that's awesome. We need your medicine. And then there's also the science of simply helping people heal. All right, for veterans, usually veteran organizations and veterans are the best to communicate to their community. Hey, I had PDSD and here's how I healed it. And now I'm free and my family's healthy and happy and I'm helping my friends. That, that works for them, right? You got to have a message for each person. So I think it's that, and then there's the simple, there's just a simple science of it. I think that's where I sit with the science of, Hey, whatever's going on with you, I really think this is a tool in your mental wellness journey. We all deserve wellbeing. We all know that. And these, I know that it starts from within, within in our minds, if we're healthy and happy appear, everything else tends to work out. Let's get healthy and happy. How do we do that? There's a lot of tools that we have in our holistic toolkit. Meditation, gratitude practices, intention setting, physical exercises and disciplines. Plant medicine to me is just part of that. Big part of it. And it's the best tool we have right now to help people wake up. But again, That's actually what I say is it's not all about the medicine. It's about the integration. Medicine, great. Have you integrated it? I just want to speak to building this relationship with your higher self. I can say it's to God or whatever, but it's really your highest self, your best self. You want to be your best self. These are just practices that we can do to help. Take you to another level, whether it's a business thing for you, it's a relationship thing for you, whatever that

Lindsey: 50:26

is, that reminds me of. What about this shadow side that we also need to see, and that's if there's a lack of integration or where it can become there is a potential possibly, and maybe this is just fear, a potential for it to just become a tool for it. All right, let's get out there and do more, or a tool for pharma, let's make more money. So there's this, because it's at this, it feels like it's at this, like, precipice of, okay, we're, it's, things are happening, it's big, it's not, this isn't fringe anymore, right? in a lot of ways. So how do we integrate the shadow aspect of being like, okay, now it's not just medicine. I also have work to do, or I have love to give myself so that I'm not just. Feeding my capitalistic ego.

Matt: 51:23

Yeah, it's, that's a great, it's a great question. I don't know if I can fully do it justice, but I can try. And the nature of the shadow is the idea that if there's light, there's darkness. And just like any person is capable of infinite good, they're also capable of infinite bad. And so the shadow is usually something we ignore. Maybe it's some trauma, whatever. We've just... And integration work, and this specificity is shadow integration work that you're speaking of. is a really important part of the healing journey. And before we go into that shadow work, I want to use a parable, which is sometimes some people say they get really into physical fitness and they go in the gym every day and they're just working out. They're actually working out too much, but they're not seeing any improvement. Hey, they said to the coach, Hey coach, I'm going to the gym every day. I work really hard. I'm not seeing any improvement. And the coach goes, What are you feeding yourself? The person goes, what do you mean? Are you eating enough? And they sit, and they look at the fact that they're actually not eating enough. Which means they can't grow, they're not fueling the body, they're doing all this work but not fueling the body. So they're not making any progress. The parable is that a lot of people believe that, hey, I'm going to drink medicine now and next weekend and every day and I'm just drinking medicine all the time, ooh, I'm just taking a ton of medicine. It's like working out all the time and not eating any food. Yeah. Not making any progress. And this is the capitalist mind, this is our ego consciousness of more is better. It is more better or is enough for now and learning what is enough enough is peaceful. Do you have enough? Yeah, I do. Oh, it's peaceful. Do you have enough food? Yeah, I did. Oh, now you feel content. If you had too much food now, you're like, ah, too much food. So that's again, the teaching of the Buddha, the middle way. And so that happens a lot in the medicine community. This ego comes in of, Oh, I've drank in medicine so many times. And how is your integration work going? How are you? Your practice is going that you're doing to supplement that work. And so this really comes out, and that's really an example of the shadow, of avoiding the shadow of, hey, like, I got things to worry about. No, I'm too busy drinking medicine to deal with that problem that I actually have. I'm just getting high on spiritual life. That's not really discipline. That's actually another form of avoidance. Exactly. And so what I'm trying to build out and design is really a platform. An operating system for healing because I've gone through like I've had lack of support. I've done a lot. I've just done a lot of different healing, but I'd really like. a living breathing program of community and healers to create this place where we can share information with each other, healing practices. People, if you need code, nutrition coach, whatever you need, you can link up with that person and you can get that paid offering, but we can all contribute to really an open source. Wikipedia for healing. I think that'd be awesome because then we all have a common resource, right? And we can start actually, AI is coming and it's good at regurgitating information, but it has no wisdom. We need to preserve, we need a place where we're preserving wisdom. And so that's what all this is to me is really wisdom practices.

Lindsey: 54:48

Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about this platform and how you see like tech, spirituality, healing, like. all coming together. I

Matt: 54:58

really want to help build an end to end program that goes from pre retreat preparation or psychedelic experience preparation to you being where you're at, having kind of an integration journal, whether that's physical or digital, and then after the retreat, having continuous, a continuous curriculum that you can participate in at various levels, right? And so that would create This harmony. And a lot of places have this, they have certain ways to facilitate these Facebook groups, et cetera. I just want to create an end to end platform that any center that, that's doing indigenous medicine, because that's what I want to support, could use that to facilitate. And then we could actually, with our Council of Elders, create a certification for certain, if you follow certain sacred practices the way we do. You get certified. So then people can start having a trust based system similar to Western medicine and Western health care. And we can really provide an alternative health care platform, but we actually come at it from preventative. And so if we can help you with your mental health, then eventually we can grow to help you with your physical health too. And so That's the initial vision, right? Like any startup. And so really it's going to Hialeah Lima and you go to Hialeah Lima dot com. It's a ayahuasca retreat center in Ecuador and working with my family there to build out this offering and get that kind of built out so that we can scale it. To other places so that if you came to me and said, Hey, and you were in our lineage or had done your certification with a elder, then we could help you get your place set up wherever you get your place set up to help others. And then you'd be able to just use the software to make it really easy for you. And not everybody needs that, but I think right now it'd just be a really great tool for us to have as a collaboration. Brings

Lindsey: 56:50

this community aspect to that's like. A global community. Correct.

Matt: 56:57

Yeah. And I really, for me, look, technology is neither good nor bad. It's how you use it. But I would like to use technology to empower indigenous peoples. I'm an indigenous person. You can judge my skin color all you want. I am white, but I'm also indigenous. So Jewish people were indigenous peoples. And that's the type of community that I want to empower because that's how I learned to heal. And I'm eternally grateful for that. And I would like to show Western medicine that this way of medicine is valid, just, good, important, and should be honored and integrated. And I want to build a Western healthcare model around it where we fuse it together. We don't just say, hey, Western, Western Med, we know what we're doing. Do you? Because the data says you don't. But on my side, I want to acknowledge that there are parts of Western medicine that That are good that I admire because I just care about healing. And so if we bring those two things together, now we've got something really awesome. And so that's what I'm passionate about trying to just figure that out. Dealing with human problems and building solutions around it. Kind of

Lindsey: 58:06

like how you set, like how you wrote your book.

Matt: 58:08

Yeah, it's just, so design thinking is this ideology of how you develop tech products. And so I would say I'm a UX designer more than like web developer. The philosophy is you build something, you test it, you make iterations, and you design that, and then you build that, and then you test it, and you keep doing that process over and over, and then something that starts off a little raw, eventually becomes... Really fine tuned and nice to use if you do it right. Amazing.

Lindsey: 58:37

I love it. I'm excited to see what you create.

Matt: 58:41

Thanks. Even for example, like what we're doing here in Dallas with Chief Hari, having a platform like that to facilitate this whole thing would make it a lot easier to get these things spun

Lindsey: 58:52

up. You have, you're working on this. You have published a book, you are, sounds like you're still working on the reincarnation book, or it might happen, or maybe it's a different book that's coming forward?

Matt: 59:04

That'll definitely come out in either late 2024 or 2025. Okay.

Lindsey: 59:11

Amazing. I can't wait to see it. What is something in this moment beyond what you're already creating? Is there a spark or something else, something new that feels like your own personal starting over that you have your sights set on?

Matt: 59:25

It does involve going, finding a place to really put into practice what I call Chesed Torah. Okay, and for uh, Chesed in my people's language means loving kindness. So I believe that's the highest form of Torah. I believe it's the same Torah that Christ taught, not the confusion that is modern Christianity. And to understand that Torah is to understand it's an indigenous form of Torah. And so my understanding of Torah is that for my people, the Jewish people. We have to live an indigenous way of life, which means we actually are commanded by God not to own land. For instance, we're actually commanded by God not to charge interest on money. And so I'm really interested. And figuring out how to build new communities that can live this way of life. That's really what I want to do. And at the core of these communities have healing centers. That's my dream. And I'm trying to put that together as a framework for how do we do that? How do we create a bank of goodness, a bank that actually does good deeds in the world? How do we do that? And how do we do it together? I'm just a person. We need a lot of people to do it together because I want heaven on earth. I'm sure a lot of people do too, but nobody's going to give us anything. We've got to build it with our own two hands. Right. And so that's what gets me really excited is let's build the future. Yeah. Let's share the stories that need to be shared and let's organize. Block out the badness in the world, what's going on, and focus on what we can do. Mm hmm. Exactly. And so that gives me a lot of hope and inspiration towards whatever that turns out to be. And so I would also add that for my people, we have a certain prophecy. The prophecy is that if there is a redemption of the tribes of Israel, and to understand there's 12 tribes of Israel, 10 went into exile, Thousands of years ago, 2, 700 years ago, and it spread all around the world. But if those tribes are gathered back together and reunited, it's called the exiles, that we can begin a process of peace for the world. Because our people have a sacred bond to Torah and certain commandments. And so if we go back to living this indigenous way of life. And we learn how to share our resources in a good way to help others and not fight wars like Israel. The secular state of Israel is very different than the tribes of Israel, but if we go back to that way of life, and I believe Torah commands that we do that, then the world's going to be a better place. And I really do believe that. And I think it's an inspiring message because it's open invitation. Anybody can come live this way of life. And so with the technology that exists today, we can build all of it. We can build the tools that we need to have sovereign cities with their own clean air and clean water and healthy food and everything that you need and our own financial system to make it work. And, and we can go back to a new, the, the way of life we're really supposed to live because the Western way of life, it's very predatory actually consider America, Babylon. And so that's. That's what drives me, is that belief and that vision. I

Lindsey: 1:02:55

love your vision. I think you're going to do it. I feel it. It's amazing. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, we end with a couple questions that we ask everyone. The first one being, Is there a book or and or music that you're just really loving right now?

Matt: 1:03:16

Oh, okay. So I just finished Sermon on the Mount by Vendatta. Okay. And that is beautiful. The best interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, so it's an easy read. It's pretty short, but it's really beautiful. So I love that. And then music? Oh, I listen to too much stuff. I know,

Britt: 1:03:38

that'd be really hard for me to answer too. That's why I like asking people. Yeah, yeah. Sure. I need more.

Matt: 1:03:43

Give me more. There's a question. What are y'all's like top two or three favorite bands? Or musicians.

Lindsey: 1:03:50

You go first, Brett. First that comes pop apart. The

Matt: 1:03:53

Velvet Underground. Amazing.

Britt: 1:03:55

Jonathan Richman and a band called Silkworm from Chicago.

Lindsey: 1:03:59

Awesome. Good answer. That's my top three for me. It's gotta be Erykah Badu always. Okay. Now I want to say J Dilla, because it just encompasses everything I love about hip hop and sampling. And then I'm going to say, oh gosh, I want to say Curtis Mayfield. Nice. Yeah. And you're right. It's those feel those are random, but I feel like it sums up. I also just have to say tribe called quest. Can I have four?

Britt: 1:04:29

Yeah, you can. That's why when people when we talk about our top five every once in a while, we'll ask each other our top five hip hop and it changes every

Lindsey: 1:04:37

time to change it because it is

Britt: 1:04:40

Yeah. Yeah. And we changed the rules. Yeah. Can there be a group or does it have to be an individual? Okay.

Matt: 1:04:47

So what's your answer? I'll try my best. Matthew's band, favorite jam band. Amazing. Steve Miller band. I'm on you there. I like that. Yeah. And then, cause I love electronic, but right now it's Tale of Us. Oh, I

Lindsey: 1:05:02

don't know what that

Matt: 1:05:03

is. They're deep house.

Britt: 1:05:04

Me too. That's been coming up a lot too in our interviews. A lot of house. Yeah,

Matt: 1:05:08

a lot of house music. House and then there's deep house. Deep house. But either way, I've always, I've just, it's just a wonderful sound.

Lindsey: 1:05:17

Our last question, we always end with a question from our older boys, Eli and Jack, and their question today is... What's the question, Britt? Is the head an appendage?

Britt: 1:05:30

It's almost like a trick question. I asked the doctor yesterday and he didn't know either. I don't think

Matt: 1:05:35

so.

Britt: 1:05:35

That's a great answer. I like that. I'm not going to look it up. I'm just going to keep asking people this until I get a suitable answer, I

Lindsey: 1:05:42

think. Yeah. You know the questions that they gave me, so I want to ask you these because they're in line with everything we've talked about today. It's funny because we'll ask them randomly and sometimes it'll be Is the head an appendage? But sometimes it'll be these two questions. One, is the world just for us? No.

Britt: 1:06:02

It's a perfect answer. I love how simple that question is and how simple the answer is, but how much behind both of those there is.

Lindsey: 1:06:11

Okay, that was Eli's question. Jack's question is, they're a god. Absolutely. Tell everyone where they can find your book, how they can find you. How they can support your causes. I think a lot of people are going to be really interested in this.

Matt: 1:06:26

So you can find me at HeyTrub, H U I T R U B on Instagram. Best way to connect with me on social. My website is Heal. Earth. So you can learn more about what I'm working on there, Heal. Earth. And you can follow along for that mission at Ojai Nation. There's a link in my bio on IG, I got a link to all my projects there. And then, in terms of the book, you can get the book on Amazon. The e book is two bucks, the audio book is free, and the book's twelve, the paperback's twelve bucks. Just search Clickety Clack Psychedelic Origin of Religion on Amazon, and you'll have it in two days.

Lindsey: 1:07:05

Perfect. And this will all be also in the show notes. You can handy dandy find it. And here it is right here.

Matt: 1:07:12

Amazing, amazing.

Lindsey: 1:07:14

And I'm enjoying it. Yeah, yeah, what a gift that you had all those experiences to take you on this journey to allow everyone else to heal from your healing. I'm grateful.

Matt: 1:07:29

Yeah. I'm grateful. You get to a certain point where you realize it's all a blessing, then you're really grateful. You can see the light. And I think the highest teaching, the highest mastery of the teaching is can you look around the world at everything with your eyes, every person that you meet, and can you see God? Because if you can do that, then you'll know that you truly are the light. I love

Lindsey: 1:08:01

it. It's perfect. Perfect place to end. Thank you

Britt: 1:08:06

so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Love to hear your perspective.

Matt: 1:08:10

Yeah. Namaste. It means the light within me honors the light within you. Bruch Hashem basically means God bless you.

Britt: 1:08:26

Don't just give us a like. Also follow us. That's what I meant to say. Okay? Just like any photo. Just like any photo at least once. I think only once is all you can like, I don't know. I'm a nerd. Oh dear.

Lindsey: 1:08:42

Like any photo three times, then you like it, unlike it, and you like

Britt: 1:08:45

it again. Ugh. I'm a nerd. Is that a hack? Like it, unlike it, like it, like it, unlike it, and like it again. That's a hack.

Lindsey: 1:08:53

Yeah. That's an algorithm hack. That's how they know that you, um, Took the red pill and you're opting out of the Matrix? I don't even know what color pill you're supposed to take. Ugh. Well,

Britt: 1:09:05

you take so many. Well, yeah,

Lindsey: 1:09:07

but which one are you supposed to take?

Britt: 1:09:09

How the fuck do I

Matt: 1:09:10

know? It's the

Britt: 1:09:12

Who likes the Matrix? Ugh. Everyone. Oh, right. Everyone. Um, I don't know, to be honest. I was a kid when I watched it. You were not a kid! A kid 22 or whatever. How old were you when that came out? Probably high school. High school. Yeah, I was 22 in high school. Yeah, I probably was 22 then. I saw it in high school.

Lindsey: 1:09:31

I was the sexiest 22 year old

Britt: 1:09:36

in high school. I was giving everybody rides

Matt: 1:09:38

in my, uh, my 1990 Thunderbird with no

Britt: 1:09:42

windows. No windows? Actually, just kidding. No working windows. The windows were up and the AC was not working. Oh, really? Yeah, my girlfriend wasn't allowed to ride in my car. Really? Yeah, it was so hot. Well, also because

Lindsey: 1:09:54

you were 22 and she was in high school. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she wasn't allowed to be dating you. Right,

Britt: 1:10:02

but we don't talk about that. Um, the tapes were melting in my car. Did that ever happen to you? No, never

Lindsey: 1:10:07

happened to me. Cause I had AC. I think at some point I didn't have AC though, but I did have windows. One

Britt: 1:10:14

time, okay, so I had to prop the windows up to keep them shut, right? Or else they would just fall down into the door and I would have no windows. So one time, I was, I had pulled it down because I was at Taco Bueno trying to order some tacos. And I was just sitting there. POW! It shattered. That's what it was. I opened the door to give my order and then I shut the door and I was just sitting waiting. POW! It shattered. I thought I was getting shot at. But really, it was just too tightly crammed in there, and it just shattered.

Lindsey: 1:10:44

How was it, like, what do you mean it was... It's

Britt: 1:10:46

like, you have to, like, prop it, like, falls off of the track. So you have to just, like, bend it, like, shift it in a way that it's just, like, kind of stuck in there. And then it just exploded? It's not interesting. Yeah, it

Lindsey: 1:10:57

exploded. What did the people at Taco Bueno say?

Britt: 1:11:01

Oh, you know what? I was in the line. They don't know anything about it. Still to this day?

Lindsey: 1:11:04

Well, somebody had to clean up the glass. You never told

Britt: 1:11:06

them? Well, yeah. Do I need to? I can't go back. They are no longer Did you ever go back to that Taco Bueno? Every goddamn day. Got myself a Muchaco. Was

Lindsey: 1:11:17

there, like, glass when you picked up your order at the window? Well,

Britt: 1:11:21

yeah, back where it shattered. I was in between where you order and where the

Lindsey: 1:11:24

window is.

Britt: 1:11:26

No, because it was tempered glass, it just fell down. I mean, there was probably some in my car, but they didn't see it. They did see me crying, but...

Lindsey: 1:11:36

They just thought you wanted your

Britt: 1:11:37

order. Yeah. They knew I got emotional if I didn't get the right amount of salsas.

Lindsey: 1:11:43

Were you fucking with Maxi Dips and Chips?

Britt: 1:11:45

Oh my god, you know it was. No guac? Uh,

Lindsey: 1:11:49

no. I got... Or you would just do it... Standard.

Britt: 1:11:52

Yeah. No. Did I? I don't know. I probably

Lindsey: 1:11:54

didn't eat guac then. I feel like someone I know and probably would be a disgusting bastard like you would

Britt: 1:12:00

get double beans. I probably got double beans. Yeah. I got double beans and then cheese. Yeah. I did. Yeah. I didn't eat anything green

Lindsey: 1:12:08

at that too. Yeah. Um, fast food is a weird thing to be nostalgic about because it's so gross. Taco Bueno is

Britt: 1:12:15

damn fine though for good nasty ass food.

Lindsey: 1:12:21

I stand by my statement, it's a weird thing to be nostalgic for because it is so gross. But there's something about the freedom, well, there's something about being a little traumatized kid that uses food to comfort yourself, paired with the freedom of having your own car and like being on your own and being like, I'm going to Jack in the Box or Taco Bueno or wherever. Right. And then sometimes whether you're friends or sometimes you're by yourself. And it just is another layer of food is

Britt: 1:12:52

cool. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I used to fantasize when I was like 14 about when I get my, when I get my driver's license, I'm just going to drive up to Walmart and look through the CDs.

Lindsey: 1:13:04

I drove so much once I got a car. I would just like drive 100 miles a day. That's nice. 10 times. And drove all over, I don't know, it's a lot of driving. I think I still do that sometimes. Maybe not anymore. I'm never alone now.

Britt: 1:13:22

True. Driving. Driving. Taco Boy

Lindsey: 1:13:26

now. Yeah. Did you look through the CDs?

Britt: 1:13:31

Oh no, I never actually did it because I grew two years in between there you were like this. And I was like, why the fuck would I go there? I could go to a real record store. right? Yeah.

Lindsey: 1:13:39

Did you go to Best Buy though?

Britt: 1:13:40

Oh yeah, I did. Went to Best Buy. It was, it was a little pricey at Best Buy. That might, that's probably true. Yeah. Um, and then I worked at Best Buy, like a seasonal thing, and I remember I got a discount, so I got, um, what was it? Gangstar, the owners, the day that it came out and everybody that worked there thought I was so cool. Yeah. We're so cool. This dude, Courtney came up to me, he's like, you're buying black boy music. You want to hang out? And I was like, yeah. And that was that. And then me and Courtney were friends.

Lindsey: 1:14:10

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I remember it being a Best Buy one time and I was buying the Roots Come Alive, the Live Roots album. And I saw two girls that I went to high school with that I was friends with. And they looked at, they were like. You have such a weird taste in music. They were looking at what I was buying and then I was just like, I don't know. I gotta go. And then I bought it.

Britt: 1:14:33

And I left. The Roots, that's like the least weird, I mean it's not weird. It's not

Lindsey: 1:14:37

weird, but I don't think anyone from where I, no one was listening to The Roots when I was 18. And Crowley. And Crowley. You're right. That's actually probably not true, but they weren't. Like, no white girls were listening to The Roots. Yeah. In Crowley, not by a long shot. It's not. I mean, think about the roots now and they're on the tonight show. So everybody knows the roots, but then it was way different. That was over 20 years ago. Yeah. And what are they

Britt: 1:15:00

doing? The roots? They're

Lindsey: 1:15:03

on the tonight show. I don't know the girls. I don't know. They probably sell cosmetics. I actually have no idea. They're probably doing great. Uh, and they definitely know who The Roots are now. They probably don't even remember that, but I remember that because I was like, I am cool. You don't know this music. And then I listened to it in my car, windows down, drove wherever.

Britt: 1:15:26

That was so 90s. You should write a song about that. Yeah. Damn. Lisa Loeb number two. Yeah.