Name: Joe Rogan Experience #891 - Zach Leary
Uploaded: 2016-12-28T01:08:26.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #891 - Zach Leary' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #891 - Zach Leary' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-28. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #891 - Zach Leary

all right man we're live awesome thanks for having me man thanks for being here
yeah this
is cool this is cool any friend of duncan's a friend of mine likewise likewise
it's cool
it's fun dude okay so i have to ask the opening question okay what the fuck is
it like being the
son of timothy leary the opening question right it has to be it has to be okay
that's cool um
yeah man you know and you know that the answer to the question kind of it's it's
changed a lot over
the course of time obviously you know because when i was younger when i was a
kid you know really up
until my mid-20s even my late 20s i would say like i didn't know how to answer
that question how could
i it's just all i knew it's just life you know it's just my dad it's just how i
grew up you know
he would take me to little league he'd make sure i did my homework or didn't do
my homework in my case
but whatever it was you know what i mean it just was life i didn't have any
objectivity to it i
didn't have any distance from it i couldn't be removed from it you know i didn't
know like
that it was perhaps really strange right and then uh you know he died in 96 uh
you know i was 22 and
then kind of after that then i sort of you know i got some distance from it
then i was like oh shit
you know things were a little different at home you know they were well your
dad is probably like
one of the most important if not the most important people ever in terms of the
psychedelic revolution
he was i mean yeah i my relationship with him and my relationship especially
with his work was
um yeah i mean of course the psychedelic part was a core pillar and i
understood that's what made him
famous but i considered him to be like he was a futurist really you know when
you know during my
formative years i mean the psychedelic thing was always there but he was much
more interested in
like in technology and cyber culture and kind of like the progressive kind of
technology arts and
things like that and uh you know in the 80s he called uh the the pc the lsd of
the 80s you know
so he was kind of really shifting and i kind of considered him uh somebody who
just had like the
innate ability to constantly reinvent himself and of course the psychedelics
were you know were the
core and i guess probably is also probably a big part of how he could reinvent
himself right yeah
yeah yeah no that that's that's true i mean well and considering i mean you can
relate with this i
think too and you know he didn't do his first psychedelic until he was 40. oh
wow you were what 30 or
something yeah right yeah so it's a similar like you're well into your adult
life and you're you're
well formed you have an identity that's jack harrah's story too oh is it yeah
jack harrah was a gold
water republican like deep into his uh i can't i think he was getting divorced
and uh met a met a young
gal and she turned him on to the weed and all of a sudden he was like hey what
the fuck have i been
missing yeah he's still uh to this day it's still the strongest weed i've ever
had was jack harris train
yeah fuck man he was a cool guy man he was a cool guy bummed me out when he
left yeah and did good
work so your dad probably would have had an amazing time with what's going on
today in terms of virtual
reality and the the integration of cell phones into our life in an almost inescapable
way yeah i mean
it's funny like the vr thing we were just jamie and i were just talking about
it before we rolled tape um
you know we were doing vr like yeah you know we were at the nasa ames research
center people were
like jaron lanier and were like really um uh you know generally was kind of the
godfather of vr and
he was bringing kind of setups to our house in the early 90s and like really
early kind of almost
eight-bit rudimentary vr but it was there so what like what did that stuff look
like
it kind of looked like um being an inside of an atari video game so real pixelated
pixelated eight-bit
kind of clunky block like but with full 3d dimensionality and stuff like that
did you ever
loved it duncan's oculus the first yeah the first versions that he had which
was kind of like that
real kind of yeah yeah real pixelated was it similar to that very similar to
that yeah and uh yeah duncan
and i uh we went on the show together this thing called gunter's universe's vr
chat show and you know
this was recent and you know it's still vr is still kind of in that you know
how does that work like
does someone have a vr headset on another location yes and then you guys both
enter the same room so
you're in the room together yeah well duncan actually we're in the same room
together right
physically physically we happen to be but yeah and then all of these people
with different headsets
on and then everybody has a different avatar and they're all in that room with
you they're all in
the room wow very cool very cool but uh like in that one um i think the servers
crashed too many
people oh how many people can it support uh what we had maybe like a thousand i
think
oh wow but yeah like to get beyond that you need some pretty i mean the avatars
you know they're
pretty involved they're pretty you know they made me into this harry krishna
monk or some shit
and duncan was like this psychedelic clown it was it was pretty cool but yeah
you know my dad loved vr
and we were you know he was he was right he'd love it it'd be really cool yeah
i've always thought
about him and uh mckenna mckenna obviously was a big futurist as well and
completely fascinated by
yeah the the possibilities uh and where technology was going i would have loved
to see those guys
today just take this all in and try to yeah amazing right like terence was
writing about the connection
between psilocybin and virtual reality right i mean that's the subtext of not
food of the gods but of
um one of those nations no no it wasn't that one um i'm forgetting which one's
what it's called
mushrooms virtual reality and you know and he really saw the connection between
and you know there's no
accident that the godfathers the true visionaries of the silicon valley
movement were kind of remnants
um yeah he also terence also had this idea that you would be able to recreate
the dmt world in virtual
reality and you'd be able to experience what people see when they're on dmt
without actually taking the
drug he believed that there was going to come a time when technology was so
good and the the images that
you could create would be so elaborate that you literally could create the dmt
images
i kind of believe it i'm kind of i'm kind of leaning there right now myself you
know i mean we kind of
uh again duncan you know we kind of had this crackpot idea of taking a uh vr
into the flotation tank
into the float tank with this kind of in mind that by disassociating the body
and kind of getting rid of
like because you know what's the big dmt thing is it's the disassociative you
just leave joe you leave
zach and you become right whatever so by taking the vr mask and a headset into
the tank maybe combining the
two worlds it could i don't know i'm still bullish on that i think it could
work i think terence is
right it sounds like it could be possible i know crash from the float lab
excuse me the float lab
crash has this setup where he has developed this screen that has like the
lowest amount of light
that could be emitted to the point where you don't see the edges of the screen
so you literally while
you're in the tank it's floating above your head it's suspended above your head
and you see the image
as if it's like just the video just floating in the sky oh wow and he believes
that by separating your
body from uh sensory input like so you're not feeling your feet on the ground
you're not feeling the weight
of the world and your shoulders all that jazz you're floating right he he
thinks you could take in data
better and so his idea was to show documentaries and you know instructionals
and things along those lines
and that you would learn quicker that way yeah interesting right because so
much of your brain
and like your the function of the cerebral cortex is to integrate the body yeah
this movement standing
upright you know and to the being muscular and moving around and if you get rid
of that right
your brain kind of opens up and can take more in well the way i always describe
it to people that haven't
used the tank i was like imagine if you were having a conversation but next to
you people were screaming
if it was an important conversation you'd want to get away from those people
screaming because
even though you think of it as a distraction it's just input it's just data
that you have to consider
right you know well you also have to consider your butt on this chair the the
room the dimensions
that you're calculating as you're moving your head around social cues language
all these different things are
all being calculated and they require resources right well when you are in that
tank there's none of that
and so your brain feels supercharged it feels like you have all these resources
have been opened up to you
yeah and and i agree and i think you know all of those resources resources that
you're speaking of
those are sort of the things that contribute to this idea of what we call the
ego
you know and the same thing with psychedelics you know they formulate the ego
and our body and being
separate oh my god joe you're strong i mean you know it's all these kind of
different things that
create this image of who we think we are psychedelics the tank meditation
whatever method you want to
pick it gets rid of that yeah and purely gets into you know soul land or
something else did you ever
meet john lilly oh yeah it's been a long time oh wow yeah did a lot of yeah did
a lot of what
research with john research air quotes back in the day yeah that guy man he's
the for people who don't
know we're talking about the guy who invented the sensory deprivation tank and
he was a pioneer in
interspecies communication with dolphins yeah fascinating fascinating guy
fascinating guy and
you know the last 20 years of his life um you know the ketamine aspect was such
a huge part of of what he
was doing and did he get too into it the ketamine seems to be an addictive yeah
substance um look i
mean i love john i did i thought he was great he was a good friend of my dad's
and and i certainly
wouldn't uh say anything too negative about him but yeah one toke over the line
man sweet jesus
todd mccormick has a very funny story about do you know who todd mccormick is i
don't know todd's one of the
first guys to get arrested in california for medical marijuana where um he was
arrested in like the early
in the late 90s or early 2000s and um he was one of the first people to find
out that when you are
legally growing marijuana in california because of the law the medical law the
federal governments can
still prosecute you and when they prosecute you you are in court you are not
allowed to even bring
up the term medical marijuana because that's not a real term federally so he
had yeah it was a railroad
he got railroaded and he went to jail um but anyway point being he was uh at
john lilly's he actually
still owns john lilly's tank oh wow yeah and he was with john lilly and john lilly
uh invited him to
get in the tank and uh so todd's about to go in the tank and he says do you
want to do ketamine
and he's like i'm stepping into the tank and he's like uh of course you know it's
john lilly
what am i gonna say right so he hits him with a blast of intramuscular ketamine
in his thigh
and then todd starts freaking out he's in the tank and he's freaking out so
john gets in another tank
next to him blasts himself with ketamine and goes and visits him what yeah whoa
yeah they've found
whatever same fucking dimension in the ketamine world and it worked yes it
worked what does that
mean i don't know because i've never done ketamine so i don't have you yeah i've
done it in the tank too
well okay what is what happens in the