There is a lot being said about the World Economic Forum.But how many of us have spoken to someone who is a member?Well, now I have, and the conversation is surprising. Christian Angermeyer has an extensive resume of both accomplishments and fields of expertise, and we only get to a fraction of them. This conversation offers a radically unique perspective.Connect with Christian AngermeyerWebsite |https://atai.life/people/christian-angermayer/Twitter |https://twitter.com/C_AngermayerInstagram |https://www.instagram.com/christianangermayer/Facebook |https://www.facebook.com/christian.angermayer

AUBREY: Christian, thanks for coming out here.
CHRISTIAN: Thanks for having me.
AUBREY: Here in Miami. I have never done this before on any podcast ever in my life, but I'm actually going to read your bio from ATAI.
CHRISTIAN: Oh my God.
AUBREY: And I went to that page and I was just looking at it, and it's so fucking interesting that I want to read it, and it'll kind of be like a little bit of a map for us to talk about a few different areas, alright? So, I'm going to go through this. Christian Angermayer, actually, is that how you pronounce your name?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, it's fairly perfect.

AUBREY: Fairly perfect. He's an entrepreneur and investor and the founder of Apeiron Investment Group, his family office and merchant banking services. Apeiron focuses on financial services, especially FinTech and crypto assets. So let's put a little asterisk. I want to talk about FinTech and crypto assets, technology, life sciences, media and entertainment, and real estate and prop tech. Apeiron completes deals across the entire lifecycle and balance sheet of a company. More about Apeiron. In 2000, Christian co founded Ribopharma, (original patents for RNAi technology), which merged with the stock market-listed, US-backed, blah, blah, blah. 13 billion market cap today, you've raised over 2 billion for portfolio companies, been involved in more than 50 successful IPOs and M&A transactions as an entrepreneur, investor or banker/advisor. One of the most significant investors in European FinTech companies, again asterisk on FinTech, because I've never really talked about that, with a special focus on cryptocurrencies and blockchain related business models. Let's see, we have some info about Cryptology which we could get into, the shareholder of Block one and those tokens. The biotech company, ATAI Life Sciences, you have the ambitious goal to develop solutions for more than 300 million people who suffer from depression, especially by bringing back formerly vilified drugs. Very true. Like psychedelics in the legal realm. With the biotech companies, Rejuveron and Cambrian, Christian is developing drugs and technologies which have the potential to significantly prolong the human lifespan, and ultimately defeat death. Okay, big asterisk there, about places to go in the podcast. So, we got a few things already. In addition to the entrepreneurial activities, Christian places great value on social, political and societal commitments. He is a young global leader of the World Economic Forum. There's a lot of stuff that's talked about the World Economic Forum. And I want to know, like, you probably have a better insight than me looking at shit on Instagram. So, I definitely want to talk to you about that. A member of the Presidential Advisory Council for His Excellency President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. That's random and really fucking cool. Good job.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, let's talk about it. My favorite country.
AUBREY: Really?
CHRISTIAN: Yes.
AUBREY: Wow. Alright, a board member of Vienna-based Hayek Institute, a libertarian and free markets-focused think tank. My father was a libertarian, and I've always really identified with those politics, probably more than, if I had to choose a political party, that would probably be it, although I'm a bit apolitical given what I've seen. And we had a nice little intro conversation on politics, so maybe a little asterisk there about libertarianism, free market ideas, politics. Member of the Court of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Tropical medicine sounds cool. Let's see, you have forums where you bring a bunch of, Christian Angermayer's Policy and Innovation Forum convened several times a year for heads of states, including politicians, investors and scientists to discuss crucial topics and issues. And then another turn, which is wild and really paints the picture of the complexity of you as a podcast guest and a human. Passionate about the arts and film, Christian has executive produced 21 feature films, including critically acclaimed movies like "Filth", "Aspern Papers", and "Hector and The Search for Happiness. The largest shareholder of DEAG, live entertainment company in Europe producing over 4,500 shows a year. And finally, the last asterisk. You have a unique collection of art centered around the theme, psychedelics and entheogens. I too, have a good collection of art centered around psychedelics and entheogens.
CHRISTIAN: Great. Where do we start?
AUBREY: Here we are. Well, there are a lot of really interesting places to go there. And because I think we should just go fairly chronologically from that. Obviously, you've had massive success in business in a variety of different areas. FinTech, which is short for financial technology, is one of these areas of focus, and as blockchain and crypto kind of enters the space, I would just love to enter your mind as to what you're seeing for the evolution of money, and the evolution of financial instruments, and kind of what's on the emerging bleeding edge that you're really looking at there?
CHRISTIAN: Good question, where do we start? Generally, because cryptocurrencies became such a big term, and then you saw all the bad stuff like last year, from the fall of Luna, and obviously FTX was just fraud, which can happen in any industry. But I'd like to actually see--
AUBREY: That was an interesting one. FTX was just a fraud. But I think people like to blame crypto for it in a weird way, right? Like almost like crypto got a bad brand hit, because the company--
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, because crypto already had the reputation of being unregulated, very little regulated which is true, which also is part of the charm. Because like you see, normally, the strongest innovation with less regulations, so regulation is a double-sided sword. So, you sometimes want it, because there is an element of protection. And then also, regulation if overdone, is not really fostering innovation. And it's hard to find a balance. Normally, like at the beginning, nobody wants regulation because it seems to go well. And then when things go wrong, like FTX--
AUBREY: Then regulation comes in.
CHRISTIAN: It's the old cycle which happens practically in any new industry. But if you boil it down, FTX seems at least from the outside, luckily, we were not sort of in this, not an investor, not anything, burned by it. But from the outside view, it seems like, I don't want to play it down but like, fraud can happen in any industry. Like somebody can, I don't know, Enron was a fraudulent energy company. And also generally, I believe, and I don't want to discount that. Obviously, it's thousands and thousands of customers, which is a very bad thing, lost money, because they took customer money, and sort of were lending it practically to themselves. But like, it's a little bit like with., I always say with murder, with any other bad thing. It's illegal, we outlaw it as society, but it still happens. But the solution is not that we say, look, there will be, definitely, less murder cases if nobody would ever go out again, and we just stay in our apartment. But that's not the solution. And the solution is also not like throwing, I don't know if it's an English expression, but in Germany, you say throwing the child out with the bathwater. And that is always my worry. Like, yes, we have to think about is there a sensible regulation which the crypto industry should adopt? But also, like just because one person or one group of people really did bad stuff, this is not the industry.
AUBREY: Yeah. Understood, understood.
CHRISTIAN: So, but like coming back to the big question of the future of currencies, I always like to take Bitcoin sort of apart from the rest, because Bitcoin for me is really, that's why even don't really like the term, even if I used it in my own CV, like cryptocurrency industry because yeah, the main thing, and we got a little bit distracted from it over the last years with the hype, but the main thing really is Bitcoin, which from my point of view stands the test of time as what I see it mainly is digital gold. So, if you look at human history, humans always want, actually let's call it a store of value. So the critics might say, but Bitcoin went down as well. But like, you want something, let's say maybe which is not touchable by the government. And humans always have it. By the way, why? Because if you go--
AUBREY: Cash in your mattress.
CHRISTIAN: Yes.
AUBREY: Even a pinkie ring with a diamond on it was the old gangster way to store money on your person, right?
CHRISTIAN: And then gold has, because then people say, "But Bitcoin has no value." But like, gold has no value. You can't eat it, it's very little used in--
AUBREY: But it's so shiny, though.
CHRISTIAN: It's shiny, but we like it because yeah, maybe shiny. But the fact is that gold has not a real use case. Yeah, it's actually even fairly hard to transport wherever, but we agreed as humans, that gold should be given a value, as a kind of store of value. Yeah, and it's so ingrained, and it's definitely the most successful store of value. But we had ours, we had--
AUBREY: And also because it's scarce. It had just the right amount of--
CHRISTIAN: Fun fact, which I just learned, which is by the way, if you look at what gold is, Bitcoin is extremely modeled on it. So, gold cannot be produced on Earth. It's one of these rare metals, which practically came literally from outside. So, the Earth was seeded with gold from asteroids and comets.
AUBREY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, in our early days, and maybe still something's falling down. But like, it cannot be produced here. So, the amount of gold on Earth is finite, and we're mining it. And by the way, exactly like Bitcoin, like while, I don't know, what was it? Like eight years ago, you could mine a Bitcoin for $100. It gets harder and harder. The same in the medieval ages, gold was way more prevalent. Yeah, people were mining it in Europe, whatever. Now we mined everything already, and now it gets harder and harder. But there is a finite end because there's just a finite amount of gold. And it's the same. So, Bitcoin in many, many ways copied the model of gold. And by the way, I do believe they can be there both at the same time.
AUBREY: Yeah, sure, sure.
CHRISTIAN: Because okay, will gold be worthless? No, I think for a long period of time, humans will have both. But we had many, many periods of time where we had many stores of value; silver, whatever, pearls, like maybe cows. It's always what we just agree on to be a store of value. And if you look at Bitcoin, it's actually even the better gold, because it can be sent very easily. Yeah, it can be transported. And by the way, there's a complete difference of how, maybe, people in America look at Bitcoin, and then talk to people in Venezuela or in Argentina or in Ukraine, they're like, "Okay, I really want something, their currencies are shit." And they want something they can take and leave the country, which is still actually a thing in big parts of the world. It's just luckily, you can say no in Europe and in the US. And then lastly, by the way, I always say, think about that way. Like every single currency in the history of humanity has always been destroyed by the government, some when. There's not a single currency which is there since a real long period of time. And if it's there - I think the oldest currency is the Sterling, then it's massively devalued. Because politicians always abuse the currency.
AUBREY: They just print more cash.
CHRISTIAN: And that's why we need--
AUBREY: And that's the thing about gold and Bitcoin, there's a limit on the amount of Bitcoin, and there's a limit on the amount of gold. Cash, there's no limit. And that's why when you want more money, and you can just hit go on the digital printer, I mean, people actually think of printing sheets of money, but that's just cash. Real money is just created with a click of a cursor on a very, very protected machine somewhere in the Federal Reserve. But that's what happened. That's what we saw during the pandemic, of course. So, alright, so--
CHRISTIAN: That's the short version. I'm a big believer in Bitcoin mainly. And then by definition then, or as a consequence, I'm a big believer in all the industries adjacent to Bitcoin, which is like crypto mining or Bitcoin mining, which is like exchanges. So, then you have some really valuable platforms like Etherium, where you can really build on. But to be fair--
AUBREY: So, that's more like silver or copper? And then--
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, because silver has a use case. Yes, exactly. That's actually a good analogy. Because these platforms and tokens have a use case, because you can develop applications on them.
AUBREY: Yeah, like copper wires and copper, things like that. So that's what the other currencies are like. One is a store of value, the other is like, alright, these are metals that we can use for different--
CHRISTIAN: And then you have the tulips, if you remember the tulip mania. Because unfortunately, over the last years, people just wanted more and more, and crazy and crazier.
AUBREY: Okay, so the tulip. What you're talking about, in Dutch history, tell the tulip story. It was like 1850?
CHRISTIAN: Not essentially, I think it was the 16th century. I don't want to say the wrong time, but--
AUBREY: I think it might have been 1850--
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, but somewhere in the Dutch history, people suddenly gave value to tulip, what is it called?
AUBREY: Tulip bulbs.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, the bulbs. Yeah. And they became insanely expensive, and people somehow told themselves that there is a reason why this is happening. And then one day, they woke up and were like, "This is crazy."
AUBREY: Yeah, and everybody invested all their money in tulips and they were like, "What the fuck are we actually doing?" And then the tulip market crashed, and then people lost massive stores of wealth.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, so it never was a store of wealth, but that's actually--
AUBREY: Well, they gave money to some tulip. Well, they at least moved a bunch of wealth to whatever tulip farmers, and tulip middlemen and merchants were out there, right?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, so but that sort of is like, I think is a very good description of the crypto world. You had Bitcoin as sort of the original and really most important, if you want to call it cryptocurrency. Then you had sort of some very valuable protocols to build on, Ethereum, Solana, wherever. And then you had suddenly hundreds and thousands of crazy projects which were the tulips. And I think it's very, very healthy what is happening now although it's obviously not nice for people losing money. But I think it needs to go through this cleansing process, and the blockchain crypto industry needs to concentrate back on the good stuff, which is Bitcoin, plus very few tokens.
AUBREY: Do you think that there's a risk that governments and world governments would, and this may even bridge into the World Economic Forum discussion, push cryptocurrencies out of the market by creating central bank digital currencies to replace them, and then kind of outlawing cryptocurrencies in that way?
CHRISTIAN: Well, first thing is, I think it's not a competition. So, a central bank created digital currencies will definitely come because it makes a lot of sense to digitize the Dollar and the Euro, just because it makes it easier to handle... You could in a certain way, I know that's the worry is like say, it makes it easier to control. But I don't mean control the people but like just to know what is your float out there, whatever. Now, it's a little bit like, how many caches are there? So, central bank digital currencies make sense. But they are the same, it's just digital--
AUBREY: I think actually, I think everybody would be cheering for it. Absolutely. Like, come on, digitize this currency if we trusted our governments.
CHRISTIAN: True, yeah. But even if you don't, it does make it really fully worse. It's sort of the same. If you know the money launderer, whatever. I always think people worry about the wrong stuff in life. That's generally--
AUBREY: People are worried about social credit scores, and what's happening in China, where they're linking money, like you go to the gas station, and all of a sudden, you put out a political statement, or you put out something on health freedom or some other thing like that. And all of a sudden, you get restricted from spending your money, right? Like, that's what people are worried about. Do you think that's a real fear? Or is this just like paranoia playing out in the zeitgeist around central bank digital currencies?
CHRISTIAN: Well, definitely they can be, again, I would say they're neutral in itself, but if a government wants to use them to exercise more control as you described it, I think it does work. So yes, but that is by the way, technology in general. These are the same people, they should then say, "I don't want a mobile phone because the government knows at any certain point where I am." Most of the people, I'm not saying that I'm dismissive of the fear of these things, but if you really fear that stuff, you need to avoid a lot of things, because you already give away everything to Google, to your phone, to Apple, whatever. So this one is not fully cohesive how people behave, so the same people who would say, "Oh, I'm very afraid," these guys, they are very much using WhatsApp and whatever. And the truth is that technology makes us more controllable if the government wants it. So, we should actually place the focus on how can we keep--
AUBREY: Making a better government.
CHRISTIAN: Exactly. And how can we keep the freedom which we still have by the way. The West is like, you can say a lot about, but like if you look at China, for example, I very much want to live in Europe and the US and not in China. And I think we underappreciated that freedom we still have, and I would say it's fairly intact. But we should put more political focus on it to keep it.
AUBREY: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely been encroached upon in the last few years, and I think that's why people are getting concerned. You know, doctors getting unable to share their own opinions, and certain political things even. The Twitter Files releasing the Hunter Biden laptop suppression. I mean, that's just out there. That's actually what happened, right? There's suppression of truth for political aims.
CHRISTIAN: Weirdly though by a private company, yeah.
AUBREY: Well, but it was pressure from the White House to Twitter and yeah, but--
CHRISTIAN: Which fell on fluid ground. I don't want to excuse Biden's team for doing that, but I think the bad people are the ex-Twitter people, which was a private company. I'm just saying like, the danger comes not, but I agree.
AUBREY: I think having a bigger picture of the empire itself, and knowing that everything's kind of intermingled; business and government and tech. And I think that whole tech plex that includes politics, and is separate, both. It's interwoven and separate because of campaign contributions, etc. There's a lot of connection points, and I think people are afraid of that. But what I feel actually emerging in my own mind is a new way of thinking, thanks to what you're sharing is like, look, technology is rolling in, it's coming in, and it's going to give access to more control for the powers that want to control. So, we're not going to be able to stop technology, it just makes too much sense. It makes too much sense. So, since we can't stop technology, we actually have to take a stand for our freedoms, and for what we believe is good, true, beautiful and right, against those powers that may want to abuse it and actually take a stand.
CHRISTIAN: 100%. This is why, by the way, what Elon Musk is doing, so many people criticize him. It's amazing because he's giving freedom of speech back to a platform, which is super essential, although it's still a private company.
AUBREY: Yeah, but I think it's an important reframe, actually just think, look, stop trying to fight the technology. Like, you can put your little band aid over the camera on the front of your laptop, because you're worried they're going to watch you jerking off to your own porn. But nobody wants to filter through your 185 hours of masturbation, I'm telling you.
CHRISTIAN: By the way, this is a fun anecdote. I had several conversations with friends in government, secret services about this, like, what can you see? And the answer is always, "If we want, we can see a lot." But first of all, who wants to? They were like, "I don't wanna see your pictures, yeah, or whatever you've stored in your phone." But then that is also very cumbersome, still. Like, for example, if somebody technically could read all your WhatsApp which is possible if you wanted, but then it's a lot of WhatsApp. So you need humans still, maybe AI is catching up with it, but you would still need humans to make sense of it. And then 99.9%, hopefully 100%, what you and I would say on WhatsApp is maybe offensive, or is maybe funny or whatever. But it doesn't touch the government. So they want to catch terrorists, whatever. So there, although I know what is technology wise possible, I'm actually fairly relaxed. But I do think coming back like, we should focus as society, that our political system sort of is keeping that freedom. And that is actually, I think, a value which needs to be defended, as we see now. Because weirdly, what they call I would say the left, because I also think it's very confusing sometimes to still use the terms left and right. Doesn't fit really anymore.
AUBREY: Yeah, exactly, everything has evolved very much.
CHRISTIAN: That interestingly, the left who was fighting like the last century for freedom, for individual rights, whatever, is now rather, sort of "No, let's take it back," during COVID, whatever. That's unfortunately a weird twist of history.
AUBREY: Yeah, it seems like actually, parties are more just interested in what is the way to win? They're just in like this finite game thinking of like, how do we win at all cost? And even if they're not guided by first principles and values necessarily, they're like, "Alright, where's the advantage? How do I win?" It's like they're locked in this game of chess.
CHRISTIAN: Or as we said before, it's almost like a telenovela, or an entertainment thing for voters. Which I also think is partly the good thing that as a European, if I look at US politics, there is a lot of craziness on the surface. And that's what keeps people glued to the TV or the internet or whatever. But like, the policies then are actually on both sides, still fairly rational, nuanced. Like you see that, by the way now, the China policy of Biden is fairly the same as the Trump policy on China. Because it's geopolitically the right thing to do for America to try to contain China. Trump maybe voiced it differently and had a different sort of theater around it but factually, it's very much the same.
AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, that's what you were sharing earlier, if you were sharing that there's this huge political theater happening. But then actually, when you look at what happens in the administration, you actually see people making fairly rational choices, and fairly rational decisions.
CHRISTIAN: Let's hope it stays that way, but that's my observation from sort of outside European, on the US. By the way, coming to the World Economic Forum question, because it's funny, like, there is no, I always jokingly say, I think I've met a lot of people who are always named on the internet, individuals, as being part of a big conspiracy. They completely left me out of that, but then they're not good friends. Or no, like understand--
AUBREY: You're like, where's the conspiracy party? You're a young global leader, World Economic Forum, where do I pledge my blood to Satan?
CHRISTIAN: Exactly. I get comments on that. But the fact is, like, on a serious note, I think that it's very hard to impossible in our days to really do a conspiracy. Because a conspiracy needs some kind of secrecy, like you need to, whatever, share information. I think the world is not able, and now I'm saying something controversial, maybe we would need a bit of it. Because I think, again too much of politics is happening at sort of the world stage in terms of everybody's watching. And I think there are points in history, and there are negative examples as well of what I'm saying, but I think at some points, people might want to talk in private, one head of state to the other. Because if everything happens as you said before, not to find the right solution, for example, if there is a conflict arising, but if everything is geared towards how do I look to my voter? How do I look at my constituency, whatever? Like, that makes sometimes solutions harder. So, in a weird way, I think first of all, it's not possible to do conspiracies today because the world is too transparent. And maybe the world would need, maybe let's not use the word conspiracy in that term, but the world would need a little bit more secrets or politicians being able to, for example, what I hate at the moment is that several European leaders are criticized for still talking to Putin. But if you want to find a way out of the mess--
AUBREY: You got to talk to him.
CHRISTIAN: You got to talk to him. Like, it's not saying like, you shouldn't give anything to him, but at least talk to him. So we are in a world where suddenly, even the talking in itself is like, you can't do that. I was like, but then what's happening then?
AUBREY: Yeah, that's a crazy idea. So, there's a couple of things. One is, I mean, we brought the Hunter Biden laptop in there. And that was actually a conspiracy, right? Because the government then went to Twitter and then said, "Hey, you know, suppress this," and Twitter did it and then lied about doing it. So in a way, it's a little baby conspiracy, there was secrecy--
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, baby conspiracy, but it's something which happened, which was not secret. So it's maybe missing the secret because people knew about it. It was more like a cartel.
AUBREY: Yeah.
CHRISTIAN: I think there's a nuance.
AUBREY: Yeah, but what I think you're talking about is like the secret society conspiracy theory, right? Like, there are conspiracies that happen. There was a conspiracy between the White House, Twitter and media to actually keep this information from coming out, right? So, that's a small little conspiracy, which is basically, we're working together in secret to do something that we're not telling people about. And that happens a lot. But what you're saying is--
CHRISTIAN: It still comes up, thank God.
AUBREY: Yeah.
CHRISTIAN: Back then but like... Yeah, so it's sort of. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
AUBREY: And then, but what you're saying is like, alright, this whole secret society, backroom plan to do all of these different things is, you're like, look, I'm a young global leader in the World Economic Forum, I haven't been invited, these things aren't real. That's basically what you're saying, right? Like, there is no them.
CHRISTIAN: Exactly. By the way, I just saw it today that they know, which I think is wrong by the way, because the World Economic Forum was meant to bring people together, originally, like, whatever, what is it now, 40 years ago? To discuss things in private. It's like in a marriage. Every problem you and your wife would ever have, hopefully you have none but like you might have one once in a while, and you're forced to do it always on your podcast in front of the whole world. Someone would break because you need that moment--
AUBREY: Yeah, sure. It's like the Kardashians at that point.
CHRISTIAN: Well, exactly. So we're obsessed with that--
AUBREY: Yeah, so it becomes a show.
CHRISTIAN: And now the World Economic Forum is, I think completely online, like people can log in and see anything. What does it mean? Like, you don't need to go to any session anymore, because nobody says anything. Like we used to see they're sitting there, they scripted, like--
AUBREY: Oh, because now it's public, nobody's actually talking.

CHRISTIAN: Exactly, so maybe people meeting behind the doors, but like, it's all becoming, because like you can't even have meetings, the sessions a while ago, they were still private, even if 50 people were, and that made people a little bit more comfortable. Because we live in that world which even in our podcast, I'm like thinking I'm sitting here like, who could? Because I don't care. But yeah, I always decide not to care, because I think otherwise you become a lane douche. Yeah, but like, seriously, like, no. Like, I'm so annoyed about this political correctness, especially in the US. But I even see it with myself. You have always this sort of thing in your head, like, okay, what if I say one sentence, which taken out of context can be completely misinterpreted? Yeah, you have to say I don't give a fuck. But like, most CEOs do give a fuck, and that's bad. I think this is the real evil. Not conspiracy theories, not politic shows, the real evil of our times is this sort of wrongly, there was a good element in political correctness when it was intended to really protect people.
AUBREY: Right.
CHRISTIAN: Obviously, you shouldn't be rude but by the way, your parents should have told you that you shouldn't be rude to people. But like that completely went insane into the speak police and thought police and whatever, which is weirdly not coming from the government. It's coming from a marginalized, or a small part of society which found ways like Twitter to enforce that. But I think there is always an element of willingness on the other side, because nobody's forcing me to be politically correct or be overly vulgar. I've decided not to be it. I think the real lame people are like maybe a hundred CEOs. If you think about it, what happens? Somebody says something, it's taken out of context, there is a big Twitter wave, which is completely meaningless. Twitter is completely meaningless, all that stuff. Because like, still 80-90% of people I know don't read Twitter. But this wave is building up, and someone, it's reaching a boardroom or it's reaching an investor or whatever. And then someone, a cowardish CEO is like, "Oh, if I don't say anything about this employee who said something apparently wrong, whatever, it could be bad." There's some business guy at the end and if 100 CEOs would say we don't give a fuck about that, nobody would care after a certain period of time because then suddenly that wave of agitation would be very boring, because there would be no consequence. And there shouldn't be any consequence.
AUBREY: I mean, so this is obviously a nuanced topic. And I think the impetus for people's vices to be like, transparent, I think was good, when there are actual vices. If somebody's being actually abusive, actually sexually abusive, actually racist. Like, of course, that's not cool. Like, let that go out. So, there's actual real shit--
CHRISTIAN: Exactly, but that we should have known before.
AUBREY: There's actual real shit about it, and then there's also these, but it goes farther and farther and farther and gets weaponized. And what you're saying is, back in the day, when the mob got riled up, got agitated, they would come with ropes, pitchforks and fire, and actually to your physical body. And tragically, millions of people, I think the estimates are 9 million witches got burned in Europe. "Witches". Which we're probably doing the same things that you're doing in your labs for your, really, like, they were probably working with the same plants, and psychedelic medicines and consciousness, same thing I've been doing. I mean, I would have been burned 1000 times over as a warlock, I guess, as a male witch. But nonetheless, it actually had physical consequences to your flesh. Now, when the mob comes, they have pixels that make words on screens, but not pitchforks. And yes, I know, sometimes it can affect your job, and sometimes it can affect something else in your life. But we're actually in a very safe time. It just feels unsafe. But actually, if you just say, what are you doing, throwing pixels at me?
CHRISTIAN: So, as long as you have sort of, I think the main thing is, I always joke that I'm the only person who can fire me, which is good. But there are, unfortunately, people who are dependent on other people like you have a job.
AUBREY: Right, and that's where it gets dangerous.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, and that's where it gets dangerous. This is why I think the real, sort of where it should actually end is like you can complain about people and you can have different opinions, and you can have a debate. But like the consequence, I think we have a great achievement in the Western world, that real consequences are actually taken or decided by judges and courts.
AUBREY: And it has to be, that's the only place where...
CHRISTIAN: This is taken away.
AUBREY: Yeah, it cannot be justice if it's mob justice. It just can't be justice. By the very nature of it being mob justice, it's not justice.
CHRISTIAN: And we're losing that.
AUBREY: We're losing that. We're losing that understanding. We have a fetish for vigilante films, where it's like somebody's doing something bad, and there's a cop, but the cop can't go through the system, because the justice that's needed is justice that's beyond the system, right? And we all have this trained in our mind where it's like, no, no, no, actually, the system was developed for a fucking reason. And yes, it's imperfect. And yes, sometimes people escape it. Yes, blah, blah, blah. But we have to rely on that. Because otherwise, the fervor of the mob will create madness, just like we saw in Salem, just like we saw, all of a sudden everybody's a witch, and all of a sudden, there's fires across town. We have to be mindful that the system is there to protect all of us. And yes, we may lose a couple of times by using this system. But overall, it's the best thing we got.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, 100%.
AUBREY: So, during this podcast full of many guest appearances from our kitties, we took a quick short restroom break. And upon returning, Christian wanted to talk about his opinion on vaccines. So, we roll right into the conversation, so apologies for the abrupt reintroduction. But I believe you'll be able to pick up with the thread of the conversation from where we started recording.
CHRISTIAN: The short version, by the way, is for yourself as well. I think being vaccinated is good. However, the mRNA vaccine was not made for, sort of viruses. If you remember, mRNA was the original idea was to make a cancer vaccine, which means if you already have cancer, you train your body to attack the cancer, which is a very smart idea. So, and like everything in medicine, it's always about the balance or to make a judgment call, what's the problem I want to solve? And what I'm willing to pay? So, if you have cancer, you don't care about myocarditis if it's a risk, because you still want to cure the cancer. So, the mRNA vaccine or mRNA technology is really, really valuable, yeah? And what it does, it creates a very strong immune response, by the way, which this is what it's meant to do. Like that's why it's a great technology. So, sort of in COVID, we used it, which was also not even wrong, because we didn't know what COVID is doing. So I was like, look, one time mRNA, whatever. But it's not meant to be used all the time for a fairly non-deadly thing for younger people like COVID. So, practically my view is don't use mRNA all the time. Don't get boosts all the time because it does have side effects. And this is all what people describe online. Again, depends what you were like sort of optimally--
AUBREY: Yeah, so basically, what you're saying is that the vaccine is doing what it is intended to do, it's creating these spike proteins and these antibodies or whatever, whatever mechanism it is to actually fight off some portion of what COVID contained. But it comes with a cost, is what you're saying.
CHRISTIAN: And especially up here, it seems to come, the cost seems to get higher and higher the more often you do it. So the boostering is the problem. So my view is now that we really know what COVID does, now that we have antiviral medication if people get COVID, now we have the antibodies if you get COVID, now we have other vaccines which are maybe not as effective, but by the way, the flu vaccine is also not 100% effective. So now that we have a full tool set of how to handle that, I think the mRNA boostering is too aggressive. It doesn't make sense anymore to sort of pay that price if you have other alternatives.
AUBREY: And there's a lot of data about the price that's being paid. And this goes into also potential suppression of the speech, and suppression of the narrative like we were talking about, that is now becoming exposed where even in the Twitter Files, certain doctors who were sharing information. And this is part of the story that I think doesn't want to get told by the powers that be that are benefiting from additional cash generated from boosters.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, what I'm thinking a lot is, and I have no answer is like, the Twitter Files seem to be a very concrete group of people colluding. Like Biden team, Twitter, whatever. But like, often, I think people, things happen but it's not because 10 people met in a room, and said, "Oh, let's do that." But more because one comes to the other. So there is no evil superpower. That's what I actually wanted, maybe to make more precise what I wanted to say with the World Economic Forum when I said, there are no conspiracies possible. Maybe there are some, like, it's often things and this is by the way, the sad truth. The sad truth is that our world is maybe so chaotic, and things are so often happening kind of randomly, that this is truly frightening people. And actually, it's frightening me a bit. So that sinking that there are, I don't know, 50 secret leaders orchestrating everything gives people a comfort that at least somebody is in charge, and that's not the case.
AUBREY: There's no one driving this ship. Are you serious? I was expecting at least 10 evil wizards.
CHRISTIAN: And then you look at China, then you have a country where there are people in charge. There you have that, you have maybe what is the standing committee, 12 people or whatever? Like they are in charge. That's not what I want. Like, I'd rather have this chaos, as uncomfortable as it is, than having a group of people like being fully in charge of everything.
AUBREY: Yeah. I think, right now we're in a period where things are becoming more and more transparent and exposed, as we're seeing with the Twitter Files, as we're seeing with, it's much harder to keep a secret now, not only for us, but for everybody.
CHRISTIAN: Which is healthy. Then again it's not healthy. The thing is, I think the true problem is, which we all appreciate too little, is that life is and the world, and we as humans inside of our brain and everything, everything is way more complex than we want to admit. And I think we crave, wrongly, for simplification. And by the way, that is maybe where we talked about political correctness is, you said look, and totally correctly, like the worst things are are things where if somebody's harassing somebody or whatever, that's bad, and we have to outlaw that as a society. But then there's other cases. And the truth is, we need to discuss all these nuances.
AUBREY: Right.
CHRISTIAN: But we live in a world where nuances are completely lost. Everybody wants to be black or white, and you're almost afraid to discuss things. And the truth is, again, if I look at many sort of whatever, from technology to whatever political stuff were involved, everything is really fucking complicated. And we should appreciate or at least accept how complicated it is, and accept that for example, also two truths can be true at the same time. I would say it was the right thing to do, which some right wing people would say, "Why do you say that?" I deeply believe scientifically it was the right thing to do to develop these vaccines as quickly as they were developed, because we didn't know everything about COVID. Like, it could have been way worse than we thought. So the people really wanted to protect the population. And everything was right, so--
AUBREY: People have to remember it was Trump that created Operation Warp Speed, and tried to make it as fast as possible.
CHRISTIAN: And it's also the right thing to do to now look at it and say, 'Okay, do we still need it? Did we overreact?" Again, many things can be true at the same time.
AUBREY: Listen, I mean, I think a lot of people's criticism came with the mandates. Like I think the idea that you should force somebody to take it, that's where a lot of people are, and I completely agree.
CHRISTIAN: And there was indeed, I think, I still wouldn't have a full opinion on it, because it was a very complicated question. Because like, for vaccines, again, the question was, how afraid have we been, have people been who had to take the decision ultimately of how bad this could get? And by the way, if we would sit here now, and COVID would have turned out to be way worse, we would maybe applaud the same people for a vaccine mandate. So I think that was the most complicated decision because it goes into individual freedom. But also like, again, it's also true at the same time that vaccinating your population just makes sense, if you get to a certain threshold.
AUBREY: What about the libertarian in you that says, "Don't you fucking force me to do anything."
CHRISTIAN: No, that's why I'm saying, it's not easy, and I don't even have the full answer for myself. I was thinking I would, but like, I would say, although I'm libertarian, at that moment I most likely would have taken the same decision to make a vaccine mandate. And we should be able to discuss it and discuss it. Actually, again, but I think it has a big part to do with the media. I would rather have whatever, Fauci, or anybody who was involved, say that they had doubts, because they did have. I know so many of my friends in Germany who were in government back then, like nobody was prepared for a pandemic.
AUBREY: Express the truth, just say, this was a really fucking tough choice, and we felt like if we didn't mandate this, this thing could spread wildly and kill a bunch of different people. So we did it, we didn't like that we did it. So, you could actually paint a picture that's not evil people trying to depopulate the world, and actually just tough decisions that turned out to be wrong decisions, but tough decisions.
CHRISTIAN: But I can say, like, don't say all, this is such a generalized statement. Like most of the top people I had the pleasure to know, and our chancellor, former Chancellor Merkel really well, most of the people I met--
AUBREY: Former chancellor of who?
CHRISTIAN: Of Germany, Merkel, or Kagame of Rwanda, but generally, also business leaders. Most of them do mean well, that is actually sad to see how everything they're doing is sort of twisted, as if there is an evil plot. They are all humans, they can make mistakes. Again, they know how complicated the world is they're operating in. And maybe we lost, or they should communicate that more but maybe it would upset people more if they would really understand how complicated the world is. So I really want to protect a little bit, like, if I really like, the World Economic Forum, stuff like that, actually hurts me a bit because all the people I know who running these think tanks, wherever, they have opinions on things, they maybe are on one side or the other side of the political spectrum but they do mean well. I've never encountered, maybe because I've never encountered those 50 people, but yeah, this is--
AUBREY: I mean, look, the thing is, it feels like you would have been approached.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, I always think that.
AUBREY: If such a thing existed, you would probably know.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, no, but honestly, it's really important, that most leaders I've ever met in my life, and I've met a lot, especially in politics they do mean well. We might disagree with them on what well means, but again, I think what mostly, what we need back is, what I would wish for, I think it's coming is more nuanced, more accepting.
AUBREY: Yeah, so in the lineage teachings of Hebrew mysticism, there's the Torah and the Testaments and the Zohar, which are like the sacred texts. And then there's the Talmud, which is explaining all of the nuances and Ari Shaffir has a great comedy special called "Jew". And he talks about one of the nuances they explore in the Talmud, which is religious doctrine, which is going into the nuance. And of course, there's a mandate that Jews shouldn't have pork products, so no ham. And then they have a whole section in the Talmud that talks about how much if some ham gets in your soup accidentally, how much ham can you actually just eat and it's all cool, and how much ham is in there that you have to throw the whole soup away? Right? Nuance. It actually doesn't really matter about the ham, but what it's teaching is fucking nuance. And they make a decision, they say 1/60th. As long as it's no more than 1/60th ham, you're good, eat it, no problem. God's cool with it, everything's good. So they make a line because you have to make a line somewhere, right? Like you can't have, "Ah, there was the smell of bacon cooking from the next neighbor and a particle of ham got in my food, let's throw it all away." Like, it gets absurd. So you have to understand the nuance of everything. And I think that's a part of the way that we need to apply thinking that it's not black and white, there's nuance to everything. And sometimes you just have to put a line somewhere and say, like, "Alright, this is too much ham."
CHRISTIAN: And I would say philosophically, or like, poetically speaking, like that nuances make life awesome. Like it would be, really, suck if life would be just black and white. And like, yeah, I think everything we're enjoying is coming from that complexity of everything.
AUBREY: Yeah, one of the things, so just to wrap up the World Economic Forum. One of the things that I think freaked people out was this ad they put out that said, basically, by 2030, you will own nothing, and you will be happy. They put that out on a commercial; you will own nothing and you will be happy. World Economic Forum, right? What was that plan? Because what it seemed like is like, "Yo, somebody's got a plan, and they haven't told us this yet and they leaked some of it."
CHRISTIAN: No, I mean, then they wouldn't put it on an ad.
AUBREY: Right.
CHRISTIAN: I think I vaguely remember that it was their... They did a big study on how ownership preferences evolve. And the truth is, for example, by the way, it's nothing conspiracy that younger people don't want to own their car anymore, because they want--
AUBREY: They want to lease.
CHRISTIAN: No, they have an Uber. Yeah, I don't own a car by the way. Like, why should I? Like, yeah, there's always an Uber, and there's always a driver, and there's always something. Like, why should I own a car? And I think this was this whole, it was a completely economic observation that makes certain that the younger generation has different preferences in terms of owning a house, owning a car, owning some of the, by the way, completely, literally, like this will change the world a lot. Because like in Germany, 20%, I just have that number in my head. 20% of the German industry, or the German GDP are related to cars. So if suddenly, in 20 years, cars are less important, and you have less cars because people are sharing cars - Sharing Economy I think was the headline of their study, then this is an important thing to look at. And I think this was all they wanted to say. They wanted to say there is a change in consumer behavior, and then people. By the way, and why?
AUBREY: Because what people are thinking is, "Oh, they're going to take away everything you owe, and you're going to have nothing left." And I was trying to, like how the fuck does that work?
CHRISTIAN: I had one photoshooting just like how people, and I think they want to do... Where I did something like that. Why I did it? Because the photographer said, I shall do it, it might look cool.
AUBREY: So you just made a diamond with your head, yeah.
CHRISTIAN: Well, it looked cool. Like, it looked artistically cool. And somebody then, whatever, said, "Oh, my God, this is the secret symbol of the World Economic Forum," like whatever. I was, like, "What the bullshit." It's like, yeah, and the same, like, yeah..
AUBREY: I mean, my logo that says AM, it's an A, and then in the middle, it has an M. And they're like, "That's a Freemason symbol, bro." No, it's not, it's my initials. You know how I got it? And I got that logo. I went on 99designs, and I crowdsourced this logo. And some homie in Indonesia who's a badass designer developed this, and I paid him the premium gold price, and fucking got this logo.
CHRISTIAN: It's so funny. I think people, when the world is really complex, they want to simplify. And when the answer is really simple, when the 99 design or what it's called, they want to make a huge complexity out of it. It's completely, by the way, there is this medieval, what is it called? I think it's called Occam's Razor?
AUBREY: Occam's Razor, yeah.
CHRISTIAN: Is it the one where you say like, always the simplest explanation, which by the way is a good thing for life.
AUBREY: Yeah, the simplest explanation is typically the true explanation.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, so that, people should apply more.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And most of the time, most of the time, it's right and then occasionally, there's the aberration to that. But this idea that what the World Economic Forum was saying is that we're moving into a shared economy, where people are actually going to be sharing homes as we already do with Airbnb.
CHRISTIAN: Exactly.
AUBREY: And they just phrased it in a way where they shouldn't have said nothing, because obviously you'll own something. I'm going to own my underwear. It's not like our underwear, you know? It's like, no, it's fucking mine, these are my shoes, this is my stuff.
CHRISTIAN: I think it was just misguided communication, whatever it is. But again I think it's a hard job when the whole world is trying to actively misinterpret whatever you're saying.
AUBREY: So, one of the things that I noticed about the World Economic Forum is recently, there was, I don't know if it was officially or unofficially, there was some psychedelic medicine that was actually brought out to one of the events. And I saw a few different articles about this. And it was, I think Bufo 50-MeO-DMT, and some other things that were connected at least. And again, I don't have for sure proof about this, but it was this interesting moment. And what I saw happen, is it spread around the community, because I'm deeply in the psychedelic community. And the question was, because there's this idea the World Economic Forum is bad, and up to bad things. And I think we've exposed a lot of that thinking here, hopefully. And I just want to say like, what I feel from you is, I believe you. And also I have to recognize that I have a bias, I want to believe you. I want to believe that actually. So I understand that there is some bias, but I feel like I believe you. And I want to believe you. So, for anybody who wants to call me out, there may be some bias because I do want to believe that what you're saying is true, like Hanlon's Razor also like, do not ascribe malice to that which could be described by ignorance. Okay, like, I'm with that, 100%. So anyways, this sudden merger, this combination between psychedelics and the World Economic Forum, which is actually embodied by you yourself. You're the founder and chairman of a couple of different psychedelic companies and a member of the WEF. But anyways, psychedelics were being woven into the forum, and the question was, oh, well, either they're using these tools for their nefarious--
CHRISTIAN: Mind control.
AUBREY: Their nefarious plan, or this is actually like, they're just looking out at the world like everybody else going, "Wow, these things can really help our mind, and I have trouble going to sleep at night."
CHRISTIAN: To my knowledge is neither nor, because like, what people confuse, is that there is a World Economic Forum event, what they call Davos. It's happening in Davos. And then they have multiple regional events throughout the year. And it's happening very, by the way in the Davos Convention Center. And in order to enter the Davos Convention Center, you need to be a member of the World Economic Forum. So then because we're in this political correct time, and this makes me now look very old, because like when I started going to Davos, they were still able to completely cut off the whole village because nobody cared. But like, it was a different time. It was like, whenever they went to Davos the first time 14 years ago. So, it was practically a synonym. Everybody who was in Davos was automatically also a member of the World Economic Forum, because you literally couldn't enter the village for a week. So every year that was sort of a weekend, because we went into this time where we have to be very transparent, and where you can't cut off a whole village for the elitist of the World Economic Forum. So, in the meantime, every single person can go to Davos, because it's a village. So you can go in three weeks, I think it is again, or two and a half weeks where we're like, okay, this is like, most likely published after. But like in January, people can go to Davos and say, "I'm in Davos," and because still in the mind of the people, Davos and the World Economic Forum is a synonym, but they might be in Davos physically, but they might not be at the World Economic Forum.
AUBREY: Right, it's like South by Southwest in Austin. There's the official event and then there's a million events that happen.
CHRISTIAN: And to my knowledge when I'm really following that part closely is that on the official World Economic Forum agenda, there was not a psychedelic theme. There were longevity themes, and they're going into mental health whatever but gradually, but there were side events with nothing to do with the World Economic Forum. Yeah, side events happening. So you also need to think now, why do some people in the psychedelic community who are so suspicious of the World Economic Forum, still seek out the affiliation although we're not even affiliated, which is another discussion. So it just shows you a lot of human psychology. But these were just events happening, coincidentally so to say, at the same time as the World Economic Forum in the same city, Davos, but it was not the same. So this is why the answer is there is no conspiracy, nothing, or no, even overlap, because, yeah.
AUBREY: So, let's talk about the psychedelic movement and the psychedelic Renaissance that's happening as well. And I think one of the big concerns that a lot of the people who are kind of psychedelic traditionalists let's say, is that, oh, like we shouldn't medicalize and pharmaceuticalize these sacred medicines considering. Of course, there's the plants themselves, but then there's the derivatives of the plants. And they're all considered I think, by the psychedelic traditionalist, as the sacred medicines. And the sacred should not be commodified is the traditionalist viewpoint. And, I fully respect that viewpoint, because, look, these medicines are sacred. I've experienced the most sacred things you could possibly ever imagine through the guidance and support and help of these different compounds. So, I fully understand that argument. But I also understand the complexity of the world we're in, and actually, that by using the pharmaceutical machine, at least from my view, like allowing the psychedelics to enter through the pharmaceutical machine, which was led of course by MAPS pushing the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy through as one of the real leaders, and then quickly thereafter psilocybin, from those trials that are coming. It's actually helpful to get this out into the world. It's actually like a distribution mechanism with some controls in place that actually is helpful ultimately, and it doesn't preclude you going down to Oaxaca and doing mushrooms with a Maestra down there, or going to Peru and studying with my teacher, Maestro Orlando Chujandama, the Quechua tradition where he's brewing his own, doesn't preclude you from doing that. And I think that's also a nuance where people, they're either very like traditionalists, like orthodox fundamentalist, or not. Or they just see everything as a drug without the sacredness attached. It's just a drug, it's just a compound, it's just everything, just like Valium, you know? No, it's not. It's different. But again, it's like the complexity I don't think people are really grasping,
CHRISTIAN: But it was perfectly said, like this is normally what I say when the question comes up, how do you marry like, sort of the sacred nature of the drugs, what I believe in? Because like, interestingly, finally like, people also, that it's never both things can be true at the same time. Yeah, I believe in capitalism, I believe in drug development, biotech drug development, that this is the right way to bring new medicine to people. But at the same time, as an individual, it's not a scientific answer, and I can explain to you scientifically what psychedelics do, but as an individual answer, as a personal answer, I very, very much believe in the religious part of it. And I do believe that psychedelics are passed on by our connection to the divine, and whatever you want to call it, God or yourself or your soul or whatever. I think the problem is always when you start talking about religion--
AUBREY: Nomenclature becomes an issue.
CHRISTIAN: Exactly, because then people, we're so wired to have an immediate. When I say God, then a Hindu might have an immediate, completely different picture. But interestingly, like, I think when people have done psychedelics, they know what you want to say. So, I believe in both--
AUBREY: It's the God you know.

CHRISTIAN: Very, but it's exactly what you said, there is no competition. I think some people, and again, these are just so little by the way, because most spiritual people I meet, because interestingly, you should be chilled out if you're very spiritual, and should accept that humans are different and that there are different ways, whatever. But unfortunately, I would say that psychedelics seem to produce the same amount of zealots, I think that's the Zealots, yeah. And sort of extremists like any other religion as well. That seems to be almost wired in that some people turn to that, but it's a small number. Because I would say these two sorts of practices, at least the minimum, they can perfectly coexist next to each other. I think even better, I think they're very much supporting each other. For example, by our medical work in an FDA framework approving those medicines, we actually give so much credibility to sort of the more indigenous way to do it. And I do believe that there is... I had this wonderful experience where a girl was emailing me on Instagram, who I frankly, don't know. I think we did shake hands at an event I was speaking, and I was talking about psychedelics, and she had never done it. And she then felt the calling after and she did it. Actually, she went to Costa Rica. Did it at Rhythmia, I think it's called. And wrote me this super beautiful email or message on Instagram, how much it changed her life. But this, she would maybe have been a person, if we wouldn't have created the scientific right sort of studies, she would maybe have been too anxious to go to the jungle, and do it with a shaman.
AUBREY: Yeah, and look, I'm also excited about this reality. Somebody goes in to help their anxiety. And like, okay, I'm here for my anxiety, I'm here for my psilocybin treatment for anxiety. They go into treat their anxiety, and their anxiety is getting treated, but it's getting treated because it's opening their heart to the possibility of their eternal, unborn and undying soul. And it's absolute, inextricably with the one love truth, beauty, intelligence of all there is, God. And they find that and they're like, "Oh, wow, I'm a little bit less stressed out now."
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, and by the way, and then also like, there people who don't have a spiritual experience, but still are helped, and it's also okay.
AUBREY: Sure, that's also good too.

CHRISTIAN: Exactly. And by the way, what we always and we say like, because you and I have the same view, like sort of more Psychonauts. Like, I think we all underestimate that we are like the 1%. By the way, and two things, we are the 1% financially, because whoever tells me at the moment, in this moment of time, that he or she, that they are going to Costa Rica, they already have the money to buy the flight. And we shouldn't treat it normally. There are many, many people who couldn't say, "Oh, I'm flying," and then pay the shaman, and then I take three weeks off. Like there is a lot of luxury and entitlement when people say, "Oh, this is the way it should be." I was like, hey, there are 300 million people, who first of all, many, many of them don't have the luxury to take three weeks off and go to the jungle, they don't have the money to pay it for themselves, they maybe don't have the courage. But maybe they don't want that at all. If I look at my parents, like my parents, they really, really and I convinced them at some point to do it, because I'm their son, but they really profit from it. But they don't want to go to a shaman, they will be, actually, way more happier, and luckily, at the end, they trusted me. But they want this to go to their doctor they've been seeing since 50 years, and take it with them. It's like, we should accept that different people have different views, but that the medicine, and that's the beauty of it does help many of them. And it's not one way to do it. I'm bothered by that, that often the various or at least some people coming from the religious side sort of try to enforce a certain way. I'm not trying to enforce a certain way. I'm trying to develop one way, which is the medical way in the medical system, which I believe is the fastest way to get it to the people who really need it. Which by the way, always should be the guiding principle. The guiding principle should be not people like you and me who do profit a lot, but we are not rock bottom depressive. So, the guiding principle should be how can we make sure that these super valuable medicines come to the hundreds of millions of people who have no alternative, who tried everything, who have a miserable life, and who wanted and needed within the medical system. And then by doing that, that's what we are doing with ATAI and Compass. And by doing that, I think all the other sorts of options around which are equally valuable. I don't even want to charge what is more valuable. Like, they are profiting, because again, people might say, "You know what, I read about the science Compass is paying for and ATAI. But I have the feeling I should do it in a traditional, great! And we gave you the confidence to do it. Great. Go ahead.
AUBREY: There's two things I want to touch on. The one that comes up is one of the criticisms that I've heard of Compass from some of the more psychedelic traditionalists, and also from people who just have a sense of things and they're trying to figure it out, is the patent strategy. It's like, "Oh, my God, Compass is out, they're patenting all of these compounds, and that's going to prevent anybody from ever being able to use them." So what people are worried about is that the patents are going to lock them up, and then--
CHRISTIAN: But that's what they're meant to do.
AUBREY: That's what they're meant to do. So they're going to get locked up, and no one's going to ever be able to use them. But the thing is, is that there--
CHRISTIAN: So sorry. This is really one of my favorite topics. First of all, every day, somebody complains about the patterns of Compass and ATAI. It's a good day, because it confirms that we did something right because that's what patterns should do. And by the way, you don't complain in any, or you, in any other biotech field, having patterns is the most normal and basic thing of biotech development, because Compass at the very end, when hopefully in a year, one and a half from now, Compass will have an approved psilocybin, which will make the world a better place. So, big shout out to George and Katya, who get way too much criticism for nothing. Because they did something amazing as sort of the pioneers in the field. Like they're going to have invested hundreds of millions, I think it's gonna be north of $500 million, which was needed to advance a medical drug to approval. By the way, I'm the biggest investor. The only way as much as I want to give money to everything I want to, I have to think about making money back. That's my job, yeah? And the only way to raise that amount of money and the same is true for ATAI, is to make sure that once we succeed, we are going to make that money back and more because that's the capitalistic way. And then what patents do? They will prevent that other people in the medical system can use psilocybin because we paid for it. However, it does not prevent any shaman growing their own mushrooms. That's a completely different world.
AUBREY: That's I think what people are afraid of. They're afraid of some patent police, taskforce, coming to George and Maria's fucking hut.
CHRISTIAN: I always say, I'm not going to come to Burning Man and knocking on every caravan and say, pay me my royalties for the... No. It's a complete misunderstanding, literally. It's funny, but I do think people believe it. And that makes them scared. And then even do understand it, like obviously, it's two different worlds, but what it means is that any medical psilocybin used by doctors to treat patients paid by the healthcare insurance will be Compass psilocybin and that is good.
AUBREY: It seems like people are getting an initial reaction, and this is just my sentiment as well, and probably people are going to be mad at me because they're still in this initial reaction. But these compounds are already illegal first of all, which is a way bigger problem than a patent infraction or something like that. And so when these get legalized actually. So, I've seen this with ketamine. I forget which pharma company but they repatented esketamine, and actually--
CHRISTIAN: Repatented, this was a soft version but--
AUBREY: So, J&J patented esketamine, and then that actually opened the field for ketamine to be prescribed off label. Now, I have wonderful prescriptions from this company I'm involved with called Wonder men, they send me these lozenges. I have unbelievable journeys here on my own. Thank you to J&J for pushing esketamine forward, which is a derivative that they patented of ketamine, which then opens a whole field of unpatentable ketamine because it's already been around forever. And now I get to do it with my fucking mind fold on in my bedroom. And I wasn't able to do that before. So like, it's already worked in our favor, one time in a hugely beneficial way.
CHRISTIAN: Yes, I can't agree more.
AUBREY: I think people are, they're just, I understand, but I also understand the fear. I also understand especially in the climate that we've had, where it feels like pharma has an agenda that's ruthless and just about profiteering at all cost, and this idea. But I think really what it comes down to is yes, there may be some of that but there's nuance in everything, and that's what people are not potentially adequately seeing is just the nuance of the whole picture, and also following the threads all the way through about what will actually happen.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, what it is, is there's a lot of misunderstanding, there is this generally, idea that pharma is bad, which is by the way also wrong. Pharma is not bad, pharma is not a conspiracy. Like is pharma profit driven? Yes. Like every company should be profit driven. But actually being profit driven, actually tells them, or supports new drugs being developed all the time. If pharma wouldn't be profit driven, a lot of the science wouldn't happen. Because profit, or hopefully the prospect of profit is what is driving the economy, and what is driving companies. If you would take the profit out, we tried that in communistic systems and--
AUBREY: It doesn't work.
CHRISTIAN: Like go to people in Venezuela, because you should go to people who are really in systems who try that stuff, or go to people who were in former Russia or in former Korea, wherever. Ask them if they like it. And when people here don't like the capitalistic system, why don't they move to Venezuela or to Cuba or to North Korea?
AUBREY: The problem that Brett Weinstein elucidates is, it's the problem of capture. It's the fact that actually, the money, if everybody was actually good actors, and everybody was acting within the bounds of actually the law, because you know, these big pharma companies, there's been $2 billion fines and $1 billion fines for different frauds and different ways that they've manipulated data. So, it's actually when they cross the line, and do kind of a morally, you know, either criminal, which they've been punished for. I mean, pretty much nobody has a clean record in pharma as far as not getting, well, Compass and ATAI, and may that always be the case. But very few big players in pharma have a clean record of not being fined and punished for criminal fraud or some kind of activity like that. And there certainly seems to be those borderline moral things where money was chosen over the greater good. But I think, if you just focus on that, you're missing the nuance of the whole thing, which is like, alright, these are the negative aspects of this system, but it's still the best system. We just have to help change these negative aspects.
CHRISTIAN: It's the same like we say about democracy. It's not perfect, but it sort of is the best one so far society came up with. The same with capitalism. Capitalism is not perfect, yeah? And by the way, we had that before this discussion with FTX. You can have bad actors in any industry. But like what I want to say, my feeling is, in any industry, but also and especially in biotech and pharma, this is actually an industry when really people want to help other people. It's really like this whole idea, because I get the question all the time. And luckily, people don't see us as pharma, they see us as biotech. But like people who go into pharma and biotech overall want to help people, which is by the way, the great thing of that industry. It's maybe the most satisfying industry to be in because always when you're successful you do help people. Sometimes small stuff--
AUBREY: Usually when you're successful, you help people. Some cases where you've created something that doesn't? In general.

CHRISTIAN: But generally, drug development wants to heal people and solve people. And by the way, then moving into patterns, the great thing is patterns are not forever. This is why they have a lifetime, and then some when they are over and then somebody in competition comes, which is further forcing biotech and pharma companies to be innovative and develop better solutions, whatever. And yes, are there people who game the system? Yes, like in any industry. And this should be bad, it should be sort of seen as bad from society. But like the overall people, especially in pharma/biotech, are good people who want to make sort of a change, or want to make things better for humans. I've never encountered, by the way, I'm in this industry now, investing in biotech since 25 years. Very early. But like, I never encountered that conspiracy, that somebody's withholding stuff, whatever. Again, by the way, unfortunately, because one of the usual things when I go to a class reunion is like, why is there no solution for cancer yet? Like, is there a conspiracy that pharma companies are holding back? No, it's really, really complex. And there have been billions and billions of dollars literally sunk. Because cancer, I have another theory why cancer, but like, it's complicated. That's the answer. But people are like oh, no, they must have a solution, and they just don't give it to us because they want to, whatever, drip feed us with chemotherapy. No, it's sad that we still have just, or chemotherapy still is a very old thing. Like, it's still one of the pillars. Shows how complicated cancer is, how complicated drug development is. But it's not because the people are evil.
AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's been a, it's kind of a general theme is there's the good and the bad mixed in, and that's all there. And there's also bad actors in every industry, in every organization. And if there have been bad actors over the past two years and collusion, which as we discussed with the Twitter things, it's like small areas of collusion, hopefully those get exposed. And then the bad actors will actually pay the consequences for their actions. And that is the process that's happening when I talk to people who are on the health freedom side, their degree of confidence that, actually I just did a podcast with Ed Dowd. And he has a degree of confidence that now, attorney generals for the states are looking in to see, like if there was any fraud and collusion and if there was suppression of important data, if there was bad actions. That's being pressed, and will actually come out in the legal system. And that will actually move forward. And so actually, potentially, the system is clumsily, and we face a great challenge, it's clumsily working as it has to to expose what needs to be exposed. But actually, it's okay. Like, the process is underway. We're figuring things out.
CHRISTIAN: This is not specific to pharma, but like a general rule which I have in life, and actually, especially now in downturns, you have portfolio companies not working, whatever, and you easily get angry on other people, or you get disappointed or whatever. My rule in life was like, giving people the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good. You're going to have people who trick you once in a while. And I think many people then let these few moments which are actually just a few, there is just one FTX. Yes, and there are the guys who did the opioids, yeah? Yes, there are these bad examples but you forget the way higher number of good people. What I always remind myself when I'm getting whatever, very disappointed or even defrauded by one person, then you have this instinct to become hard, to close yourself, whatever. But then I remind myself how often, sort of this, my in generally trusting nature or giving people the benefit of the doubt and being very optimistic on ideas, on people, how much that actually has profited me. And if I would now use one thing where I get disappointed to allow that to change me, that would be not just sad, that would I think over time really cost me a lot.
AUBREY: Well, it's like if your partner cheats on you, then all of a sudden, you're like women are unfaithful, women are unloyal. It's like no, no, your partner just cheated on you. Or men are dogs. No, no, your boyfriend just slept with somebody.
CHRISTIAN: What you do by sort of saying that you actually don't allow you to be happy in the future, because you will ruin every relationship going forward.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, sure. Our cats always want to steal the limelight for those of you watching on video. We have a big appearance by our large leopard-like cat. So, speaking of cats, now that he entered the scene, I want to ask you about your own experience with any traditional teachers or ceremonies? Have you been able to go through that portal to experience these psychedelic medicines in the traditional setting with ayahuesceros, or maestros or maestras or curanderos or anybody on the more traditional side?
CHRISTIAN: So, this is now the answer, it's not complicated, just timeline wise, because I know and people know I think it's recorded. And you're going to see that when then I will have had, because like, I'm going to have it from now on, but this is before the podcast comes out in three weeks, which is--
AUBREY: Beautiful.
CHRISTIAN: It's actually a very interesting story. Because, I would say, let's start there. I'm very spiritual even before psychedelics, actually since, I'm brought up Catholic but I always had sort of these, I was always drawn generally to mysticism from Rumi to Kabbalah, generally, I believe more, first of all, I don't believe in organized religion. So, I believe that there is a higher being, which I think is very hard for us to put in words at all. And then I think people tried it, because they wanted to help their fellow people. So, I think always, if you look at it, generally it's a little bit generalized, but I was always very interested in sort of the history of religion. That if you go through religions, they normally are good at the beginning, because there are people who have a spiritual experience, and who want to give on that spiritual experience to their fellow humans. And then either they stay a cult, or we don't even know any more about them because they vanished. But the problem is, we know the ones who transformed from being spiritual to being an organization. And an organization, by definition, can't really be spiritual. And there are great texts if you go in the early days of Christianity, when they had their first, what is the English term? When they were meeting up the first sort of--
AUBREY: Council?
CHRISTIAN: Councils, yeah. And many of these texts are practically acknowledging that people were doing psychedelics, because they were talking--
AUBREY: Yeah, some of the Gnostic texts.
CHRISTIAN: They were talking about, they didn't name it, they were talking about practices which allow you to communicate with God. But then the more pragmatic parts of the just starting church were saying, but this is not how you can run an organization. If your disciples come in the morning and say, "You know what, last night, I spoke to God, and he told me that." And then the other one they say, "Me, I was told this." This is how you can't run an organization. So they started, actually, to say, no, not everybody should do that. Like just the priests, just the cardinals, whatever. And at the end, oh, no, the only guy who speaks to God is the Pope, or the top guy in any church. So that is, unfortunately, a transformation of most religions we know now, because that's the successful ones in terms of organization, they went through that, and this is why I'm not an organized religion guy. But I think you find beauty in all of them. Because in the core, they all tell you, coming back to what we said about political correctness, they all tell you just to be a good human being. Just be nice to others is the core teaching of Jesus, is be nice to yourself, and be nice to other people and treat other people like you want to be treated. It's simple and it's also a lot.
AUBREY: Yeah, and the sad part is that that was lost for so many years. I mean, we already referenced the burning of an estimated 9 million witches in Europe, the tortures of the Inquisition. Like the antithesis. It's almost like the church was acting in that way as the Antichrist, which is I know a very inflammatory thing to say. But if Christ stood for forgiveness and the recognition of the Christ within all people, then the killing and the torturing is Antichrist consciousness. So the church was actually acting in the opposite way of what it's intended, what its original intentions were which is sad.
CHRISTIAN: Because it became an organization. So that is my general sort of view on even before psychedelics, I was very into the mystical sides of many religions, trying to find the common denominator again, which is, I think, just be a good human being. And then psychedelic sort of, this is why when I took psychedelics, I was very open to again, on the one side looking at them scientifically, and on the other side, saying, "Okay, well, this is a tool to get closer to yourself, to your soul, and to God.
AUBREY: So, do you mind sharing which sacrament you're going to be--
CHRISTIAN: Sorry, I lost that thought. But interestingly, the one which is missing is Ayahuasca. And also, again this story will have happened when it comes out, and then I can report back, but like, so, I have a friend who's a very accomplished Ayahuasca shaman. So, always when I had people who I felt really needed it for many reasons, I was referring them to him. And also, I believe very much, I don't want to say I'm like antiparty use, but I am, actually. Because I believe so much in these substances, and especially in the religious spiritual component that if you look at the history of psychedelics and the best book to read is Brian's Muraresku's "Immortality Key", they were actually coming, also back to the pattern discussion, they were always highly regulated. So, if you look at these---
AUBREY: Yeah, by the mystery schools. They wouldn't even tell people what was in them.
CHRISTIAN: Sometimes it was forbidden by death to tell it to other people. You were not allowed to do it on your own, you had to do it with your therapists--
AUBREY: And that's what happened when Alcibiades stole the kykeon from the Mystery School. And then he was exiled from all of Greece because he was throwing his own parties with the sacrament.
CHRISTIAN: So, it was never meant to be a party drug. This is why Burning Man, I'm very critical. At least because I think the spiritual part is really, really important.
AUBREY: I will say, just to throw that out, you can have spiritual experiences in a party setting, and I think it's important to have the nuance. There's nuance in that as well.
CHRISTIAN: Yes, I agree. I agree. What I want to say is like, one part of that is that I believe you shouldn't be a thrill seeker. So you shouldn't do it for the party. It should be really a sacrament, it should be like--
AUBREY: With reverence.
CHRISTIAN: And you should do it, which I very much believe in, because actually, my first psychedelic experience was really built up over two years. I was very stern, we talked about that. I have never done any other drug, including alcohol. I've never tried it before, because I didn't want it in my life. I think drugs, the bad ones, are a product of evil, if you want to use the term of the devil, because they feed on all your insecurities, and all your weaknesses. And they offer you an easy way out. But the truth is, they make it really worse. So that was my view on any drugs. I didn't know of psychedelics. So, it was really like, it took me two years and many, many what you could call a coincidence, but meeting scientists randomly, but at a time when nobody was talking about psychedelics. And they talked to me about psychedelics, having friends who brought it up. So that ultimately I did psilocybin mushrooms in 2014. But there was a way and there was, again, if you want to see like it was the universe pushing me to that. So, I believe that should be either a calling or a push. And I didn't have that for Ayahuasca, because I always thought, okay, I think I got all my answers I have, to the divine in my mushroom experiences. Long story short, so I referred though, because I see and also again in our scientific work, Ayahuasca is stronger. So there are people who profit from it extremely. So I was referring to people who I felt they need more than a psilocybin trip. I was referring to my friend, and all of them came back, problem solved, transformed. So that in October, I was thinking for myself, maybe I should just try it for the sake, it's like, from all people, I should be the one who said just try it.
AUBREY: Of course, of course.
CHRISTIAN: And I have so many friends, and it's weird recommending people and not having done it yourself. So, I made an appointment with my friend who's very, very sort of in demand. But then I thought about it two weeks later, and I was like, I will never forget that because I was sitting in LA with friends, and I saw the whole day, I was like, "Ah, January's getting so full, and this is such a commitment." And again, if I want to do it properly with the right fasting and everything. So it is a commitment in January, which is already filling up. So I was actually writing the email, and I still have the email in my draft folder, and sending it to my friend and saying, "Look, you have so many people who really need it, and you're booked out. Like, do it with somebody who needs it. I'm going to cancel, I don't need it." And this was the day, and it was one of the, you can call it a coincidence, where this girl who I again socially met in passing at an event I was speaking emailed me, and not just said what I said before, that she dared because of what she heard from me, explore that side, but that she had a message from Ayahuasca, that I should do Ayahuasca myself and not shy away from it. Because I'm going to get answers on questions I don't even know I have. So I'm very curious. So, I sent a screenshot to my shaman friend, and he was like, "Well, if you don't call that a calling, then it can't be more..."
AUBREY: It's pretty on the nose.
CHRISTIAN: Can't be more direct.
AUBREY: I'll tell you a story that's interesting too with Ayahuasca. So, it was around 2014. And I was running my company, Onnit, and it was off to a great start. But I needed some people underneath me to fill out the organization, and I get an email from a guy named Jason Havy, who got a message in an Ayahuasca ceremony at a place called Blue Morpho down in Peru, in an Ayahuasca ceremony that he had to come work for me in Onnit. And Ayahuasca was very clear. And he actually had his dream job. He was the manager of a hotel in his hometown in Wisconsin. And it was like, that's always what he wanted to do. And he did it. And he made it, and he was like, "Look, I gotta come work for you, I'll be your assistant, I don't care. Like, whatever it is, I know I'm supposed to come work for you." So I was like, "Well, you're way too qualified to be my fucking assistant." And ultimately, I hired him. And he like VP of operations of this thing. He worked his way up. And then I handed him the CEO title right at the beginning of 2020. And then he carried Onnit all the way through the pandemic, and all the way through the final sale. And he's been one of my closest friends, and one of the great heroes of this company. But it was Ayahuasca that specifically told him that come work for me. And he just answered the call. And that's wild. Like, that's fucking wild.
CHRISTIAN: By the way, I think more people have these experiences, and don't dare to talk about it. This morning I had this discussion with Florian, my colleague, who's the CEO of ATAI. So we are four co-founders. And, he was like, "Oh, is it really good that you talk about your spiritual stuff?" And I said, "Why not?" Like, why are we making sort of that boxes, and like, oh, if you're a scientist, or if you're in science, you cannot talk about ABC. Or if you're right wing, you cannot talk, be like the same time for something like the vaccine. We're making all these rules, which don't make any sense. Because I always come back, humans are complex, life is complex, we should exchange views. We don't always need to agree on things but we should not shy away to say that's my opinion, and that's my opinion. And weirdly, I can't have the same at the same time.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, indeed. One of the things that I also wanted to talk to you about that relates to this, I mean, when you have, they call ayahuasca, of course, the vine of souls or the vine of death. Because oftentimes, you actually pass through your own portal of death, the death of who you think you are, to reveal who you really are, which includes who you think you are, and transcends it to something else. So, it's this kind of death rebirth process, it's very common in the psychedelic space. And so it's been curious to me, because I've been through that process so many times, and I understand death personally, and I don't expect anybody to believe me. But I personally deeply understand what I believe to be the place that I'm going when I transition from this body because I felt like I'd been there many times.
CHRISTIAN: Same here.
AUBREY: So, the idea about longevity, and this idea to try to live forever is a curious one for me, because I see someone like Ray Kurzweil and I'm like, "Ray, if you just did a little bit more psychedelics, you could maybe relax a little bit about trying to live forever, because guess what? You do, and it's all good. But at the same time, I understand, I also want Aubrey not to live the longest but if I could extend the quality of my life, where like I am sharp, and I can still at 80 get around and like--
CHRISTIAN: Get laid.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, sex and a jump shot, and drive 250 on the golf course or whatever. Like if I could still do that, like, yeah, yeah, I'm into it. But it's not about death, it's just about life is awesome, and I want the most of it.
CHRISTIAN: I think people misunderstand and maybe, look at me, maybe sometimes because again we're living in a world where we're trying to simplify things and then I'm posting, oh, I want to defeat death, or going to live forever. Which is not the case, because first of all I sat there. Living forever doesn't work because forever is a very long time. The term forever doesn't work. So even, I tweeted it because I'm conscious about it. Because someone's universe will collapse, and a new one will start. So, forever is never forever. But, exactly what you say, like I think it's almost like a game, by the way. I think it's like, sort of we solved that mystery of aging as we solved other mysteries. We're going to live, I believe that, much longer. I actually believe that it is part of the human, not just psychology, but our nature because I believe in the spiritual side, and the soul, whatever. So when our soul wants to die because very deep down, I think we know that there is something coming and we want to go there. But why not live here 500 years and then do it? I deeply believe actually that in my lifetime, we will push life expectancy that long.
AUBREY: To 500?
CHRISTIAN: Well, it will not that we wake up one day, and you're going to read in the news, Christian made it, and we're living to 500. But it's going to be, like Ray's perfectly explaining it, it's going to be a continuous prolongation. And there will be this one magic year, and I believe that's going to happen in the next 20, 15 to 20 years where we win more than one year of life expectancy in one year. And then technically, we could go on forever, because we're winning more than we losing.
AUBREY: Interesting. So, in one year, you do enough practice and you have enough protocols that actually you extend your life, let's call it one year and one month.
CHRISTIAN: Exactly. And so, we're pushing it, pushing it, pushing it, but it can well be that you and I keep pushing it into the some hundreds. And I deeply believe that in my lifetime, we will be able to push life expectancy that much that people want to die. And I think that talking about libertarian stuff is the ultimate freedom, that you live your life to the fullest as long as you want to. And by the way, maybe there are people who want to end it at 80, maybe there are people who want to go on to 500. I do think, by the way, psychedelics will play an integral role. Because the one thing is to have a functioning body and mind. But there is a difference, the mind, but your soul needs to want that novelty. And that's what psychedelics do. They make you really, really passionate for life, and they give you back what children have, I believe the awe, how amazing that all is, yeah? With all the problems, and all the troubles. And I want to see where this is all going. But maybe there's a point when I'm 500, and I'm like, okay, now I'm headed, I don't know, like, look, read all the vampire novels. Anne Rice, like she was writing 12 books which I love, about that whole idea. Like, when is immortality enough? And it's going to be enough somewhat, and then we're going to see what's coming after? But what I don't like is that there is a limit at 80 or 85, or maybe 90 at the moment. And I'm very sure that when I'm at 90, let's see that. I'm very sure at the moment that I still want to go on. If I don't, great. Let's end that. We should be able to have a way more liberal, way more libertarian view on life and death. I would let anybody... There is all that complexity, like if people do it too quickly and hastily because they're heartbroken and say, "Oh, I want to end it now." So we need a little bit of a--
AUBREY: A buffer.
CHRISTIAN: A buffer between emotions, yeah. But generally, we should be the master of our--
AUBREY: Yeah, permanent solutions to temporary problems is a bad idea.
CHRISTIAN: So again, in the big picture, I believe we hopefully--
AUBREY: What if there was like a psychedelic protocol to get the right for euthanasia at that point, right? Like if you wanted to end it, it was like no problem, but part of your process is to do 200 milligrams of MDMA and make sure you really want to end it.
CHRISTIAN: It's interesting that you say, by the way, that you say MDMA, because MDMA makes you love yourself more if you do it right. Because interestingly, we saw in some studies with cancer patient at the very end, like it was terminal, they then accepted it, and they--
AUBREY: They actually wanted to die more.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Because in a good way, because they accepted their fate, and didn't have the panic, or the last resistance when there was resistance was not an option. So, we are a little bit away from that but I think we will have, maybe in 10-20 years, we will have to as society debate that. Like, how do we feel life and death in a completely new framework? And part will be like, what is the protocol that people, someone who's getting old and older, want to die? Not because they're miserable, but they want to die because they just want to see what's coming.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah. And it's, all of these questions to be able to talk about them freely, and to be able to talk about them with nuance. I think that's one of the also meta challenges that we're facing across the board is, and I think we've really kind of eliminated this, is the willingness to discuss nuance, the willingness to talk about things that are unpopular, and talk about things that are taboo, and not have the default reaction. And everybody has all of these default reactions about like, and they'll take the side of something. Like one area that people take the side of is like, you shouldn't be using indigenous medicines, you need to reserve these for the indigenous people. And then I asked my teacher, Maestro Orlando Chujandama, who lives in a small village in Tarapoto and dedicates his life to his six children, and all of that, and I help support his village. And what does he say actually? Not the people on Instagram who are saying what they think, they're putting words in his mouth. He's saying, "No, we all live on a shared Earth. And Ayahuasca needs to be shared to as many people as possible, especially the people who are threatening Earth, and that's what Mother Gaia wants, and that's what Mother Ayahuasca wants." And so there's this weird world in which like, there's this kind of woke cultural idea about what the right thing to do is, but we have to actually be able to talk about--
CHRISTIAN: But the people who they're talking about are not even like, "Why are you throwing me into that?"
AUBREY: And Sebastian Junger's book, "Tribe", was very interesting. I'm reading that actually. I've known about his theory for a long time, but let's just speak a very simple aspect of this. He's spent time speaking with a Navajo elder, and he was calling his people Native American. And he's like, "Don't call us Native American. Because anybody born in America is actually a Native American." Like, even though Indian was the wrong name, because he thought we were in India, at least it identifies us as a tribe, as a race of people. And so, he actually encouraged him to say that. But then, Junger explains that in his book, and he uses the word Indians, and people get all riled up, right? But actually, in this case, there's just nuance and people need to unwrap all of this kind of rage and offense and sensitivity and say, like, "Alright, let's talk about everything." Assume generally good intentions. Assume that, yes, it's not cool to wear a fucking headdress, like a warbonnet, like a Native American warbonnet. And again, I didn't talk to the elders, so I still don't want to say Indian.
CHRISTIAN: I don't know but I met a lot of, not Native Americans. But I met a lot of other cultures who like this whole idea of what is it called in America, which we don't have in Europe? Thank God. But like, stealing somebody's--
AUBREY: Appropriation.
CHRISTIAN: Appropriation. They're like, it's celebrating our culture. It's like, again, people are--
AUBREY: Right, there's no nuance. The assumption is that this is an act of blatant racism.
CHRISTIAN: Racism, mocking them, while it's like--
AUBREY: And really, and generally, it's like somebody who appreciates, and I'm not saying that it should be done like, particularly with the Native American headdress thing. That's a warbonnet, every feather was a measure of an individual's bravery. So, the more acts of bravery in serving or helping one of their tribe members, they got a feather. And so, that would be like somebody going out and decorating in a US Marine's vest with a bunch of fucking medals on it. It's called stolen valor. Like, there's things that are not cool to do. But let's just assume that they're not trying to be fucking assholes. They just may not be aware of what they're doing. And like, give a little bit of space, like a little bit of breathing room for conversations and actions. Correct them, but correct them lovingly. And say, like, "Hey, like, I know you probably didn't know this, but check it out. Here's some of this stuff." But that just seems like the way, and unfortunately, we're in such an inflammatory time that those nuanced discussions are not happening, and instead it's just projection and canceling and anger. And it's like, we all need to just relax.
CHRISTIAN: I think the whole Twitter mob needs MDMA, because then you really understand the others. No, and by the way, I just tried that in a relationship, it's unbelievable.
AUBREY: It's unbelievable. Changes the fucking game.
CHRISTIAN: Yes. So, I always tell everybody who's watching like before you get a divorce, before you can't repair your relationship, go for it. Doesn't cost you anything, it's very safe. Rick Doblin and--
AUBREY: And look, it's not always going to bring you guys back together. I actually was in the room for an MDMA ceremony with a couple that I knew. And they wanted to do an MDMA ceremony to see if they should stay together. And they finished the ceremony, they said, "You know, look, I really loved you. But this isn't right, you know, this isn't for me." And both of them said that, and they separated in the most beautiful way. So, it's not like it's going to force you one way or another. It's going to open your heart to the truth of what you really believe and feel. And so, yes, of course. And then having that tool available, it's going to change the fucking world.
CHRISTIAN: We're going to save a lot of money for a lot of divorces.
AUBREY: Divorce attorneys are not going to be happy. Yeah, well, this has been a really beautiful conversation. I really deeply appreciate everything that we've discussed. And I think people probably learned a lot of things about myself, and the nuance of which I understand the world, which shares a lot of the nuance. And we may differ on certain ideas about where we draw the line, but the things that we agree on are, it's a very complicated, nuanced situation. And also the idea that let's not be too hasty to project these nefarious organizations and groups and things. It's so difficult to coordinate something. Like when I was in college, like even getting my fraternity to get together for a fucking meeting was really hard. And it's like, it's just kind of softening a lot of these different thoughts and just opening the field for nuance and a deeper understanding of things rather than the initial blush first reaction.
CHRISTIAN: And I would say maybe even take away like, if the world is a very complex and chaotic place at the end, and it's not ruled by 20, 30, 50 people, it puts way more emphasis on every individual to do the right thing in his own small community, in a bigger context. But I think people secretly with this whole conspiracy stuff, what I said before, they wish to simplify the world, and they wish to give responsibility away because oh, there are people who are running that bad, they're still running it. And the truth is, you are responsible--
AUBREY: Yeah, we're running it.
CHRISTIAN: We're running it all together, and everybody of us is a small piece of it, and you're responsible for yourself, for your soul, for your close friends. Like, I think that is what really should be the takeaway.
AUBREY: Yeah. Well, I deeply appreciate you coming on the show, and I also just want to say like, as much as we've talked about the science of psychedelics, and as much as we talked in the traditional, I wouldn't be here without both. Really, truly. Like, I wouldn't be here without the great traditions and the teachers from those traditions who have taught me. And I also have benefited immensely from the medical side of psychedelics, which include MDMA, which include especially ketamine. The ketamine and cannabis journeys that I've been doing have been some of the most profound in my life, and in most places, that's legal to do that right now. And I've been talking about those, and that's changed my life. And that's not in the traditional lineage, it's on a different side, and prescribed to me for medical reasons, at least the ketamine, originally, the cannabis, although that was a bit of a hoax about how you get prescribed cannabis. But nonetheless, there's a deep appreciation that I have for all the lineage roots, and just the deepest bow of that. And then there's also a deep bow to science, for what science is kind of pushing forward. And it gives me a lot of hope for how we can ease a lot of the suffering that we see in the world, and a lot of the discord.
CHRISTIAN: Agree.
AUBREY: Yeah, I guess if there's going to be one final thing, is there any crazy new psychedelic that psychonauts need to look out for coming down the pipeline? Any spoiler alert about some kind of new thing that you guys have found in the lab somewhere that you're like, "This fucking thing is great."
CHRISTIAN: No, that's the short version. We're looking at new psychedelics. I'm a very big believer in sort of the first generation ones, because we know so much about them. Again, and now speaking as sort of a biotech guy. Yes, there are, but it's mainly about duration and stuff like that, or MDMA is a little bit neurotoxic. So you try to get that away, but it's not really the, so you try to make them better, either in pharmacological terms or in duration, whatever. But, then there are new substances and you want to test them, and we know already so much about the first generation ones. And for example, I'm not a believer in, which we're also trying because like we have to as a company to try that hypotheses. It's like, is the trip essential? Which my answer is yes. But there are some people who believe no, it's just neuroplasticity or whatever. So, there are some psychedelics in development, including within ATAI which are non-trippy. I don't believe in them, but like we still should have a look, explore that, yeah. But, I think the sort of core, whatever big five, is what I call psychedelics; like psilocybin, TMT, Ibogaine, whatever. They are pretty perfect, and they seem to be pretty matching what we need in life in such an all encompassing way that it's hard. Again, we should be thrill seekers. Like if you have something perfect, it's a little bit maybe like in a relationship. If you have something perfect, well, it ruins it if you think there is something better out there. Somewhere in life, you should say, "No, I think we have it."
AUBREY: I love this answer. That's the best answer you possibly could have given because through the infinite divine perfection that somehow manifests through the love, intelligence, beauty of all that is, we already have these medicines. And there's ways in which you can, like I mentioned ketamine and cannabis, and there's ways in which you can combine things in the right way that can create really potent experiences. We're already in the paradise, and now it's about just democratizing that paradise, giving as many people access to these medicines and access to these experiences, and shaping the world with the shift in consciousness and the shift in heart intelligence that these medicines can provide. So I'm here for it. I know that. Thank you very much. Any other final words you want to give to anybody listening?
CHRISTIAN: No, I enjoyed it very much. If there are questions or people want to ask, discuss stuff, we can always do a second part of it.
AUBREY: Yeah, sometime later this year, and you can talk about your journey.
CHRISTIAN: It's the end of January, so we can do it pretty soon. It's going to be very interesting. I'm very much--
AUBREY: I'm very excited to hear how that goes.
CHRISTIAN: I'm very much looking forward to that.
AUBREY: Alright, thank you very much. Thank you, Derek. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. We're out. Much love.