Democratizing Psychedelics: From Ancient Rituals to Modern Medicalization

Podcast Highlights

• Exploring psychedelics and the evolution of organized religion.
• The parallels between ancient psychedelic traditions and modern medicalization.
• An argument for democratizing psychedelic access through centralization.
• Christian’s thoughts on creating a regulated framework for microdosing.
• Optimism about longevity research and extended lifespans.
• Overcoming deeply-rooted fears and embracing the concept of a long life.
• Christian’s challenges and successes at COMPASS Pathways & atai Life Sciences.
• The obstacles of commercializing psychedelic medicines in an economic downturn.
• Investigating how psychedelics might contribute to longevity.
• How psychedelics can help us find and live our Dharma (life’s purpose).

Show Links

1. Apeiron Investment Group
2. Christian on Twitter
3. Christian on Instagram
4. Rejuveron Life Sciences
5. atai Life Sciences
6. COMPASS Pathways
7. Book, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
8. Book, The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku
9. Eleusinian Mysteries
10. Paper, “Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe”
11. Podcast Episode 120 - Biran Muraresku: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Roots of Modern Religion
12. Podcast Episode 24 - Jerry Brown: Were Early Christians Tripping On Psilocybin Mushrooms?
13. Podcast Episode 196 - Graham Pechenik: The Psychedelic Patent Puzzle: Unraveling the Impact on Innovation vs. Access

These show links may contain affiliate links. Third Wave receives a small percentage of the product price if you purchase through the above affiliate links.

This episode is brought to you by Apollo Neuro, the first scientifically validated wearable that actively improves your body’s resilience to stress. Apollo engages with your sense of touch to deliver soothing vibrations that signal safety to the brain. Clinically proven to improve heart rate variability, it can actually enhance the outcomes of your other efforts like deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and plant medicine. Apollo was developed by a friend of Third Wave, Dr. David Rabin M.D Ph.D., a neuroscientist and board-certified psychiatrist who has been studying the impact of chronic stress in humans for nearly 15 years. Third Wave listeners get 15% off—just use this link.

Podcast Transcript

0:00:00.2 Paul Austin: Welcome back to the psychedelic podcast by Third Wave. Today I'm speaking with Christian Angermayer, the conscious billionaire financier of the Psychedelic renaissance.

[music]

0:00:13.4 Christian Angermayer: In times like these, people don't like new paradigms and are overly negative. I actually have an extremely optimistic view, meaning I think both maps and compass with their respective substance, they will positively surprise for one very simple reason I have never met a person who was touched by psychedelics, who didn't become an advocate. I think pharma companies at the moment and big investors who are skeptical underestimate that bottom up power and demand.

0:00:46.3 Paul Austin: Welcome to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, audio mycelium, connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders of the psychedelic renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors, and shamanic practitioners, exploring how we can best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance and collective transformation.

0:01:17.8 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, today's podcast is brought to you by the Apollo Wearable. I first started wearing the Apollo in the midst of the COVID quarantine over two years ago. It helped my body to regulate itself, to calm down, to stay more focused and to meditate in the morning. And I used it to really regulate my nervous system in a time of incredible stress and I've continued to use it on a day to day basis. It is indispensable in my daily routine. Here's the thing. The Apollo is a wearable that improves your body's resilience to stress by helping you to sleep better, stay calm and stay more focused. Developed by neuroscientists and physicians, the Apollo Wearable delivers gentle, soothing vibrations that condition your nervous system to recover and rebalance after stress. I tell folks that it's like a microdose on your wrist that helps you to feel more present and connected, especially when in the midst of a psychedelic experience. It's a phenomenal complement to any psychedelic experience. In fact, Apollo is currently running an IRB approved clinical trial in conjunction with MAPS to understand the long term efficacy of the Apollo Wearable with PTSD patients who have undergone MDMA assisted psychotherapy.

0:02:35.8 Paul Austin: The Apollo Wearable is the only technology with an issued patent to reduce unpleasant and undesirable experiences associated with medicine assisted therapy, including psychedelics and traditional medicine. And you can save $50 on the Apollo Wearable by visiting Apolloneuro.com/third wave. That's Apolloneuro.com/thirdwave.

0:03:02.4 Paul Austin: Hey, listeners. This is Paul Austin, founder and CEO at Third Wave. Today we're sitting down for a very special conversation with Christian Angermayer. We recorded this at the MAPS Psychedelic science conference in mid June, 2023. Christian is best known in the psychedelic space for being a co-founder of both atai and COMPASS Pathways, and also one of the foremost financiers of this Third Wave of psychedelics. He himself has invested 10s of millions, if not 100s of millions of dollars through his funds into biotech, specifically in the psychedelic space through atai and COMPASS Pathways and Christian is an investor, pioneer, visionary in the crypto currency space as well as the longevity space. So we had a fantastic conversation today.

0:04:03.1 Paul Austin: So there's a lot of overlap between my personal interests and Christian's personal interests. He just happens to have a ridiculous amount of money to support his initiatives. But going in and talking about Bitcoin, talking about longevity, the relationships between psychedelics and longevity, the relationship between psychedelics and crypto currency, talking about the centralization of psychedelics, which is the biotech healthcare model versus the decentralization of finance and Bitcoin. Christian and I went into all of these topics and more. Now I'm going to read his official bio for you. Christian Angermayer is a serial entrepreneur and investor who builds and invest in companies that are shaping the next human agenda, a future in which technology empowers people to live longer, healthier and happier lives. Christian's family office and private investment firm, Apeiron Investment Group, has made more than $2.5 billion under management and employ 50 people across five international locations. Over the past 20 years.

0:05:10.7 Paul Austin: Christian has founded three unicorns himself and has been the lead investor in four unicorns and two deca corns, which I believe means $10 billion or more. He is the world's largest investor in psychedelics and is recognized for leading the current psychedelic renaissance. This third wave of psychedelics, there's a lot more there and of course we will get into all this. Now one other interesting aspect about Christian Angermayer is that he happens to own ancient artifacts from Greece that relate to the Eleusinian Mysteries. And in fact, this is what we start our conversation today talking about. So this is really a wide ranging conversation, one of the most interesting ones that I've had in the podcast so far and I really can't wait to hear what you think about this podcast, good and bad. As a quick reminder, head to Third Wave's website if you want to go deeper into this episode. We have show notes, we have a transcript and any links that we mention in this conversation. You can follow the link in the description or just head to thethirdwave.co/podcast. That's thethirdwave.co/podcast. And click on the episode with Christian Angermayer. All right, that's it for now. I hope you enjoy my conversation today with Christian Angermayer.

0:06:33.0 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, welcome to the psychedelic podcast. Sitting across from me is conscious billionaire financer Christian Angermayer. Christian, welcome to the podcast.

0:06:43.0 Christian Angermayer: Thanks for having me.

0:06:44.1 Paul Austin: It's an honor to have you on. You just got off stage with Rick Doblin speaking at the MAPS conference. I'm going to read a brief bio and then.

0:06:49.7 Christian Angermayer: Okay.

0:06:50.9 Paul Austin: I'd love to jump in. So Christian invests in life sciences, FinTech, AI, psychedelics and crypto currencies. Through his family office, Apeiron Investment Group, he made his first millions co-founding biotech firm Ribopharma with his college professors. His holdings include psychedelics Biopharma firm, atai, Life Sciences and blockchain holding company Cryptology. And I think most importantly, you own an extensive art collection that includes ancient artifacts highlighting the role that psychedelics have played in human history.

0:07:23.6 Paul Austin: Yes, great intro. Hopefully I'm living up to it. I try.

0:07:28.6 Paul Austin: Tell us about the artifacts, why and what?

0:07:31.4 Christian Angermayer: Well, first of all, I think in generally and let's come to religion specifically, I was always... I'm a history geek, I'm really loving it. But for many days, the one thing is I'm just interested in history and also in the history of religions. But also I think when you then look closer, we're still humans, we might have technology, whatever, but sort of the basic drivers why we do things good and bad, whatever stays the same we're sort of... I love the book actually from Yuval Harari the Sapiens and then Homo Deus sort of which explains so well why are we who we are how we are...

0:08:12.8 Paul Austin: Especially our biology? Our biology is ancient.

0:08:14.5 Christian Angermayer: Biology and our brain.

0:08:14.8 Paul Austin: And our brain. Yeah.

0:08:15.7 Christian Angermayer: Which is both ancient we, practically the way we are. It was actually formed like rather 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years back. And we sort of suddenly don't want to say we're apes, but we are more than that. But we're sort of these kind of archaic being with archaic emotions which we try to tame and which we try to develop philosophy to be better humans. But suddenly we also have nuclear bombs. And the question is, has philosophy and all the good stuff, was it quick enough in parallel with the technological development or are we like, very dangerous sort of beings which suddenly have weapons at hand? From AI to nuclear bombs?

0:09:00.5 Paul Austin: Existential risk...

[overlapping conversation]

0:09:00.6 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. Exactly, which pose an existential risk. But we can come to back to that because your question was, and so I've always thought by learning more and again huge fan of Harari and by looking at where we come from, we can make better decisions for ourselves like very individual ones, not always talking about investments, but also talking about sort of investments or companies, whatever. So I just think you can learn short version a lot from history. And then second, I am... I always say spiritual, but I just want to say by that that I'm sort of not believing in the organized part of religion, because sort of what... But because I'm very spiritual, I also was very interested always in particularly the history of religion, which unfortunately has one big commonality, is that most religions actually start out really good in terms of meaning.

0:09:57.1 Christian Angermayer: If you summarize Christianity it's like love your neighbor, treat other people like you want to be treated, just don't be a dick. So it's very simple.

0:10:06.1 Paul Austin: The golden rule, right?

0:10:07.6 Christian Angermayer: Exactly. But then out of that golden rule became a religion, an organized religion which at least for certain parts of it's history was extremely violent and everything. So you ask yourself...

0:10:19.0 Paul Austin: Dogmatic, oppressive.

0:10:20.5 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. How did we get there? And I think sort of what always happens, or very often to organized religions or to religions in the moment they want to become organized, they need to actually get rid of the spiritual people, or let's say of the mystical people. Because in the early days, you have a charismatic founder, by the way, who always says, if you read what Jesus said, one of the core things, what he's teaching is you can turn to God like a son turns to the Father and talk to him.

0:10:48.4 Paul Austin: Yeah.

0:10:49.1 Christian Angermayer: Which is kind of the difference. What later came where the Catholic Church like wait a moment, you have to pay to go to heaven, you have to talk to us here, the Pope, the bishops, whatever. So practically organized religions unfortunately always purge their movement from the real spiritual ones, the real mystical ones because they... You can not build an organization if everybody claims or maybe everybody really has the potential to talk to God because that's not how you build an organization anyway. So it's just like very fascinating. And then the other thing is I think everybody who has done psychedelics sort of realizes or at least thinks and then there is this guy who I adore, Brian Muraresku who wrote a book about it and really researched it and has partly proven it, that sort of most likely psychedelics are the origin of all or most religions, which by the way is not my personal opinion, by the way, and we always need to make clear because in our pre discussion said we're going to jump from science to religion. Whatever. This is a personal opinion, which is obviously not part of my science day job because it's not provable.

0:12:02.3 Christian Angermayer: But I personally believe that psychedelics do open up a path to God the divine however you want to call it. I'm always just cautious because when I say God then different people have different...

0:12:14.2 Paul Austin: Source, Mystery, oneness, the universe, nature...

0:12:16.9 Christian Angermayer: Yeah but at the end it's all the same.

0:12:17.0 Paul Austin: At the end it's interconnectedness and intervene, right?

0:12:19.7 Christian Angermayer: And they know where religions come from and so if you... And then you suddenly also see that our language is just so limited to describing certain psychedelic experiences or religious experiences and maybe both. Yeah so, and then suddenly though you've read the Bible but you need any other spiritual book and you're like, Oh, my God. I know what these guy were taking. And really important this doesn't in my opinion sort of weaken the experience these people and weaken the testimony. It's actually in my point of view, strengthening it because I truly believe that psychedelics are a path to God.

0:13:02.8 Paul Austin: Gnosis and that in those Eleusinian Mysteries that this experience opened up for Plato, for Aristotle, for some of the most influential thinkers of Western philosophy and just our Western lens. And of course, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, that was cut off.

0:13:16.6 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. The Eleusinian Mysteries were like before Christianity, the longer lasting, actually sort of, let's say, organized religious movements for more than 2000 years. And one of the movements where we know for a fact that it was based on psychedelic consumption, which by the way, which is another big topic we just had with Rick Doblin, hopefully supports also my, let's say, decision or opinion which formed over the last years, that psychedelics are extremely valuable. They should come back into our society as medicine, as approved medical drug, but in a very regulated context. And I know some people are like oh, why is he saying that? And shouldn't it be for everybody? But I'm like, look, let's leave the '60s out because the '60s, in my point of view...

0:14:03.8 Paul Austin: Sure. We've learned lessons.

0:14:04.2 Christian Angermayer: Exactly, they were an anomaly because like for 10,000 years every single documented religion which was using psychedelics did it in a very regulated framework. The Eleusinian Mysteries did it twice a year. It was actually forbidden by death to talk about it, to spill the secrets, but also to do it outside of it. And it was very organized. You had to do prep work, you had a shaman or priests doing it with you, you had integration work post, which by the way is very similar to what we are creating here with psychedelic assisted therapy, with preparation, and then there's the trip, and then with a session and then the post work. So, I really believe they knew how to do it and we should just look at those sort of often 1000s a year proven frameworks.

0:14:55.9 Paul Austin: The Lindy effect is what Taleb calls it. The longer something has been around, the longer it'll be around, the longer that we have fasted and we've been omnivores and we live in relational communities with other people, all these things matter and make a big difference in terms of how long we tend to live.

0:15:09.0 Christian Angermayer: Yeah, I mean even generally you mentioned all the right things. I think religions, by the way, and also not just in psychedelics, also in other things. In their core they have actually good ideas, like, again, be nice to each other. But for example, fasting turns out is really, really healthy. All religions have fasting and whatever. It's just like a lot of religions partially or as a whole got corrupted by people seeking power over other people and using that as a tool.

0:15:34.6 Paul Austin: They become ossified in a way, right? Overly dogmatic and rigid. Okay, I have a burning question for you.

0:15:42.5 Christian Angermayer: Okay.

0:15:43.0 Paul Austin: All right, so I'll lay a little bit of a framework and then ask the question. So the way that I think about business, entrepreneurship, philosophy, sort of the evolution of life is that there are these attractor points in the future that are pulling us towards it, right? And one of those attractor points currently appears to be decentralization, we could say, broadly speaking. So you're a huge fan, a huge supporter of crypto currencies, of bitcoin, the decentralization of money, and yet when it comes to psychedelics, you're more of a fan of the centralized model, the FDA medicinal path. And I'm curious what you see as the core differences. Why do you choose to support or amplify decentralization and finance but not necessarily with psychedelics? What are some of the key differences and reasons for that?

0:16:26.6 Christian Angermayer: It's a little bit though... Okay it, first of all, I think what did you say in English? I don't say apple with oranges. Or like...

0:16:33.0 Paul Austin: Attractor point.

0:16:35.2 Christian Angermayer: When you say you comparing things which are not comparable fully, like is it called...

0:16:39.9 Paul Austin: Apples to oranges?

0:16:40.5 Christian Angermayer: Apples to oranges?

0:16:40.6 Paul Austin: Yeah. Okay, I like that why apples to oranges?

0:16:43.7 Christian Angermayer: So let's start, for example, let's start with the FDA, because that's a separate topic. So yes, I decided that these substances should be medically used and medically used only. And hence my company atai plus COMPASS, where we have a stake in, are developing various psychedelics, again as medical therapeutics in an FDA and also EMA in Europe framework. So that is more, I would say accepting the path to approval is more accepting how our world is structured. So, and I know there are people that oh no, this should be like why don't we, whatever, change FDA was like, look, this isn't the discussion for psychedelics.

0:17:26.3 Christian Angermayer: We can have, happily have the discussion if FDA approval processes take too long, like if they're too cumbersome whatever. There is definitely, by the way, for any organization there is always a discussion to have can they be improved? And over time, unfortunately, any supra national and any sort of organization which exists outside of the democratic process of change becomes normally too stiff, too rigid whatsoever. Yeah, but I'm accepting that's the way drugs get approved, and I deeply believe that psychedelics should not be fringe, they should not be counter culture, they should be in the center of our society and people should have access to it, by the way, paid by healthcare insurances. And the only way to have that is to have them as an approved medication and should be sort of available. Not just for you and me. We might be the ones who could go to the Caribbean or whatever, or to a shaman in the rain forest...

0:18:20.1 Paul Austin: Costa Rica.

[overlapping conversation]

0:18:20.3 Christian Angermayer: Costa Rica but for the woman and the man in Ohio who might maybe, by the way, don't want the dancing shaman around them, but they want to go. But they have a problem, as we all know. Unfortunately, mental health issues are the number one problem of our time and they want to go to their trusted doctor and get it next door from the trusted source. Trusted doctor, by the way, who knows the history of the patients, which is very important because we're going to have multiple psychedelics and psychedelics are, I think a very, maybe the best group out there to help for mental.

0:18:52.0 Christian Angermayer: But not the only one. Like maybe the doctor says for you, a psychedelic is not the right thing. Maybe we have, or maybe it is the right thing. I just had this discussion with a therapist, but not at the beginning. Maybe we have to do some work before. So it is not so black and white, and I want people to get it again, in the healthcare system, paid by insurers, by people who know what they're doing. Yeah. And the way to go. So this has nothing to do with decentralization, because they're still like decentralized in the way that there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of therapists. I'm not saying, oh, I wanna be the only sort of, therapy company or whatever. Yeah. But like the process in generally with all the sort of, again, critiques or like improvements we could make through the FDA is a proven process to, by the way, also scientifically prove what we all think is the case. But I wanna point out like we are living in a luckily is also a scientifically driven world, and it's very important that we create the data we are creating so that we once and for all can say, look, that stuff works. Yeah. It's safe. Yeah, or maybe it has these minor risks, but like, I wanna stand on like solid ground.

0:19:54.8 Christian Angermayer: So, and I think the problem of the... Again, by the way, that's what humans did over 10,000 years as, so I'm not sort of outside the norm, so to say. I'm actually I see...

0:20:04.2 Paul Austin: But it was much quieter, it was much more subculture, it was much more private, right? For 10,000 years it's we have never lived in a globalized...

0:20:10.7 Christian Angermayer: No. No. It was much more elite. It was much more elite. Yeah.

0:20:11.9 Paul Austin: Much more elite.

0:20:13.4 Christian Angermayer: So I'm actually democratizing it.

0:20:14.9 Paul Austin: Right.

0:20:15.2 Christian Angermayer: Weird idea. Yeah.

0:20:15.8 Paul Austin: Right.

0:20:16.6 Christian Angermayer: So because like in ancient Greece, people always point to Eleusinian Mysteries. It was an elite cult. Yeah. You need to be invited.

0:20:21.8 Paul Austin: Exactly.

0:20:21.8 Christian Angermayer: And it's just for the rich and the famous. So in that case, I'm actually decentralizing it.

0:20:26.9 Paul Austin: Right.

0:20:26.9 Christian Angermayer: Because I don't want just the rich, because that's, by the way, what it is. I'm a little bit poking back on the people because I know there are people out there who say, oh yeah, Christian is a capitalist, which is true. Yeah. [laughter] So I'm not ashamed of that. I'm actually very proud of that, but also saying, oh, Christian creates monopolies because he has patents. No shit Sherlock. This is how, yeah, drug development works. However, that is the most democratic way to open up medicine for everybody. Yeah. Because first of all, I'm not harming any other movement, meaning at Burning Man, I won't go around from camp to camp and knock on the door and say, you know what? I have the patents on psilocybin. Give me all your surplus, I joke about like, that's what people, I do think that's what people are fearing.

[overlapping conversation]

0:21:10.5 Christian Angermayer: No, I don't that.

0:21:10.7 Paul Austin: You have better things to do.

0:21:11.1 Christian Angermayer: I have greater things to do. And I'm also not taking it away from shamans. Who wanna do it in the very indigenous way, but I wanna make people aware that whenever somebody tells me, oh, but people can already go to the Amazon, whatever, it's like, who can that, who pays the flight? Even here, I'm very, very happy that this conference is happening, but we should acknowledge that everybody who's here paid for a flight ticket and had the money to do so, which is great. Like I'm happy. Like you just point out that yeah. Sometimes, especially people who see themselves more on the left, which are the ones who criticize me are very elitist. Yeah. And I'm like, look, I think everybody should have access. So practically, I'm not short version taking anything away from anybody. But I'm adding the biggest group of all, which is like all those people who live in, let's pick a state, Idaho.

0:22:05.3 Paul Austin: I'm from Michigan, Midwest.

0:22:06.8 Christian Angermayer: Michigan.

0:22:07.3 Paul Austin: My parents, I think of that.

0:22:08.3 Christian Angermayer: Who wanna go to a doctor and want to get it paid. And that's zero competition.

0:22:11.9 Paul Austin: Correct.

0:22:12.1 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. That's just a different world. And then people who wanna go to Costa Rica, people who wanna go to Burning Man...

0:22:17.2 Paul Austin: There's more options on the table, right?

0:22:18.6 Christian Angermayer: Do it. Yeah. It has nothing to do in a... But I think the fact that people can do it that out and proud and about yeah, is based also on our science. So I think I do support actually indirectly these movements or the more, because like I give them the credibility.

0:22:36.5 Paul Austin: All ships rise.

0:22:36.8 Christian Angermayer: Exactly.

0:22:37.0 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. All ships rise. And it's not mutually exclusive.

0:22:39.8 Christian Angermayer: Exactly.

0:22:40.4 Paul Austin: It's not either or, it's both and. It's a broad landscape. It's a blue ocean, it's a huge sky that's growing bigger every day, right?

0:22:48.0 Christian Angermayer: But to fully read, answer that, I think we've really decentralizing it in a certain way and democratizing it and...

0:22:53.1 Paul Austin: I think it's a helpful context.

0:22:53.6 Christian Angermayer: Making sure that much more people in the healthcare framework have access to it.

0:22:58.1 Paul Austin: Yeah. There needs to be a structure built, there needs to be scaffolding built and right? That scaffolding is both above ground. And we already have a lot of the sort of mycelial network at the below ground that is communicating and educating. And I mean, to come back here seven years, six years later, after their last conference at the maps, 11,000 people.

0:23:14.6 Christian Angermayer: That's great.

0:23:15.0 Paul Austin: It's fantastic the progress that's been made. Okay. I have one more question for you on this about microdosing.

0:23:20.3 Christian Angermayer: Yep.

0:23:20.6 Paul Austin: All right. So I started a nonprofit called the Microdosing Collective about a year and a half ago. 'Cause a lot of the regulatory policies in Oregon, Colorado, even looking through the FDA, it's not for microdoses that people consume at home. It's, you go into a clinic, you go into a center and you get a high dose. Yet my hypothesis is that the vast majority of people who work with psychedelics currently are doing so at a more microdosing or psycholytic range. So in other words, a lot of the research regulations, rules that are being put into place don't necessarily reflect reality, which is most people are still gonna have to use psychedelics illegally. 'Cause A lot of people choose to just microdose or start with microdosing at the very least. What's your thought on a legal, microdosing regulated environment like we have, let's say with cannabis where you could go into a dispensary or you can go into a situation and you could legally, as an adult, purchase microdosing supplements. What would be some of the pros of that, but also some of the risks, the cons? Would you or would you not support something like that model?

0:24:22.4 Christian Angermayer: I think the biggest risk or the sort of most neutral answer is I don't know. And the reason why I don't know is because there is not a lot of research for microdosing. I think we all have a hunch, but interestingly, even like, so if I not take the few just of my colleagues, but if I talk to some of the big researchers in the field, there is not a unified few on microdosing and in a really, in a neutral way. So the honest answer is I don't know. So is it like, I give you an example, like just asking questions. It's not that I believe one or the other. It's just like a scientist, like yeah. We all know that the neuroplasticity yeah. Which is created after a trip is very beneficial in the entire healing concept because it's kind of, Michael Pollan said it in his book so beautifully. It's like people have sort of in their brain, like ski slopes, which they're always using the same ones. And then neuroplasticity means like it has snowed and there is like an open, how you say, slate... A blank slate and you can suddenly choose to...

0:25:26.4 Paul Austin: Fresh powder.

0:25:26.7 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. Fresh powder. You can make new pathways. So just as a picture for the ones who might not be so familiar with the term neuroplasticity. So, and what we know is that, or what we assume is that... That takes healing place in the, let's say, session in the strong deep trip. People often work through trauma, people learn things about themselves. So there's many, we can talk about that more like, but like there's psychological things happening, especially this is why it's so important to have a therapist next to you. But then we also know that post integration is so essential because yes, it is one thing. It's already a very, very important thing to learn certain things about yourself. Yeah.

0:26:11.7 Christian Angermayer: To make really important life decisions you might not have been able before to overcome trauma whatsoever. But then in order to not fall back into sort of, let's call it old thinking patterns. Yeah. You need to work on your integration. And neuroplasticity seems to help you perfectly because it gives you this blank slate. So, but our interest is side note. These things are really well designed by whoever designed it for us. Yeah.

0:26:34.3 Paul Austin: God, nature.

0:26:34.7 Christian Angermayer: 'Cause these the... Most likely yeah. Which is maybe the same. Yeah. But it's very important, like sort of the depth of, the spiritual depth of a trip plus this neuroplasticity, I believe really work well together. But what is now, and I'm just again, just a question why I was always very careful with microdosing or what is like what is, if you are in not such a good place. Yeah. And you do now microdosing alone, so you create neuroplasticity. But you're still in your old habits. You're still in your old without the therapy, without the change. Yeah. And that really, again, it's very important.

0:26:38.8 Christian Angermayer: It's an open question, I don't know, but does it make it nevertheless better? So is neuroplasticity alone an improvement? Or does it maybe make it worse because you suddenly create deeper slopes, deeper ranges for your negative thoughts when you're depressive? Like, I don't know, we need to find that out. So definitely I would say that way. Microdosing is very, very interesting. Yeah. Because obviously if we can prove certain things, and then the other question is indeed the regulatory one, but like, first of all, we need to see is it valuable? We really don't know. We know, everything we know 99% of psychedelic science has been done for full, let's call it deep trips.

0:27:49.2 Paul Austin: Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is the technical term.

0:27:52.1 Christian Angermayer: In the '60s as well. So this microdosing is a fairly new idea. Yeah. Worth researching it. Yeah. And once we know more about it, then we can talk about what's the right policy for it.

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0:29:56.3 Paul Austin: What's the relationship I'm gonna keep going between psychedelics and longevity? You're a huge proponent of longevity research and medicine. You, I think you were quoted as saying if you can just live another 15 or 20 years from now, then you could add several healthy decades to your life post a 100.

0:30:12.7 Christian Angermayer: Or a Millennia, Or not a millennia or 100s of years like I really am very optimistic. I do. So first of all, yeah, that's my other big passion.

[overlapping conversation]

0:30:19.1 Paul Austin: I'll add one more thing though. And then what psychedelics teach us of this course Death Rebirth, this experience with God, right? They allow us to experience ego death, which we experience as real death. So there's a just an interesting relationship there about how could that experience help with living till we're 170, 180, what is... Is there a relationship, if any, between those two?

0:30:39.5 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. There is. I think there is, so first of all, it's my other favorite topics. So my two favorite topics are mental health in a broader sense. And obviously they're mostly psychedelics, but we also invest in mental health in other areas from neurodegenerative diseases to brain computer interfaces. And then the other is longevity is really seeing aging as a disease. Actually I'm very proud that one of my colleagues with whom I started a company called Rejuveron, he, professor Manuel Serrano, he found out, or he actually found out is the wrong word, he has shown like in 2013 in a paper which laid the ground literally for the entire sort of longevity industry mission. Yeah. That aging is not one disease. It's actually... He, called it nine hallmarks of aging.

0:31:27.3 Christian Angermayer: It's like nine sort of problems which come up the older we get. And then he enlarged it last year and added three. So it's now the 12 hallmarks of aging. Yeah. And the summary of those, or sort of the visible outcome of these nine respectively 12 problems creates what we as humans then started calling aging. Yeah. And why this was so essential? Because before Manuel did that work, people really believed, some belief there is like a switch and something sort of, if we find that switch, like yeah, we could stop aging at all. And he was like, look, it's not that easy. Like it's actually nine against 12 different diseases. But yes, suddenly even the skeptics were like, okay, but these 12 hallmarks of aging, they are very tangible. This is metabolic dysfunction, stem cell exhaustion, stuff like that.

0:32:17.5 Christian Angermayer: And the assumption is if we can successfully treat all of those issues, then we can slow down or even reverse what we call aging. And by that push, and it's extremely important healthy life expectancy and life expectancy in a very useful state by decades and somewhere maybe by 100s of years. Yeah. And what I deeply believe is that in the next 10 to 20 years, so not that far out, we're gonna have this one magic year where we win in one calendar year more than one year of life expectancy statistically. And from then on, yeah, all that's on because then you sort of win more than you lose per year. So having that and he said that, some people say, Oh, does Christian want to escape death? And isn't death like sort of the restart, whatever.

0:33:06.9 Christian Angermayer: And I think... Those people who say that have not really thought about eternity. Yeah, because I do believe actually, we are eternal souls, and eternity is really long because it's eternal. So it doesn't matter if we live, matter in a good way, if we live 100 years or 500 years, or even if someone lives 5000 years. Yeah. Because at a certain point something will happen that you cease to exist. Yeah. Because even the best medicine, if there is an accident. But go further, even if we live long, long, long, long, long, somewhere in this universe will end and then a new one will be created. There is always an end to something. No, it's like in a spirit of God, because like...

0:33:43.7 Paul Austin: It's very true. It's very true.

0:33:44.4 Christian Angermayer: People can not... I had this one trip, and this was the most beautiful one where I really understood the concept of real eternity. It's really long. And in this eternity, you can have all the opportunities and a year, a 100 years, a 1000 years, that it's all just a blink. Yeah, and sort of what I can tell is that I think this life, and especially by the way this time, I think we're at one of the most interesting times of human history ever. Yeah. Are worth to be lived and are worth to be explored. Yeah, and I have a really big sort of curiosity, where are we going? Yeah.

0:34:27.0 Christian Angermayer: Also, which was also part of the discussion we had, is, if we give, and hopefully it's not an if, but a when we give people the opportunity to live some 100s of years, we need to acknowledge that not everybody wants that. Yeah. But I think it's really a big liberation that we say, hey, it's your life. Yeah? We hopefully, my companies in longevity, Rejuveron and Cambrian, but also others hopefully, and at the end it's the entire biotic industry together, we're hopefully giving people soon the option to live very long. And with that we need to rethink that we need to give people also the allowance to say, that's it, I had enough. By the way I also think we don't even need to wait till an accident somewhere or this universe ends. I deeply believe that somewhere, every human being will say, you know what? I had enough. Yeah, and I wanna see what's next. And we need to allow people to say, oh, I had enough. And maybe some people had enough after a 100 years, maybe some people, like at the moment I would say, oh, I'm gonna go on and go on. But maybe in 500 years I'm like, look, now it's really always the same, let's see what's next. Somewhere it's gonna come, but I wanna give us the option to go on as long as we please, because this life is fucking awesome, yeah.

0:35:39.2 Paul Austin: Thank you. And this even comes back to some... We were talking about religion to open, and traditions and how we perceive death. And in the Bible they would talk about how these, Moses and Abraham would live to 100s of years. And I don't think we need to debate whether that's true or not necessarily, but there's clearly in our mythos, sort of as a human, especially as a western civilization, this sense of, what's it like to live a long time and become even a mythical like figure. Which I think is also really key in this, is like a lot of us are awakening to godhood through plant medicines and then asking, not how do we become God but how could we become as expressed as we want?

0:36:18.3 Christian Angermayer: By the way, it's this extremely important point because what you say, it's true. Most religions have these stories of their forefathers living very, very long. Yeah. Which is interesting because what has happened, again, Christianity was not always the best one. Yeah, because what has happened is, in most religions God or the gods bestow immortality or a very long life to the best, the brightest, the most moral ones, it were always the good people. It was Moses or Abraham, yeah, it was the Greek heroes, the demigods whatsoever. So, immortality or a very long life was associated to be good and a gift. So, it comes in Christianity, who someone by the way decided unfortunately, which is also related, that they really cleansed their own religion from psychedelics because they wanted to become an organization, that it's a good idea to rule people with fear and eternal damnation unless you'll be a very subordinate citizen. And in this context, suddenly living very long was, they painted it as, oh, you wanna escape judgment, because we are judgment, yeah. So it's actually an interesting shift in medieval ages where suddenly the bad people live very long. Dracula lives very long. Demons live very long. Monsters live very long. Yeah. But humans should soon find their judgment and just judgment you will survive or we'll make it with the Catholic church.

0:37:49.0 Christian Angermayer: So that is unfortunately, which is still deeply rooted and I'm always very fascinated how much people are like, oh, no, we shouldn't live forever. And then I'm like, what? It's like, I don't even understand it, but it is really, people are more influenced by these very old, very deep rooted fears religion has put into us, yeah. And we should overcome it and go back where we celebrated a long life.

0:38:16.2 Paul Austin: So COMPASS Pathways and atai, these are two companies that you've been quite influential in. Not only financing, but publicly supporting, amplifying through media, really backing, really believing them, for good reason. And it's been an interesting path these last, I would say, four or five years. I don't remember when COMPASS...

0:38:34.5 Christian Angermayer: 2017.

0:38:35.1 Paul Austin: 2017?

0:38:35.9 Christian Angermayer: Yeah.

0:38:36.2 Paul Austin: Right. So the last six years even I'm curious now that we're in 2023, we're on the cusp of MDMA being ideally medicalized next year, psilocybin soon to follow. In the last, especially, three years as we've hit an economic recession, stock prices have really dipped. What have been some of just the challenges that have come up in, specifically, COMPASS but also atai? Bringing things through clinical trials and a lot of the bureaucracy and the lack of, maybe, financing that's come through. I'm just curious kind of like, yeah, what's been some of the harder or more challenging aspects these last few years?

0:39:14.3 Christian Angermayer: Well, let's start with the good side. The good side is that the Antech clinical work is doing really well. Yeah. Meaning for COMPASS and atai, we're moving forward with our drugs. The results are great, like the COMPASS phase 2B study, COMPASS moved now into phase three, but the same for MAPS. So I think sort of throughout the psychedelic universe, which is, I would say, largely MAPS of MDMA, if you wanna call it a psychedelic, and then COMPASS and atai, because as you know, which I'm very proud of, [chuckle] we can come to that like that, we have the patterns and all of that. So, that isn't reflected in the share prices at all, yeah? So, what is my explanation? Two things, the one is, biotech as a whole is, I don't think it's in trouble because the companies are doing fine, but like the whole... Sort Of the whole, I don't know how much we should go into it economically, but the whole interest rate spiral, or the whole inflation spiraling up and interest rates being risen, whatever.

0:40:06.0 Christian Angermayer: Yeah, it obviously influences the most companies whose cash flows are further out than tomorrow. Yeah, because most models in finance are built on a DCF model, discounted cash flow. So practically, the longer you sort of have to discount, the more the discount factor matters, and the discount factor is related to the interest rates.

0:40:39.6 Christian Angermayer: Yeah, so it was a natural thing that in a rising interest rate environment, biotech stocks would go down, or should go or have to go down. But then what has happened, because biotech is a more closed industry than people think, yeah, it's kind of a, yes, retail was in it, but like, it's at the end, it's kind of a small industry compared to Prototech or whatever. Yeah, sort of while maybe in average, when we come to psychedelics in particular, but in average, maybe the biotech industry should have gone down 30%. Yeah, yeah, and that's it. That would be sort of the mathematical, as long as you can say that that way, like right way. Yeah, always when an industry, and then we also have to admit that biotech started from a very high point, because like after COVID, it was sort of the biotech stocks in generally, again, it's not an industry observation, were very high. So practically, once they started to go down, actually, that became extreme. Like it is always on the stock market, you have hypes and you have depressions.

0:41:33.9 Christian Angermayer: Yeah, and sort of the normal correction, which was sort of warranted because of rising interest rates became way amplified, yeah, by liquidity issues in stocks, da da da which created sort of really like, actually the longest and darkest winter biotech has gone through at least since 20 years. So, but let's turn it around. I'm an eternal optimist. Yeah, this is maybe one in generally, I'm not talking about atai specifically, but in generally, I think, yeah, you get really amazing biotech companies for, how is it in English, a dime on the penny or whatever, or a penny on the dime, or, you know what I want to say, like a very cheap, yeah.

0:42:13.5 Paul Austin: Dime on the dollar.

0:42:13.8 Christian Angermayer: Dime on the dollar, yeah. So it's, I think it's a real, one of maybe the best times ever to invest newly into biotech. So having said that, I think there is a special burden on psychedelic stocks, especially on COMPASS and atai, because at the moment, while I think nobody really disagrees that the probability that these substances will be approved soon is very high. I think even like if you would talk to a pharma CEO, to a scientist, they're all like, look, your data, and by the way, the same is true for MAPS yeah, is really very, very solid, yeah. I mean, to say the least, it's amazing, yeah. Yes, this should be approved, will be approved, whatever.

0:43:02.0 Christian Angermayer: But if COMPASS were to be bought pharma companies and actually most investors, especially opposing downturns, people become very like, oh my God, I don't want to do any novel stuff, like the approval is just one thing, you have to then commercialize it, you have to bring it to the patients, yeah. And there is a lot of skepticism of some big investors and especially of the pharma side, how easy that rollout and commercialization will go. Meaning, it's just different, it's not the typical, oh, pop a pill per day, like go to your pharmacy, as you said, you have to go to a therapist, you have to do work before, whatever, it's just novel. By the way, it's not negative at all, even they don't say it's negative, it's just like different.

0:43:43.5 Paul Austin: It's a new paradigm.

0:43:44.1 Christian Angermayer: It's a new paradigm, and in times like these, people don't like new paradigms, yeah, and are overly negative. I actually have an extremely optimistic view, meaning I think both MAPS and COMPASS with their respective substances, they will positively surprise for one very simple reason, which I think most people who haven't done it or haven't seen loved ones doing it and being helped then can see it like. I have never met a person who was touched by psychedelics who didn't become an advocate. That mustn't mean they go on TV, but an advocate, I mean, you tell your parents, you tell your partner, you tell your best friends because you see how good it is and you want them to be helped as well.

0:44:34.0 Christian Angermayer: So literally, from all the people touched by psychedelic, every single person became an advocate, one in their small circles, others who go on TV and talk about publicly, but you talk about it. Have you ever seen that with Prozac or any SSRI or whatever? No, people don't talk about it because it's shit. So I think pharma companies at the moment and big investors who are skeptical underestimate that bottom-up power and demand. Once these drugs will be approved, people will go to their therapist and say, look, I don't wanna try literally bad stuff before. Why don't we start with it?

0:45:12.1 Paul Austin: Real medicine, give me real medicine.

0:45:14.0 Christian Angermayer: Give me that what my cousin was helped. So the viral effect of that therapy is completely underestimated. Yes, we need to create infrastructure. Yes, we need to create... I'm sorry we need to train therapists, but also therapists wanna be trained because I have spoken to so many therapists who are like, I can't even imagine the frustration they have because it's a little bit like you're an oncologist and you're not allowed to use chemotherapy, although you know it works. So that's the fact. Most therapists, if they're old enough, they maybe used it in the past when it was still available. They know it helped their patients and they can't at the moment. So I don't see at all why this would take overly long. I'm actually optimistic that the rollout success and the rollout speed will surprise everybody positively.

0:46:06.5 Paul Austin: Because there's so much of a groundswell already, so much education...

0:46:10.8 Christian Angermayer: Groundswell therapists are so open for it.

0:46:11.3 Paul Austin: Therapists are open for it, people are talking, I mean, it's all over the place and people know that this old stuff doesn't work. They want the new medicine that's here.

0:46:20.0 Christian Angermayer: But that's, to come back to your question, that's the reason though that pharma and investors alike, sort of, let's call it traditional, they don't like or don't wanna embrace, like is the wrong word, they don't wanna embrace that new paradigm, especially in the downturn. That's what it is, like in downturns. And that's the reason why psychedelic stocks are actually more hurt than normal biotech stocks. But this will change.

0:46:42.8 Paul Austin: Okay, we have like seven minutes left. So a few final questions to touch on. One... We talked about longevity a little bit already, physiologically, is there any relationship between the impact that psychedelics have on the body and certain key hallmarks of longevity? Is there any relationship between BDNF, for example, and longevity or anti-inflammatory, and longevity.

0:47:15.3 Christian Angermayer: So, yeah, I mean we assume, again, it's the same a little bit with microdosing. This is a world where research is at the very beginning. Yeah. But it seems fairly logical. Like if you, but not... Let's not talk about our body first. Let's talk about your brain. Even if we are successful, if when we are successful with  Rejuveron, and others in the field and make our bodies live longer in a healthier state, we want the same for our mind. Yeah. So, and my gut feeling that is not more than a gut feeling. Again, I wanna always make sure like that people, I really try to be in all worlds from the spiritual one, but like when I talk about science, yeah. I actually appreciate the FDA process in terms of let's do clinical studies. I always come back to that and I wanna do the same for the question, can psychedelics prevent maybe neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson, dementia? I personally think yes. But there needs to be much work to be done. I can't say that with the same sort of conviction I have than with depression, because in depression we've done the studies, but I think there is a huge potential, there. Yeah.

0:48:25.5 Christian Angermayer: But let's go even one step beyond, like the one... One of my favorite topics by the way, one of my big beliefs is that we have actually many, let's call it issues, which should be classified a treatable disease, but because every human being has suffered, we sort of kind of accepted it like a fate and not like a thing we can change. One of the biggest one is aging. We're really lobbying at the moment aging in itself and ultimately dying is not a disease. If you go to the FDA and say, Hey, I found something for which counter-fights aging. It's really hard. You need to find much more concrete things. This is why, what I said before, what Manuel did, Manuel Serrano to really define, oh, these are these sub things, yeah, he made them much more concrete. And by that we can sort of read, run trials and say, look, we show that, I don't know, we can, reactivate stem cells and so on. So, but like... But the same problem we have on a conceptual basis with aging, where aging in itself is not, I think we're gonna change that soon with a lot of lobby and bipartisan support, but aging at the moment is not a disease. So is, for example, take loneliness. Yeah. It's... What is it like.

0:49:41.8 Paul Austin: Characterizes depression oftentimes or...

0:49:43.6 Christian Angermayer: Yeah. But like there's, like, there's some people are not depressive. Maybe they get depressive. The question is, are you depressive and this is why...

0:49:51.3 Paul Austin: Chicken and the egg.

0:49:53.2 Christian Angermayer: I'm checking lonely or are you lonely and you become depressive. So, but take, I said it just with Rick, like, I love my parents. Everybody loves his parents. It's not something special to say, but I'm an only child, so I really want them to do well as long as they can. And so, and then I look at some of their friends, whatever, and they sit at home, although they're physically fit, but something changes in older age. And although they have all the time in the world. Yeah. Meaning it's... I always say being old should be like being in high school. You hang out with your friends, you go on trips, like yeah. But instead they sit at home. So is it now society who sends people to old people? So partly, yes. So I think we make mistakes in how we treat old people and we should be much more integrating them. But there is also a point that like, I think even if they have the time and even if they have the opportunity, it's just way harder for older people to make new friends. So we accept that like a fact. If I tell you that, like, I was like, yeah, that's the case. Like, and if or the other way around...

0:50:53.0 Paul Austin: Usually Just at church or you know, a social club or but even then it's...

0:50:56.0 Christian Angermayer: But even then, like people are... So, and all the other way around, if I ask you when did you make your... I mean you young anyway, but if you ask a 50 year old, when did you make your best friend?

0:51:04.1 Paul Austin: College.

0:51:04.6 Christian Angermayer: Most people say in college. Yeah. So why is that? Like why can't a 60 year old or an 80 year old not make a truly deep friendship, which would make the last years much more magical. I do think that is a brain problem. I think this is a dis... Disease sounds so negative. I think this is an issue, we can cure maybe with psychedelics. Yeah. Maybe we can give people back the openness and also the awe for the world. Like, and for other people we had when we were 20, when we were at college and we were like, the world is our oyster and we were sitting like 'till 7:00 AM in the morning around the campfire and we're talking about life and God, I still do that by the way, because I think this is what life is about, but people lose that.

0:51:49.0 Christian Angermayer: And I can't give you a definitive answer why we lose that. Yeah, is it society who makes us lose that? Yeah, is it something happening in our brain which makes us lose that? Is it a combination?

0:52:02.6 Paul Austin: Both.

0:52:02.7 Christian Angermayer: But I think there is... I wanna do, yeah, this is at the beginning. This won't be a company because like again, you need to almost lobby like, and sort of do ground research. But I think there is much more to learn about why we in our brain, not just in our body, are what we are. And then I think my hunch is though that than for many issues like loneliness, psychedelics could be an answer.

0:52:23.3 Paul Austin: Well, and also this kind of what you're speaking to is what I would call a re-indigenizing. So there are these indigenous traditions, the ways that we live for a long time, as we've already talked about in community, around the fire in groups of 25 to 50 to a 100 with elders and chiefteins, right? So there's almost like a push of, with industrialism wiping out a lot of that knowledge and wisdom. How do we start to bring that back? And I think with you, what I love about your approach is you're very technology driven, right? You've talked about this next human agenda, that's coming out. But what I'm also hearing in this is you understand that plants and the intelligence in plants, intelligence in psychedelics, it's a symbiosis between the two. And I'd love for you to just speak about that, right? When we think about the human agenda, we think about human intelligence. But Ayahuasca, psilocybin, Wachuma, even we would... 5-MeO Bufo, it has an intelligence in its own. How can that plant intelligence support our next human agenda, and where we're going with technology.

0:53:27.6 Christian Angermayer: Very good. Very deep questions. Let me think, like slide again. It's not like, how do I... First of all, I think the... In a very broad concept. I think one of the biggest problems of our time, but in generally of humans, is our ego in terms of these feelings separated from other human beings from nature, but equally from technology. We see all of it, like bits and pieces and like, we are not part of it, or that is not part of us. Yeah. And I think that is kind of wrong. I think that all this ways I don't know how to describe it in English, but like I think this is, it's all much more closer and more integrated, maybe like you said on like a mycelium network. Yeah. So and I think it's all influencing in a positive way each other. We need to just look through it. I think, I know a lot of people have fear of technology because it's like changing so much, but it's almost like, I think it's almost like these creative process we're giving now birth to new things. Maybe we are giving as a species birth to AI. Maybe we coexist with it. Yeah. I think there are, yeah. There are many things which sort of are again, problematic because of that divisiveness we're feeling.

0:54:47.5 Christian Angermayer: And which I unfortunately think that's sort of the biggest worry I have is like this divisiveness, which is drastically increasing. Meaning the whole problem of American politics is this divisiveness that people can't find a common ground anymore. Can't... And you don't even need to always find a common ground. You just need to respect that there are other people and they are maybe much closer to you on the one side, but you also have to give them sort of like, let them be and let them have their own views. And everybody's like so hostile. Yeah. Sorry, I'm a little bit drifting off, but I think that's all related. And here, I think for example, psychedelics can also have a huge impact on easing people a, into a new age of technology, which a lot of people are afraid. Yeah. But also easing people into a new or maybe new, like it's not new. Like maybe bringing people again closer together, which doesn't by the way always mean. Yeah. That we believe the same, like people sometimes have had this one question, a podcast, which really stuck with me because it was kind of like, or it was, it wasn't a point, it was an audience where somebody said, oh, you have taken psychedelics that you are spiritual and yet you are a capitalist. Yeah. As if they know it's important 'cause like it shows something, it shows that people think we are uniform and that this person who asked the question believes that psychedelics would make you a certain way or would form you...

0:56:15.6 Paul Austin: A communist.

0:56:16.2 Christian Angermayer: Pardon.

0:56:16.5 Paul Austin: A communist or a socialist or whatever...

0:56:20.0 Christian Angermayer: Or Whatever exactly whatever that person. But by the way, I think it couldn't be further away from the truth. I think we are, in many ways we're the same, but in other things we're different. And I think the difference is the beauty of life. Like I want people to have other views and I want to debate it, and I might even say, I don't agree with you, but I need to accept that there is a human being who has a certain way of looking at things, and I accept it because it's good and I have a different one maybe. So, and I think psychedelics what they really do, they make you aware and learn about yourself and embrace yourself, whatever that is. And in my case, psychedelics really showed me that in this at least life. Yeah. It's my passion and sort of duty, almost like to be an entrepreneur, to create companies who hopefully contribute a little bit to global happiness and wellbeing. Yeah. So that's sort of my, I say my destiny, that sounds so grandiose, but like that's what I feel. This is the right thing for me. And there might be...

0:57:20.4 Paul Austin: Like your Dharma is what the Buddhist would say, right?

0:57:22.0 Christian Angermayer: Yeah, exactly. That's the perfect word for it. Yeah. And there might other people who say, oh, my Dharma is to be a teacher for children in Somalia. And there is not... There is no... It's not a competition whose Dharma is more valuable. It's just, it is like that's, and we should accept that and celebrate that diversity. Yeah. Instead of trying to force people into that uniform math.

0:57:49.6 Paul Austin: We each have a way, the way, as the Dallas would say, the middle way, right? We have a path and where those paths converge is where reality is created. And I'll end with a quote which I think is relevant to this. It's from Edmund O. Wilson. He says, we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology. And I think one of the beautiful parts about psychedelics and plant medicines is they help us to evolve in such a way to hold the complexity of that God-like technology.

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0:58:19.7 Christian Angermayer: That is perfect. I will use that. That is like, it's, I know I knew the, the quote, but it is actually the perfect way to put it. I Love it.

0:58:26.9 Paul Austin: Thank you for joining us for the podcast, Christian.

0:58:28.6 Christian Angermayer: Thank you.

0:58:28.9 Paul Austin: This is a pleasure.

0:58:32.9 Christian Angermayer: Cool.

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0:58:34.6 Paul Austin: Hey, folks, this conversation is bigger than just you or me, so please leave a review or comment so others can find the podcast. This small action matters way more than you can even imagine. You can also go deeper into this episode at thethirdwave.co/podcast, where you'll find full show notes, transcripts, and all the links that were mentioned in this conversation. To get weekly updates from the leading edge of this third wave of psychedelics, sign up for our newsletter at thethirdwave.co/newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram at @thirdwaveishere, or subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/thethirdwave.

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