Caving for Wild Magic with Sean Dunne and Cass Greener

(upbeat music) Welcome to Synchronicity, my guests this week. It's been a long time since we've had guests, huh? That's a normal, no, that's not what I was gonna say. Novel, novel concept. There's the word. My guests today are my good friends, Sean and Cass. You know them from the very eight podcasts. They're documentaries, which are incredible. They're now working with the Marvel team. They're cool people. They're probably my bestest, best friends. They're just great people. If you've had the pleasure of meeting them or getting familiar with them through any of the stuff they put out, you know how cool they are.

They're just solid, solid people. I don't know how else to really say it. This episode, we talk about a bunch of stuff, pretty fun convo, as always with them. They just released a film called Wild Magic, which I had the pleasure of scoring with them over the course of about a few weeks over at my studio here. Really fun project. I am very proud of the music we created for that. It was very collaborative, which is always fun. Really great film. I actually haven't seen the final cut of it. I'm gonna have to go and purchase it myself. Please go and check it out at wildmagic.tv. You know, listen, there's a lot of stuff out there.

I know everything is available now for free if you want it to be, and there's all the streaming services and everything. This is how you support independent filmmakers, artists, creatives. The people we should be giving our money to are people like Sean and Cass. I had the privilege of executive producing another one of their films a few years ago. Just do what you can. It's really money well spent. It allows you to have art like this continue to prosper and thrive. And then who knows? Maybe down the line, bigger studios take note of this and create films that are impactful and moving and not just serving up entertainment on a platform and kind of like force feeding it to you.

So go ahead and check that out at wildmagic.tv. There will be links in the podcast notes. You know, there's podcast notes, right? Whatever tool you use platform you use to subscribe and listen to podcasts, the notes will be there. Go check it out wildmagic.tv. Again, they're just awesome people. Support awesome people. It's generally a good rule to do that in life. I think you will find it pays dividends and it is well worth it. So without further ado, I remember like back in the day when I used to have guests, I think I used to say that all the time without further ado, I don't know why it just became a phrase.

Without further ado, here are my good friends, Sean Dunn and Cass Greener. Enjoy. (upbeat music)

Welcome to my podcast that I never, we never know who's there really gonna be when we're here.

Yeah.

And there's no real like, no one leads them.

No.

So I just had to say that so people know this is synchronicity.

Yeah, totally. No, we keep it conversational with you no matter what.

It's impossible not to I feel like at a certain point. It's like how, there's like an agenda of questions. I was saying the other day I did like a, it's so derelict in the podcasting and there was a period where like, I would write shit down, type things out and like read from it. And actually I think those podcasts were really good, but 90, 95% are just off the cuff. And like, I don't know how not to do that at this point. Like it feels like it would almost be forced to go in with like a pre, you know, written interview type style, although the first five years of my podcast, that's all it was.

It was straight once a week, I interviewed a guest every single time for like five years. And then it, I don't know.

We did the same.

Yeah.

I wonder if it was probably around the same amount of time, but really when pandemics, you probably beat us to the punch on that. When pandemics started coming around, we were like, this is a Sean and Casio. Yeah, what are we, you're literally the only guest we ever have on.

Yeah, 'cause I came, I would just like, fuck the pandemic.

Yeah, you're grandfather then. And we only wanted to do in person. So I was like, all right, Noah's gonna be our only guest for a few years. And we have, I mean, the chronicles of our conversations on our podcast are epic. If you ever wanna go back and listen, Jesus Christ, we cover everything.

I kinda wanna go back and listen, especially during the ketamine nitrous days, like those shit.

Yeah, I mean, like, and it's so weird when, like, we're out at psychedelic science and people like, oh yeah, I know you, oh, I know you through your podcast with Noah and I'm like, I'm sitting there like, what era are you talking about? And then sometimes people have been like, you guys were doing some sort of, you were huffing something and I'm like, oh my God, I'm like, all these memories flood back. I'm like, I forgot we did that. We're like sitting there doing nitrous on a podcast.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, we were.

Holy shit. I mean, once the tanks were around, it was just--

Yeah.

God, those were, but I can't imagine doing that now, by the way, like, it seemed so distant and like, not the time to be doing it, but man, during that period, it was so perfect, like, I couldn't imagine doing anything else back then.

Oh, I feel like nitrous fit that whole scene's life, like a glove, we were all like, oh, of course, the laughing gas is here.

It was so good.

Let's party.

Now Kanye, you know, he went down that whole rabbit hole and kind of affected him in a weird--

Yeah, yeah, I think he's going the way of Steve O. Did you ever see Steve O's, like, when he would film himself? Like, he basically was trying to get through days where he never took a breath of air. Like, he only was breathing nitrous and he's like, he's tunneling holes through his walls into his neighbor's living room and fucking terrorizing his neighbor and, like, his whole apartment, I mean, this place looks pretty messy. Get it, Steve O's place. Holy shit, that is, it's one of the craziest documentaries I've ever seen as Steve O's downfall and they played it on MTV.

He's, he's, I'm not a huge Steve O fan, just 'cause, like, he kind of is, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it.

He's a little tri-hard dork since he's sober.

Yeah, also, I think when people get sober, like, I have no problem with anyone running their life how they want, or getting sober, but I feel like if you try to ram that down, people's throats constantly, it's just, like, save it for someone who really gives a shit. Like, I, that's great, be sober. I'm glad it works for you, I'm glad it saved your life, but, like, not everyone needs to be sober, not everyone needs to follow what worked for you, for you, even doing drugs, the same thing.

I agree.

I just, I don't, I'm not a huge fan of, like, you know, ramming things down people's throats. (laughs)

Absolutely.

Like, it just doesn't, I don't know, and I feel like you definitely got on that, and, you know, those, also, the jackass stuff, like, I liked in the very beginning, but it was never, like, that was never my, like, sense of humor. Not really, like, some of them were really funny, but, like, it wasn't, like, I didn't, like, love that shit. It wasn't, like, that, it wasn't, like, for me.

I did, I loved it.

You know what I loved even more, which immediately preceded it, which doesn't get enough to, Tom Green.

Oh, Tom Green was the best.

Really much more of my style.

Tom Green was great. I mean, like, he was also really talented. I mean, his rapping also is amazing, but he, he was, like, innovative at the time, too, with, like, the interviews he was doing, like, the, just, like, the skits and the weird shit he would do, like, I loved Tom Green. That was, like, one of my first favorite shows on MTV that, like, I really remember. But, yeah, I mean, that, that was a very different vibe than Jackass. There wasn't, like, the physical, violent stuff...

Yeah.

Wasn't, although, you know what I have been watching? There's two things I started watching on YouTube and I'm fucking really hooked.

Uh-oh.

The first is, and they're both, like, kind of demented. The first is the power slapping. Have you seen power slapping?

Holy shit, where someone's face looks like it. It's about to fall off.

Dude, this shit is the craziest sport in air quotes I have ever seen, and I watch all of it. Watch the heavyweights, the super heavyweights, the women.

Oh, man.

Dude, this is, I don't know what it is, but I love it. It's, there's something about, like, I can't look away. And I've just been watching, like, a lot of those clips. I even went to YouTube, I was watching on TikTok. That's how I got served at, and I was like, oh, let me go to YouTube and, like, watch some, like, full videos of it. And it's like, I don't know, there's something about it. It's not really dangerous either. It's not like boxing, it's not like MMA. Like, these people are getting slapped, slapped. They're getting the shit smacked out of them, but, like, for the most part, no one's really getting hurt.

Their ears aren't getting, like, you know, all boxed or anything, but I like that. And then the other thing I've been watching are these caving videos and the caving reenactments.

Oh, are you talking about, like, just slipping down them? - No, well, kind of, but the ones where they go through, like, the really small case. - I can't handle that, I can't handle that. That, that, that engages my anxiety away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people can't watch them, like, claustrophobic.

Holy shit. - I watch, I watch the videos less, but I watch the reenactments of, like, you know, these people went in and then they got pinned and it was crushing their lungs and they couldn't move. I don't know what it is, but I'm, like, hooked on these, like, really dark fucking, I mean, 'cause I would never do, you could offer me any amount of money in the world, I'm not getting in a cave, like, ever. Like, I don't even care if there's a lot of room in the cave, it does not appeal to me, but for some reason, watching reenactments or the actual caving videos of people going these, like, I mean, we're talking about the tiniest, like, this big, like, you know, six inch, seven inch, nine inch spaces, twisting their bodies around.

They don't even know where the fuck they're going.

There's also pockets of gas that make it so you can't breathe.

I saw that.

'Cause I just die from suffocation.

Holy shit.

Even if you're, it's not like a cave, it's just, like, a rock out in the normal woods. Sometimes gas, like, is trapped there, so you really, when you're, like, looking for shelter in the woods, you really almost don't even wanna go under a rock.

Yeah, yeah, it's fucked up. Otherwise, wouldn't there be animals in there?

Usually, that's a good sign if animals are somewhere, it's, like, safe, at least, in terms of environmental stuff, but there was, like, a cave rave. I think it was, I forget where it was, I think it was in the US somewhere, but they'd have this rave under, in this old bunker, in, like, a cave, and there was one narrow entrance and exit, and they brought generators down there.

Oh, my God.

Which is, like, already your idiots, but then, because they didn't want the noise going up to the street, they fucking sealed off the air vent. And so, like, of course, people start passing out no one died, which is amazing, but people, like, obviously started passing out, and then, there was, like, a stampede to get out of this place. There's one narrow place where you have to crawl up to get out of this place, like, no one died, but it was like--

Oh, shit, I was like, damn, what are you doing? Like, who wants, I also don't understand, like, what rush need that feeds for people, which is why I think I like watching it, 'cause it's just so foreign to me, like, why people would do this, like, I understand, like, hiking, or, like, even, like, Everest. I mean, I would never do that, but, like, I understand, like, the conquering in some ways of nature, but, like, caving is, like, it's crazy what these fucking people do.

Real cavemen.

Real cavemen, like, just insanity. So, that's what I've been watching. I don't know why, I just, there's something that has been piquing my interest about that type of shit.

Is there something you're trying to say, Cass? You keep looking at your phone and then looking at me and--

How dare you?

How dare you?

No, you do, like, look, if there's something we--

No, not, absolutely not.

Put this a little closer.

Absolutely not.

There we go. That's good.

What do you guys think about this mom, Donny guy? You like him?

I don't know enough about him.

I'm psyched about him.

I hate him.

I'm psyched he's doing, I'm psyched that he seems to have like a Bernie type ideas and that it's becoming popular. I think he's making some weird missteps here and there already that it's like--

I think he's flocked, but I mean--

Yeah.

When I first heard it, I was like, okay, this is interesting, you know, there's some interesting ideas, but then the more policy stuff he puts out, I'm like, all right, guy, I mean, like-- Also, like, there's just very weird statements he makes. Like, I am not someone who's like fundamentally opposed on some moral level of like taxing the wealthy. I don't think that's the worst idea. I don't think it's as effective as people would want to think it is, but he did make like comments like, we're gonna tax the rich white neighborhoods. Like, why do you gotta say the white part? Like, there's gonna start losing people really with that.

Why say that?

If we're fighting a class war, why are you making it about identity? Like, that's what I don't understand.

I think right now, he's just gonna be targeted for every misstep in semantics possible, and I think we should have necessarily--

No, he's putting it out there.

Focusing on those sort of things. And taxing the wealthy is what, when people think of America being great, it was when there was a tax code that taxed the wealthy. And so, I think everything that people want to happen could be pretty simply solved. And if we're in a, this, where we're like, oh, well, rich people are gonna leave New York City, it's like good, let them leave New York City.

Yeah.

This should be a city for the people where people can afford to live there.

Like, we would have never left New York City if we didn't get priced out.

I mean, most people.

Like, we were, you saw our situation where we were like, we are more than content being childless, elderly people in the same apartment, if we could have, but then they raised your rent, like $1,500 a month, and they're like, oh, they're trying to push out the artist class.

Yeah, yeah.

They're trying to, they're not even trying to push out the artist class, they don't care who's in there, they just want as much money as possible. And I do like the idea of having grocery stores run by communities, and I like the idea of freezing rent, and I like the idea of raising the minimum wage. And these are really good ideas that, yeah, we can nitpick about how he says it, and oh, he's targeting white people or whatever, but that's just fear-mongering over policies that will help white people, brown people, and all people that aren't of a certain class. And these are the people who have a lot of money, this is there, they have two homes or whatever, it's like, make them stay in a hotel when they come to New York City, I don't care.

Yeah, I watched a really good documentary at this upstate star cinema called The Drop Dead City, which was about the fiscal crisis in the '70s in New York. And I didn't know, like, before that happened that New York was incredibly progressive with like one of the strongest social support systems ever, like free college education for every resident of the city, like really, really good stuff. But since that point, because it really fucked up the city, like it was like they arguably never recovered, like New York never got back to what it was before that. It turned into this like mega capitalist kind of like corporate run place, which I think anyone who's lived in the city for any significant period of time knows sucks, like the banks that are everywhere, the corners that now look like strip malls, like it sucks, that's not what you want.

Well, there's also a lot of foreign owned real estate.

A ton, I mean, an absurd amount.

An empty real estate.

So much empty real estate. There are a lot of problems with New York City. I think no one person is ever gonna be able to solve those. I think there are aspects of his policies that are good. I think, unfortunately, the messenger of those policies matters a tremendous amount. And I think what's really gonna kill him more than anything, and I didn't know this, but New York City has the largest population of Jews outside of Tel Aviv in the entire world. Listen, you're allowed to support Palestine. I know lots of people who do. I don't have a problem with that. We can even disagree about what is going on and what is right and what is wrong.

But if you can't just say like, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't say globalize the Intifada. Just because you know what that means to a large subset of your constituents, you don't wanna win. And that to me is like kind of where I feel like he won with a very small percentage of people who came out and voted in that primary. No one likes Eric Adams, like he's a tool. No one likes Cuomo, he's a creep and a goon. But I feel like this dude had an opportunity if he really wanted to change New York. And it just involves like toning back some of the rhetoric. And that to me is like, I don't understand that.

He's gonna tone it so far back that we'll be talking about a different person in November. I trust me on that and that breaks my heart because I'm like, hey, it's kind of cool that there's a radical in there. And I'm of the belief system that is like, electoral politics ain't how we're gonna fucking do this. That you're never gonna take the systems that they invented and implemented, the powerful invented and implemented to stay powerful. You're never gonna be able to use them to take down the powerful and the systems that are oppressing us. It's just not in the design of how it works. And people don't wanna really get hip to how it works.

And how we got everything that's nice right now was from withholding our labor. And that ain't fucking fun. People don't do it anymore. People don't do it anymore. People don't consider that anymore. But we're watching the new Adam Curtis documentary, Shifty. It's five part documentary. Like he did hyper normalization, which I think starts talking about New York City switching their banking system. That's what's like the impetus for these eight episodes of like, hey, here's it when the world fucking really fell under the spell that it's under right now. But it's very interesting. We're only on part one of this.

But just showing how the crumbling facade of the British Empire and the myth kind of being exposed as bunk that the British Empire was something special. And so it starts, it's like in the late '70s, early '80s, and it's just showing all this just creepy lifestyle stuff. 'Cause all Adam Curtis does is he just takes the BBC archives of footage that they've collected over the years and he just recontextualizes it. And it's so brilliantly done. Like it just pulls you under this spell of just like, damn, wow, but there was something in there that like they're showing the coal miners go on strike. And it's scary and it's violent.

And it's like, well, that's how it was. And that's what we did here. That's what they did in West Virginia. Harlan County, a great documentary. Remember that one? You know, like people, you got to stand up and you got to organize and get, sure, vote and vote for the best, most progressive. But that's where people stop. Yes. And I think that's what has become our problem is like our electoral politics and our obsession with politics has placated us from just making the new paradigm. Just, you know, I always say that's the only way to subvert the dominant paradigms is just fucking create something way cooler.

And we just were at psychedelic science. We're in that bubble of 60,000 heads. Like people like us from all over the world. You don't hear a word about electoral politics. You didn't hear the word Trump once in a week. What do they care? We're building something new. It's illegal. It's illegal and we're all here. And we're not scared of the cops, bring it. No, especially not in Colorado. No, it's the perfect place to do it. It really is. But like Paul Stamets was saying, he's like, we used to have these conferences. And the whole thing would be, would just be under this vibe that the cops could be running in here at any time and just shut us down and arrest us and look at us now.

Chillin.

Chillin.

Yeah.

Five, seven thousand people in a keynote address where he's talking about this stuff.

Yeah.

So powerful.

Yeah, he watched our movie, Wild Magic.

Oh, cool.

Dude, it was the honor of it. Like I told him, I was like, this is the best thing that's happened to our movie so far.

That's so cool.

Like we're just getting this movie out there, but like you came to our screening and sat through the whole thing and was like, good movie, good movie. That's the quote from him.

Good movie, good movie.

That's really awesome.

Yeah.

Paul's such a cool guy.

Yeah. - Like he's like really, really like tuned in to like some of, also tuned in in a way and also like spearheads a lot of like the innovative thinking. I mean, no surprise, he's Mr. Mushroom. Like it's like, of course he's gonna have some like

But for him to still be on the bleeding edge in a conference like that where everyone is pushing things further and he gets up there to end the conference and takes it so much further than anybody dares go.

What was he saying? What were some things he was saying?

Man, he's just like, well first of all, he's saying, like, hey, there's some native populations that should be the only ones that have access to these certain mushrooms.

Yeah.

Like just kind of going out on a limb in a way that I'm like, oh, I never really thought like that. And man, I highly recommend looking into that keynote speech if I can't like really surmise it right now. But I remember afterwards, I was talking to Dennis McKenna, which was in honor of a lifetime. And he was like, 'cause he had to then do a speech after.

He's a hard guy.

He's a hard guy.

He's a hard guy. And I said, you're saying that, man. He's like, yeah. He's like, I've always known that about Paul.

Yeah.

He's not somebody you wanna follow at one of these things.

No.

Very charismatic, unbelievably, just magnetic speaker.

Yes.

And will you fall under his spell? And I mean, he just took us through the whole history of just like, the migration of people and mushrooms and what they do. And like, you know, he's basically showing evidence that mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, are so much more effective in treating depression and mental illness than any medication that pharmaceuticals are offering.

Yeah, I believe it. Then it gets into that murky territory of trying to like, make the mushrooms medicine in like a clinical sense, which I think is fraught with peril, just because to try to commodify those is like exactly what they're not intended for.

Yes.

And it's like, how do you navigate that? 'Cause you know they're really good medicine, you know they're really helpful, but they just are not gonna be caged in into like a pill that you take on a regular basis.

Yeah, yes, exactly. And they don't want to be.

No, then they won't be. And if people try to do it, it's not gonna end up with positive results more often than not. It's a really interesting, some things you just can't put boxes around as much as you would like to try.

Some things you can't explain.

Yeah.

And I think he even thinks that and says that.

Yeah.

That's what's so cool.

I mean, he's really talking about how it helps with depression.

Yeah, it does.

You know, and he cites a bunch of articles and I think what's really cool about what Paul says is he's also telling people, he's on the bleeding edge of how to grow these mushrooms and new ways in which to have the mycelial networks encouraged and prefer them to prosper by these low tones. And do you remember this part from the "Wild Magic" movie?

Yes, yes.

We have a guy who's playing the didgeridoo talking about creating a healing forest and he actually mentions Paul Stamets' low tones and he's doing the didgeridoo and drums and he has--

They're feeding like a grandmother tree and just playing music to it and playing the didgeridoo. And then he said, "We learned this from Paul Stamets "that if you stimulate just even this one tree, "it lights up the whole mycelial network "and it helps it grow."

I texted him like, "Paul Stamets is about to watch the movie."

Ah, that's so cool.

And he was like, "Tell him that the mushrooms grew "thirty fold or whatever, like just in this 30 day period "or whatever, he had some crazy stat "about what had happened after they had done that." But in the movie, he talks about how people who have been in the presence of him doing these healing ceremonies with these grandmother trees have had personal healing themselves.

What we would describe as miracles.

Right.

And he's like, "Look, I don't know how to describe this. "What I think is happening is that the forest hears our call "and it's saying, I can help you with that."

Yeah.

And it sends off the energy that we need.

When we take care of the forest, the forest takes care of us.

For sure.

It's something we, I don't know, it's something that we've now kind of created just part of our practice is like going and loving on the trees and essaying our prayers to the trees and spending time in the forest.

We each have our own tree. Like, well, first of all, we've become literal tree huggers.

Of course, natural huggers.

Which started on drugs, which felt so, it feels so alive and good.

I've done that.

And then, but it continues when we're not on drugs and like Cass has a tree that she goes and prays to and I have a tree I go and pray to. And it's cool to kind of have this like living altar in the forest and like, I don't know, I just think that this tree is a living thing and it's like, it's it's own ecosystem. So why not go and honor it and say like, hey, thanks and by the way, if you could help us get money.

The money tree, you're giving tree.

It's shaking loose some money for us.

I'm sure it has, I mean, trees mythologically are embedded in like almost every culture, right?

Tree of life, like there's so many, so many allusions to it in like every single culture because it's such a good metaphor for so many things but also just actually being out in nature with trees. Like, listen, trees literally keep us alive even outside of like their magical mystical properties. Like they actually produce the oxygen we need and take in the night like they take in stuff that hurts us. So it's like, we would literally not have an atmosphere without them, like that is an important thing to remember. And I think because we don't have like, because they work in such a different modality, like that we just kind of take them for granted or think that like they're not living or they just don't have like communicative properties.

But if you really think about it, there is a major relationship between people and trees and we just forget. I mean, I think that's why certain places where there's not a lot of trees, it just, it feels so desolate and barren and horrible. Like Berlin, I noticed that was one, Berlin just has like kind of like for a place that's been war turned in like a lot of negative history. There's a ton of trees everywhere and there's a vibe walking through an urban area where there's trees on every corner and block that makes it feel so much nicer than if you're just walking through some area and maybe there's a tree like every 20 blocks or something.

It's just, it does something for you psychologically and the converse is true too. Like when there's not trees, it just it affects your mood negatively. It's just like it's really kind of like this hopeless idea. And I don't think we consciously think about that too much, but subconsciously, we're always processing like the need for nature and things around us that connect us to that, which it's so easy to forget. It's a super simple studies where it's like they've taken two conference rooms and it's like one conference room has a plant in it and the other one doesn't in the room with the plant.

It's like there was like so many more ideas generated.

Whoa, really?

I believe that.

That's so cool. Well, to me, as even we're talking about this, I'm like fractal wise, like what's the human form of this? It's making friends.

Totally. You're creating branches, family trees, we say.

Yeah.

Around my serial network.

Yeah. - Totally.

And what do they do? They provide you life, they provide you shade, they provide you shelter, they, you know.

My mom has been having a really hard time and I just keep thinking, I'm like, she just moved back to New York. It's good 'cause she has some friends, but I'm like, the same problem persists. You need to build your community. You need to not feel alone, because when you feel alone, you feel helpless under the weight of all this.

Shit.

Shit, you know, and you don't see, I'm like, mom, you gotta pay attention to the helpers. You gotta contribute, you gotta just be part of that. You need people and friends. And I was so sick the other day. We came back from this conference with the flu.

What flu?

Yeah.

And we have this weekly film club, and for this film club, we ended up doing wild magic, talk about the movie we just released.

Yeah.

And we had, it was incredible. But I literally, for the hour, I had been in the fetal position with the chills and aches all day, and blowing my nose non-stop.

Couldn't talk.

Couldn't talk. And then I got on this call, and I just, I guess maybe all the adrenaline, or whatever. - Yes.

But I think it was more just like, the community support. Like, honestly, just like being connected to people, maybe took my mind off my own story of I'm sick until like, oh, here I am, and I'm showing up. And it kind of that, it was like a really cool experience.

And if you notice, we didn't get sick until we took ourself away from the community.

Yeah. - It's when we came back, and we were alone in our house again, that it just hit us. - That used to come.

Yeah. - Which is interesting.

Well, I just wanna say, Noah, I've watched this movie now hundreds of times, and every time I watch it, I love the score more.

Oh, good. Thank you for doing that, man.

Noah, you guys, Noah killed it.

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that.

Yeah. Yeah, I gotta watch it again. I mean, I feel like after the last time we were together doing it, I haven't really.

Yeah, you gotta sing with the color correct.

Yeah, I have to see it in its final form. I really want to. Yeah, I mean, it was an amazing privilege to work on that too, and seeing kind of the evolution. 'Cause like, I got to see it evolve just even in those like two, three week period.

Yeah. - Like so much from where it was. - Yeah.

And I saw in even one of the trailers, like someone I hadn't seen that in the film. So like, I know there's been some other additions and edits in it. I mean, everyone should see it. It's like a really, really, really well-made movie, but also topically, it's like you don't see films like that because there's like A, commercially, there's no one saying, hey, we have a demand for a movie like Wild Magic. So they're not getting greenlit at major studios. Like there's no, even passion projects for like indie studios wouldn't focus on this as a topic because it's nuanced and it's subtle, which is like not, we're in the age of Marvel movies.

That's not what they are. So it's like, it's really fucking well done. And it's really interesting. And it's also not like a movie that tells you what to think about what you're watching, which I think people need more of that because so many films these days literally grab you by the hand and like force you down a narrative like plot. And it's just like, that's fine. Some people want like, I love that shit as much as anyone. I'm watching the fucking Gilded Age, right? It's like a soap opera, a period piece soap opera. And I love it, but sometimes you want to be able to think about something as you're watching it or either after and like be like, oh, like this is something that I actually have to like marinate with and figure out like what is going on here and also how to create or encounter that wild magic in your own life, which I think everyone needs that.

It's an antidote for where we are right now as a society. And everyone is in it. There's no real, like there's, yes, maybe an infinitesimal part of the population who was like off the grid and like not plugged into the matrix or whatever. But that really like even those people have like Starlink or something that's connecting them to the world at large. So like you need something to be able to like pull you away from that for a second just to remind you that there is other stuff going on in the world because that alone can recharge your batteries.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, everyone needs it.

That's why we make cinema because I think it's the most powerful artistic medium because it's a sensory experience on every level. And I think what's happened with the studios is like, they used to give us stuff that was nuanced and awesome. It's why we mainly watch movies from like 70s, 80s, 90s. That was a sweet spot. But now because you're beholden to shareholders and profits and all of this stuff, what you're gonna get from the studios is lowest common denominator. They're gonna hold your hand through experiences. You're not gonna create those connections for yourself that make you feel enriched and like you just watched some cinematic nutrition.

So it's really incumbent on the independent artists and independent voices in cinema to fill in the blanks and show people like, no, there's still a lot here. And we still trust our audience and we trust you. And the irony is this film was funded by Marvel.

Yeah.

Really like our friends that work for Marvel gave us the money to make this movie. And then now we've gotten hired by Marvel a few times and which is awesome. But it's just, it's so of just completely black and white, just different worlds. Like we are operating in a whole different way of seeing things where we trust the audience. And that's what the studios are never gonna, you're never gonna go to the movies and see that anymore. Like somebody that trusts you. You know what our film club movie was this week? I'm not sure if you've ever seen "The Tree of Life" by Terence Malick.

No, I want to though I heard good things.

Dude, I mean, I don't know if there'll ever be another movie like it. And I don't know how something like that would exist now. But it never, it really trusts your ability to put two and two together because it never settles into any kind of expositional anything.

There's Brad Pitt in that?

Yeah, Brad Pitt.

I never saw it, I want to see that.

Dude, I highly recommend.

Oh, I'll grab it, I need some plain stuff.

It's just a flow of a movie. And it's basically, you know, it's a traumatized, older man just like remembering his childhood. And the way that they do the film, the cinematic style, is like just this flowing wide angle lens on like a suburban upbringing. And it never settles. It just never, it's just a flowing two and a half hour montage.

The birth of the universe in the middle of it.

Yes, which if you, the best sequence I've ever seen depicted. - Really?

The Big Bang, the universe, earth forming. Volcanoes erupting, the dinosaurs are here. Like, and it's all to, 'cause the central plot of the film is, and it's right away. This isn't a spoiler, this family loses a child. And it is such a tragedy in this life. As somebody, like I lost my sister, my parents lost a child. The only way to explain it is to start at the beginning. The only way to explain, let's start at the very beginning and show how brutal this place is, to begin with.

'Cause it goes through a family's questioning of like, why, or like, yeah, who's out there?

It's very interesting. So, I just, I finished, I'm a huge Ron Churnell fan. He does the biographies, like he did Hamilton, Washington. Grant, a lot of like luminaries, especially for American, but he just wrote a book on Mark Twain. It was like 45 hours. I listened to the whole thing.

Whoa.

Talk about tragedy, talk about how you are someone who will get beaten down so much by life that you actually lose any sort of compassion or connection to the divine, like he was not a fan of God. He thought that God was cruel, that he thought how could a benevolent or kind creator subject his creations to non-stop suffering. I mean, his brother died in a freak accident when he was young, got crushed by a tree, his eldest daughter died, his youngest daughter ends up dying, his wife died, like everyone died in his life.

This is his name, Joe, but.

Basically, I mean, that's kind of what he was left with. And, you know, it was humorous, especially for the first two thirds of his career. And he was really shaped by this non-stop barrage of not only death, but illness. Like non-stop illness is his youngest was epileptic. Like it was just like really, really, really tough for him. And it was interesting to see like, you know, some people will be like, well, that just can deepen your appreciation for the life in the world. But for him, you know, he viewed death as like a sweet release from like mortality just because his life was so fucking tragic.

I mean, I remember just listening to this book and like once in a while I'd have like, my sister would be in my car and my dad and I'd be listening. And like, I realized how bad his life was because just that these like intermittent parts where they'd be in my car listening, someone was dying or someone was getting sick. I'm like, shit, this is happening like every fucking day for this guy. It was brutal. I mean, it's a great book. It's actually probably my least favorite of Turnout's books, but like really interesting, 'cause I didn't know a ton about Twain, but God, that dude's life, man.

How about I have to get into this?

Fluster fuck, like.

Damn.

Shit.

And did he ever come out the other end?

No, not really, I mean, he didn't. Like he got more dismissive of religion. He got more dismissive of not just organized religion, but just the concept of like a benevolent creator. He just didn't, he couldn't find any reason why that would be the case. And I mean, you look at his life and it's not hard to understand why. Like it really was very, very tragic. I mean, he's a brilliant guy. Like autodidact in so many ways. Like just so many things that he did, he was brilliant in it. But yeah, he didn't really find that connection to the divine in a way that you would hope someone was. But I mean, he was like also just like, he founded essentially modern copyright law.

Like he, he was a genius in so many different ways, but yeah, man, he did not, he was not religious in any sense of the word and just did not think that the God or divinity was, he was really into dreams. He felt that dreams were some portal to some mystical aspect of life. He felt that this life could even be a dream. So he was, he was into a lot of interesting like mystical like theosophical stuff at certain points and like self-healing, but in terms of like a benevolent creator, man, no, he just did not.

I mean, it's tough.

I can only imagine, you know.

Do you guys think this life is a dream? Sometimes I do. I mean, sometimes I remember it is. And then I forget. And then I remember.

I definitely do. I mean, dream being like.

Maybe it's not the right word.

Yeah, it's in the way it functions, right? Because there are more like concretized rules to it. In that sense, it doesn't feel dreamlike sometimes. But you know, when you pierce the veil enough and you realize that the rules that you think are in place aren't really functioning the way that we probably perceive them to be, yeah. It's much more like going to sleep and having this experience. And when you're in a dream and you feel like it's real and then you wake up and you're like, oh, it wasn't real. Like that's probably what I think happens when you die. Like you'll be like, oh shit, I thought that was the realest thing ever.

Yeah.

It would. Like there's another thing here. So I mean, in that sense, I intuitively feel like that. But, you know, you have to be responsible in engaging ideas like that because I think some people can just completely take that the wrong way and think there's no responsibilities or obligations in this world 'cause it's not real.

Or maybe there's more because maybe consciousness, there is no, I personally believe that there's not sweet relief in the way that we think that it's like we're in a churn and that this energy doesn't go anywhere and it's not destroyed. So we're in this churn of our karmic predicament and what we do and how we are. And that, okay, you might not be in the life that you were in for a long time and you may not remember the life from before, but you just kind of were spit back out into a life. I don't know. I feel like it's optimistic to think that there's sweet relief with death.

Yeah, I don't know that it's, although I do like the quote from Ramdasa, which he was quoting a manual who disembodied friend where he said dying is like taking off an old shoe.

I love that. - I always really like that. 'Cause there's something that rings true about it and there's something about that metaphor that's just very easy to understand.

And it's comforting.

It is comforting, which I think people want ideas around death and dying to be comforting because it is such an unknown scary thing for the majority of people. I also think though, maybe not in the conscious sense, but there is choice to come back. Like being propelled by karma is an aspect of it, but I don't think we're forced to do that. I think that there is a choice that is made at some on some level that propels us back into the cyclic existence of like living life as a human or otherwise. Like I do think that that's more of like something we take on and ascent to that rather than like the Nietzschean idea of just being propelled into this cyclical like hell realm that you can't escape.

That never made sense to me. Just because of our experiences of life and suffering, that's not really how it works. It's not like, I mean, most people's experience through life isn't that like suffering has no benefits to it. There's plenty of insights and nuggets of wisdom to be gained going through difficult experiences, at least my experience of it. So it's hard for me to think that there's no it's pointless or like it's just some torture from like a demon God who is somehow like taking control of us, but I don't know. You never know.

That's where I think life is but a dream in that way because dreams are, I mean, you come out of it and you can think back and you're like, what was that? It was a bunch of symbols.

It was a bunch of proxies for things that probably are very important for your soul's development. Life is filled with those things that we kind of have to blunt our senses from overwhelming us with. But I mean, look, I mean, we've all experienced it but how many times have you gone through one of those days where you're just like, the synchronicities are just fucking overwhelming. The conversations are so lit and everything is like, just, oh my God, the perfection of it all. Well, the perfection of it all is unfolding all the time. You know, I think we convince ourselves otherwise we might be able to like mark twain our brains a little bit.

Yes, yes, yes.

But, you know, and then there's the opposite, you know, the people that kind of like, you get wasted on the dream and you're like literally just kind of like exclusively swimming in mystic seas all the time and it makes it hard to function and we hospitalize those people, we medicate them.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot that we don't but, you know, like it's really crazy too, we have a guy in the film that talks about a near death experience and it's weird because the way we made this film is we'd be like, oh, it would be really nice if we got somebody speaking in tongues or a near death experience and then the next person we meet would naturally go there, we wouldn't even bring it up. And like this guy, he does talk about what you're saying, like he slipped and he fell and he went into another dimension and joined the angels, life review the whole thing but he did say at some point, he decided to come back and one second had gone by in human time, he had spent what felt like months, years of lifetimes with the angels and but it was very much his decision, I think, to retain the story of Ben in that body and come back and those, I mean, I don't know, talk about YouTube rabbit holes.

Yes, they're one of the most addictive things, like they never lost on me.

No, they're, it's the coolest shit. I mean, forget the guy's name, the doctor, I had him on the podcast, I can't believe I can't remember it but he was the doctor.

Even Alexander?

Even Alexander, yes, had him on the podcast, he was a really cool guy, particularly cool because he was a doctor who specialized studying the brain so he was able to clinically and scientifically break down what should have happened, he got bacterial meningitis, I believe it was, where it literally affects the cognitive aspects of the brains where you should, brain where you should not be having these experiences, that part of the brain is shut down, there should be no activity and yet he had these magical mystical like tours of reality in the universe but was able to come back and speak about them in a very eloquent way because he understood the physiology behind what was happening to him but yet had experienced all of these crazy things and yeah, NDEs are fascinating, I think, especially when there's so much overlap in terms of the experiences that people have, it's almost like, you know, some people will say, well, there's an inherent bias in that and maybe someone heard something about it so that's what they experienced but this is all throughout culture that people have these things and it's just, there's something beyond the threshold of death, the question is how much of that can we understand and how much of it should we understand?

That's what I was gonna say.

What's the functional aspect of that?

Of understanding that, of understanding and inevitability for all of us, every single thing that we know here will die.

Which is bizarre to me that there's these people like Brian Johnson or whoever who wanna live forever who wanna live, freeze their, or digitize their consciousness and like, what are you, what are you doing?

Well, you're just showing us how really scared you are.

Of course, at the end of the day, but like,

I'm more scared to live forever.

Yeah, who would want to? I've got really into the reboot of Doctor Who recently, I hadn't seen any of the new ones. I used to watch the old ones when I was a kid. I'm plowing through them on like season nine now and you know, Doctor Who at this stage is like 12, 13, 1400 years old and he can travel through time. So like there's lots of, you know, unique aspects of living a life like that that he gets experience, but I mean, the truth is, everyone you know is going to die. You're going to outlive every single person or relationship you come across. Like it's not some wonderful existence that you get to like, magically like, oh, I'm gonna go, it's kind of sad.

And like, it's very desolate and alone. So this idea that somehow we would want, I understand maybe if you want to extend your life, if you're living a great life, like maybe, you know, my kids, kids will live to 120, 130, 140. I get that extending a very nice life, but like wanting to infinitely exist. I don't understand.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess you just don't want to die so much that you think that that is somehow a better alternative, but.

I'm so curious. This is the only thing that keeps me sane. It's just being like, I'm curious. I'm very curious what happens when you transition. And I just hope that I can keep the wherewithal to like have a nice bit of wonderment as I'm passing over and not like a resistance and fear.

It's also so big and makes my stomach drop out when I really go there thinking about everything we just said about the inevitability of everything and everyone dying. It's so big that it forces me into my real religion, which is occupy the moment right here and right now. This is what we have and it is eternal, weirdly. Like it feels like when you really get good at occupying the moment, you're tapping into a form of eternity that is manageable for the human existence. And you know, like the more and more practices you have that kind of marry you to this very moment and land you in this moment fully as yourself.

Like that's what a good life kind of is made of, I think. You know, in a really practical way. I think that the people that have the best lives have figured out hacks on how to be very present and how to show up for it. And because like especially, you'll watch this movie Tree of Life.

Yeah, yeah. - It's three young boys. You're raising three young boys. It's terrifying. It's fucking terrifying to watch, you know, what the world does to people. And like, you know, the Brad Pitt character is like, it breaks your heart because like he starts off as this dreamer and then like, you know, his kids are growing up and he becomes this strict, stern dad. And you kind of like, you're like, oh, it breaks your heart for the kids, but you see why he has to be like that. And like, you know, I don't know what kind of dad you are, but I think you're pretty soft and sweet and like playful your place.

You let your kids fuck up your house.

I do let them fuck up the house.

No, I would not allow for that. But because you can't go through life like that and like, just seeing him try to impart lessons on these kids that make no sense to me as an adult. You know, he's saying, there's a line here. I know you can't, it's an invisible line, which is a property line. And he's saying, you can't cross that. Just weird little moments like that where you're trying to impart on a kid what the adult world is and how brutal and harsh and segmented and it is, it, it, uh...

Well, it's like kind of, it shows the, the coming of a person of like, how you come into consciousness, how you like, learn these different boundaries. And it's not in these huge moments. And these, it's these little moments that happen that form who you become and how you see the world and what the world even is to you.

Yeah. And the way that he taps in to flow state and eternity is through playing music. And it's his only solace in this crazy world where he has to go off to an industrial job that's brutal, that you can get fired from that, you know, like just this world that's like trying to fucking just chew you up and spit you out, there are, there is solace and it's in art and it's in friendship, it's in making music, it's in dancing that has been the huge revelation of my adult life is when you're dancing with your friends, you are living peak human existence. It does not get better than that.

No.

Maybe the sexual connection you have with your soulmate.

Sure.

But it's the same thing.

It's also usually shorter.

Yeah, it's way shorter.

Yeah, I could dance all night.

I could dance for a few hours and I'm not fucking for you hours. You've never been that too.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the limit of your life appreciated as a woman.

Yeah.

I realized that too.

The guy wanted to fuck all night, I'd be like, "Jesus Christ."

Yeah, I think even in guys' heads, that's like sounds like such an amazing thing. But also like, I know for myself, like anytime it extends past like a reasonable period of time in my mind, I'm like, "I'm done."

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And this does not need to be going all night long. I can only imagine for the women what it feels like after you're done and it's still going on.

Yeah, but dancing. And especially dancing with your friends, like it's so, like we have so many friends. When I think back of my best memories with a lot of them, it's when we all shut the fuck up and I turned up the music and we got lost in it. And it felt like we all occupied infinity together for a minute.

Absolutely.

Or an hour or whatever.

Well, for sure. I mean, I've been in many experiences with you guys where that happens.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We used to call it shaman time.

Yes, yes, yes.

There's no real experience like it because it just completely, it pulls you into that eternal now, which is the only real thing. We forget that because we're always projecting into the future or living in the past. But like, that's our only experience is of the now.

Yeah.

That's all we got, even in dream world. That's all we're getting, like, even if you're aware of more, that's what you're living through. So anything that focuses your attention on that, I view as typically a positive and not anything. I mean, listen, you could be pulled into the moment by torture, which not great, but like a lot of things that pull you into the moment are positive experiences. And I think that's where we can understand ourselves and reality better than just trying to like logically figure out what is going on. And when it's just hard to come up with reasonable or satisfying answers like that, it just doesn't seem, at least for me, it doesn't seem to work.

We have a friend that's really currently struggling with being in the moment and being in the moment with us. And it's a lot of her projecting out into her future and then join me in this.

Yeah, yeah.

And we join her in it and we're rendering it out and trying to, and like all we're trying to do is like bring it back into that moment, but it's, you know, and it's based on it and she'll say, it's just like, I'm scared, I'm scared. And it's just like, oh, well, homie, we all are. That's why I don't spend too much time thinking about that. Like, all I can do, and this is where I spend enough time with a person like that and you start to be like, all right, well, here's the new prescription. If you fucking can't handle, you have to make art now every day. I'm making you make art. If you wanna be my friend, if you wanna have this access, you gotta make art because it's the only thing that has made my life grounded in the moment, not have me fixated on money and relationships and oh God, what if, what if, yeah, all your worst fears can and will come true.

But like, why would you wanna live in the hellscape and bring that all now? It's too much to bring into now. The now is like very spacious and real and you know, we're here, we're here for each other. So it's very interesting to kind of like, and we've all been there, but to be with somebody who's just very currently struggling with being in the moment because they're fixated on their fears about the future. And look, we've all struggled with that. I relate with it so much. That's why I can even have the advice of like, start making a daily art practice. And by art practice, I don't mean like some little, if it's a doodle, I mean, you have to put it out.

You have to put yourself out there in some way 'cause that's how you complete the circuit of art is when someone sees it, they imbue their own meaning on it. It gives your thing meaning. And you're just in a whole different economy of time and space and eternity. So it's like, you know, I would recommend that to most people, but especially if you're struggling with like casting your wide net and pull into the future and pulling back anxieties. So like, that's your creativity running wild. You are a creative being and it's instead of like applying it to something in the here and now, you're applying it to this mess of a story about your future.

Like, come on, we could do better than that. And that's where friends can be trees. That's totally, I mean, that's a, I will say my darkest moments have inevitably and always been helped out via friends or support groups. If you don't have that, the likelihood of you falling into like long lasting despair just goes up exponentially because you don't get the added perspective. It's like depression is so sticky as it is. It's just something that you can't when you're in it, really see a way out of it. And even if you temporarily kind of get out of the pit of it, it sucks you back down. So you need people providing the metaphorical ladders and ropes by different perspectives of seeing.

And at first, it doesn't matter. You swat 'em away, you say, oh, that's bullshit. You don't know what I'm going through. It's different. But after a while, you see that like, oh, there is a way out. I might not know how to get there, but I do see there is a way out. And then you can actually start getting there at some point and it lasts sometimes. And I know that's like a shitty thing to hear if you're in it or you're going through it. But I mean like my last period of depression was probably like 20, late 2021 to like mid 2023. I mean, it was maybe even a little longer. Like almost two years.

We were still showing up.

Yeah, of course you were. And it sucked and it was terrible. And at the time, like I didn't see any way out, but now I'm sitting here like what? Mid 2025 and things are fucking amazing. Like I'm loving life. Like I have so many like amazing relationships. My family's doing great. Like I don't know like it's--

And you help people.

Yeah, I try. And like you just, you do get out of it if you allow yourself to, but you have to allow people to help you too, which I think for a lot of people, and I know this very like for me too. Like if you have a lone wolf mentality all the time, you put such an enormous amount of pressure on yourself that like it will cave in on you. It's like those cavers.

Yes, bro.

Which means though the rock is going to fall in on you. If you're the only one doing it, all those people who die in those cave videos, every single one of them who actually ends up dying, they're alone.

Yep.

They're alone. That's how they die.

I was just gonna say like I know for me, all of my worst moments of despair, and I'm sure it applies to you and anyone hearing this, was marked by some level of isolation.

Yes.

And a lot of times we bring it on ourselves. You find a drug that works for you and you're like, "I'm gonna isolate with this little buddy for a while, "and I think that'll help me." And it's like you're basically inviting the cave in on you. But like when you start letting people in in any way, it really is the fucking antidote.

Yeah.

That's why we make these movies.

And they're so great for that dude.

Because it's just like, "Hey, it might be a juggalo, "it might be a cam girl, it might be a Florida man, "but you're out there."

Yeah. - And if you could see yourself reflected in these fringy characters, these people that you'd otherwise never think to associate with, all of a sudden your world got a little bit smaller, all of a sudden your circle of compassion got a little bit bigger, and it applies to you. And so like that's why we continue to make them. And like I'm glad we found our particular cinematic voice because I think it lends itself to lots of this kind of exploration.

Yeah.

And that's how we think we're helping people. Like hey, make the movie, put them all together, put it together in a hyper-dense packet that if someone watches, how could they feel alone?

Well I like this one, Wild Magic, because it feels like we did our own version of an Oracle deck, and when I watch it, a different person resonates with me every time. I needed to hear a different message, and every time I watch it, a different message really hits me in the heart. And it's kind of like a really cool experience to see like, oh, who felt me? Who did I feel? We had a friend who saw the movie, and he was like, I knew I was gonna feel the movie, but I didn't realize how much the movie was gonna feel me.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, I think that's as high a compliment as you can get. And like the last time when we were watching it at Psychedelic Science, I was really picking up on, like there's these themes, like I almost didn't know we're there.

Yeah.

And it's weird, I'm like, I don't know what guy did this film to come together this way, but then there's these potent themes, and there's like a really, a section of just like, just men talking about living with less, and how much happier they became when they gave up the idea that they needed to be carrying around so much baggage, like, you know, physically and metaphorically, and just like that really resonates, but like there was also, there's a guy in there that lost his son, and immediately he went and hiked the Appalachian Trail by himself, and he was like, bad mistake, big mistake, that is not--

He calls it a cave, he says, you know, there's a saying about now.

A long green cave, I was in, and it wasn't good.

How men go to the cave, and women go to the well in times of grief, and he said, women, it makes a lot more sense to go to the well and share your emotions.

Yeah.

And how much going to the cave probably extended his grieving process.

Well, and it's just so definitive of mankind, like actual men.

Men.

So like God, like metaphorical for what all men go through, and think they need to take on, and it's probably especially as you become a father, all of a sudden, like, there's pressure on you to provide. It's waking up some ancient DNA that wants to provide, and like, I mean, that used to be very simple. You're like, okay, I gotta go out and hunt something, and then fucking bring it back, and blah, blah, blah, now it's like so complex, this fucking wild-ass jungle that you have to navigate, and in a system that has the haves and the have-nots, and winners and losers, and in a capitalist system, it's basically inherently turning us against each other.

I can't think of other podcasters as potential collaborators, they're my competition. Other filmmakers are my competition. They're not my brothers and sisters who are also trying to reach out and extend a hand to humanity, and say it's gonna be okay, you know? So like, I really hate, but I think if you're aware of what this system and these systems that we're living under do to people, and how it can dehumanize, like if you're aware, you can start to do something about it, and you can start to, like we said, create a new paradigm that is much softer and more welcoming, and I understand why humanity had to do everything it had to do to get to this point of being so comfortable, you know, I understand, you know, we had to try some things, we had to do some things that a lot of blood needed to be shed.

Yeah.

Holy shit, blood, sweat, and tears, a lot, and a lot more will be.

Most likely.

But there are better times ahead, like I always say, I really feel like we're living through the great humbling right now, where everything that you thought was real is just fucking, boom, gone, and then you go into, what I feel like we're transitioning into, at least some of us, is the great healing. It is like saying, I'm gonna get out of myself and I'm gonna help other people, and then after that, after the great healing, the great harmonizing, well, I can't wait to live through that. That's what, to me, feels like the three major sections of humanity, as far as I can see, in my lifetime that we're living through, and maybe we just keep going through those three.

Yeah.

Well, time, it just keeps coming back around now.

It's a charming wheel spinning around and around.

Oh, you guys were harmonizing for a second here. You Atlanteans, you were with your magic. Here's a, boom, you're gone. All the knowledge is gone. Little scraps of it are maybe left or whatever.

Totally, yeah, I mean, I think that's what we do, is we much like the doctor who I've been watching, you just pop in to different periods of time and space for the energetic lessons that your soul or spirit needs to learn, and you go through it, and I think the people who choose in mass to incarnate during this period of time are going through those periods of realization, healing, and then, you know, harmonizing. I do think that's a big part of it, and I think it's actually happening relatively, imminently.

It's happening quick.

Yeah, I don't think it's as far away as people probably perceive it to be, but you have to also believe that for it to experience it too. Like, we are weaving our way through our collective and individual timelines, and that's based on your awareness and perspective and belief and faith, so that's just something to keep in mind because someone you may know may drift into a different kind of timeline vortex or tunnel,

And they will.

And they will, I mean, and you just have to, the best of your ability, try to stay in resonance with what you truly love and believe, then you'll end up, you may get a weird circuitous route through it and it may be fraught with, like, peril and hardship, but you will get there. That's always been my experience in life. And to try to just remember that when things are a little darker or scarier, it can give you just that little piece of solace you need to get to the other side or through the difficult experiences. And I think, again, like, your movie really highlights that because so much of what is in Wild Magic is people haven't gone through very difficult experiences.

Like these aren't just like hippies who are just peace, light and love. My life was so charmed and amazing and everything worked out. Like a lot of these people are real people, all of them are real people who have gone through some serious suffering in a lot of cases. And those are the people who are also, like, interesting to hang around with and get to know. That's, you don't want to meet the Silver Spoon, you know, elite baby, Nepo baby who's been fed everything, like, yeah, maybe they can be interesting, but that's the exception to the rule. It's the people who have gone through this shit that, like, those are the people you really can, like, appreciate and gain something from by being in their presence.

So I think the movie does, like, if you don't actually know those people in your life or haven't come across them, this movie does a great job of exposing you to that type of energy through a film, which is, you know, again, relatively rare these days.

What a gift you get to be safe.

Yeah, you're in the theater.

You have safe distance.

Exactly, you're in your home, you're in the theater.

I think that the real thing that people, like, just to give a behind the scenes, like I was saying, just how powerful it is that we literally would say, "Oh, you know what else this film could use?" And we just held that intention until that soul found us and ended up in front of our camera, is a real microcosm, or, yeah, it is a microcosm for how things work, so hold the positive intention, but then allow yourself the vision to see your prayers being answered. And when you do, shout out the angels, shout out the, well, like, I cover all of our bases when we pray. We pray to our angels, aliens, and ancestors.

I think that covers most of the things I think of.

Triple A.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So shout them out when you're like, "Oh, my prayers are being answered." Like, you know, we were like, earlier this year, praying for more peers, 'cause, you know, a lot of our friends for years have been like, people way younger than us, who really need something, a need guidance and all this stuff. And I'm like, "But we need that."

Yes.

And then we meet Michelangelo, the ungoogable Michelangelo, an artist like that, who comes and overfills our cup, and with just everything that we love about life, and art, and poetry, and sweetness, and good conversation, and the whole thing. And so like, and when we meet him, and we're like having these fucking amazing nights together, I'm like, "Hey, just shout out to the angels."

Yeah.

And to the ancestors, 'cause this is an answer to our prayers.

Yeah.

You know, this is like a tree that's providing a lot of shade for us to flourish under, and for our souls to kind of get some rest from just exclusively recharging other peers.

Yes, which, well, eventually just drain you.

Oh, bro.

You cannot live like that permanently.

Dude, that was part of the great humbling for us, is like, you know, so much melting away, and you're just left with like these, these just people, these hungry ghosts that just fully surround you, and you're like, "Look, I'm there for them," and I still am, and I always will be, but I also am a hungry ghost, and I need to be fed.

Yeah.

And so calling in other people, and like, how cool is it to, I love that we're the same age, man.

I know, it's very useful in how to love it.

Yeah, because we can't, I mean, it's like a frame of reference thing, but it's just also like, I get so sick of, you know, hearing myself tell people like, "Oh, when you're my age, you'll see." You'll see how generous it was that I was hanging out with kids 13 years younger than me, you know. (laughing)

That's great, so-- - Cool.

Where can people watch, find out, tell us about Wild Magic Day.

The real, look, if you're still listening to this, you get us, this is the real hard pitch, is like, we need people to support this film in order to keep doing it, and we need you to support, not only us as an artist, but anyone that you think is really resonating with you, because artists have it harder than ever right now in this country, and getting their voices heard, we're being swamped with fake shit, AI-generated, and content, and content makes you content. So strive for art, and support artists, because artists are the ones trying to make this world more beautiful, and we made a film that was paid for very generously by a company called Rustic Films, but they want their motherfucking money back.

So the second they get their money back, I feel like I can really take the paywall off and release it, but if you're the type of person that has money and you can afford to pay $10 for a rental or $20 to buy it, please go buy our film. Please, it's on WildMagic.tv, everything's there. We have awesome shirts too, long sleeve and short sleeve shirts, we have stickers, and write to us, and leave a review, it really means the world to us that people are leaving reviews on the Vimeo, on demand page, because then when other people may be randomly stumbled across it, they could see like, this is a good one, and we're a trustworthy name and documentary.

We might not be trustworthy in a lot of other fields, but in documentary, we are trustworthy. We come through, because we need this shit as much as we think the audience does.

All our movies are available for free on our website, veryape.tv, so we put out a lot of free movies.

We've made like 19 other movies, and it's cost us every dime we've ever made, literally we are back at zero.

Don't feel bad about having to charge for this one, I mean you got it made with the help of people who need to get paid, it's just how it works sometimes.

We paid you, you really needed that money at that time, that actually opened up the portal that allowed me to make a lot of money since then, it really did, I was in dire straights, so yeah, support these guys, do what you can. I know there's people who have money, who listen to this podcast, this is also something you'll enjoy, it's not charity, like it's literally an exchange.

You're gonna love it, yeah.

Can I also do another plug, if anyone needs community, I know you're part of the synchronicity community, but if you want a community where we're watching films together, please join patreon.com/churchofchill. Sean has been holding it down for a weekly film club, he's also been pumping out the vibes, I mean every episode 237 of his latest--

Yeah, my radio show, Church of Chill, is the radio show, and we're on episode 237, an unbroken change since September 2018, when we went through an epic heartbreak, and we lost a friendship, and I didn't know what to do, and so I occupied the moment with music curation, and I haven't stopped, so for two dollars a month, you get in on the Church of Chill episodes, our weekly film club, which is incredible, and our Discord community.

Yeah, and we do have a podcast.

And we do have a podcast, a very eight podcast.

That's where our bonus episodes are, and afterglow episodes.

Yeah, we do two, every episode, we do a free one on YouTube, and we do one. We pump it out.

I mean, anytime I'm like, why do we do this? I just think about how many friends that we've got, have from doing this, from holding this space, all of our friends are because we've held the space and been reliable, and we want more friends, and new friends, so be our friend, and yeah, we're very grateful for you guys.

Yeah, it's also perfect, because I have such large gaps in what I put out. You heard all this stuff they're putting out, so just go sign up for their stuff, just feed it in between, whenever gaps here. There's large gaps in mind, fill it with their stuff, and you know, I'll do it when I can't guess.

Dude, it means the world to us, our friendship and our podcasting collaborations.

The best. - Fucking awesome.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, of course, thank you guys.

Peace, love and magic. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

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