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Pete Holmes
Hello. Is that a new camera, Josh?
Josh
It's an old camera that I got a new plug for.
Pete Holmes
It's beautiful.
Josh
Thank you.
Pete Holmes
It's a big chunker.
Josh
Yeah.
Pete Holmes
What is that? Those are nice. Those are for streaming, aren't they?
Josh
It's a black magic camera with a screen in the back. It's the same as these, but these don't have the screens.
Pete Holmes
I almost bought one of those, and then, thank God, the guy at the film store was like, you don't want that. You don't know what you're doing. You could just tell from looking at me because they're complex. And he was just like, it's. You can't buy this. You don't know what you're doing. You're why he was right. Because you have to get special lenses and gear for that, right?
Josh
No. This one, you just touch the back of the screen and it focuses on the face.
Pete Holmes
Oh, well, then fuck him.
Josh
Yeah. He was lying to you.
Pete Holmes
Why did he lie to me?
Josh
He wanted you to buy a camera that he makes more money on.
Pete Holmes
That's exactly what happened. Well, anyway, let's get some business out of the way. I want to announce something that I'm really excited about. It's coming up in Denver. And also to all of you in Denver who came out sold out, the comedy works. Thank you. It was an insane weekend, and I'm coming back to Denver. I'm going to be there April 19, and it's this insane event celebrating one of my favorite holidays, Bicycle Day. For those of you who don't know what Bicycle Day is, Bicycle Day is the day that we celebrate the first intentional LSD trip taken by Albert Hoffman, who famously came up on acid. The first acid trip, riding his bicycle home, ended up having what I would imagine is maybe the worst acid trip of all time. Because we all know those of us who've taken lsd, that at some point, hour five or six, you're thinking, yeah, I'll come down soon. And then you don't. You don't. In fact, the acid is going to hang on for maybe another six hours, depending on how much you took. And somewhere along the way, it gets a little tedious sometimes. But, you know. And if you have a friend nearby and you go to him with tears in your eyes, you're like, I don't think I'm ever going to come down. Your friend will say, you'll come down. Don't worry. It takes time. And then you come down. Hoffman didn't have that friend. There was no friend. There Was no one on Earth who'd ever gone through what I think was like a 700, 600 microgram acid trip. I could be wrong about that. But that's a big, big fat dose of acid. Fresh to the universe. Lsd, one of the first batches ever created. Hadn't even been on the planet that long. And he slurped it back, rode his bike, had a terrible trip, saw demons. His wife, not knowing what the fuck was going on with him, was giving him milk, which, as an antidote. So if you, if you could make a top three list of things you wouldn't want to consume on lsd. I mean, I don't know if milk would make it. And I guess you blood, placenta, shit. But somewhere, okay, It's a top 20 list somewhere. Milk should land there. I want to drink milk on acid. And so she's bringing him cold glasses of fucking milk. He's raving, seeing demons, doesn't know if he's ever going to come down. But thanks to that suffering, I guess you could say he died so that we may live. And now we have lsd and we all know about it, and it's helping people. There's neurogenesis. It has a lot of therapeutic applications. And also it's fun if used responsibly. Kids, not for you. Your brain's still fucking developing. I wish somebody had told me that when I was in high school, but we didn't know. We just thought it would drive you crazy. Because that was the propaganda back then, which is if you, something like, if you take more than three hits of acid, you will go legally insane. Whatever the fuck that means. And so we liked it that much that we were like, I guess we're going to go crazy this summer because we loved it. But we know much more about it now and your brain is still developing up until your mid 20s. So use it responsibly, folks. When I was younger, I wouldn't have said that, but now I would say, come on, this is powerful medicine. I hate it when people call psychedelics medicine.
Josh
I hate it.
Pete Holmes
Why did I say that? Regardless, April 19, Meow Wolf Convergence Station. We are celebrating this beautiful, powerful fucking day. The opposite of the atom bomb went off in Albert Hoffman's brain. And we are still experiencing the ripples from that daring bicycle ride. And on April 19, it's not going to be stand up at Meow Wolf. I'm going to be doing. And also thank you to my friends over at Blackrock, a simulator upgrade workshop, so you'll know more about that when you come. But it's going to be fucking awesome. They were doing it in one of the most insane theaters I've ever seen. It's 360 degrees, laser projection. Like it's. I don't know how to explain it other than it definitely seems to be some kind of liminal space between this realm and the astral realm. And the Meow Wolf people are fucking cool. And I want to thank Portal and Brandon for inviting me to do this also. I'm not going to be the only one there. Reggie Watts is going to be there. There's going to be a lot of super cool people at this event. And you're going to be helping raise money for Portal. You guys, you can find out everything you want to find out about Portal, the event by going down there or if you're listening to this, going to dunkatrustle.com or just google it, all the links, they're out there. So come, come to Meow Wolf. Jesus. I've been to the one in Vegas. You ever been to Meow Wolf, Josh?
Josh
I don't even know what that is.
Pete Holmes
Oh, it's so cool. The one in Vegas is like a satirical grocery store. Like you walk in, it seems like a grocery store. All the products are fucking bizarre. And then there's secret doors that lead to like the most insane shit you've ever seen. And I thought, I mean, that's mind blowing by itself, but this. Yeah, that's it. But look up Convergence Station. Look at this. Check out Convergence Station in Denver. Omega Mart is fucking cool. I mean, these are just like. It's some bizarre art collect. Look at that.
Josh
I know, dude, this reminds me of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When the bad kids go to the Shredder's place. It looked like this.
Pete Holmes
Yeah. And see that, see that? The room with the lines on the floor, that is the room that I'm doing the show in.
Josh
Wow.
Pete Holmes
And it all. Everything. You can project anything you want anywhere. The people running Meow Wolf are fucking just hyperdimensional geniuses. Literally anything that I've been asking for for this show, they just like, yeah, no problem. And I've been asking for weird shit, but look at this place. Look at it, look at it. Imagine celebrating bicycle day there. I know, I can't wait. It's so cool. So, yeah, come everyone. April 19th. Let's hang out at Meow Wolf all night. It's gonna be a blast. Hopefully I'll see you there. What was the other thing I'm supposed to. Ah, that's good for now. Sorry about that. I just wanted. I'm very excited about us all. It's like. It's just so fun. And this thing that I'm going to be doing is really fun. And come completely sober. I know it's Bicycle Day. I know you're going to be at Meow Wolf, and there's some kind of intimation that we, you know, that you would want to get high on Bicycle Day at Meow Wolf. But for God's sake, kids, this is a sober night. And we will be doing drug tests. We will be doing piss tests at the door. And you will be arrested if you don't take the piss test. By that I mean the ladies will be peeing on me. I can tell. And that's Bicycle Day now, so. Dude. Okay, when I came in the studio today. Wait, I don't know. For those of you who are just joining us, you have to go back a little bit, but. And I'm not going to tell the whole fucking story, but I got a creepy box of tapes. So my dearest producer, Josh has an update on these tapes. What do you got, Josh?
Josh
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for leaving that box here. The energy here has been a little weird.
Pete Holmes
Yeah, it went in my house. Honestly, my wife said I couldn't have it at the house.
Josh
Yeah, I remember that now. I know why.
Pete Holmes
Are you serious about that? Are you joking?
Josh
They stay in that room and nobody goes in that room. So that's what they are. But I did find at the bottom of the box, a hard drive.
Pete Holmes
Wow. No fucking shit.
Josh
And it actually says DTFH on the bottom.
Pete Holmes
Great. That's fun.
Josh
So I plugged it in. No pornography, unfortunately.
Pete Holmes
Wait, you plug that shit into your computer? You're crazy. Do you not watch 20 20?
Josh
Oh, shit. I don't even think about that.
Pete Holmes
Dude, that's fucking crazy that you did that. I would never plug a hard drive in it. That is. You might as well have, like, gone to a fucking porno theater and stuck your cock in an anonymous puckered butthole. It's probably less dangerous than what you did. That's a fucking hard drive. Sent by an anonymous theoretical stalker in a nasty ass box of tapes that you just said is evil. And you plug that shit into your machine.
Josh
Well, I didn't think about it. I kind of just did it because you wanted to know what was on it.
Pete Holmes
Well, thank you. I'm sorry to chastise you. I mean, I just worry about you. That's scary.
Josh
Now I'm worried about my crypto on my computer and that I should change password.
Pete Holmes
You should definitely do more than. I mean, I got an old computer you could use. I guess I would work. Whatever. I don't want to make you pay. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. Just some creepy old hard drive and old box of tapes.
Josh
I did find something, though. What you find, I'll pull it up for you.
Pete Holmes
Hold on. Wait a second. Is this. Honestly, if this is anything that seems to be like it's threatening me or anything weird like I don't want to play it, is it?
Josh
I wouldn't say I don't. You just watch it.
Pete Holmes
Okay. Yeah. See what we got.
Josh
All right.
Urban Explorer
Definitely don't try this at home because it's illegal. Which is why I won't say that I just used a crowbar to pry open a hatch and climb down a ladder into an underground tunnel. My guess is that this is the tunnel they used to carry nuclear missiles to the silos.
Pete Holmes
Can you get the audio up a little bit here?
Urban Explorer
This tunnel is gigantic. Not hauling missiles gigantic, more like hauling Godzilla's gigantic. Multiple Godzillas stacked on top of each other. Your taxpayer dollars at work, folks. Speaking of your dollars, if you go to urbanexplored.com and click on the shop section, you can order the exact urban explanation exploration toolkit I use in every episode. You'll get a crowbar, rechargeable flashlights that also function as bottle openers, and of course, our urban explored signature hoodies that will help you hide in the shadows of wherever you may go. Just use offer code. Don't try this at home for an extra 20 off. Sorry for the plug, but unless you want to come feed my kids, don't complain about my merch.
Pete Holmes
You know who you are.
Urban Explorer
Okay, let's head down the Godzilla A tunnel. One thing worth noting here is that these tunnels should be filled with groundwater, but aside from a puddle here and there, this tunnel is dry as your mother's vagina before she swipes right on my Tinder profile. Okay, I'm standing in yet another room of boxes. It's been like 20 rooms filled with taped up moving boxes. Based on my impeccable research, specifically browsing a Reddit thread, this place isn't supposed to be this deep underground. And it's definitely not supposed to have power. And it's definitely, definitely, definitely not supposed to have infinite rooms filled with boxes. It. I'll open one.
Pete Holmes
Come on.
Urban Explorer
Let this be Euro dollars.
Pete Holmes
Yay.
Urban Explorer
A box of old cassette tapes. Just what you would expect to find in a missile silox.
Pete Holmes
Cassette tapes.
Urban Explorer
Can any audio files.
Pete Holmes
Echo for what the Echo for coming. What the man. Wait, go back. Go back.
Josh
What did it say at the end?
Pete Holmes
I have no idea, but like go. Did just go back. It sounded. Go back. It sounded like he was choking. Just play that. Play.
Urban Explorer
This place isn't supposed to be this deep underground. And it's definitely not supposed to have working power. And it's definitely, definitely not supposed to have infinite rooms filled with boxes. Fuck it. I'll open one.
Pete Holmes
Come on.
Urban Explorer
Let this be Euro dollars.
Pete Holmes
Yay.
Urban Explorer
A box of old cassette tapes. Just what you would expect to find in a missile silo. Cinevox cassette tapes. Can any audio files.
Josh
Oh, yeah.
Pete Holmes
Echo for ten Echo. What the fuck, man? Jesus Christ. That sucks.
Josh
That was on. That was the only thing on the entire hard drive.
Pete Holmes
Well, it's spring, guys. Spring is in the air. We. Wow, that's creepy as fuck. I have seen. I mean, I got into it for a second. You've seen these like. Like go on YouTube and look up exploring abandoned missile silo? Because I've seen shit like this before. I mean it's a whole Genre of YouTube video Underground missile silo. Yeah. I mean this shit is fun to watch, but yeah. I mean there's kids like, they find where these abandoned.
Josh
Like this one.
Pete Holmes
Yeah. What's that?
Josh
It's in Colorado. It says.
Pete Holmes
Well, I was just a young guy back then.
Josh
Jerry took us to the silo. Said he hates it when people sneak in.
Pete Holmes
You can see there's been a lot.
Josh
Of people down here.
Pete Holmes
I mean, having that in your property, you might as well just.
Josh
It is dark in there. We used a really good flashlight to find our way around. It's full of old equipment, wires and pipes. Now covered in paint from the hundreds of graffiti artworks.
Pete Holmes
Okay, go back. I've seen way better ones. This is the dude who owns the property. But I've seen like ones in Russia. Like exploring underground military base Russia? Yeah. Like, no.
Josh
Why would you do that?
Pete Holmes
Because you're a kid. You'd do that when you were younger. I do.
Josh
Hell no.
Pete Holmes
You wouldn't do that when you're younger.
Josh
No, I believe in ghost.
Pete Holmes
This would have been.
Josh
Someone would have been stationed here as a gun and be able to shoot anyone coming in. Protect this entrance.
Pete Holmes
Yeah. So like whatever that is is appears to be like some be able to live here. Well, also some version of this, I guess, but I guess, I don't know. Look up like I don't know how we'd even find this podcast without the website. Like, look up. I don't know, look up Urban explorer tapes or something. Box of tapes. He had something in his hand, too. It must have been a gun. No, that's not the. That's not the dude that was on that fucking door video.
Josh
Yeah, that sounded like it was from the freaking 50s or something like that.
Pete Holmes
It sounded like shit.
Josh
Yeah.
Pete Holmes
Yeah, but these videos are. These videos are super creepy. And it's a whole. It's like a whole, like, interesting, like, hobby, which is. Has a lot of levels to it. Like, one of them is, like, just, we have all of these dead buildings in the United States and no one's allowed access to. You have. Which is really crazy when you consider, like, how many abandoned malls there are. You have abandoned malls, Just dead, empty malls. And then you have a growing population of people who don't have homes, but they don't put them in there. They could restructure the malls. They could make it some kind of community, but they don't. They just let it rot. And so there's a political angle accidentally, to these videos where people go in and they're really kind of filming, like, disintegrating America or disintegrating capitalism. Like, look up abandoned mall tapes. These I love. There we go. Oh, and the crow cop. Oh, my God. Look at that shit.
Josh
You think he added that?
Pete Holmes
Yeah, I hope so. Oh, yeah. Listen to the music, too. This is perfect. This is good work.
Josh
Decay.
Pete Holmes
Wow. It's still got the gumballs in it. Look at that. Isn't that nuts, man?
Josh
Now join us.
Pete Holmes
Jump all the way in the middle. Just jump right to the middle. Oh, yeah.
Urban Explorer
She started bleeding at 19 weeks.
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God. What the fuck? Don't laugh at that, you monster. I didn't laugh. He thinks it's funny, guys. That's what I'm working with. That's what makes you laugh. Why did that come crying? Why did I come up? Okay.
Josh
Did you bring a quarter?
Pete Holmes
Oh, I forgot the quarters. It's funny. They're in a dead, abandoned mall, but they don't want to break the gumball machine. Open place right to put them. They're all open. Oh, yeah. I'm sure you can just get them out if you turn this. Yeah. Don't break the law, guys. I'd hate it if you broke the double bubble. Ancient gumball fucking balls. That'd be terrible for this mall.
Josh
It's like $140 worth of gumballs.
Pete Holmes
It is. It's funny. You know the num. The dollar value of those. Just a quick analysis. I think this was a bank.
Josh
You think so?
Pete Holmes
Had a bank in the mall.
Josh
Yeah.
Pete Holmes
It says tellers right there. That could be a lot of things. Neon, dude. So in the 90s, you could go to the mall to do your banking. Guy. They're acting like they're talking about ancient Egypt in the 90s. In the 90s they had designer would have a field day. Gumball machines. Inspiration. An interesting choice of things to film textures. Don't you know that this is a movie set? Oh, our videos are fake.
Josh
Oh, yeah. Oh, there's fish in here.
Pete Holmes
There's little tadpoles. Oh, my God. It's got life. I don't know if those are tad. That's a bad incarnation. Tadpole. And a dead mall. And those aren't tadpoles. That's come. That's living jizz. That's. That's their jizz. Go to that. This is somehow not. Not as great as I thought it be. But you get the vibe, right? It's just like these dead malls, the urban decay, as they call it. Just these ulcers on the carcass of America and no one knows what to do with them because it costs so much money to tear them down. And nobody wants to build anything there, so it just rots. And it represents a dead dream. It represents someone at some point invested a shit ton of money, raised a lot of money because malls were so incredible in the day.
Josh
Yeah. I've seen it kill a town.
Pete Holmes
What?
Josh
I've seen it kill a town.
Pete Holmes
Oh, they would kill towns.
Josh
Well, yeah, because there's a place in Hardgen, Texas, and you walk into that mall and it's creepy because it looks nice. Nobody's in it. Nobody's in it. Just the people that work there.
Pete Holmes
That's so weird. Yeah, some. For some reason. Well, because, you know, they linger for a little bit. There's a There. I've seen these on the road, you know. God, where is that? I'm trying to think what city it is. The club is right under a dead mall. And you're excited when you're on the road and there's a mall next to your hotel because you're like, oh, great. You inevitably forgotten something. Right. I'll just run over there, grab some socks. Whatever it is you need lube. Can't fly with lube if you have to check your back. So you get into the mall and you realize, oh, no, it's a dead mall. And just what you're saying these eerie storefronts with one person working in them. No one's there. The whole fucking place is empty except you. And these people working there are deadened by the effect of being in a. In a vacuous, failed mall with no one in it except for, like, crackheads. There were, like, crackheads wandering around, like, curled up in the corners of the mall. And if I had to choose between spending a night, let's say I don't know if they tore it down. But the Amityville house, right, that's supposedly one of the real haunted houses in the world. If I had to choose between spending the night in that place or spending the night in a dead mall, I'm going, Amityville house, man. You're doing dead mall.
Josh
Dead mall all the way.
Pete Holmes
What do you think's gonna happen in the Amityville house?
Josh
What happens if I take that with me and I come back and I kill my entire family?
Pete Holmes
You really think you can carry ghosts away from a place?
Josh
You can carry spirits?
Pete Holmes
I do believe that, yeah. Like germs. They rub off on you. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've had that feeling before when you go to some shitty place that you shouldn't be, and then you come back to the house and you got that kind of contaminated feeling. And then no matter what, just because you came back from a contaminated place, not, like, literally radioactive, but a place where, like, a recent murder happened or bad energy, bad energy zone. And then you go back to your house, and then anything could happen. Just some random event, just a creek. You're not used to something thumping around, and you're gonna associate it with the place you just were, even though it probably has nothing to do with it, but just that effect. They call them hitchhikers.
Josh
Are you saying that I always wanted to kill my whole family?
Pete Holmes
I'm saying that's the first thing that came out of your mouth.
Josh
That's true.
Pete Holmes
I mean, I'm thinking, like, oh, maybe there'll be, like, an anomalous thump. You're like, I'll probably just kill my whole family.
Josh
Isn't that what happened at that house.
Pete Holmes
Though, in the movie?
Josh
Oh, shit. Okay.
Pete Holmes
But maybe. I mean, it does happen.
Josh
I want a six pack. Like Ryan Reynolds.
Pete Holmes
I want a fucking six pack. And honestly, like, I'd probably do a lot of things to get that Ryan Reynolds pack. That's a haunted six pack. Haunted with, like, passion, attraction. But, yeah, I don't. Look, I hate going into haunted house. I do. I really don't understand the Phenomena of ghost hunters who go into haunted houses. Because the very best thing for the show is potentially the very worst thing for you, which is you actually find a real haunted house. It's like basically going into. It's basically like going into a place that's been hot boxed by ghosts. Like, would you want to sit in the flatulence of. Of your older brother? It filled up a whole house. And if you leave the house, you're going to smell like farts in the same way you're going to smell like fish. If you are a fish chef somewhere. I don't know if that's a distinction with chefs, but you know what I mean. Sushi chefs come home and they smell like fish. If somebody went into a house that was filled with farts, they would go home and smell like farts. Therefore, this is science. If you go into a house where there's ghosts, you're going to come home not stinking of ghosts, but with that dark energy around you. And then your house, you know what it's kind of like, dude, this is like, you know, infidelity is fucked up on a lot of different levels. Level one, you have to deal with the fact that you're gaslighting potentially like the mother or father of your kids, right? So that sucks. So you have to. You create a weird little rift in your perception of things where you, I guess, push all of the fucks that you secretly do. Your secret fucks. You have a little compartment in your brain where you push your secret fucks. Because if you're thinking about your secret fucks in front of your partner, they're gonna see that. They can tell you in your eyes. They see it in your eyes that glitter. Cheaters glitter. And so you can't. So you basically have to almost create a parallel reality in your own brain, which is the. That. I don't know who that is. That's the person who does secret fucks. And then there's the you, you know, you're picking up your kids, you're laughing, and you're in any time, even the vaguest tendril of just thinking about bare backing that fucking Hooters waitress in some shitty hotel comes into your mind. You got to shut it down. Shut it down. So that's bad for you, it's bad for your family. That's fucked up. But then there's like more like physical dangers. And I've heard of this happening, dude. Somebody cheats, they get vd, and then all of a sudden their wife or their husband's like, babe, why do I have herpes? And they have to be like, did you fuck somebody? Are you cheating on me? You know what I mean? That's the only option. Yeah, you have to. Because really what happened is you have herpes and you gave it to your fucking husband or your wife. And so that's messed up. So that's a long way of talking about ghost contagion. When you go to a ghost house, it's. You get vd.
Josh
Yeah.
Pete Holmes
And you can bring it back, and.
Josh
Your whole family has herpes and your.
Pete Holmes
Whole family has fucking ghosts. Better. That's probably better than vd, but still, I mean, it's no. It's no good. When I was younger, you know, you're interested in this shit. You want to summon demons. You want to see the ghost, the specter, the spirit. You want to have the encounter with a metaphysical entity or whatever. But when you have experienced anything remotely close to that, you don't want that anymore. If you're smart, it's gross. They're never happy. You ever seen a ghost?
Josh
No, I've never wanted to, though.
Pete Holmes
It sucks.
Josh
Have you seen a ghost?
Pete Holmes
Yes.
Josh
Where?
Pete Holmes
Well, I'm sorry if I've talked about this already. Maybe there's some new people who haven't heard this story. I'll tell you, this is a real ghost encounter that I had. And up until this point, I did obviously believe in. I believe people when they tell me they've had this experience or that experience. But I think all of us kind of lean into skepticism to protect ourselves from that realm. It just makes you feel safe. So I'm in New Orleans and. Why did I say New Orleans? Because I don't talk like that. I'm in New Orleans and I'm staying at the Omni Hotel. And I have the craziest fucking dream ever, man. And I have dreams all the time. But every once in a while, I have a. I gotta write this down dream. And I always write it down. There's dreams that are very different. These are significant dreams. They seem like visions. Visions. So here's the dream. I'm in the Arctic. You know how dreams are. I'm in, like, Antarctica. All I know is there's snow everywhere, right? I'm in a tent. I'm with my girlfriend in the tent. Now I hear a thump outside the tent. Big, loud thump. Go out there, unzip the tent. Go out. Laying in the snow. There's a body bag. Like a body bag fell out of the sky. Because it's a dream. Of course I go and unzip the body bag. Now, in the body bag. I'm sorry, Pete. It obviously wasn't Pete Holmes, but in the body bag it looks like Pete Holmes, right?
Josh
That's a big body bag.
Pete Holmes
He's a talk dude. So there's this fucking cadaver in there with a note shoved in its pocket. It stands up somehow. I'm not terrified. I'm reading the note in its pocket. This motherfucking cadaver has written a love letter to my girlfriend. I get so mad that I grab the cadaver, who's alive, looks like Pete Holmes, and, like, escort him out of the Antarctica, shove him out of the dream, essentially, right? There are other parts of the dream I wish I still had the journal because I wrote all this shit down. Like there was another. Like when I took him out of the Antarctica, it was like I was in a record store. Weird candles, weirdly lit record store, right? Okay, so there's the dream, right? Whatever. Fucking weird dream. Just a strange dream, but I wrote it down. And you know, dreams like that, they follow you around a little bit. So I felt kind of weird that day. But that night, we're at the bar, just getting drinks, talking to the bartender, and I said to her, this is New Orleans. You know, it's a spooky city. I'm like, do you have any ghost stories about the hotel just shooting the shit? She goes, you want me to tell you the one we're not supposed to tell guests? I'm like, yeah, well, as it turns out, that hotel was the hotel that this dude who chopped up his fucking girlfriend during hurricane Katrina jumped off of with a suicide note in his pocket. Like, what the fuck? Now look up Hurricane Katrina murderer. Now, obviously, it doesn't look like Pete Olms, exactly. Click on the one where he's smoking. Right there. Look at that. That kind of like blondish hair, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, does he look exactly like Pete Olm's fucking nose? The same kind of hair color, though. Now, see, look, here's the thing. This is my theory on ghosts specifically, and this dream informed my theory on ghosts because that dude jumped out of the hotel with a suicide note in his fucking pocket. He killed his fucking girlfriend, right? So here's my theory on ghosts or paranormal experiences. Player pianos. So player piano. You stick the same sheet music into a player piano. That shit that has the bumps and it tells the keys when to ding. I'm a real musician, so if I take player piano sheet music and put it into a well tuned player piano, it's going to sound completely different than when I put player piano music in a player piano that's missing keys. Another way to put it is printer ink. You know, depending on what kind of ink you have in your printer, you might have the original data that tells the printer to print out this, but it's gonna look different according to the ink in the printer. So this dream made me think that whatever the stuff is that hangs around that we call ghosts, it somehow interacts with some part of your psyche. But if you don't have the right color ink in there, it can't do the exact replica of whatever it is. It's just going to do the. Your brain is going to serve up the closest thing it's got, right? So dude jumps off building with a suicide note in his pocket.
Josh
That's the thud.
Pete Holmes
What?
Josh
That's the thud.
Pete Holmes
Right. So my brain not having an exact picture of this guy just sums up Pete Holmes, kind of has the same hair color as this dude and uses Pete Holmes in the fucking cadaver bag. Right? But where it gets weirder. Look this shit up. Read the story about what he did with the fucking with his girlfriend's body. Let's just read the story. Police said the mystery began on Tuesday when the body of Zachary Bowen was found on top of a parking garage. That's where he jumped. A suicide note in his right front pocket. That's where the fucking note was in the dream. That's where it fucking was. I did not know the story. Scroll down. According. Wait, go back up. According to news reports, two pots were sitting on the stove, one containing a woman's head and another holding her hands and feet. But where it gets really weird, dude, is where that apartment was. Where that apartment was. It was over a voodoo shop. And so I think my brain translated record store. Translated voodoo shop to record store because it's like, you know.
Josh
And you said weird candles too?
Pete Holmes
Yes. So it's like my brain just used whatever. Like it just rifled through my blurry memories and threw together some amalgam of whatever that energy imprint was and it manifested as a dream. That's what I think at least some forms of ghost encounters are, you know, it's like the best scene in any movie, the Shining. You know, that's if you watch the Shining.
Josh
I've seen parts of it.
Pete Holmes
Okay, pull up YouTube. Pull up the Shining. Burnt toast. The point is, he describes ghosts as like, you know, when you burn toast, the smell of it sticks around. So, yeah, man, that's my theory is that like, you know, if you are even remotely, vaguely open, that vibe that you're feeling, that's like the ridges of a record. That's the bumps in the player, that's the vaguest sort of data set. And the clairvoyance and people who can like, you know, figure out murders and shit, they're just really good at reading what that is. They know how to like take that data in and like from it, do some kind of sketch in their own head sometimes even knowing the names of people who are murdered in places and stuff like that. But I think something, it's left behind. And that's what we call ghosts. Like, are there sentient beings? To me it's more like AI, like AI clones. Anytime I. And I've heard other people talk about this too, that cadaver being, it had this confused quality to it, right? It was like half asleep, like it was drugged on Ambien or something like that and just sort of out of it, you know, just confused. Dumb confused. And other times I've like picked up on ghosts. That's what they seem like. Dumb, confused, drugged, sedated.
Josh
Stuck.
Pete Holmes
Stuck, yeah, stuck. And so it's like whatever that is, it's some residual ripple of their soul. I think they've probably moved on, but they've left behind some personality structure that hasn't diffused into time or something. And there's enough there that it still has some kind of like, I don't know, like personality in the way people with dementia still have a little bit of themselves there, but they're mostly gone. Bye bye. It's that. That's what a ghost is. Dumb, confused and just sort of like out of it, you know, that's a ghost. Whereas like when they talk about demons, I think those things are like clear as a fucking bell. I think that whatever they are is a completely different thing, you know, they're more like a hyperdimensional extrusion of some kind of dark personality that's poking its dick into time.
Josh
I feel like kids see ghosts more.
Pete Holmes
Dude, they definitely do.
Josh
And adults see demons more.
Pete Holmes
Interesting. Interesting. I mean, you know, it doesn't bother me that people are going to make fun of me for this, but I am convinced that there are countless entities and forms of life around us at any given moment. They're just all there. You just can't see them. And some of them can't see you and some of them can't. I'll tell you though, one of the coolest explanations I got for some haunted houses was coast to Coast. And I was just tuning in random time. And so the explanation is this. In some houses, in some parts of the world, time, space itself is distorted. So what's happening? It's like that movie Interstellar. Time, space is distorted. So what's happening is the past is leaking into the present, and the present is leaking into the past. And so what you think is a ghost is actually you're seeing the past in that very same house. Like the. Whatever was happening in your kitchen, it's happening still. Because time, everything happens at once. And so in some places, somehow that is more apparent than others. And that is a really cool explanation of haunted houses.
Josh
My brother scared the crap out of me because my grandmother died in our house, and, well, she lived there, and then we moved in with my grandfather, and she had died maybe six months before this. And we're going to bed, and the door closed, right? And my little brother, he's like six, gets up and goes, good night, grandma. And then put his head down, and I started screaming, and my dad's like, no, that's not what it was. The AC probably pulled the door in. And your brother just said that. And I'm just. I'm freaking the hell out.
Pete Holmes
Yeah. You're scared of ghosts.
Josh
Yeah, terrified. Even though I love my grandma, I miss my grandmother.
Pete Holmes
You don't love her that much. You don't like ghost grandma.
Josh
Move on, grandma.
Pete Holmes
That's all I'm saying. Get out of the house. You're dead. Yeah, well, I mean, the. The.
Josh
I had two grandmas die in that house. My other grandma died in that house too.
Pete Holmes
Damn. You got to keep grandmas out of the house.
Josh
Yeah, I have no more grandma.
Pete Holmes
House eats grandmas. Well, blame the house.
Josh
Yep, the.
Pete Holmes
The. For sure. When getting close to death, weird shit happens, man. People see things. They say weird fucking things. They see their family around them. Dead relatives, like, you know. Did I ever tell you this story when I volunteered for a hospice?
Josh
Mm. Mm.
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God. I. When I look back at the series of decisions that led me to think I was ready to volunteer for a hospice, whatever that was was just hubris. Like, you should volunteer for hospice. Everyone out there, I mean, it's incredibly good work, but I just was.
Josh
How old are you?
Pete Holmes
I was, like, in my 20s, and I just wanted to do volunteer work. I wanted. I don't know what I was doing, man. Like, I was basically. I was just stumbling around la. I don't know what the fuck I was doing, man, but somehow I thought it'd be a good idea to volunteer for Hospice. Now this hospice gave a orientation for volunteers. The orientation was led by this mystical dude who had been like a multimillionaire, had gotten struck by lightning, had had the near death experience, and had been told in the other realm that his job, his life going forward, was not to be a business person, but to help people transition into the next life. So he gave up his ambition and job and he became this, like, started running hospices, teaching people how to sit with dying people. All that totally normal seeming guy. But like, I just remember one of the things he said is, you know, what's over there makes this look like a shadow. Like what's over there is way better, way better than here. Here is like, I think he called it a time warp or something. It's a warp, I think is what he said it was. But which is why generally you will hear when people die, they don't want to come back. They get pushed back by some force. Sometimes their families. Like, you're not done there, you're not at school yet. It's nice to see you, but you still have to go to school. And so they come back here completely changed, transformed. And that was all fascinating and interesting. And by the end of the workshop I felt, okay, yeah, I'm totally ready to do this work. And so I had my first volunteer call. There's someone who needs help. It's at this apartment. Drive over there, open the door. Lady's in the living room, she's crying, she's saying, who's going to take care of the rabbits? Who's going to take care of the rabbits? And you know when you walk into a house that's filled with. I mean, I just can't even. It's a wall of grief, a wall of just. I can't even explain the energy level. It was overwhelming. And right away I'm like, oh, I'm. This is way above my pay grade here. They shouldn't have sent me in. I'm the volunteer. I don't know what's happening here, but whatever the fuck the mystical ex millionaire said was out of my brain. And then walking out of the bedroom comes a man whose face is basically, you know, falling off. And he goes in the kitchen, gets a slice of pizza, walks by me, waves big smile on his face. It seemed like a smile. And that's the other thing that dying people have is that like, it's crazy, the lucidity they can exhibit before, like they become incapacitated completely. While all of us are freaking the fuck out. They like have started plugging into something much bigger. And then I go in the other room, she shows me. There's rabbits. I guess they had rabbits. You know, what you're looking at there is, if I had to guess, just a classic beginning relationship. Maybe, you know, two people decide to move in together in an apartment. Somebody got diagnosed with brain tumors. Brain tumors somehow manifested in his face. They'd gotten rabbits probably before all the shit had happened. And, you know, what you're seeing is, like, this very unexpected change in circumstance because these were young people. So then I get on my phone, like, hey, guys, I don't know if you should send in the volunteer for this one. This. Probably need a nurse over here or something. Because she was saying he's been kind of out of it. And he keeps turning the burners on and the stuff. So right away, this woman comes from the hospice, calls the ambulance to pick him up. He's ready to go to the hospice. He shouldn't be staying in his apartment anymore. And I remember he's in the ambulance. And I'm dazed. I've just been sledgehammered by reality. I have never seen anything like that before. In my fucking 20s, I'd never seen that reality. And I remember this guy. I will never forget him sitting in that ambulance right before they shut the doors. Looks me right in the eyes and another somehow radiant smile on his face. I've never seen anything like that before. And a really friendly wave to me, and also a kind of sparkle in his eye, like, I just blew this fucking kid's mind. Like, welcome to reality, man. This is what reality is. They shut the door at the end of us, drive them away now. They sent me back to the hospice where he was at, to see if they needed anything. A few days later, maybe a week, I don't remember. And I remember that fucking orientation. They were like, why don't you. Sometimes you can offer. See if they want you to play music for them. It's weird. And I had that in my head. This is how dumb I am. I'm like, maybe they want me to play the Grateful Dead for them. Oh, my God. So I go into their room, and there's that woman holding hands with him. He's in bed now. He's, like, asleep. He's sleeping. Giving him morphine, I guess. And I think I did say it. You guys. You want to listen to Grateful Dead? She's like, no. Oh, no. He was awake. He was awake. They both are like, what? They seem like an incredible couple. Like, they would have been fun to hang out with. And the reaction was exactly the funniest reaction you could have. Like, no. Like, what, are you trying to make it worse? And he looked at me, goes, and maybe I'm misremembering this. And she told me this. I'm pretty sure he said this. Yeah, he did. He said, my brother visited me yesterday and said, we're going on a trip. And he goes, but he didn't tell me where. Asleep. And then she says to me, his brother died. Oh, dude. And then a few days later, he dropped his body. But. Whoa. Whoa. And that encounter with family members who have passed on is very common. They just show up.
Josh
Yeah. My great grandma had dreams of my great grandfather before she died, and she started giving all her stuff away.
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God. It's so cool. Assuming you have a good relationship with your family.
Josh
Correct.
Pete Holmes
But yeah. And that's the craziest thing about it is there's all of these, like, similarities in people who are about to die. That is just wild. And the energy. You remember the energy around your grandmother. Remember what that was like? The other experience I had, and I only did a few of these, One of my favorites was I went to this lady's house because mostly I was just a messenger. I was like an errand boy. I would just pick up groceries and shit. And I went to this one house. I don't know who it was. Ex Hollywood starlet. I knew that because, like, pictures of her all over the wall. Beautiful, but black and white. If I was more of a citinephile, I probably would know who it was. But I wouldn't say because that's not cool. She's laying in bed. I walk in, There was someone there. How you doing? She looks at me and goes, how does it look like I'm doing? That was awesome. She was funny too. And. But the other one, you think you're.
Josh
Gonna be one of those people, like, I'm ready to die. Hurry up. Come on.
Pete Holmes
Me?
Josh
Yeah.
Pete Holmes
Well, I mean, I don't. I don't know. You never know how you're gonna face it. Like, I would have said yes to that before I had kids, but, you know, when you add the addition of kids to the equation, I think that's gonna be, like, really hard to say. I don't want the. I think by the time. Hopefully I'm old when I die. But when you get to a certain age, you start intuiting what's coming and you're not quite as afraid of it. Generally, you might be, depending on your practice, whatever your connection is with the eternity. But I think there's a sort of poignant and very difficult saying goodbye to your family and comforting them. You don't want them to suffer, you want them to be okay more than you want you to be okay. And I think that's what happens to a lot of dying people is they become the hospice worker for their relatives. They're calming them, comforting them. It's going to be okay depending on what kind of karma they have. Some people it's not an easy experience. Some people it is. It just depends. That's another thing they say in the hospice. People die as they lived. So the entire pattern of your life reemerges as you approach death. You repeat the same shit in different ways. It's like the whole thing loops one last time, but quickly. So you'll go through all your habitual patterns and stuff. And if you haven't figured out a way to overcome your reactivity, then that can show up as like a very disturbing last few days for your family. It just depends.
Josh
I had a friend that happened to where he had stage four cancer but for like four years. So his wife was taking care of him. And towards the end you can tell it was wearing on her having, I mean, four years of almost dying. And then he would code, but anytime he code, he wanted to come back. So it wasn't like let him go. The last time that they brought him back, he confessed to his wife of some infidelity.
Pete Holmes
Oh shit.
Josh
Yeah. So I'm like, oh, he saw something. Yeah, he saw something and confessed. And then after that it wasn't. She was pretty pissed off. It's like, damn.
Pete Holmes
After that he was like, I'm out.
Josh
After that he was out.
Pete Holmes
I'm coming back. Yeah, not coming back.
Josh
Yeah, exactly.
Pete Holmes
Hey, I cheated on you.
Josh
He had to get it off his chest.
Pete Holmes
Well, yeah, that's. That. That is exactly right. Like you don't want to. You know that. And that's why these deep dark secrets are not good. You gotta get em. You gotta find a way to like, you know. There was actually in San Francisco, if you look at the history of Burning man, there was this group of urban explorers and I think they were called the San Francisco Suicide Club. And, and so the San Francisco Suicide Club, they would, their members would tie up all the loose ends as though they were going to die the next day. That was the thing, like, as though they were going to die. Act like you're going to die, pretend you're going to die and take care of all the bullshit. Call the people you need to call set things right. Get your fucking, you know, will done, get it all taken care of right now. Prepare for death. That was the beginning part. And then new members would be taken on this blindfolded tour of some abandoned place. You're blindfolded, someone's leading you in the dark, holding your hand. It feels like you're walking, maybe on a beam. And the person would say to you, if you move one step to the right, you're going to fall to your death. So don't, don't panic. But if you don't follow me exactly, you're gonna die. The end of it. They take the blindfold off, there's a huge fucking party. You're now a member of the San Francisco Suicide Club. So that transformed into something called the Cacophony Society, which is this culture jamming art collective that would once a year, they would burn this effigy on the beach in San Francisco, and people would gather to watch the burning of this thing. And then it got too big. And so San Francisco's like, you can't do this anymore. You gotta get permits and shit. And so they took it out to the desert and that became Burning Man. But so this practice of looking death in the eye and fucking dealing with it now is like, very healthy, very healthy. And if you don't do that, when it sneaks up on you, and sometimes it does, then you will die in this kind of chaotic, befuddled way. But if you are like strong enough to just know. Yeah, you're gonna, of course you're gonna die. What do you think? You're not gonna die. And then you take care of it, then that's the most compassionate thing you can do for your family too.
Josh
Is that the same thing as what Skull and Bones does where they do the fake death? And I heard Freemasons do that too, once you get to a certain degree.
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Well, I think the Masons. That's the initiation, isn't it?
Josh
I have no idea.
Pete Holmes
I don't either. I do think that's the initiation, I think. The initiation pull up Masonic coffin. I think you have to, like, take your wedding ring off even. So you're like, you're basically reborn. And so you've been, you've. You've been resurrected from the dead. Your beginning of your first day as a Freemason is your first day of life. You're starting over, right? They pull you from the coffin, you're starting over. And then, you know, you go through the various degrees and you learn all this stuff, which I have no idea what it is, but it must be cool.
Josh
And according to Matt Damon, they also can pee on you. Well, it was in a movie. He's being initiated and he's CIA.
Pete Holmes
That's the Skull and Bones.
Josh
Yeah. They pee on him.
Pete Holmes
I thought the Skull and Bones, they jerk off on you.
Josh
Oh, they could do that.
Pete Holmes
Onto a glass coffin. Look up. Skull and Bones. Glass coffin.
Josh
Jerk.
Pete Holmes
Come. I'm going.
Josh
Get off. Of images.
Pete Holmes
You should unplug that hard drive while you're doing this shit. Skull and Bones. Glasscoffinjit. Come, come. Yeah, there you go. Reddit Red Dead online. Oh, there, there it is, look. The initiation. Oh, it's a video. Oh, it's Red Dead Redemption. Oh, scroll down. Did Red Dead Redemption fucking just look up? I can't believe that's the first thing that popped up. Is Red Dead Redemption? Look, I don't know. The point is you apparently that, like, I didn't know you jerked off in the coffin. I thought they jerked off onto the coffin. There's probably meetings where they're like, guys, why don't we jerk off on the coffin? I'm tired of watching guys jerk off in the coffin. It's not fair. Why does he get to come? Yeah, but this is like in, you know, a lot of different societies, fraternal organizations, initiatory systems. There is the descent into the underworld. This is the Eleusinian Mysteries, where initiates would be given some kind of psychedelic brew called kykeon. And then they would go into like a labyrinth. No one really knows what it was, but it represented the descent into the underworld. And then in that darkness, you were, like, reborn. And then you would be taken out of the underworld a completely new person. And the near death experience mimics this pattern, which is you actually do die. You encounter the abyss, the next phase of your evolution as a soul in the universe. But for whatever reason, you gotta come back. And that's why whenever anyone comes back from those things, they're always better. They're changed. They're more compassionate. They're more focused on things that matter. They're less fixed on the material world. They've seen the transient nature of life itself and it resurrects you.
Josh
Unless you're George Bush.
Pete Holmes
Did he have an nde?
Josh
He was in Skull and Bones, right?
Pete Holmes
Well, yeah. That's jerking. That's way. Yeah, dude. I mean, look, if like laying in a coffin with dudes jerking off on you made you enlightened, I'd be the fucking Buddha. I'll just Leave it at that. It doesn't work. Yeah, you gotta actually have the transit. This is the hardcore psychedelic experience. This is like when someone, like, goes deep into psychedelics and they come back and they're changed forever for the better because they caught a glimpse of infinity. And whatever this bullshit we're up to here starts seeming like a protracted game of make believe invented by warmongers. You just. You're over it. You're like, you're in the world, but you're not of the world, as they say. Look at Lazarus. Jesus reaches into the tomb, pulls Lazarus out. It's the moment of recognizing your entire life was the tomb. The hand of Jesus is the hand of infinity reaching into your life and bringing you the baptism of John the Baptist. You're born again. But you can't be born again unless you die. Otherwise you weren't born. So there's a death in there that they don't talk about. The. Plunging into the water represents the. The. What do they say is it? Expatiate. Your sins are washed away. But it's not just that you're dipped into infinity. You're annihilated and then reassembled. And in that reassembly, all the impure shit gets washed away. You're born again. This is a possibility in any human life.
Josh
Sounds like resurrection. The other one where they take the. They think they die from taking the psychedelics.
Pete Holmes
What is that?
Josh
Where Jesus came back. You know what I mean? Like, he. He resurrected, yo.
Pete Holmes
Yeah, exactly. And Jesus went to hell, apparently, for three days. Three days. Went down to hell, was born again, came out of the tomb after having, like, wrestled with the darkness.
Josh
Yeah, he became spawn and started fighting everybody, dude.
Pete Holmes
I mean, something. Fuck. Mel Gibson's got a movie coming out about that. Do you know that? He's got a movie. Look up Mel Gibson's new movie.
Josh
When does it come out?
Pete Holmes
It's Passion of the Christ, too. I think it's literally Passion of the Christ, part two. Can you pause it for a second? I don't want to be blasphemous, but if I had holes in my fucking hand and I was going to visit a lady, I would put bandages on. I think it's rude to have this daylight shining through the holes in your hand, just whistling. I would at least close them. Yeah, or like, I don't know, man. Or gloves. They had gloves back then. Not. I mean, look, it's Jesus. He could do whatever he wants. I mean, look, the Passion of the Christ is a hard act to follow. It's like, I'm. I'm. I respect Mel Gibson for trying to do Patch of the Christ 2. But, dude, what I've gathered from that is we don't get what I thought, which is like, Jesus in hell. Oh, yeah, I'm buying a ticket for Jesus in hell. I don't think I'm buying a ticket for what appears to be just like a long, like the scene that should show up after the credits roll. You know what I mean? Like, maybe it'll be good. But I mean, pull up passion the Christmas. All right, that's enough.
Josh
I remember people watching it out and it was like a bunch of people from my church and women just weeping, like, crying, crying. I was like, whoa.
Pete Holmes
Well, that's.
Josh
Dude, this is what intense.
Pete Holmes
Here's what I love about. And you know, this is like a conversation that my wife and I have an ongoing dialogue about Christianity. And I love it because Christianity is completely different than most people think it is. That's. And most people don't even, like, get into the driveway of Christianity. And I don't blame them because they see mega church pastors, vaguely sexual megalomaniacs asking for money to buy Porsches and. You know what I mean? Or they see private jets. Private jets and shit like that creepy. Dude, pull up that creepy televangelist. Oh, my God, this is so good. I'm sure everyone's seen this, but as long as I'm showing clips. Creepy televangelist confronted about jets. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. That spooky ass dude, he.
Josh
He did a blood sacrifice in his church. Say I did. Oh, that part.
Pete Holmes
We wrestle not with flesh and blood. Okay? The principalities and powers. Can you explain what you meant by smile? So you just don't like. Yeah, dude. I mean. Okay, in his defense, I can't think of a better way to describe flying commercial than being in a tube with demons. I don't mean the people. I mean the fucking stinks. The farts. You know, when you get a commercial flight farter, just like, for whatever reason, people just feel like they can blast farts up in the sky. And so suddenly just someone's doing like, dude, I've been on planes where, like, I won't name name names, but I was flying with someone once and I don't. Honestly, I respect her for this. She just yelled, stop it. Because someone kept blowing, like, horrible farts. Like, it was terrible. So, like, yes, tube of demons. But I mean more to the point, like, you know, just like that guy looks like he Just climbed out of, like, a cow carcass and washed off. He looks like he sleeps in dead things. He looks like he could climb a tree way too fast. He looks like he could sprout wings like that. This is the. And of course, from the cosmology of Christianity and an analysis of the. If we're going to bifurcate God into good and evil, if somehow there is some personified form of evil in the universe, it's not going. The adversary is way more clever than that. It would go around like, Richard Dawkins ing everybody. It would infiltrate the system itself. And by being in the system and parading about as the very worst possible example of the thing of essentially a satire of the thing, it corrupts the thing because people see that and then they associate with that psycho with Christianity, and they're not interested. Why would you be?
Josh
Right?
Pete Holmes
That's. That keeps people out of the driveway.
Josh
Did you see when he cut his hand and he, like, put blood.
Pete Holmes
Pull it up. Pull it up. You'll need to see that one. That was fun.
Josh
Kenneth Copeland.
Pete Holmes
Kenneth Copeland.
Josh
And then I would do the same.
Pete Holmes
I don't think they really cut their hands. They're using fucking cranberry juice. Fucking pussies.
Josh
There's no blood.
Pete Holmes
Yeah, pussies. Jesus said, take this cup. Okay, whatever. Watch more of this. Dumbass. Are you fucking kidding me? Get some. Gross. Grosso. Fucking balls. Copeland. Cut your fucking hand. You're really going to use cranberry juice up there? You. Whoa. Look at that. That looks like something fly into your window if you were vacationing in a castle.
Josh
The way he talks to is mixed with blood.
Pete Holmes
Good. What, do I scare you? What, I don't seem like I'm filled with God's light? Yeah. So that. That's like. I get it. But then when you, like, encounter actual Christianity, you weirdly see how absolutely bizarre it is that of all the world religions, that's the one that gets the most pushback. That's the one that gets judged. That's the one that's, like, you fucking Christian. What then you see the thing itself, and what you're witnessing is insane, at least in Catholicism. And it goes back to the haunted house thing. They don't. Wouldn't, like, make. Most of us who aren't Christians are thinking about Christianity. We see a group of people that seem, like, obsessed with a maybe historic figure from a long time ago, and that's what we think. We're like, all right, this guy walked thousands of years ago on the Earth. When you see Real Christianity. Every fucking year, they're going through this cycle. And they're the. Like, the devout Christian is. Is experiencing the crucifixion. Like, right now, it's Lent. Jesus goes out in the desert to, like, pray, and he gets tempted. And so you see the people with the ash on their head, and, like, you see the people are doing Lent who are abstaining from this or that. And we see that on the outside as some kind of weird ritual. They're there. The idea is they love Jesus so much, they're there, like, trying to support and comfort the being all the way through the crucifixion. So when you see someone taking communion, it reminds me, dude, I remember I was in Varanasi, India. It's basically Israel for the Hare Krishnas in a Hare Krishna temple. Watching the devotees look at the deities. They have deities. And realizing, like, oh, like, whatever I'm seeing, that's not what they're seeing. They're interacting with these deities. To them, the deities are real. Like, they're real gods. Like, they're in front of God right now. They see God and you could see it in their face. That's Christianity. So when Jesus is being crucified, they feel. They're feeling it. They're mourning, they're freaking out, they're grieving, they're weeping. Like, they're in that moment. That moment from that cosmological perspective was so powerful that it transcended time, space, meaning. Right now, it's happening in this moment, and that's what they're connecting to. That's why when you see it as it is, it's way different than probably what you thought it was. Yeah, it's hardcore. I mean, it's hardcore if. If you really go for it.
Josh
Yeah. And communion and Catholicism, when they're doing communion, it's. You're actually supposed to be there. In the Last Supper, you're there. Yes, that's the way the priest describes it.
Pete Holmes
And you're not a bystander. Like, you're in it, you're feeling it. They have found a way to plug in to this event, and they are experiencing it every year. And it's so hardcore. Like, pull up Philip K. Dick, talking about Jesus. Okay, this is for. Okay, just cut to this, guys. I'm sorry. We just spent the last two days looking for this. I can't find the YouTube video I watched years ago when I was super high. So we finally found something on Reddit. Thank God. As for the theory, we're living in 50 A.D. philip K. Dick discusses. I heard first heard about this when I watched the movie Waking Life. If you haven't seen that MOV movie, watch it. It's so good. The idea that we discussed is we're all living in 50 AD where Jesus Christ has just died on the cross, saving us, allowing us to have eternal lives if we choose to follow him. But Satan is trying to get us to forget this with an illusion of time. In effect, time is just being asked if you choose to follow him or not. And our life is just saying no, no, no until you say yes. So what we're experiencing right now, according to Philip K. Dick, is the Matrix, a time loop. And essentially, like Jesus is being crucified in front of us right now. It's so overwhelmingly powerful that we are hallucinating reality as it is. And this hallucination, I guess, is like the last fucking attempt by Satan to, like, get you to deny, you know, the divine manifestation of the Godhead in reality. And so you think you're just having a normal, mundane human life, but you're no different from Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan, Buddha being tempted by Mara. You're no different. You, in fact, are the Enlightened One just on the precipice of your realization. And this thing you call human existence is actually a test. It's a fucking test. And you're failing because you keep reincarnating.
Josh
I found it.
Pete Holmes
Ah, yes. Hell, yeah. Thank you, Josh.
Philip K. Dick
Novelist Philip K. Dill suggested that time on Earth has stopped in the year 50 AD and he gives concrete reasons for his theory in his breath.
Pete Holmes
Keep playing it. Fuck it, just play.
Philip K. Dick
How to build a universe that doesn't fall apart two days later in I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. In short, he believes that our world today is not taking place in the 21st century, and we are deceived and live in a counterfeit reality lodged in a space time pocket. In 50 AD he writes, My theory is time is not real. Despite all the change we see, a specific permanent landscape underlies the world of change. And this invisible underlying landscape is that of the Bible. It specifically is the period immediately following the death and resurrection of Christ. It is, in other words, the time period of the Book of Acts. There is internal evidence that another reality, an unchanging one, exactly as Parmenides and Plato suspected, underlies the visible, phenomenal world of change. And we can cut through to it. Thousands of years pass, but the world of the Bible is concealed beneath it, still there and still real. To Dick, the Bible is a literally Real but veiled landscape, never changing, but usually hidden from our sight. Dick cites numerous coincidences in his life that plunged him back to the time period of the Book of Acts. His novels contained surprising fragments of the Bible that he had never read at the time of his own writing. When a young Christian woman wearing a shining gold fish necklace appears at his doorway with medicine for his pain, it all becomes clear to him. The synchronicities are too much. Although Dick realizes that modern scientists would scoff at his seemingly insane assertions, he promotes his odd worldview as a useful metaphor for the difficulties humans have when trying to comprehend reality. Pre Socratic Mileshian Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself. Dick believes that the cosmos is not as it appears to be. And what it probably is at its deepest level is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level. Call it mind or soul. It is something unitary which lives and thinks and only appears to be plural and material. According to Dick, God and the universe were both that which thought and the thing it thought, thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought. And since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.
Pete Holmes
Exactly. Perfectly said, very clear, easily understandable. Totally makes sense. I don't even need to explain it. You understand that? I do, too. It's obvious. But that is Christianity. That's what That's. They live in that zone. And, you know, you'll never know that if you don't, like, explore it with your own brain. Like, if you explore it with, like, your. The brain of which is, by the way, anyone. Whenever I meet anyone who rolls their eyes at Christianity, I get it. It's like, I know why you're rolling your eyes. I don't blame you, Psy Copeland, or God help you. You were raised in a family that made you feel like you were going to hell for touching your dick. You know, all kinds of abuse and stuff. It's like. But all of that is an encounter with abuse. That's an encounter with abuse. That's an encounter with. With misarticulation of the Dharma. That's an encounter with what appears to be. If you want to talk about a recurring pattern in the universe relative to Christian cosmology, a distortion, an intentional distortion that warps something that's readily available to anybody, which is the New Testament. You just pick it up, read it. It's in every fucking hotel, and nothing is stopping you from doing that. But there's some distortion field around it, which is what I find really curious. It's a very powerful distortion field. We are not compelled to look into it. And. Except when we are compelled to look into it, it's coming from people like Copeland. But then when you meet the actual Christians, which I've been lucky enough to meet, they will say things like, don't. Don't talk about it. Like, you don't need to tell someone you're Catholic or Christian or whatever. You don't need to talk about it. Let them ask you, why do you seem so happy? And then you can talk about it. But, you know, there isn't this beating someone over the fucking head with, like, you know, sinfulness or something like that. And also the. The articulation of sin, which. Even saying it, we all hate it because of the way it was presented to us, which is usually to make you feel ashamed, right? That's the way it was. A control mechanism used to make you feel ashamed. And, you know, this is interesting because one of my kids, very young, has already figured out how powerful it is to use religion to manipulate. He just does it intuitively. He's like, daddy, Jesus doesn't like it that you're not giving me dessert. You know what I mean? He already figured it out. A lot of us experienced that, which is like, if you want to control somebody, tell them some invisible fucking figure doesn't like what they're doing. Misinterpret a fucking book, and then use that to control people. And boom. Anyone who's encountered that, it sucks. But the thing itself is very different from that. In fact, I would say the polar opposite of that. And the conceptualization of sin is just karma. It's a representation of the law of cause and effect. If you are a sentient being in the material universe, you must make decisions. Those decisions have a direct impact on everyone around you, on everything, whether it's a big or a little decision. And because you're not perfect, that impact is not going to be positive. There's always going to be a fragment of selfishness, confusion, something fucked up in it. No matter how much you want to help, your bullshit's gonna get in there somehow, a little bit. I don't care who the fuck you are. It's gonna get in there. And so that's sin. That's original sin. Original sin is like pointing out to a fish, they're wet. As long as you're making ripples in time space, you're going to create negative consequences. And the fact that you believe There's a way to swim in time. Or I guess for a fish. It's like a fish who thinks that you could swim around in the ocean and not be wet. So everyone's trying to be a dry fucking fish. This is really weird to say it like that, but of course you're going to feel like an asshole all the time if you have some stupid dream that you can be perfect and then you start beating yourself up. And that's why in the Christian cosmology, Satan is called the accuser. Because it's that part of you that accuses yourself of being a piece of shit every day, when really you're just dealing with the nature of being a sentient, limited, impermanent being, contending with cause and effect. That's sin. You can't do it right. There's no way. No matter what you want to do, there's no way out. You're going to fuck shit up. So just give up trying to be perfect. And then that's where you enter into the okay, then what am I supposed to do? Surrender, baby. You got to reach out. You can't do it on your own. No one likes that. That's the other thing people don't like. I want to do it on my own, pull myself up by my fucking bootstraps. And so people don't like that. And I get it, because we live in a post industrial revolution world grind culture. You do it all yourself. And if you do ask for help, you're a pussy and you're fucking needy, codependent. It's not that kind of asking for help. It's more like if you're. God help you. Maybe some of them listen to my podcast. If you're one of those people who's locked in, you know, you're laying in the hospital bed. I believe that the incredible Metallica song was written about this situation. You have some kind of spinal injury. You're trapped in your fucking hospital bed. You can't move a muscle. People don't even know if you're in there. You're thinking about pulling the fucking plug. Maybe it's better if they do. But it's that kind of asking for help. It's the twitch of the finger when you're in a hospital bed, indicating that there's something more there than just a vegetable. That's what it is. It's like you just need help. Like you need a doctor. You need someone to do something. That's what it is. That's the divine intercession based on the grim Reality of having sentience in time space. Because a rock has no sin. No one's ever looked at a rock. A boulder rolls down a fucking hill, smashes a fucking baby to jelly. Nobody's like, that's an evil fucking boulder. The boulder was just like over a period of a billion years. Finally, some sand underneath the boulder displaced, allowed the boulder to go plummeting down into a fucking playground and smush a sweet little tot to jam. Bab squished it down. Sinless boulder. Now the boulder somehow could think and look down and was like, dude, I think I can smash that baby. That's an evil fucking boulder. Humans, we think we can act. And so, yeah, there's consequence. That's Christianity, that's sin, it's karma, it's cause and effect. But you can't say sin. It upsets people. So you got to say cause and effect.
Josh
Do you think we live in 50 AD?
Pete Holmes
Absolutely we do. 100%. Well, I don't think, honestly, I mean, after that podcast with Mitch Horowitz, I've been thinking a lot. I will wrap it up on this. Already rambled too long. But you can cut that two days that we look for the Philip K.
Josh
Dick bullshit, cut it back some.
Pete Holmes
That'll make it a six minute podcast. The so Horowitz. You guys should watch the Mitch Horowitz episode if you haven't watched it. Horowitz is talking about a study where apparently people were invited to take a test, memorize a bunch of words. Obviously not in that order. Memorize a bunch of words, take a test. They scored the test randomly, selected a group of people who had already taken the test and invited them to continue studying for the test. Those who continued studying for the test scored higher on the test, implying time isn't the way we think it is. That time is actually not time's arrow. Maybe it's all happening at once, or maybe it's a lot of different parallel universes happening simultaneously. And via decision. You connect to specific frames in various parallel universes, which produces a sense of identity, self change, meaning that. And this is what I'm really interested in, because I've been thinking about it a lot and I've been doing something since actually that conversation, which is going to sound completely batshit crazy, but just playing around with that concept, because I remember reading something in Chaos Magick about how you could actually send good energy to past versions of yourself and you could reach out to future versions of yourself that you want to be and make direct connections with those future versions of Yourself to get information, help, comfort. It reminded me you were telling me some memory trick that people do, it had a cool name where you sort of notice particular moments. What's that called? What's that called?
Josh
Being present? Being.
Pete Holmes
No.
Josh
Practicing gratitude.
Pete Holmes
No. Well, that too. But there's a way where you just sort of remind yourself to be in the moment. And then if you do that regularly, you don't have that fuzzy sense of like time going by too fast.
Josh
Yeah. Where you're taking a. I'm enjoying this hot shower. Because a hundred years ago they even kings, whatever, didn't have these hot.
Pete Holmes
So you're picking out these moments from a general kind of blurry fuzz of many, many moments. And you're. And it solidifies your reality.
Josh
Jacking off in the shower.
Pete Holmes
Yeah, jacking off your friends in the shower. And so then you. Instead of just doing that. This sounds nuts. And I mean at the very least it'll get you into the moment. But if, like right now, you could do it right now. It sounds so nuts right now. Send good vibes back to yourself 10 seconds ago. Just try it. I know it sounds nuts. Done, done, Right? And now. Feel it right now, from some point in the future, you're sending good vibes to yourself right now. And now do that. You see, you start making these bizarre connections not just to the present moment, but to future versions of you and past versions of you. And it's weird, but it's really interesting because like if this shit is true, Philip K. Dick's maniac sodium pental vision is true, or if Horowitz's study is true, or if what the Google people are saying about their supercomputers is true. Time doesn't work the way we think it is. It's not past, present, future, all happening at once.
Josh
Right.
Pete Holmes
That means there are onion skin layers of reality all around us that we call the future or the past. Meaning the past isn't gone at all, it's still there right now. And you can connect with it and the future, all possible timelines right now. And you could connect with them theoretically. Meaning that when people have been talking and ear beating you about goals, you need a goal. It sounds so boring. The goal. Work towards your goal. What that is is the sort of beginning realization of actually you're not working towards your goal. You're literally connecting to that moment in the future where you've achieved the goal and pulling that moment into the present, which is drawing you into that reality. It's a whole different way of doing things.
Josh
Time is always. It's always the present. Because God gives you free will, but he knows what you're going to do. Right? How is that possible? Yeah, that's because to humans, we see time linear, right? But to God, everything happens at once.
Pete Holmes
Right?
Josh
So every decision you ever made in your life, you already made it.
Pete Holmes
Right?
Josh
So now your free will is just. Feel how you.
Pete Holmes
From that perspective, from a hyperdimensional perspective, time is complete. Like all the miracles, synchronicities from an outside of time perspective would not seem like synchronicities or miracles at all. They would just seem as normal as the fucking wind blowing the leaves in a tree.
Josh
Correct.
Pete Holmes
Because we can't see that. It seems insane. How could that happen at the exact same time? I was just thinking them and they called me. And then the thing. Well, it's. Yeah, because you are stuck in time. You're bobbing down the river fucking time. You're stuck in it and there's no way for you to see past it. So that opens up the realm of magic, miracles. I'm teaching my kids magic. It's so fun teaching them how to like, distract. To like, do the thing, grab someone's attention, pull it over here, and then do something over here. Well, that's a function of the universe. Except that the distraction is just what we call manifested reality. There's all this shit we can't see, but yet there appears to be a pattern. That pattern shows up in the miracles and the synchronicities and such.
Josh
If you're in tune to it.
Pete Holmes
If you're in tune to it. Exactly. And so if you have subscribed to Times Arrow, the past is gone, the future ain't here yet. There's just the present. I certainly have. If you're wrong about that, then it's basically like cutting yourself off from appendages that you can't see. You have all these extra arms and tentacles that are stretching out into all points in the future, in the past. And you're not using any of them. You're just using this appendage that looks like your body. You're not using any of the other stuff.
Josh
You're in survival mode.
Pete Holmes
You're in survival mode. And so playing around with all these bizarre new ways of conceptualizing time is so fun, even if it's not real. I mean, who knows?
Josh
It is a simulation. Because I told this, my parents hated this. They're super Catholic. And I go, well, what happens when you die? They go, you go to heaven or you go to hell? I go, okay, that's probably based reality then, right? They're like, what? I was like, what is this then? If that is the end, that means that's. There's no more time after that. That's base reality, Right. That means this has to be a simulation, right?
Pete Holmes
This is just some kind of dream happening within that realm. Yeah, that's good. Base reality, sure. I mean, yeah. Yeah, if that's outside of time, Right? Yeah. And then, so then sort of you start thinking about like, well, we know there's history, there was a past, something did happen. But it's crazy to imagine history is happening right now. Like all the stuff, World War II, World War I, Hiroshima, future apocalypses, all of it happening simultaneously. And you in the same way right now, your eyes can only see certain, like, lights, spectrums of light. You have been dialed in to this slice of time space. It's all you can see or experience, but all the other ones are happening at the same time. So the question is, can you connect with alternate timelines, temporal timelines? And that's what Horowitz is talking about. Spooky action at a distance. Quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement flies in the fucking face of everything we understand about how fast things can go. Because something in the past instantaneously connects to something in the future, light years away, theoretically. And time and space are the same goddamn thing, right? They're intertwined. So that means that you. If you're not quantum entangled with your body, then you're not. What are you quantum entangled with?
Josh
I know how to get it quantum entangled with your body very easily. The way you do it is. Dtfh YouTube memberships.
Pete Holmes
Yes. Entangle with me, baby. Subscribe and I'll shut up. Entangle with me. Become a member. You will get commercial free episodes of this podcast. You will quantum entangle not just with me, but with the entire DTFH community, which has been called by the National Council of Global Geniuses the greatest community of all time. Brilliant, mostly. Architects, nurses, surgeons, incredibly symmetrical, beautiful people. All aligned. Entangled. We jerk off on each other in coffins. We do it online, offline, at our mini retreats and seminars. But most importantly, you won't get plagued by fucking commercials. Please subscribe. I'd love it if you would. And I got to get the fuck out of here. I'm quantum entangled with my kids. I gotta get back there, do some bedtime stories. I love you guys. Stay in 45 AD. Don't get crucified. God bless you. Goodbye.
Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Episode 678: Soloooooooooooo
Release Date: April 1, 2025
In Episode 678 of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour, hosts Pete Holmes and Josh delve into a myriad of intriguing topics ranging from technology and urban exploration to deep philosophical discussions about time, consciousness, and spirituality. This summary captures the essence of their expansive conversation, highlighting key points, notable quotes, and the insightful conclusions drawn throughout the episode.
The episode commences with a light-hearted exchange about Josh's new camera setup, setting a casual and engaging tone.
Their banter underscores the duo's camaraderie and sets the stage for deeper discussions ahead.
Pete enthusiastically announces an upcoming event in Denver celebrating Bicycle Day, intertwining historical anecdotes about LSD with personal reflections.
He emphasizes the therapeutic potential of LSD when used responsibly, contrasting past misconceptions with modern understandings.
The conversation shifts to Meow Wolf's Convergence Station in Denver, an immersive art experience that Pete praises for its creativity and dimensionality.
They discuss the unique features of the venue, including 360-degree laser projections and the collaborative spirit with guests like Reggie Watts.
Josh shares an unsettling story about receiving a box of creepy tapes and a hard drive labeled "DTFH."
The duo listens to the ominous audio, featuring an Urban Explorer's narration about illegal underground tunnels, which heightens the episode's suspense.
Delving deeper into the tapes, Pete and Josh discuss the allure and eerie nature of abandoned missile silos and dead malls.
They explore the sociopolitical implications of urban decay, pondering why these structures are left to deteriorate rather than being repurposed for community use.
The dialogue transitions to supernatural experiences, with Pete recounting personal ghost encounters and theoretical musings.
They delve into theories about ghosts being residual energy or echoes of past events, drawing parallels with philosophical concepts of consciousness and existence.
Pete shares his volunteer experience at a hospice, providing profound insights into the transition between life and death.
Their conversation touches on the emotional and psychological facets of dying, emphasizing the cyclical nature of life patterns and the importance of confronting mortality.
The hosts explore the obscure rituals of societies like Skull and Bones and Freemasons, blending humor with curiosity.
They speculate on the symbolic meanings behind these ceremonies, connecting them to broader themes of rebirth and transformation.
A deep dive into theological and philosophical discussions ensues, with Pete articulating complex ideas linking Christianity, time perception, and the multiverse.
They explore notions of time as a non-linear construct, suggesting that our perception is limited and that multiple realities may coexist simultaneously. The hosts connect these ideas to concepts like quantum entanglement and the illusion of linear time, contemplating the possibility that our existence is part of a grand, multifaceted simulation.
Wrapping up the episode, Pete and Josh reflect on the interconnectedness of time, consciousness, and reality, encouraging listeners to explore these concepts further.
The episode concludes with an invitation for listeners to engage with the broader community, reinforcing the show's themes of exploration and understanding.
Notable Quotes:
Final Thoughts:
Episode 678 of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour navigates through an eclectic mix of topics, seamlessly blending humor, personal anecdotes, and profound philosophical inquiries. Pete Holmes and Josh offer listeners a thought-provoking journey, encouraging a reevaluation of reality, time, and existence. Whether debating the nature of ghosts, the construction of society through abandoned structures, or the very fabric of time itself, the hosts invite their audience to ponder deeply and explore the multiverse of ideas presented.