#157 Peter Berg - Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side

Summary

Shawn Ryan Show – Episode #157 Summary: Peter Berg on Exposing Big Pharma, Lone Survivor, and Hollywood’s Dark Side

Release Date: January 9, 2025

In Episode #157 of the Shawn Ryan Show, host Shawn Ryan sits down with acclaimed filmmaker Peter Berg to delve into a myriad of profound topics ranging from the challenges of transitioning from military to civilian life, the harrowing experiences depicted in Berg's film “Lone Survivor”, the dark underbelly of Hollywood, and the critical examination of the opioid epidemic. This comprehensive conversation not only sheds light on Berg’s cinematic endeavors but also explores personal battles with addiction and the transformative power of psychedelics in overcoming such struggles.

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1. Welcome and Mutual Admiration

The episode begins with an evident mutual respect between Shawn Ryan and Peter Berg. Shawn expresses his admiration for Berg's work, stating:

• Shawn Ryan [01:08]: "I can't even believe you're sitting here. I've watched so many of your movies and series, and to have you here is pretty surreal."

Peter reciprocates the sentiment, acknowledging Shawn's impactful work with former SEALs:

• Peter Berg [02:00]: "I know how challenging it can be for so many team guys to figure out the next chapter of their life... I pay attention to that and try to help."

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2. Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life

Peter reflects on the difficulties faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life, highlighting the lack of support despite the extensive investment in training SEALs:

• Peter Berg [28:52]: "I tend to agree. I mean, certainly they don't act like they care... it's hard for me to sort out."

Shawn emphasizes the systemic neglect:

• Shawn Ryan [28:54]: "They don't care about us when we're done."

This sets the stage for their deeper discussions on personal and systemic struggles faced by veterans.

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3. The Making of “Lone Survivor” and Emotional Toll

Berg shares the intense emotional journey of creating “Lone Survivor”, detailing the interactions with Marcus Luttrell and the families involved:

• Peter Berg [03:02]: "I knew... I had to make sure that when I was done and I showed that film to not just the families, but the entire SEAL community... it became something much more than a movie."

He recounts a particularly poignant moment with Danny Dietz’s parents:

• Peter Berg [12:21]: "His father sat me down on Danny's bed... and he said, 'That's who my son was. Make sure you get that right.'"

The pressure to authentically represent the SEAL community's sacrifices was immense, influencing both Berg and the entire crew deeply.

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4. Exposing the Opioid Epidemic with “Painkiller”

The conversation shifts to Berg’s latest project, “Painkiller”, a documentary series exposing the opioid crisis:

• Peter Berg [34:27]: "Painkiller was for me... and it is the cure for opiate addiction, for alcoholism."

Berg discusses the systemic corruption involving Big Pharma and the Sackler family:

• Peter Berg [34:27]: "The Sacklers and other drug companies were bribing these guys to restrict the amount of pills that were allowed to be prescribed..."

He reveals alarming insights into the manipulation of prescription regulations, highlighting the profound impact of these revelations.

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5. Personal Battles with Addiction

Shawn opens up about his own struggles with addiction, providing a vulnerable look into his past:

• Shawn Ryan [48:42]: "I had a hell of a run in Colombia with cocaine... I've been sober for three years."

Peter shares his perspective on addiction, emphasizing it as a disease rather than a weakness:

• Peter Berg [48:40]: "It's not about weakness. It's a disease, and I'm fortunate that I don't think I have it."

Their candid discussion underscores the pervasive nature of addiction and the personal toll it takes on individuals and their loved ones.

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6. The Role of Psychedelics in Healing

A significant portion of the episode explores the transformative role of psychedelics in overcoming addiction and trauma. Shawn details his journey with substances like ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT:

• Shawn Ryan [58:25]: "I did ibogaine and 5-MeO DMT... It's a completely different animal to me."

Peter shares his profound experiences with these substances, describing them as life-altering:

• Peter Berg [62:03]: "It was an incredibly life-changing experience for me."

They discuss the potential of psychedelics in providing deep psychological healing and introspection, advocating for their recognition and availability as legitimate medical treatments.

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7. Navigating Complex Geopolitical Issues

The conversation takes a contemplative turn as Berg shares his recent trip to Israel, offering insights into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

• Peter Berg [129:30]: "It was really fucking sad to me. But there's some good, some good stories too."

He expresses frustration over the intractable nature of the conflict, emphasizing the need for external intervention:

• Peter Berg [120:07]: "They can't fix it without other people... Europe’s gotta help because they can't fucking figure it out."

This segment highlights Berg’s broader concern for global conflicts and the human suffering they entail.

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8. Upcoming Project: “American Primeval”

Berg introduces his latest venture, “American Primeval”, an epic saga set in 1857 amidst the violent intersection of Mormons, Native American tribes, and the US Government. Drawing inspiration from classic wilderness films, Berg aims to capture raw survival instincts in a treacherous environment:

• Peter Berg [125:35]: "It’s set in southwestern Wyoming and southeastern Utah... following a woman’s journey through that part of America."

He details the ambitious nature of the project, highlighting the challenges of on-location shooting in harsh conditions and the historical significance of the storyline.

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9. Conclusion and Mutual Respect

As the episode winds down, both Shawn and Peter reflect on the depth of their conversation. They express mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s openness and vulnerability:

• Shawn Ryan [131:19]: "Thank you for opening up about everything."

• Peter Berg [131:20]: "Same to you. Thanks for sharing the story."

Their exchange encapsulates the episode's essence—honest dialogues about personal and systemic struggles, the pursuit of healing, and the relentless quest for truth.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Peter Berg [02:00]: "I know how challenging it can be for so many team guys to figure out the next chapter of their life... I pay attention to that and try to help."

• Peter Berg [12:21]: "That's who my son was. Make sure you get that right."

• Peter Berg [28:52]: "I tend to agree. I mean, certainly they don't act like they care... it's hard for me to sort out."

• Peter Berg [34:27]: "The Sacklers and other drug companies were bribing these guys to restrict the amount of pills that were allowed to be prescribed..."

• Shawn Ryan [48:42]: "I've been sober for three years."

• Peter Berg [58:25]: "It's a completely different animal to me."

• Peter Berg [129:30]: "It was really fucking sad to me. But there's some good, some good stories too."

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This episode of the Shawn Ryan Show offers an unflinching look into the personal and professional battles faced by both veterans and individuals grappling with addiction. Through Peter Berg's experiences, listeners gain valuable insights into the complexities of filmmaking, the pervasive influence of Big Pharma, and the potential healing avenues beyond traditional treatments. The candid and heartfelt conversation underscores the importance of truth, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of a better understanding of oneself and the world.

Transcript

[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

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[Sean Ryan]

B-B B E L.com Spotify podcast rules and Restrictions Play Peter Berg, welcome to the show.

[Peter Berg]

Pleasure man. Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, I can't even believe you're sitting here. I've watched so many of your movies and series and, and to have to have you sitting here is pretty surreal.

[Peter Berg]

Well, I feel the same way. I've watched a lot of your shows and I figure it's good, it's good for you to expand your, your reach and, and get a, a director to come on here because you know, I think I asked you if you'd had any other directors and you said not yet. So I'm glad to be here. I'm a big fan of yours and good job man.

[Sean Ryan]

Man. Thank you. Thank you. I am curious, I have to know this. How the hell did like you gotta be super busy guy and with who you appear to be surrounded by. I mean how did this pop up on your radar?

[Peter Berg]

I'm starting to think about when I first came to know of you. I know a lot of seals and it might have been Marcus or Morgan Luttrell that somehow got you on my radar and a couple of other guys that are living in California that I know, but just your name came up. You know I'm always interested in anything a seal is doing, particularly an ex seal. I know how challenging it can be for so many team guys to kind of figure out the next chapter of their life. And we get a lot of guys in LA who are trying to figure it out and kind of trying to get into writing or directing or stunts and I pay attention to that try and help. And I heard about you and how you had kind of found this whole new career for yourself. And having gone through the military experiences you have, I found that really fucking impressive.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Peter Berg]

And that caught my eye also. So I don't think people understand how hard that transition is. I mean, obviously military guys do, but civilians don't. They don't think about it. If they do, they kind of think about it. But to go from the job that you've had and I've been fortunate to have a pretty decent look at for a civilian to understand how difficult it is to let go of that world and move into civilian life. I think it's important that people do make an effort. I do. And I just. A lot of respect for what you've.

[Sean Ryan]

Done and thank you a lot. That means a hell of a lot coming from you, so I really appreciate it. Well, let's. I got all kinds of stuff that we're gonna talk about when it comes to that, but everybody starts off with an introduction here.

[Peter Berg]

So.

[Sean Ryan]

Peter Berg, you're born in the heart of New York city in the 1960s. You moved to Los Angeles in your early 20s and have realized your dreams of becoming a celebrated film actor, writer, director, and producee producer, earning accolades across multiple platforms. Your approach to filmmaking is deeply personal, often focusing on real stories that highlight human endurance, teamwork, and the fight against adversity. Your films are known for their gritty realism, emotional depth, and action that feels both authentic and exhilarating. Among your many creative endeavors, Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor, and Deepwater Horizons stand out as highlights in your career. More recently, you tackled the opioid epidemic. That's like super close to me. And I'm sure you know why. Which we'll get into the opioid epidemic head on with your epic Show, Painkiller. Just one week after its release, Painkiller ranked number one in the top 10 English language series genre and currently has over 54 million hours viewed. And on January 9th, you're about to introduce your latest project, American Primeval, into the world on Netflix. I look forward to discussing that today. Thank you for giving us a sneak peek that, like, it looks so awesome and so realistic and like the sounds in it are. It's amazing. It's amazing.

[Peter Berg]

I think you'll like it.

[Sean Ryan]

I can't wait. I can't wait for that to come out. And clear eyes, full hearts.

[Peter Berg]

Can't lose.

[Sean Ryan]

Can't lose. Let's dig in. So. So also, everybody gets a gift. Just a little something for the flight Home.

[Peter Berg]

Open it. Now, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, go ahead, open it up.

[Peter Berg]

Oh, the gummy bears.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Okay. They're not gonna get me high. I'm not gonna get me or anything.

[Sean Ryan]

No, you'll have to go back home to California to get those.

[Peter Berg]

Okay, I can get them, But I love Gummy Bear.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, those are good. A little something for the plot.

[Peter Berg]

Well, here's. Here's yours. I got you. I got you this because I said I might need it. I'm not good with three hours. That's, from what I understand, some of Tennessee's finest from right here, right in Franklin.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, man, this is awesome.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Franklin Distillery.

[Peter Berg]

Yes, sir. Perfect.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you.

[Peter Berg]

And then I got you. This is a limited edition. This is an American Primeval Crew hat, which generally we had to earn up on the mountain, but I figure you've definitely done your fair share of earning. So that's a gift from me and the entire crew of American Primeval Man.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. I'm going to have you sign this. This is going to be a relic in the studio.

[Peter Berg]

I'd be honored.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. This is very cool.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, that's rare. That's a collector's piece.

[Sean Ryan]

Perfect.

[Peter Berg]

Cool, man.

[Sean Ryan]

We'll have you sign it after the interview here. And then one last thing. I got a Patreon account. They're my top subscribers, top supporters.

[Peter Berg]

Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

They're the reason I get to be here and you get to be here. They've been with us since the beginning. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. And you had a ton. So this is from Tory Miller. With so many great movies that you've directed and several based on true events, which movie was the most stressful to film? It made you feel that you got that you got it right when it finally released, right?

[Peter Berg]

So I've been asked this question before, and I'll give the real answer. Like, you know, I could just say, oh, well, Lone Survivor is my favorite, or Friday Night Life's my favorite. But the truth is, they're all incredibly fucking hard to make. Every single movie that any director makes, any TV show is really, really hard. You go into it believing you're gonna touch God and achieve real greatness, and you're gonna change lives and you're gonna tap into the divine creative forces of the universe, and you just don't always do it. Sometimes you fail miserably, sometimes you succeed. But the reality is they're all really, really challenging, and you end up kind of looking back at least I do. And loving things, certain things about every one of them. Even the ones that suck you. You know. Cause you don't go into it thinking, hey, man, I'm gonna make a really shitty movie and I don't care. No, you go into it like, you know, I would imagine, you know, an athlete goes into a game, a team guy goes into a building, you know, a dentist goes into a mouth with a drill. You go in expecting to have a good result, you know, if you're like a competitive, ambitious human being. And so I try for them all to work, every single movie. And, you know, I love all of them. They're all really stressful. If you really push me, I'll probably say, like, Lone Survivor is my favorite. And that was the most emotional. Yeah, but I love them all.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, it's. You've made some just amazing, amazing stuff. And. But, yeah, I would say, I mean, that had to be a lot of pressure, you know, considering the events that happened, that, that, that. That the movie's about. And then in just our conversation before we, you know, actually officially started the interview about showing the families, I mean, that's. That's tough. I mean, that is.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. I mean, we're talking a little bit about it, and for some reason, you know, I always say, like, I want to make a love story, just film a love story with a girl and a boy on a beach, drinking wine, kissing and crying and doing all the things that people do, falling in love on a beach. And then I always end up on top of a mountain with a bunch of stunt guys fighting for their lives and pyrotechnics, bombs going off and weather and animals, and I can't seem to just make the love story. So I tend to be drawn towards more challenging projects. And in the case of Lone Survivor, like, right from the get go, when I met Marcus Luttrell and, you know, first looked into his eyes, I knew. I read the book quickly and he was in town interviewing directors, and a lot of directors wanted that story. So I met with him and literally from the moment I met, sat down with him and looked into his eyes, I was kind of caught up in this spell of emotion and pain and sacrifice and this energy that Marcus had kind of got me. And still to this day, it still gets me just facetiming. I have such a connection to him. But making Lone Survivor and, you know, started with going to the Dietz family, the Axelson, the Murphy family, and asking for their blessing and telling the story, and all three of those meetings were very emotional. I remember going to Danny's parents house in Colorado and his father taking me into his bedroom, which they left kind of as it was almost from a young age. Hot Wheels and posters of girls and toys and all kinds of things. And there was also his uniform that had been recovered and his father that they recovered.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Peter Berg]

His father sat me down on Danny's bed, which is his bed from childhood, and he had a piece of paper and he started reading from the paper and he started talking about. I remember hearing after action report, autopsy, and he started reading and he said, left knee bullet, left thigh bullet, groin bullet. And I realized he was reading his son's autopsy report and he started shaking and he said, abdomen bullet. And I could see the tears falling out of his eyes and hitting that paper. And he finished. I can't remember how many times Danny Dietz was shot, but a lot. And he put the paper on my lap and the autopsy report with his father's tears in it, and he said, that's who my son was. That's how tough my son was. You make sure you get that right. And I thought to myself, okay, what the fuck have I gotten myself into with this? Not a joke. Very, very real to some very good, decent human beings, parents and wives and siblings. And it was a tremendous amount of pressure to make sure that when I was done and I showed that film to not just the families, but the entire SEAL community, I think Admiral McRaven was running either SOCOM or the SEALs. I'm not sure what he was running when we finished, but I had to show it to him and all of those folks and the families and everyone in between. And every day I was making that film, I was thinking about the Murphys, the Dietzes, the Axelsons, Marcus. And so was the whole crew. So was Mark Wahlberg. It became something much more than a movie for us. We didn't quite realize the power of the brotherhood of the SEAL community, of your community. You know, at first, maybe, certainly some of the actors didn't. But very quickly everyone did. And that movie had a special gear that is very hard to find. I think if you ask Mark Wahlberg or Taylor Kitsch or Ben Foster, anyone that was involved in that film, we see each other, you know, text each other and like, no, no, that was it. That was one that will be hard to replicate. And a feeling that's very hard to get. And the pressure to get it right was there every day, including the trail on set every day reminded me that if I didn't get it right, he was going to kill me. So that every day I would. By then, at first I was really scared and then sort of halfway through, I would see Marcus in the morning. I'd be like, I know I have to do a really good job today or you're gonna kill me. Anything else? He'd be like, nope, that's it. I got it. And then I go about it.

[Sean Ryan]

Man.

[Peter Berg]

And then he had Morgan kind of like lurking as backup. Cause for me, Marcus was a scary one, but Morgan was a really scary one who really didn't have to say much. But have you met Morgan? Do you know him at all?

[Sean Ryan]

I've never met him.

[Peter Berg]

I mean, he's such a great guy and in Washington now, doing really well. I just spoke to him last week and you know, having those two guys suddenly in your life and then just the general SEAL community was a gut check and it definitely focused a little bit harder every second than I have in some other films.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

Me goosebumps when I walked in here and saw the rounds from the Chinook that crashed. I was not expecting to see that.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty heavy. There's some heavy stuff in this room. It's very historic. But yeah, I remember, you know, when we got the after actions report when we got into country and they showed us, it was, I think it was. It was some kind of recruiting video that Al Qaeda put up. Yep, I saw it and you could. I remember seeing. I was new, you know, fairly new. And I remember seeing Danny Dietz upside down on the mountaintop and his cami blouse was pulled up. And a lot of the guys in my platoon had. We're in a team with Danny. And they were like, holy shit. Like, he just got that tattoo. And I was with him when it, when he got it on his rib cage. And it was just like. That's when it became very real for me.

[Peter Berg]

I can't imagine how personal and how much emotion you guys must have felt seeing those videos. I saw those videos for age.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, I would watch them every time we went out on an op. That was my, that was my, my warm up. You know, I would. This is why the. We're doing this, because of this. And, but. And then, you know, I can't wait to get into some of the opiate stuff too, with you. That's something we can relate on. I lost my best friend to opiates and who was struggling. You know, you were just talking about, you know, the transition from military. Four military guys getting back into civilian. And everybody goes down the. Down the spiral. And, and he didn't make it out. And it was, it was because of opiates. I mean, actually it was because of that operation. So that was my best friend's team.

[Peter Berg]

He was part of the Recovery operation.

[Sean Ryan]

He was part of the. The recovery operation. He was. I'll tell you this. This was. This. I've never talked about this, but he was. That was his sister platoon. He was in Iraq. They were doing. Having a great deployment, which means they were going after a lot of bad guys. He had. His name's Gab. I don't know if I should be doing this, but fuck it, I'm gonna do it. And because this. He had one of the worst runs I've ever heard. And he was engaged and had a mess up at a strip club and got a stripper pregnant, broke off the engagement, was gonna do the right thing. He was gonna do the right thing, and in his mind, which was to marry her, marry the stripper, have the baby. And he deployed to Iraq. Well, they were getting after it, and she went into labor. There were some complications. So he left Iraq to come home and to be with her while the. While the baby was born. Gets home, goes to the hospital, the baby's dead, the mom is dead. He doesn't tell anybody. He goes back to SEAL Team 10 and says, Hey, I want to go back with the guys over in Iraq. They say, oh, you didn't hear? The guys are coming home early. He had screened to go to development group, and they said, hey, you need to reenlist. So how about you jump in with your sister platoon who's in Afghanistan right now? He's like, well, I don't have any of my gear. It's all in Iraq still. And they said, don't worry, you don't need gear. You're not going on operations. You're just going to go over there, reenlist, get it done, jump back on the bird, come home. So he wears his dress, Camis gets on the bird. They land in Germany for a layover, find out that Marcus is on the run, then he lands in Bagram, you know, so they know there's. They know that three guys have died and that Marcus is on the run. They land in Bagram and he finds out that the Hilo went down, which was all his. You know, the rest of his friends wants to go on the recover. On the recovery op with. With. With Dev. They wouldn't let him on at first. And he was like. Basically, he's like, I don't. They're like, you don't have any kid. You can't go. He's like, I don't give a fuck off. I'll scrounge up some shit. So in his dress, Cammies goes and takes like Piecemeals some shit together from the text. Gets like a helm, like a helmet that doesn't fit with a, with a monocle. Piece of night, night vision, like a shitty rifle, you know, without any optics on it. And he's in like a old flak jacket that, you know, I mean you knew the gear we were using back then. Cause you made the movie, but it was like the old shit that didn't even have any magazines on it. Found a couple of magazine pouches, put it on, goes on the fucking op. The dev guys are all like, who the fuck is this? Why is a tech coming on this? And goes on the opinion and. But I mean that's goes on the app to recover the guy, the bodies. You know, they get in a firefight out there. And, and, and, and he also had a role in Benghazi. He also had a role in the coast bombing at the Agency, but never fucking told anybody, you know. And, and he told me when he was in buds. He was in BUDS with, I believe. I know James Sull was one, I think Axelson was the other. And this was. He was in buds when 911 happened and through Hell Week. And he told me he was sitting on the grinder or standing on the grinder. So was on one side, Axelson's on the other. And this is like 30 minutes after the towers go down.

[Peter Berg]

What a time to be on the grinder.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. And so they give a speech and they're basically saying, hey Blake, it's been peacetime for a long time and your guys generation is going to war. And look to your right and look to your left. There's a good chance that one of these guys are gonna be dead, you know, in the near future. James Matt Axelson. And when he fucking landed, when he landed in Bagram, it was that master chief that gave that speech that greeted him coming off the bird. Wow. And wow. Yeah. Yeah. Then he later died of. Of addiction with opiates. And so I've never told anybody that. I've never told them.

[Peter Berg]

I appreciate.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And, and I mean, it just kind of goes back for me to what we were talking about. The complexity of, you know, the difficulty of surviving for anyone that went through buds during 9 11. Okay. Yeah, you're going to be busy and good luck surviving that. Just literally coming back alive like SA and Axelson couldn't. And then if you do come back, the complexities of having to carry. Forget about the woman and the baby. I mean, that's horrific. And that would do most people in then Whatever you saw in theater and people, these guys are coming back and having to try and move on. And I know some professional athletes, and I've seen the complexities of an athlete retiring. I own a boxing gym in la, and we get a lot of military and pro athletes that come in there and train, and especially when they've gotten out. And I see firsthand how hard it is for pro football players. We have a couple in there now. We've had a lot of team guys come in and they're trying to just stand on their feet like children again, like babies in a new world. And I can't imagine how hard it was for your friend to come back with the weight of those experiences in a world that's not necessarily receptive and we can't see the injuries. Right. So I could be talking to you, and you look pretty good, and, you know, you're handsome and you're an ex fucking Navy seal, and everybody loves a Navy seal, and so you're cool inside. It can be a different story. And I. I remember when someone gave me the statistic about how much money the government spends making the seal, right? All the training, everything, you know, three phases, and then all the specialized training. And then, I don't know, I heard pretty high numbers for what it costs to make a SEAL versus how much money they put into kind of keeping an eye on a SEAL when he's done.

[Sean Ryan]

They don't care about us when we're done.

[Peter Berg]

I tend to agree. I mean, certainly they don't act like they care. They might say they care, but if you just look for actions, that's where it kind of gets hard for me to sort out.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, they try to hide it. You know, they try to hide it. They don't like talking about it because it fucks up. Recruiting numbers. The upper echelon of the SEAL teams fucking hate this show because we dive into it.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

I would imagine we expose it and it, you know, and, you know, I don't care if it hurts the recruiting numbers. I believe they have responsibility.

[Peter Berg]

I understand that. You know, I went. I got to go. When I was writing Lone Survivor, I got to go to Iraq with Team 5 to a place called Rawa. I don't know if you were ever out there. It was a Marine Corps base kind of by the Syrian border. And I got to spend a month, you know, as a civilian, embedded with a bunch of guys from Team Five. And that was, without a doubt, one of the greatest experiences of my life on many levels. And I took a lot from it. And I have a lot of memories, but to this point, one memory that really stuck with me when I tried to. When I look now back and I try to understand the transition for seals, but not just seals, it could be anyone that was in the military, but certainly it could be for Rangers or Delta or, you know, MARSOC or any particularly special operators that have to kind of get out. Something I remember from my time in Iraq was I got to go with the seals, and they were going to go into a house and, you know, kick in a door and get a guy. And so they all went in, and they wouldn't let me go in until it was secure. And so I was sort of out on the street, and I was on a corner with this one young seal, I think wasn't quite a new guy, but he was young, little guy, and he was doing security on a corner, and I was kind of with him, and he wasn't really talking to me. He was kind of looking out in the street, and there were three Iraqi young men that had sort of come and were staring at us. And he knew enough Arabic to say, you know, go, get out of here. And he yelled it at him, and they stared at him, and he yelled it again, and they sort of walked away. And afterwards, after the whole lap, we were back at the base. I said, well, what would you have done if they didn't leave? And he said, I would have killed them. I said, what? He said, well, you know, the way I look at it is if I'm working and I see them, I own them. I own their shoes, I own their pants, I own their shirt, and I own their organs. I own their heart. Their heart is mine. So I do whatever the fuck I want with that. I own them. And I remember thinking, well, this guy's going to have trouble getting out of the military. Like, how do you take. And I totally understood that mindset of, like, fuck it, I will survive. My job is to protect this corner. My guys are in that house. I will fucking protect this corner. I understood that. But then thinking, well, this guy's gonna have to get out one day and he's gonna be in traffic and someone's gonna cut him off, or he's gonna be in Starbucks and someone's gonna say some shit. And like, the complexity of that kind of mindset, to have to adjust to being able to be like. I remember someone once talked about Mick Jagger, right? The Rolling Stones guy, and who we met in the hell in, like, 1975 when the rolling Stones were the Biggest band in the world. And Mick Jagger told a story about how he had to come home from a world tour where they were selling out stadiums all around the world. And he's Mick fucking Jagger. And he comes home and his wife, Jerry hall, this woman, and he has a baby. She hands him the baby. She says, clean up the baby. And there's dog shit in the yard. And Mick Jagger's like, but I'm Mick fucking Jagger. I just came back from, you know, the. Oh. And I got. And I always thought that moment, just a little moment where I. I felt what it means to have that kind of power in a place like Iraq. Well, now you got to come home and you have to turn it in. You have to retire, and you have to move forward. I don't think civilians understand that.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, they don't. They don't. You know, but I think that that's a. I think that that's a big reason why opiates become such. Such a. Such a problem, you know, in the community. I mean.

[Peter Berg]

And they're right there. And so then, yeah, it numbs that out. Turn it off, thumbs it out.

[Sean Ryan]

And. And then it's. It's just. It's the only thing that seems to turn the switch off, you know, for a lot of people. And the immediate easy fix, you know, just. It numbs you out to where you don't give a fuck, you know, anymore.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And. And then, you know, down the spiral we go.

[Peter Berg]

Well, that was what painkiller? You know, it was for me, the show I did about Purdue Pharma, you know, and the Sackler family. It's interesting. Just today. What's the date today? What is it?

[Sean Ryan]

The 16th.

[Peter Berg]

The 16th. So today, on the way over here, someone sent me New York Times article about a new twist in the opioid epidemic. These companies that serve as the middlemen between the doctors and the. The. I'm sorry, between the prescribers and the insurance companies. They're these companies that control what the insurance companies will allow to be prescribed. So if a doctor says you should have 250, you should be able to take 250 milligrams of oxycontin a day. These companies are in charge of regulating whether the insurance companies will pay for that. So they've got this incredible power. And there's three main companies. Can't remember the names of them, but just today in the paper. And now it came out in the Times today that the Sacklers and other drug companies were bribing these guys to restrict the amount of pills that were allowed to be prescribed so they would get paid off, and they would allow these incredible prescriptions to be put through and the insurance companies to pay for them. So it was just more of a game within a game within a game.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Peter Berg]

Did you.

[Sean Ryan]

When you made that, I mean, that exposed a lot of shit to the public that people weren't really thinking about. I mean, when you make something like that, do you have any fear?

[Peter Berg]

A little bit, for a minute, I did.

[Sean Ryan]

You're fucking with some really powerful people.

[Peter Berg]

So at first I didn't. Right. It's like people said, well, when you went to Iraq, were you scared? And I said, well, not really, because we're 20 Navy SEALs around me all the time. And I felt pretty safe when I got back. And I kind of really looked at the map and figured out I felt a little more nervous, but in the moment, I didn't feel nervous. Probably should have felt a little more nervous, but I felt very safe with the guys, the Sacklers. At first, I'm like, well, yeah, these guys are fucking scumbags. Fuck them. Let's make a movie and let's tell the truth. I have friends that have died from drug addiction, and I don't give a fuck, and let's go. I'm not scared. The more research I did, the more nervous I got, because they're just like. These are, like, real mobsters. These are the real Pablo Escobar, the real drug dealers that are putting up numbers much larger than the Medellin cocaine cartels, the companies like Purdue and the Sackler families. So the more I learned about just how powerful and quiet they were and what kind of masterminds. It's secrecy. Like, you still. If you try and search Richard Sackler, they're so fucking scrubbed that you'll get virtually nothing on them. And they just constantly cycle that. And I don't still. I've yet to find anyone who's better scrubbed as far as Internet than Richard Sackler, the kingpin of the Sackler family. But so the more I learned, the more nervous I got. And there was a moment where I was literally paranoid, and I'm, like, checking my back and making sure doors are locked and having access to security if I felt threatened. And then I realized, if they want to get me, they're going to get me. And kind of by the time we really got going, the wave was really getting big, and people were finally starting to say the name Sackler and realize just how dirty and corrupt this family was. And I felt a little. I Think all of us involved felt at least secure in that. Like, if they were. It was so public at this point that if they did come after us, everyone was gonna know. It's like, I didn't have to leave a note like, hey, man, if something happens to me, it was Richard Sackler. People kind of already would get that. And everyone's like, dude, I don't know if I wanna stand so close to you, or I'd invite my friends out to dinner. And they're like, yeah, no, we're good. I'm busy for a while. Let's see how the show plays out. People kind of distance themselves joking me for a minute. But, I mean, I'm not necessarily, like, the biggest conspiracy guy. Like, I'm always up to entertain a good conspiracy story. Like, I'll talk about Lee Harvey Oswald for a long time and the magic bullet theory and all that, but. And I don't even know whether it's a conspiracy or it's just, like, the realization of how the world does business. And this. If you really want to understand what the fuck's going on, not just in pharmaceuticals, but I think on almost any business, certainly the business of war, right? The amount of guys that are making money off of war, that's a different story. But the way money rules the world, it's all about money. And the Sacklers knew it. And the Sacklers knew that they had this incredible product that could do this incredible thing, take away your fucking pain. Like, for anyone that's dealt with pain, whether it's like the emotional pain that your buddy went through after losing his child and girlfriend and seeing what he saw in that helicopter, he's in pain. Give me that pill. Give me 40 milligrams of that liquid. Honey, you know that happens to have a little battery acid in the middle of it. I'll take it. And the Sacklers knew it, and they knew how to monetize it, and they knew how to game the system. And I think, like, the worst thing that I found, the thing that really floored me was this guy, Curtis Wright. Do you know who Curtis Wright is?

[Sean Ryan]

Curtis Wright? No.

[Peter Berg]

So one of the challenges the sacklers had with OxyContin and Purdue had. They needed to get the FDA to approve it, right? They had spent so much money developing this drug, and they were having financial problems prior to OxyContin being approved by the FDA, that they were all in on OxyContin and they needed the FDA to approve it. Like, you think about the FDA and big government organization, and it is probably a big organization that probably does need a haircut. And I'll bet they're gonna get one now with the new administration, which is probably a good thing, I think. But you think, oh, wow, the FDA has to approve Oxycontin. That's probably a team of 50 scientists, and they're gonna have to go. It was really just one guy, and it was this kind of nerdy dude named Curtis Wright. And he was the obstacle. He kept saying to the Sacklers and to Purdue Pharma, I can't improve this drug. This is heroin in a little M and M rapper. Like, what, are you fucking crazy? No. And they kept trying. He went through multiple applications, and this one guy was saying no. And that was putting the entire Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in real risk of financial ruin. And so at some point prior to getting the approval, some members of Purdue Pharma took Curtis Wright to a hotel room in the Virginia area somewhere near D.C. and they spent a couple of days in a hotel room. And no one knows what happened in that hotel room. When they came out, Curtis Wright had signed the approval with the words that OxyContin is believed to be non addictive. Is believed. Is believed. Which is weird language. It's not. OxyContin is not addictive. OxyContin is believed to not be addictive. But no one ever used that language. Doesn't make any sense. Curtis, he approved it. The drug gets, you know, going, and it becomes a grand slam homerun, and the money's off the chart. About a year and a half later, Curtis Wright leaves the FDA and goes and works for Purdue Pharma. Oh, shit. He was making, they say, 70,000 at the FDA, hundreds of thousands at Purdue. They bought him. And when I heard that, I'm like, okay, that is how the fucking world operates. And to. It's not a conspiracy. It's a fact. And, you know, it's public. People know about it. Human beings like your friends and friends that I have are dying and are still dying. People are getting addicted. Families are being thoroughly fucked up and derailed. And this is how it goes. And so it was making painkiller was, you know, just an emotionally powerful experience. I don't think there was a day filming it when someone on the crew didn't come up to me and say, hey, can I talk to you for a second? My best friend died. My cousin died. My mother died. Just in your studio today, someone that works for you came up to me and started sharing me a story about their relationship. And to a family member and a drug. And it's. It's omnipresent and it's horrible. And it's. You know, what I get from it is like, let's open up our eyes and be real honest about how this world operates.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And usually it's money.

[Sean Ryan]

What were some of the things. What was the initial thing that kind of got you paranoid about the Sackler family?

[Peter Berg]

I remember I was trying to interview members of Purdue Pharma. Cause like I said, you can't get the information on the Sacklers. So I was trying to interview members, people who had worked for the company, and we couldn't get anyone to talk. And then a journalist from the New York Times had written a book that was one of our pieces of source material for the book. Book called Empire at Pain. The author of that book called me, said, there's a woman who will talk to you. And she used to work for Richard Sackler as one of his, like, five secretaries. And I'm like, great. He's like, she's going to call you at whatever time on, you know, in two days, be ready. She's going to call you. So I was in pre production on the film. My phone goes off. It's FaceTime. And I answer the phone and it's this woman, and she's in a car and she's pulled over on the side of the road and. And she starts talking to me about working for Richard Sackler. But she's getting real close to the phone and she's whispering and she keeps looking around. And she told me she'd left work and driven to the parking lot of a little strip mall. And she was willing to tell me enough about him. She told me some things about him, but I could feel her legitimate paranoia and fear of talking about him. And after that call, I came back and I said, guys, we just gotta, like, you know, watch our backs and be smart because we are poking a bear.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And that, I don't know, man, they still could get me. And if they do, if I go quick or I go weird. Check out the Sacklers.

[Sean Ryan]

I will.

[Peter Berg]

I do feel pretty safe here with you, though, I gotta say.

[Sean Ryan]

We're in good company.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, I feel safe.

[Sean Ryan]

But did you. Did you struggle with addiction at all or.

[Peter Berg]

I was lucky. I never had addiction. I have family members that have. They've used 12 step to their. To their. I have one sibling and, you know, she's done an incredible job. She's 30 years sober and a. Has been a godsend to her and we've talked about addiction and I've asked her, I'm like, what do you think it is? I've asked her, do you think I'm an addict? Because I do drink. There's not a drug I haven't tried. Pretty much I don't think I've done bath salts or angel dust. Okay, take those two, maybe a few others. But I've tried them and I, I don't know, man. I always had that ability to sort of see, see through the shot, see through the line. You know, if someone put a line of coke in front of me back in the day, I might do one, but then I think about the other and I kind of have that. That it's not that I didn't want to do it and that I didn't see kind of what was good and what felt good about it. But I was able to sort of see, well, let's jump ahead 24 hours, 48 hours and think about the cost, the hangover, the self loathing, the self disgust, the bad choices that start to accumulate. And I was able to kind of, I'm good. And my sister said to me that that ability to have that pause is something that can separate an addict, a true addict, from someone that's not. And I think about that because it's not any superhuman quality. It's nothing that I take credit for and be like, oh, I can do this any more than I think most of the addicts that I know suffer not for. It's not, it's not about weakness. It's not mental weakness or physical weakness that's causing someone to go back to that drug or back to that behavior, whatever it is that's so fucking self destructive. It's a disease, I believe, and I'm fortunate that I don't think I have it, you know? And do you? Have you experienced it?

[Sean Ryan]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Is that common knowledge? Forgive me for not knowing.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, it is. It's. I had a hell of a run in Colombia with cocaine. Yeah, I appreciate the bottle, but I've been, I've been, I've been sober for three years.

[Peter Berg]

Good for you, man.

[Sean Ryan]

And well, I've been off booze for three years, but yeah, really, I was really riding the line there. Opiates, coke, benzos, booze, sleeping pill, all of it combined together. And then, and then I did a psychedelics treatment.

[Peter Berg]

You had a little journey. You went out a little journey.

[Sean Ryan]

Went down, went down to Mexico to do, do some drugs that got me off the drugs.

[Peter Berg]

What were some of the drugs. I'm sure everyone knows this and you've talked about. Forgive me.

[Sean Ryan]

It was so I had really cleaned it up. I had. So I moved down to Medellin.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, that's a tricky spot. For anyone that's even tempted to flirt with the devil, you're gonna find it down there.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, that's kind of why I went. And you found what you were looking for? I definitely found it. And overdosed a couple times. Almost died. I remember calling my mom on Mother's Day. You know, I've always heard, you don't have to worry about. You don't have to worry about how much coke you've had until things start slowing down. And they said. They said when you're on speed and things start slowing down, that's. That's when you're riding the line. And that happened to me a couple times down there where it was like. It was like that scene in old school where like, you know, the. The Voice is like. I started hearing that.

[Peter Berg]

How much coke had you done, do you think? And how long was the binge?

[Sean Ryan]

About five years and a lot. I mean, I just. It's just. I mean, it's. You know, at that time, like, really good coke in Miami was like 150 bucks a gram.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And down there I was getting it for five bucks a gram.

[Peter Berg]

And it was so much stronger. Right?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, it's fresh from the.

[Peter Berg]

It's just.

[Sean Ryan]

Right. I mean, it's Columbia.

[Peter Berg]

But would you do, like. Because I never did, but I heard about like three day, four day binges that people would go on and you're not sleeping and you're just doing. Did you ever experience anything like that?

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, it was all the time. It was all the time. And I would go, you know, I don't know. I never really kept track, but I mean, I never stopped. Like, I would go hard in the paint for a week.

[Peter Berg]

Oh, my goodness.

[Sean Ryan]

And then I would go all the way up until the point where, like, I would get like this really bad heartburn and I would just drown. Tums and Pepto and anything. Like, I just wanted to keep.

[Peter Berg]

How did you get yourself out of that?

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I actually got run out by the federal police. And I. So I like, really. I always take care of everybody around me and I do it with my team now. I've just always done it. I've always been. And so when I went down there, I had kind of a. I had a penthouse in a neighborhood called El Poblado. And so anybody that was around me, I would take care of. So like, number one guy, doorman, who has access into the building that I'm in the door guide. And so all the door guys, like, if I went to go get booze, they got booze. If I went to go get coke, they got coke. When I would leave Colombia to come back to the States, I would give them all my clothes, my shoes, my sun everything. Like a computer. It doesn't anything. If I went to go get a phone, I'd got them a phone. So I really took care of those guys because I knew that they controlled access into the building and. And up to my apartment. And so they had kind of tipped me off. And one of them in particular tipped me off and. And had told me that. That they had set up a. They had set up a observation point in a building across the mine and. And that they may have bugged the recessed lighting in the hallway outside of my. Where I was at.

[Peter Berg]

But this was real, or was this like coke paranoia?

[Sean Ryan]

No, this is real.

[Peter Berg]

Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. And so when I got one to that, I. I hightailed it out of there and never went back. Cleaned it up, Cleaned up the coke, tried to clean it up. Then I started going to Costa Rica, but Costa Rica was like Disneyland. Yeah, I bet what I was doing.

[Peter Berg]

Pura Vita, you weren't about the pure joke.

[Sean Ryan]

It was just a bunch of gringos down there. One, one have sex with. With Latin Costa Rican girls. And I was. I was just like, this is fucking stupid. KV I need. I need to be. Because the real issue was adrenaline addiction from. From all my time in and.

[Peter Berg]

Right, but that goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like, you get to play God.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Talk about adrenaline. What are you gonna do with that energy when you get out? You're gonna go to Medellin and shack up. Yeah, right.

[Sean Ryan]

People would come down to visit me and to think it would be a good time, which I thought, you know, I'm not condoning this. It was a fucking. It was horrible. I speak against it all the time now, but. But they couldn't. You know, they'd last maybe two days, and they'd be. They'd come down to visit me for a month, and then I'd get a note, you know, on my table. That's like, dude, I'm out of here. Like, this is fucking crazy. And. And because it. It wasn't. I mean, it's just different. It's just crazy down there. I mean, I used to go to this club. It was called Fahrenheit and in the club, they had, like, these tables where they would. They would line. Like put lines and mounds, like little mounds and key bumps and shit on the table of coke and then lacquer over the top, you know?

[Peter Berg]

Right now some of your viewers are like, just Googling Fahrenheit and booking plane tickets right now.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, well, that was a long time ago.

[Peter Berg]

I'm sure they're looking, but don't do it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, but don't do it. It doesn't lead anywhere good.

[Peter Berg]

Right, so, okay, so what would happen, though? You go to Fahrenheit. How. How would that play out?

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, it was just. That was. I mean, that was just one hangout. But what I really liked doing was. I mean, what I really liked was the adrenaline, you know, and it just. You know, the adrenaline from the teams. And then my time at the Agency, like, it just. I mean, it was just always like shit was happening. And then when I left, I couldn't fucking feed that anymore. And I had nowhere to get it, you know, and so that's. I was like, I'm gonna go down here.

[Peter Berg]

I'm like, but what do you think? Did you go get into 12 step? What saved you? What got you to walk away from the drugs and the alcohol and that.

[Sean Ryan]

Mother's Day thing, like, really got to me because I was like, man, I'm gonna fucking OD down here and my body will just decompose. Cause nobody really gives a shit about me down here. Nobody knows I'm here other than my parents. And they'll just eventually get a call like, hey, your son's body's fucking decomposing in this penthouse. He OD'd on coke. You know, and like, the career that I've had before that, it was just like, oh, there's my son, the former seal, former CIA contractor who died of a cocaine overdose. I was ashamed. And so I went home and, I mean, I still struggled with the benzos and. Cause down there I would just, you know, you can get whatever you want. So if I was getting, you know, eventually, if I was getting too. Going too hard down the coke train, I would just pop a volume and then.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, but whatever.

[Sean Ryan]

But. But then I had a suicide attempt. And that was really, like, the breaking point for me. When I got. When I got back home, just. Nothing was. I couldn't get anything going and. And. And pulled the car in the garage and reclined the seat back and I woke up. Wouldn't. I should have never woken up. But anyways, that's what you call a.

[Peter Berg]

Positive fail, my friend. Yeah, I'm glad you fucking failed.

[Sean Ryan]

Me too.

[Peter Berg]

I really am. I really am.

[Sean Ryan]

Me too. But so, so, yeah, so then, you know, then I then, but then, but then I found, you know, psychedelics through this show and went down there and haven't had kicked everything.

[Peter Berg]

I mean, so the psychedelics help you. Are you, are you in 12 step? Do you, do you use 12 step? Peter?

[Sean Ryan]

It was like a light switch, man.

[Peter Berg]

What psychedelics did you do?

[Sean Ryan]

I did ibogaine and five meo, D and T. And you smoked the toad? I smoked the toad.

[Peter Berg]

I smoked it four times, my friend.

[Sean Ryan]

Really?

[Peter Berg]

Yes, sir.

[Sean Ryan]

I want to hear about this.

[Peter Berg]

I love that toad.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you die?

[Peter Berg]

Yes, sir.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

I was gonna recommend that you smoke the toddler before you told me that you did. How many times have you smoked the tub?

[Sean Ryan]

Well, one day I did it 13 times.

[Peter Berg]

Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to really get. You had to get some. Get to it.

[Sean Ryan]

You gotta dig deep, you know. But, but, but like four times I.

[Peter Berg]

Think I've done it. It wasn't like staying under.

[Sean Ryan]

It's an all day event.

[Peter Berg]

She started at, come out of it. And you had a good shaman that was guiding you.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Amazing, amazing. And like I just. The first time was the scariest and probably the one that I got the most out of. I mean, like I said, you know, between that and the ibogaine, I haven't. This February, it'll be three years since.

[Peter Berg]

I mean those are the two most powerful. I mean, ibogaine I've never done. But I know what it is. I'm scared of it actually.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And I've, I've met the toad. Wow. You really. I can see how that would have taken care of a problem.

[Sean Ryan]

Cleaned me out. Still clean.

[Peter Berg]

How many times did you do the ibogaine?

[Sean Ryan]

One.

[Peter Berg]

That's enough, right? Yeah. Different experience than the five meo.

[Sean Ryan]

Totally different.

[Peter Berg]

How would you, how would you explain the differences?

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I mean the ibogaine's like a 12 hour experience.

[Peter Berg]

They say the ibogaine is the godfather. Yes. Like that's the most powerful.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

I always heard that five meo is the God molecule, but ibogaine is a godfather.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Is that accurate?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I think so.

[Peter Berg]

What was the ibogaine like?

[Sean Ryan]

Man, it was, it was, I mean it was about 12 hours long. I couldn't walk afterwards. And it would, you know, in a nutshell, it's like a life review. It's like a life review of looking at your life through from an outside perspective. Like a non biased, non. For me, like a non emotional perspective. And so a lot of the things that kind of happened, I guess you just, you process them in a different.

[Peter Berg]

Way from way back from your little kid.

[Sean Ryan]

Like. And it wasn't all traumatic. You know, it was like, to be honest, it was like this it was like the. It was like these TV screens, like thousands of them, kind of like going off into a distance and just disappearing. And if I. And every screen was a different portion, like, segment of my life. And I could see him through my peripherals and, like, see him, you know, kind of moving through. And I could think like, oh, yeah, that's, you know, when me and my dad did this thing. And that is in Iraq. And that's when I was a teenager wrestling. And this is. There was no, like, chronological order. There was no nothing. And if I tried to pay too much attention into one screen, then they would all disappear. And so it wasn't even like I was reliving experiences. But that's kind of, you know, how it went for me. I didn't, I didn't, like, it wasn't a scary experience other than at the very first, I saw, like, my head split open and another one mushroomed out.

[Peter Berg]

That's a little scary.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, but, But I wasn't. It wasn't, you know, like, you hear some of the horror stories about people reliving things or meeting demons. I didn't.

[Peter Berg]

On ibogaine is that.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I didn't meet any demons. I didn't. It was just a life review kind of. And, and, and then when I came out of it, it's like I had this new sixth sense that said, hey, all this shit you're doing, it's fucking poisonous. Like, knock this shit off. Quit drinking, quit, you know, I quit caffeine for a long time. I quit smoking marijuana for a long time. I, I was still taking Adderall to concentrate.

[Peter Berg]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

And hadn't had any of that. And, and like, the, the, the fruit that came from that experience just. I mean, it totally, like, revolutionized this show and my business. I, I was kind of scared to leave the military genre. Not leave it, but explore new territories and like, that somehow that just like.

[Peter Berg]

Do you credit the ibogaine more than the five meo?

[Sean Ryan]

Yes.

[Peter Berg]

With your sobriety.

[Sean Ryan]

Yes.

[Peter Berg]

Because I've heard that. I've heard that from ex military guys, ex team guys who've taken ibogaine, and they physically look different. I've seen them since. And the look in their eye, it's almost like their facial construction is different, their cheekbones feel different, their eyes feel different, their posture, and they're sober. Yeah, it seems to be one of the more effective medicines.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, they've done studies on it now. I mean, it's really changing a lot of lives, you know, and it is the cure for for opiate addiction, for alcoholism. And so if you are out there riding the line, you know, like we were just talking about, and you're looking for a way out, I'd highly recommend it.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah man, same here. And, and I do hope that whatever happens with Kennedy and, and you know, the new administration, that people start looking at this and that any of it, whether it's ketamine, psilocybin, 5 MeO, ibogaine, that people start at least being educated on what it can and cannot do and that the government starts making these medicines available. I'm all for it. My experience on 5 Meo, I never did ibogaine. I don't know if I have the guts for it. I was scared to do to smoke the toad. I remember my friend took me and my friend's pretty high functioning business guy, successful and the fact that he had done it and a couple other people I know that are pretty high functioning have done it, made me willing to take the chance that I didn't. I was a little concerned that I was going to break my brain on something that powerful. But because they had done it, I felt confident and I got to the point place in California where I was going to do it the first time and they were already doing it and I was looking at them and it's a little, if you watch somebody that's going through it, you know, they're making some noises and moving around a little bit and I was like not quite sure what kind of experience they were having. And the guy who was actually a psychiatrist, who is now the administer of this, and he used to do antidepressants, an anti anxiety medication and he would write scripts for it and he started learning about some of these psychedelics and he completely changed his practice and only does five MEO and ibogaine now. And I thought that was interesting. But he took me aside and he sat me down, he said, okay Pete, you know you're about to ingest 5 Meo DMT. It's the most powerful psychedelic, certainly one of them in the world. It's gonna last 30 minutes or so and you're gonna have this very powerful experience. And you might feel as though you're dying, but you won't. And he's telling me all this stuff and I'm kind of looking at him, he's like, do you have any questions? I said, well, you know, and I'd heard this about other psychedelics, you know, should I set an intention right? Like I wanna make peace with my father or I wanna remember my Grandfather or I wanna spend time with my dog Schlemmer, who died when I was 8. Know what's my goal? What should I. And he. I remember he looked at me and he put his hand on my shoulder. He said, good luck with that, Pete. Good luck. You try and set all the intentions you want. And that kind of freaked me out a little bit because I could tell, like, you know what I mean? He was like, okay, you. You, good luck with your little intentions. And I remember smoking it and the feeling of. For me, what they say they call ego death, right? And I've talked to other people about it. Mike Tyson's talked about it. Certainly nothing that I'm the only one that's experienced. But when you experience it, you really know you've experienced it. And it's interesting because you try and explain it to people and you find that words fail you because we don't literally have the words in the English language to explain this kind of experience because people just haven't experienced it. So they don't have words for it. But it is death, right? Of some sort. That's a word that people can relate to. And for me, the way I explain what I first experienced was as the medicine was taking over my mind, I felt myself trying to hold on to thoughts like, okay, I'm in Malibu, California. I'm in California. I'm on the west coast of America. I'm in America. I'm on the western hemisphere. I'm on the planet Earth. I was trying to hold onto it, and suddenly my ability to think was just turned off about that thought. And then I went to, well, I'm Pete. My dad's Larry. My grandfather's Harry. My great grand. That's off. I'm wearing shoes, I'm wearing socks. I'm wearing that. And every thought I could have would suddenly be slammed off. Almost like a steel curtain was shutting down. And I could feel myself trying to hold on to any kind of thinking, any kind of rational thinking. And every thought was just. And then this giant wall of darkness came over me. And it was a sound and it was like, over. And I remember thinking very clearly, I'm dead. And my first thought was, it's all over. It's all nothing. Everything is nothing. I thought that, wow, everything is nothing. And all of a sort of sudden, because these are just words now, I became aware, sort of, that something was still going on. I was still functioning. There was brain function, but it wasn't any brain function I'd ever encountered before. And then I just Started going into something that felt so expansive and such an energetic experience that was kind of moving and unfolding in multiple directions everywhere, everything at once kind of energy. And that energy overtook me. And I remember I sobbed and I laughed and I screamed. And when I came out of it, the people who had were organizing this, the doctor and his assistants, one of the women had a pet wolf. And I didn't know there was a wolf in the house. And I came to and I was on my hands and knees and I had snot and tears all over me. And I really had this cathartic release of feelings that I just don't have the ability to access on a regular basis. And I looked up and there's this white wolf staring at me, like about as close as you are, a little further away, locked into my eyes.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Peter Berg]

And I'm staring at this wolf and I start pointing and I'm trying to determine whether it's real, which it was. And I look up at John, the guy, and I'm trying to ask him if this is real. And I remember he put his hand on my shoulder. He said, pete, try not to make sense of anything right now. Just stay in it. And it was an incredibly life changing experience for me.

[Sean Ryan]

Sounds like a David Yarrow photo. Wow.

[Peter Berg]

It was so powerful. And for me, because I'm not religious, I was raised a bit atheist. I'm a Catholic Jew. And my parents didn't believe in organized religion, so I just never really had access to it. This felt like an incredible religious experience to me. And for me, and people are like, pete, stop fucking talking about 5 Meo. But I love talking about 5 Meo. And if someone's done it, I'll talk to them about it for hours. Because for me, the big secret that we all keep, that we all walk around as humans on this planet and we never acknowledge, well, there's a lot of them. But the real big one for me is the concept of infinity, right? The concept that if you look out into the sky at night, that in theory it goes on forever in all directions. It never stops. It has no barriers, it has no ending, right? Very hard to get our mind around. I shared a car in Greece with Elon Musk, alone for 35 minutes in traffic. And I was like, it's a long story. But I ended up in a car alone with Elon Musk and his driver and his security guy. And this was after I'd done it. And I'm like, I'm fucking. I got elon Musk for 35 minutes. What do I want to ask him? And I said, elon, what are your thoughts? Can you explain to me, like. Like, in a way that I could understand your concept of infinity? Like, because I can't understand it. How do you process the concept of an infinite universe? And he looked at me, said, pete, I don't have a clue. I don't think I ever will. And I don't think we ever will. And I remember, wow, okay. He doesn't get it. I'm not. So, you know, I don't get it either. That tracks. But when I was under it, the five meo, I felt as though I was beginning to experience the maybe very beginning of a look at, a glimpse of what an infinite energy might feel like. And that felt religious to me. It felt like. And it sounds so stupid for anyone, and I get it. Don't judge. Don't judge. Try it. Maybe that's where I went. And it really has helped me so much in every aspect of my life, as a father, as a filmmaker, as a friend in business negotiations. It's given me access to a different perspective. And I would imagine for you, it doesn't feel like people are like, well, could I get addicted to it? And I don't know of anyone that gets addicted to things like Ibogaine or 5 Meo. It's like, no, I'm good. It takes balls. It's like, I parachuted. I've done some jumps, and every time I've jumped, it's like, you don't really want to, right? That last second, you're like, how many jumps have you had? Would you say?

[Sean Ryan]

Not very many. Okay, not very bad.

[Peter Berg]

I had 13 on my 13th. I had a malfunction, so I haven't gone since. But every jump, no matter who, and I've been playing with some down in San Diego, where. You know that skydive? San Diego, which is a great place. Jeff Bramston. That's where all the SEALs train and civilians. I go as a civilian. But a bunch of tough people jumping out of planes. And I know every one of them, that second, right before they jump, they feel that maybe not today. At least most people do. I'm sure there are a few psychos that don't. But that's how I feel about, like, 5Mu is like, I'm glad I did it. But, man, if I'm gonna do it again, it's, you know, I'm hesitant to.

[Sean Ryan]

Do it every time.

[Peter Berg]

Have you done it once or how many?

[Sean Ryan]

No, I've done it, I think, four times.

[Peter Berg]

Right. It takes.

[Sean Ryan]

And four different sessions.

[Peter Berg]

It takes a certain type of courage to take that hit.

[Sean Ryan]

You don't know where you're going.

[Peter Berg]

No.

[Sean Ryan]

And so you went in. So are you saying you're not an atheist now?

[Peter Berg]

No, I'm not an atheist, but my belief. Okay, don't judge.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm not here to judge.

[Peter Berg]

All right, so the second time I did it, I went into this again. This time I skipped the crying. And one thing that's interesting is doing it a couple of times. I think you go a little bit further. Does this sound utterly insane?

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Peter Berg]

People are going to be like, oh, he's just fucking drug wacky dude.

[Sean Ryan]

Now we talk about this all the.

[Peter Berg]

Time on this show because I really believe in this. And by the way, I don't believe in cocaine. I don't believe in recreational lsd. I think weed is problematic. I certainly don't. Opioids. Fuck no. This is a totally different animal to me. Including alcohol. That's all over there. This, we're talking about something completely different.

[Sean Ryan]

This is a medicine. I so like all the coke and all that shit, like, I think we kind of covered it. Like, it's not good.

[Peter Berg]

I mean, it leads to suicide attempts, suicidal energies. No, this is a whole nother experience. So the second time, I very quickly went into this energy that feels like I'm deep in the universe and I'm experiencing something that feels like this multidirectional energy that's just expanding that I feel maybe part of the energy that built the universe. Something had to build it, right? Got all these planets floating around and you start getting into like the sun and what the fuck the sun is and how that thing's still burning and how we're in this, you know, something's right. And so there was some energetic. Even if a God caused an explosion. And that created the massive universe, not just our little solar system, but the infinite universe, which we are such a small part of, right?

[Sean Ryan]

So they say there's more planets than grains of sand. Of sand in the world.

[Peter Berg]

So it's. A God would have to be really busy. And he's probably not just our God, the way I look at it, but I'm feeling something. And we don't have words for this, but it's a real energy that words do it won't do it justice. And as I'm coming out of this energy, I start to see images of religious, iconic religious structures being built. The pyramids, the Vatican, the Notre Dame cathedral, Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Literally, I'm seeing man Building these temples. And it's coming. So I'm coming out of the energy into man's building of religious artifacts and temples and structures. And I'm seeing men building these temples, acknowledging their religion, their gods. But to me, it felt very reductive. After being in a much larger energy, this actually felt smaller to me, if that makes sense. And then I saw these religious. The pyramids, Mecca, Notre Dame Cathedral, I remember very clearly. And I came out of it, and there was a guy with me who was sort of my attendant. I don't know if you had someone watching you. Just make sure you don't take up all your clothes and run down the street, which I didn't. But I looked at him. His name was Connor. And I remember coming out of it, and I looked at him and I said to him, connor, organized religion is somewhat fucking absurd. And he looked at me and he nodded, just like you did. And I couldn't understand in that moment, having felt something that, to me, felt beyond organized religion. These structures, and I've been to them all. I've been to Notre Dame. I've been to the Vatican. I haven't been. I've been into Saudi Arabia, but I couldn't go to Mecca. I wanted to. I've been to Japan and to India and seen Buddhist and Hindu temples. And I appreciate that, and I certainly respect it. But in that moment, I felt that if that type of organized religion wasn't speaking to me, but I did believe that there's definitely a force greater than anything we can see or feel or touch out there. And that, to me, was the most honest religious experience I've ever had.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting.

[Peter Berg]

So that's kind of where I am.

[Sean Ryan]

That's. I mean, it sent me down a path, because I was. First time I did it, it was. I didn't really believe in anything either. I grew up Catholic, and that went out the window pretty much as soon as I joined the SEAL teams with that culture and what we were doing, but. Did you have your eyes closed or a blindfold on?

[Peter Berg]

I did.

[Sean Ryan]

They were closed, so I did it. I wanted to see.

[Peter Berg]

They just closed. They didn't cover them up. I couldn't see anything. Oh, were your eyes open?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. I came back after I died, you know, after the.

[Peter Berg]

What did your death feel like?

[Sean Ryan]

My death felt, like, bad. Like it was the most anxiety, most fear I've ever felt in my life. And. And like, it felt like all the negative, like, toxicity, like shit that I've experienced, you know, rage. Like, it felt like it was just Rushing through my veins, out of my fingers and my toes. And, and it felt like I had like this. It wasn't really a visualization, it was more like. It felt more like an intuition. But it, it felt like. It felt like there was this black tar, like dripping off of my heart.

[Peter Berg]

Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

And. And I had had my.

[Peter Berg]

Wow. That must have been terrifying.

[Sean Ryan]

It was. And, and I just like you, I had all these thoughts and shit about.

[Peter Berg]

Things because that's your ego trying to hold on to logic.

[Sean Ryan]

And the last thing, the last thing that I was grasping onto was my wife and my son. And I was just like, I knew, I was 100% certain. Like, you're fucking dying, Sean. Like, there's no coming back, you're done. And I was just fighting like hell. Cause I just, I didn't want to leave my wife and my six month old son in this up place. And so that was like the last thing that I was holding on to. And then when I, when I let that go, that's when the crossover happened. And when the crossover happened, I like sat back up and we were on the beach, or close to the beach. We're up on a. Like a mount, like a hill. And you could see, like see out, you know, into the Pacific. And there were some islands out there. And I remember everything looked exactly the same, it was just more vibrant. But like every time I do psychedelics, I'm like, it's very. It's a lot of intuition going on. And. And you know, I was really reluctant to do this because I was like, this shit's for the hippies. I'm not a hippie.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And I've heard hippies talk about energy and all this stuff and. But when I opened my eyes, I saw. I just. You could intuitively feel and see this flow of energy from the ocean, into the beach, up the trees, like into the grass, through me. And it was, I could just. You could see it intuitively and you just knew that it was there. And, and, and you know, if I felt like if there would have been some negative energy out there, it would have been like a spotlight in the darkness. Like you just would have been able to identify it immediately because everything was just so positive. And, and then I felt the presence of Gabe, you know, who we talked about, and I felt that. I just. It was the feeling that everything, that all the trauma, everything that had happened throughout my life was supposed to happen and that it was, it was okay. And that none of it even fucking mattered because this is such a minuscule sliver in time that we're experiencing right now. And that. And so it's. So it made me believe again in a higher power. And honestly, it sent me on a journey. And I mean, now I'm a Christian. And I've had another experience after that that, that turned me into a Christian that like fucking slapped me in the face like, hey, pay attention. And, and it's amazing. I mean the stuff that, that it's, it's. And you also realize how minuscule like you are and you're okay with it, you know, which is the ego death. Right, but.

[Peter Berg]

Right. Well. And that's where I say, like, it's changed me in all aspects. Like, I don't get upset about things that I used to get upset about. I'm not quick to like get to conflict. I found my work has just gotten better. I'm a deeper movie maker. When I was editing Painkiller, the opioid film, I had two editors and one I had never worked with. And they were editing while I was still in Canada filming. And I came back and then I had to come and work with them, you know, every day. And I was just getting to know them and one of them had an energy. I had just done the Toad and they were both really good guys, but I could tell one of them had an energy of heaviness, darkness. And I found out that he and his wife had taken their son, I think three year old son into the doctor, the ear doctor, for a procedure. This was like three months prior to us starting to work. And they put this son under local, some sort of local anesthesia. And the son died, their kid died. And I found out that that was my editor and that that had happened to him and came in after I'd found that and we're working and then I realized he had a picture of his son, little picture kind of under his computer that I noticed for the first time. And you know, I don't know him that well. And I started asking him about his son and I heard about this and I'm really sorry and I just want you to know that I'm, I'm aware and if there's anything we can talk about or you want to talk about or not, I just want, I want that to, I want to be available to you for that. And we started talking and started asking him questions about his son and what kind of life his son had had and what kind of, you know, young man he was at that age and what he had experienced. And we started talking, we started talking for a while. And he stopped. He said, you know, I haven't talked about my son like this. And I realized I don't know that I would have had this conversation prior to experiencing that medicine. We started talking about it, and I said, well, you know, how are you and your wife coping? He said, horribly, horribly. He said, we're going to grief counseling, but it's not working. They had gone to some like, chainsaw counseling where they go into the woods with chainsaws and just start cutting trees as a way of trying to release anger and energy. I mean, axes and, I mean, and group therapy. And I asked him if he had thought about exploring psychedelics. And he said, his wife is talking about that. And I said, well, have you heard about 5 Meo? He sat up, he said, my wife has been asking me about this. And I said. He said, what's it like? What do you think? And I thought about it and I said, you know, here's what I think.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Peter Berg]

And I was like, you know, forgive me if I'm, if I'm overstepping. He's like, no, I want you to say it. I said, okay, because I really didn't know him that well. I said, in my mind, the way I'm thinking about you and your family, if this is your son right now, in your mind. And he's right here. And wherever you look, your son, your dead son is right there. And you can't. Right wherever you look. I said, I believe that this medicine could maybe take your son and put him here for a minute and give you. Never gonna. It's never gonna go away, but give you a little bit of space to maybe process something like that in a way that you're not able to. And I stand by that. And it's advice I would give to myself, to you, to anyone, that. The only thing I think is that young people might. I don't think it's good to do for someone, you know, much in their twenties still. I would encourage people to wait till their thirties just. Cause I can't back that up scientifically, it's more of a hunch. But if someone came to me and they were like, you know, 19 or 20. My son. I've talked to my son about this and he's in his early 20s and I'm very honest with him about all of this. Everything I try to be honest with him about. But I said, I don't think you should do this until you're 30.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

What do you think? What do you think?

[Sean Ryan]

I think it all. I think it. I think it depends on life experiences. So. Because it is so healing. So, you know, I think if you have a kid who is. I'm not like. I can't back this up either.

[Peter Berg]

Right. I know, I know.

[Sean Ryan]

You're With a grain of salt, I think.

[Peter Berg]

I know. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

But you know, I mean. And there's kids that have been through lots and lots of sexual trauma. Rape. And I was. Just Had a guy in here and I'm not going to mention his name because this kind of conversation was offline, but his son was in an accident and somebody was killed and. And his son did this and it's. It sounds like it healed him, you know, and so. Because he carried a lot of guilt.

[Peter Berg]

How old was his son?

[Sean Ryan]

17 or 18, I think. And. And you know, kind of got him through so. You know, because you do realize, I mean, for me, just you. Just you man. I'll tell you, like, it changes your perspective so much that, you know, it's like, oh, fuck. Like so and so died. You know what I mean? That sucks that a short life could have had, you know, had a lot more life to live. Died in his 20s, died at 25. A lot of seals, whatever. Death sucks, right? That's how humanity perceives it. It's fucking horrible. Like you only get to live once after doing the 5 Meo. DMT, this is what sucks. They're in a better spot. You know, they're like. And you get, it's almost like you get a window or a veil's lifted and you see like what it's actually all about, even though you can't. Like you said, there's no words in the English language to describe it, but it's a hell of a lot better than here.

[Peter Berg]

I would agree with you. Like for someone like your friend's son, I think it could be really helpful if someone has gone through that kind of really fucked up trauma that's sort of out of the realm of just talk therapy is not going to, you know, fix that. I think what would be important is it whoever administers the medicine, the toad, I mean, ibogaine for a 17 year old, I don't know, but maybe. Did he do ibogaine?

[Sean Ryan]

I believe it was the, I believe.

[Peter Berg]

It was five meo. But whoever is the administer, the guide, stays on board with that person for days, weeks, months. Helps process that. So it's not like at least keeps an eye on that younger mind just to make sure that he's able to talk about things, you know. Cause I remember I was trying. You can relate to the idea that we don't have words in the English language, right? For some of these feelings. And so it's hard to explain what you experienced. And I was talking to someone about it and he told me about this tribe in Brazil that does a lot of, you know, ayahuasca type psychedelics. I think it's slightly different than ayahuasca. Some, like the Yamamoto tribes, these, some of these wild tribes that have been doing psychedelics for generations and how they have different words, words that we don't have in our language. And he's trying to get me to understand how we don't have words for so much. And he talked about this word that this tribe had for the feeling you get in your stomach when you hear a cliff diver jump like 100ft or 200ft into the water. That concussive sound, you know, that, that gives you a feeling. It's hard to explain, but like if you've ever heard somebody really get punched in the face, you know, with a bare fist, that's a sound that different, not like a movie, right? Like, and that sound of a body hitting the water is a stirring sound. And there's a, there's a term for that in this language because that's important to them. Let's remember that feeling that you get. And I think it's interesting that we're so new to this world and it's become sort of vogue and I know a lot of people are doing it and think it's cool or rich people in the Hamptons of New York or in Beverly Hills are having psychedelic parties and all that and expanding their consciousness and microdosing mushrooms. Great. I don't judge that. But there is something very real to it. And particularly for people who are going harder and have. I don't know, man, that kind of trauma to dig up and to look at. This shit is real.

[Sean Ryan]

I think the world would be a better place. Fucking politicians would use it. But. But have you ever heard anything. Have you ever heard anything bad coming from it?

[Peter Berg]

No. No. And I looked it up. I think. I think I heard somebody died. There was a. No, I remember there was a doctor or a shaman who. I think in Mexico this is all, you know, searchable was putting people under and like molesting. Right. But that was one person. He was busted. Cause I searched it all like dark side, downside, addiction deaths and very, very little. I couldn't find anything directly related. But I remember this one story of some shaman who. Who was putting people under and like, you know, doing that. But I don't know, man, I don't. I haven't heard much.

[Sean Ryan]

I just.

[Peter Berg]

Have you?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I just heard this last week. I had. Actually it was the guys that got me that got me into this. That like they didn't like talk me into. They shared their experience on how it helped them and I was like, I gotta do this. But they came up, we went to an event together. We were all talking about psychedelics and they. I guess there's somebody that. I haven't looked into this yet, but apparently there's something out there on it. This guy did it and seems to have experienced a 10 year time period and within 30 minutes.

[Peter Berg]

Ibogaine or meo.

[Sean Ryan]

Meo.

[Peter Berg]

Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

And hid. I don't know. Like I said, I didn't get any. I didn't have like a storyline or anything when I did it. It doesn't sound like you did either but. But he. He had built a relationship, had a kid. Like all this shit happened in his mind in 30 minutes. That was 10 years worth of time. And then when he came out of the. Of the. Of the experience, only 30 minutes had passed and he had like. He still misses like whoever he met that was in that experience because he had built a 10 year relationship with those.

[Peter Berg]

Whoa.

[Sean Ryan]

With those People. And so all he wants to do is that. Fucking wild, crazy. I know. I've never heard that.

[Peter Berg]

That's the. That's a movie, man. That's like. Because there's, like, eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I don't know if you ever saw that film, Jim Carrey. It's a good movie where he wants to erase part of his brain to get a girl out of his mind. That's like just, you know, bad relationship. But see, that's fascinating to me, and I can totally see how that could happen. I think that one of the things that 5mu did for me was just that kind of. What's the adage that we use 2% of our brain. And it's like, to me, I've made the analogy to people. Do you want to understand a little bit about what it's like? Think about your dreams. And when you wake up from a dream and you've had some insane dream that you're speaking languages and your mother is there, but her head is an ostrich head, and your son is like a stockbroker, and he's making deals, but he's only 2, and you're like, where the fuck did that come from? How did my brain. I shut down part of my brain to sleep, and something else woke up, right? And as a writer, I can relate to that feeling of accessing parts of your brain, right, that you just can't get to. You know, sitting here talking. And I've had that experience many times. I don't know if you've had it writing, but where you sort of sit down and things start coming out of you, and you look. You think that, you know, 15 minutes have gone by and you look up and three hours have gone by and you don't remember it, and you look down, you've written 10 pages, but you've accessed something that you can't get to normally. And they'll call it flow state or some sort of optimal creative. Like Rogan thinks that this state is an actual entity, like an external goblin that comes in and enters you, right? There's this guy, Steve Pressfield, who I like, who's like a guru for writers. And. And he talks about this too, like, being able to access, truly access aspects of your mind that you normally just can't get to, right? So that 5 Meo can put you in this state where it just shuts down your default network. So everything that we normally think of, like, oh, I'm wearing a sweater, you're wearing a sweater. I'm Wearing pants. You're wearing pants. Carpet here, all your things that are up on the wall. That's all our rational. Turn all that shit off. And the next thing you know, you've created 10 years of a life and you. You really think you've got a son and a wife. It's crazy.

[Sean Ryan]

And still apparently still has feelings.

[Peter Berg]

But I'll tell you, Ricky's mourning his child that never existed.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Yep.

[Peter Berg]

Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

Yep. Maybe tapped into another life. Who the hell knows? But maybe, you know, it did. It also another thing that like, it did is it set me down. It. This stuff just sent me down a rabbit hole. Have you ever read the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz?

[Peter Berg]

No. I've heard of him.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, man, you got it.

[Peter Berg]

Tell me. Give me like the.

[Sean Ryan]

Basically I'm going to butcher it. But I mean, lots of people read this. Some people read it every year. I think Tom Brady reads it every year. But it talks a lot about like, it's four agreements that you make with yourself. And I can't even. I haven't read it in years, so I don't know them all off the top of my head. But it kind of talks about like. I don't want to make this book sound like something it's not. One thing that it does do is it talks about how we've all been indoctrinated, but it doesn't do it in like a conspiracy ish fucking way. It's just the way it is. And a lot of people read this after psychedelics. And when you read it, you're like, oh, yeah, like, okay. Like, yeah, this is true. And in between that and kind of in what I experienced through psychedelics and how healing it is and how it's fucking illegal here, why, I don't know. It's helping so many people with addiction and trauma.

[Peter Berg]

Fda, baby.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. And it sent me down this rabbit hole to think that everything we know and have been told is a fucking lie. And I do believe that. And I do want to ask you about something. Did we go to the moon?

[Peter Berg]

Pardon me?

[Sean Ryan]

Did we go to the moon?

[Peter Berg]

I don't know, man. I wasn't there. I wasn't there. I know about the picture. Capricorn 1 was a movie when I was a kid that was about the fact that, you know, the theory that we never did. I don't know, man. I like to think that we did because that's how I was raised. And if that didn't happen, then I gotta really unpack a whole bunch of other shit. But I don't know. I can tell you I never went to the moon.

[Sean Ryan]

What about the Stanley Kubrick stuff? Have you looked into that?

[Peter Berg]

Which stuff did.

[Sean Ryan]

He staged it. He filmed it.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. That's Capricorn One. That's the movie.

[Sean Ryan]

That's what, what it is.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. Damn. I don't know.

[Sean Ryan]

I love the subject.

[Peter Berg]

I know. I don't, I, I'm going to assume we did.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

But I wasn't there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

I just want to believe we did.

[Sean Ryan]

Me too. I don't know though. There's some pretty compelling evidence. Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

People are full of shit. And there's a lot of reasons that we would have lied and governments are horrific and governments will do things that we can't believe to advance agendas. And I've seen all of this and I've gotten a front row seat to some really fucked up shit that our governments do. And when I was young, I didn't know about it and I didn't think about it and I thought there were good guys and bad guys and I believed our leaders when they said that we were the good guys and they're the bad guys and not always the case.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. You know, I did just come back from Israel last week.

[Sean Ryan]

How was it?

[Peter Berg]

Dude, it's up. You know, I, I, I was, two weeks before I went to Israel, I was in New York and I was going to have lunch with a friend of mine and she brought a friend of hers who I didn't know. And during the course of the meal, Israel came up and she started ripping into the Israelis and fuck the Israelis and fuck Zionism. And she's looking at me, she's really getting mad and I'm like, I'm curious, are you, are you Arab? Are you Muslim? She said, I'm Palestinian. I said, okay, I can imagine this is a really fucking hard time. She goes, yeah, it is. And I said, I get it. And she starts ripping Israel. They all need to fucking go and fuck. I go, okay, okay, I hear you. You know, I'm curious, how do you process the Nova Music Festival and what happened? 300 Israelis were killed at the music festival. And she looked at me and she had this look in her eye that I haven't seen, I don't know, ever. And she said, I thought it was fucking hilarious. I loved it. And the feeling I had was like sickness, anger, confusion. Like I'm looking into the eyes of this 30 year old girl and I said, I gotta go. I said, I'm gonna leave. I said, Look, I said, look, I just want you to know I don't agree with anything you'd said. My pulse was going like I was. I didn't even know what I felt other than I had to get out of there, walk away. And then I decided to go the next week to Israel. I wanted to see it, and I wanted to just see it for myself. And I went to that site of that festival, and I went to one of the kibbutzes that was attacked, and I wanted to go into Gaza. Asked if we could go in. I was told we couldn't go in. It wasn't safe. We got close and could see into that world, the Gaza Strip, you know, behind the wall. And I just spent. I was there for five days, and I really just tried to see it, you know, because we read about it, we see it on our computers, we certainly get into our, you know, whatever social media feeds were, had all this. I wanted to see it. And I think my biggest takeaway is as like, simple as this sounds, is that these people fucking hate each other. I mean, hate each other. I've never seen that kind of hatred. I remember when I was in Iraq with Team Five and we were driving through towns, people would look at us, we'd be in those RG trucks. Can't remember what they were called. Like, not the hump, but in those trucks, looking out, and they'd be looking in with this look that felt. I hadn't seen that look a lot. You know what I'm talking about? Like, die. But when I was in Israel, the anger and fear was so palpable, and I know it's on the other side, and I don't know, man, I just think, like, where my mind starts going is, okay, Israel did this shit. Palestinians did this shit. It's been going back and forth since 1941 or whenever, the 1907, depending on how far, however far back you want to go. Because I've tried to go back and, well, okay, it was their fault, and it was their fault. And the English gave it to the Israelis and that fucked everything up. And then World War, and it's this Rubik's cube that you never solve. Bottom line is like, they fucking hate each other. They cannot work it out. It's like two kids that are fighting, they just can't stop, and they're never going to stop. And I came out of there with the sense of. And looking into so many Israelis I met. The energy you get is, please, we need help. Right? And, yes, they're horrific with what's happening over there? Right. These kids dying in Gaza and these innocent people dying and horrific what happened. It's horrific. And I'm not like, at this point I don't know what to justify and who's right and who's wrong at this point, it's just, if it's going to stop, they need help. That was my take. They need someone to come in and say, you go over the fuck here, you go over the fuck here. Stop.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And. And I hope that can happen.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a very complicated situation.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, it's super complicated. But at the end of the day, if you just look at it just, just practically, they, they can't, they can't fix it without other people, in my opinion, getting involved. It's like there has to be help from us. There has to be help from Saudi Arabia, from uae, from Qatar, from Egypt, from Jordan, like they gotta help, Europe's gotta help because they can't fucking figure it out. That was what I got. And it's really fucking sad to me.

[Sean Ryan]

How much time did you spend over there?

[Peter Berg]

I was there for five days.

[Sean Ryan]

Five days?

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. And you know, I recommend for people to go there if they want to understand what it really feels like and get a better sense, maybe a deeper sense of just how dark and complex the problem is. So I recommend going over there.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Peter Berg]

Damn.

[Sean Ryan]

How long ago was that?

[Peter Berg]

I got back like 10 days ago.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, man. So this is fresh.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. And you know, brutal. Absolutely brutal to go tour the kibbutzes, you know, and the tour that I had was a young 28 year old guy whose brother was killed, his mother was kidnapped. They've kept the kibbutz exactly as it was October 7th. So the blood's all over the place and the glass and the kids shoes and the baby shoes and babies were taken and. Absolutely horrific. And like, you seen that video of Murphy and Dietz and you know, using that, I mean, you can't go there without getting activated. And then you go to the music festival and you know, it's. Fuck it, man. Fuck it. Game on.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

Okay. You're gonna do this game on. You support that. Right? And I do. But then you start, you know, understanding the pain on the other side and you just, your head starts to explode.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

And that's why I've come to the conclusion, like, they can't, they need referees.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

It's like the nastiest hockey fight you've ever seen in your fucking life with no refs.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Peter Berg]

You know, and people are bringing guns onto the ice and knives onto the ice and no one's there to stop it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. I've been hesitant to cover the subject because it's so complicated. It's just, it's.

[Peter Berg]

Well, if you, if you look backwards, it's really complicated. Well, you did that well. You did that well, you did that well, you did that. Okay, that's never going to get unpacked in my opinion. Looking forward. Big, Big Brother issue, like, you know, from 40,000ft. Someone has to step in and organize a large group effort to stop this shit. So that's what I hope happens.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, me too.

[Peter Berg]

Having. Because it sucks.

[Sean Ryan]

Me too.

[Peter Berg]

It sucks for everyone.

[Sean Ryan]

The world is a fucked up place.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah. But there's some good, some good stories too.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, let's move into what you're doing now. American Primeval. Yeah, how did that, how did that come across?

[Peter Berg]

So American Primeval, that's a new show. Did you ever see Jeremiah Johnson when you were a kid? Yeah, so when I was a kid, Robert Redford played this wilderness guy who went out into the. To the. I went out west from the city and like had to learn how to survive and you know, ended up marrying an Indian woman and a kid. And he was. Ended up first. He was totally inept and couldn't function and Indians wouldn't even waste an arrow on him because he was so, he was, you know, so useless and such a non threat. And by the end he was a great warrior and he had the respect of multiple tribes. And that was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Now it's like something like that got me going and wanting to make movies and tell stories and stuff. And I always kind of wanted to do something like that, you know, an adventure story, not like a western in the traditional sense. And I like westerns. Like what's Cassidy in? The Sundance Kid was one of my favorite. Or the Unforgiven. I loved the Cowboys, some of John Wayne's earlier. I loved all those movies, but I kind of wanted to do something that was a little more like raw and just pure survival and didn't have like towns with saloons and whorehouses and, you know, sheriffs and people. I wanted like to be up in the mountains with the savages. And so I got a friend, this guy, Mark L. Smith who wrote the Revenant. Did you see the Revenant? Yeah, and I loved that. And I'm like, hey man, let's go back into this world. And he actually came to my office and I have a collection of axes in my office. I think he'd let you to prove of it. And I pulled out this ice ax, and I walked up to him and I go, I. I just put the ax in his lap. I said, let's do a show. That's this. And I said, let's just channel this. This ice ax. And he smiled. He said, okay. And he wrote it. And it's this kind of epic saga set in 1857 in this corner of America. It's southwestern Wyoming and southeastern Utah. It's that intersection where in 1857, east. It was fucking wild. There was no civilization, but it was kind of the last. One of the last areas that were really wild in America. And there were multiple Native American tribes. There were the Mormons who were setting up in Salt Lake City. And they were violent, had a real violent side to them because they'd been fucked over from New York to Georgia to Illinois, where their leader, Joseph Smith was. So this dude, Brigham Young flees West with 2000 Mormons and sets up his last stand in Salt Lake City, thinking no one's ever going to come. And he starts growing the Mormon Church and he builds his army to defend. So he's out there, the US Government, sending the army to fuck with the Mormons and get them out. Because Brigham Young's trying to turn Utah. True. This is true. Into a Utah state. Utah wasn't a state. It was a territory. And Brigham Young's like, all right, we'll take it. This will be a Mormon state, Utah. And it was President Buchanan who preceded Lincoln, who's like, yeah, no, you're not doing that, bro. You're not doing that. So he's sending the army out there to get the Mormons out. So they're fighting. All the Indians are fighting. And you've got all these trappers who are just, you know, hunting, trapping bear and other pelts. So just a fucking savage place. And our show follows a woman who's got a handicapped son who's just trying to get through that land to California to find the kid's dad. So you think she's got a secret, and the story's her journey through that part of America. Damn. And it gets nasty.

[Sean Ryan]

It looks like it looks nasty. I started is. It's.

[Peter Berg]

Did we send you the shows?

[Sean Ryan]

You sent them to me.

[Peter Berg]

All right, good. We'll sit down and take a peek. Cause I get. And the organizing of event is worth anybody checking out. It's a very underreported mass murder, arguably the first mass killing in American history, that it's called the Mormon Meadows Massacre. And it happened in 1857. And a group of pioneers called the Fancher Party that were going from Arkansas to California had to move through Mormon land, Utah land, to get to California. But in 1857, the Mormons had basically issued a proclamation saying that no one can come through our land without a permit from Governor Brigham Young. And they'd done this because they were getting so disrespected by the pioneers who would come through and be like, hey bro, can I have some of your wives? Or maybe I'll just take one of your wives. And they'd steal women. Mormons were polygamists and they all had 10 or 15 wives, which was problematic. But these pioneers would come through and harass the Mormons, rape women, kill cattle. They'd let their cattle graze on the Mormons crops. So there was all this mutual disrespect. So by the time this party came through without a permit, the Mormons warned them off and said, you gotta go back, you gotta go around. Which would add like two weeks to the journey. And these pioneers were like, fuck you, we're not going around. So the Mormons came back and killed all of them. So a group of Mormons. And what was kind of fucked up is they dressed up as Paiute, which was a tribe out there, Indians. They dressed up as the Indians and actually brought a couple of Indians with them so that any witnesses would think it was an Indian murder. And it was really a Mormon murder. It was a killing done by Mormons. And they killed about 165 of these pioneers, men, women and children. And really horrific moment in the history of the Mormon Church. And it's a horrible moment. And general. And that's kind of what we use as like the inciting incident is what we call it, where you know, the moment that kicks something off. So the show's kind of going along and you don't realize it's going to hit you. And then the Mormons mental massacre kind of comes at you hard. And that's the event. And so it was interesting, like going to Utah, meeting the different Mormons that were historians of this moment in time and getting them to talk about there's such a dark moment in Mormon history, which I never knew about until you.

[Sean Ryan]

Got him to talk about it.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah, and there was one guy, one Mormon, wrote a book called the Meadows Massacre. And he took me to the site and he wrote it, because there's a monument in Utah now where the massacre took place. And the Mormons built the monument to all the folks that were, were killed. And his book, it's really interesting because it's about this crime, this horrible moment in Mormon history. What he does in the book and what he said to me was, okay, as a Mormon, if you want to show this moment in our history, you have every right to do it. It happened. But I would ask you to read my book and do your research and at least, least understand how it got to that point. Right? Because, you know, like any moment of violence, if you backtrack it and think, well, which is kind of what's so tricky about the Israel situation, well, you try and unpack it. It just, you know, and get to the roots very hard. In the case of the Meadows Massacre, what this guy, what the book did, well, is it sort of let you understand how things got so tense that this 145 person massacre could occur. And I thought that was really kind of interesting. In learning about that and learning about American history and the continual line of violence that's plagued our planet, but certainly plagued our country, you start to understand man and our human nature and why we're so inclined to violence. And that's sort of the theme of the show. And then one thing so interesting that saved the Mormon Church, arguably, is that in 1857, the army was ready to come in big numbers and just fucking kill the Mormons. And that would have been no Mormon Church. There'd be no byu, there'd be no Salt Lake City as we know it would have been over. And that would have been a great act of violence. But the Civil War was just popping off at that moment in 1857, 1858. So Buchanan and then Lincoln had to pull all the troops away from Brigham Young. And they were about to fucking get him, right? Civil War. Ah, we need these troops back east.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Peter Berg]

And that saved Brigham Young. The Civil War saved the Mormon Church.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. I had no idea.

[Peter Berg]

Interesting.

[Sean Ryan]

That is interesting. Where'd you film it?

[Peter Berg]

In Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, on location. I wanted to do a film with no sound stages. I was like, let's go out there, let's go up on the mountain, let's shoot in the weather. Let's, let's fucking, let's make a survival show. That's what I asked for. And that was maybe one of the stupider things I've ever asked for. Because we're up there for 135 days on the mountain through the winter, through the summer, you know, snowstorms, rainstorms, lightning strikes, fucking rattlesnakes. We'd have rattlesnake wranglers cruising through the set, you know, constantly. And they'd find the little ones, which I didn't understand. Those are the real dangerous ones. Did you know this? The little rattlesnakes, the younger and smaller the rattlesnake, the bigger the venom load. So you see a big rattlesnake, you don't want to mess with it. You see a little rattlesnake, everybody clears out.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Peter Berg]

I didn't know that snakes. Our actor broke his leg. We had to film around that. Stuntmen got all fucked up. It was a wild shoot, and I'm like, you asked for it, you got it. But a good challenge. A really good challenge, man, it looks.

[Sean Ryan]

The preview is awesome. And, like, it's. It looks super realistic, and I'm sure it's gonna crush it on Netflix.

[Peter Berg]

On Netflix, Chris and Netflix on, I think January 9th.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, January 9th.

[Peter Berg]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Peter, we're wrapping up the interview.

[Peter Berg]

But you're a good dude, man.

[Sean Ryan]

So are you.

[Peter Berg]

Appreciate it.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you for opening up about your. About everything.

[Peter Berg]

Same to you. Thanks for sharing the story. Your buddy.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow, it's. He lives on, so he was an amazing dude. But. But, man, we covered a lot of ground there. And you thought you didn't have it in you. Here we are.

[Peter Berg]

I wasn't sure.

[Sean Ryan]

But, hey, it was pleasure to see you again and best of luck with the film.

[Peter Berg]

Appreciate it.

[Sean Ryan]

Hi, I'm Joe. Sal Sehai, host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Every week we talk to experts about saving, investing, personal finance, trends, crypto. Can't do it. You could have done all that research, researched all the breadcrumbs, and thought, this company's never going bankrupt. Foiled again. You never knew personal finance could be this fun. Throwing down the gauntlet. I'm bringing it today. I'm only going to be off by six figures instead of seven. Every boy has a dream, Doc. Every boy has a dream, for sure. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.