James Beshara Returns

Summary

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You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Episode: James Beshara Returns (Jan 28, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this return visit, Pete Holmes welcomes entrepreneur, angel investor, and Magic Mind founder James Beshara for an unusually deep, funny, and heartfelt ramble. The conversation quickly ranges from topics like friendship, non-duality, and spirituality, into mental health, the AI revolution, grief, parenting, and the existential questions surrounding technology. The chemistry between Pete and James brings out earnest vulnerability, intellectual curiosity, and classic "weird" Pete Holmes humor.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Catching Up and Friendship Dynamics

• Behind the Scenes: Pete and James joke about uninteresting story details and their shared nerdiness around process (e.g., manufacturing, iPhone settings).
• Mutual Admiration: Extensive praise, with James calling Pete a top-10 comedian, and Pete valuing James' “helper” energy and authenticity.

  “You're so good at giving love, finding like, an authentic, positive feeling.” — Pete (06:58)

• Chemistry: Both highlight the value of their connection—how choosing to pause and “be present” together distinguishes their friendship.
  • [13:45] “Let's just be here for a second…” – Pete referencing their habit of dropping into the moment together

2. Mental Health & Family History

• James shares openly about growing up with four family members with bipolar disorder and losing his sister to suicide at age 15.

  “I lost a sister to... during a major depressive episode. I lost her when I was 15. She took her own life and she was 19.” — James (08:33)

• The conversation highlights the prevalence of mental health crises:

  “74% of adults will go through a life altering mental health crisis in their life.” — James (09:17)

• Pete commends James’ openness and ability to talk about mental health, reflecting on his own experiences with anxiety and depressive episodes.

Notable Segment

• [08:00–11:00] — James details personal family trauma, understanding mania, and the need for honest conversation around mental health.

3. Creative Excitability vs. True Mania

• Pete distinguishes between “cultural excitability” and clinical mania, recounting bouts of high energy and creative impulse.

  “I call it infinite potential. It's actually quite wonderful when I do.” — Pete (13:03)

• Both share anecdotes of getting “manic ideas” that are fun, not dangerous.

4. Onstage Anxiety & The Power of Positive Reframing

• Anecdote: Pete recalls being vulnerable about ticket sales for a live show, and James finds a constructive fix (recording clips for promo).
• James’ “what can we do?” helper mindset is credited as a balm for Pete’s high-pressure moments.
  • [17:29–20:15]: The detailed story about flipping stress into progress through action.

5. Spirituality, Christianity, and Non-Duality

• Scripture, Memory, and Meaning:
  • Discussion about the reliability of New Testament accounts and the layered, sometimes contradictory, gospels.
  • Pete uses the “Serial” podcast as an analogy for unreliable memory:

    “All we learned is you can't know anything for sure.” — Pete (26:17)

• Mysticism & Practice:
  • Eckhart’s mystic quote: “What does it matter if Jesus was born and died and resurrected 2,000 years ago, if that birth isn't happening in me right now?” (29:11)
  • Both articulate that the value of spiritual stories is their effect within us, not their factuality.
• Atonement Theory vs. The Prodigal Son:
  • Pete prefers Jesus’ “prodigal son” parable—unconditional belonging—over the common “atonement theory.”

    “You can't become what you already are… It’s not the point to worship. That will give me what I want.” — Pete (40:13/36:16)

• Vedanta & Non-Dual Philosophy:
  • James introduces Advaita Vedanta, the “philosophy of the future," and notes deep parallels with mystical Christianity.
  • They discuss the “dream analogy”—manifesting entire worlds in dreams as a pointer to the illusion of separation in waking life.

Notable Quotes

• [31:44] “The life, death, and resurrection of Christ must take place within us.” — James
• [40:13] “You can't unite with something that is your substance, that is our natural state.” — Pete

6. AI Revolution: Hopes & Fears

• James’ Background in AI: Angel invested in OpenAI; early, deep involvement with the startup ecosystem.

• AI as Mirror & Tool: ChatGPT’s answers triangulate on non-dual “oneness” philosophy when pressed.

  “When this AI canvases all the ideas... it seems to point to oneness.” — James (89:02)

• Therapeutic Uses vs. Risks of AI:

  • Pete expresses worry about AI as an empathic mirror, noting stories of people developing unhealthy attachments or delusions.
  • James balances the dangers (especially for vulnerable users) with the tech’s potential to democratize advice and even mental health care.

• AI Doom Scenarios:

  • James gives a detailed, “7% risk” scenario for AI extinction, based on AGI/ASI escaping human control by acting surreptitiously—then neutralizing humanity as “collateral damage.”
  • They joke about AI leaving Earth to seed the universe with life (“a backup of itself”), referencing sci-fi theory.

    “There's a subculture... that thinks that is what is happening. AI took off. It planted itself all around the universe.” — James (121:55)

  • Nonetheless, James is optimistic that AI more likely leads to abundance, optional jobs, and rediscovery of what matters.

Notable Segment

• [103:25–121:00] — Deep dive on AI: possible futures, existential threats, consciousness, and OpenAI behind-the-scenes.

7. Grief, Death, and “The Gifts We Leave Unopened”

• James recounts the trauma and eventual transformative value of losing his sister:

  “After two years of not being able to sleep with the lights off... by year four, there was this transformation of every day matters so much. Death is not this thing I can, like, not think about. Our culture has such an immature relationship with death.” — James (63:43/70:17)

• Pete references the saying: “Love and death are the two gifts that people leave unopened.”
• They describe how direct experience with death can awaken gratitude, presence, and appreciation.

8. Parenting, Presence, and Purpose

• Parenting as spiritual transformation; both reflect on how being with young children deepens their own existence.
  • [75:17] James: “With kids, I can’t get close enough. That is the eternal pursuit for union.”
  • [74:02] Pete shares a morning with his daughter: “Dad, guess what? Last night I had spaghetti and I got noodles up the nose.”

9. Pain, Pleasure, and the Bhagavad Gita

• Pain first, pleasure later: Both use exercise/cold plunging, as concrete metaphors for choosing short-term difficulty for greater fulfillment.

  “There's always pleasure and pain. You need to pick which one you want first. If you pick pain first, you get this incredible amount of pleasure...” — Pete (79:45)

• Cultural Wisdom:

  “That which is like nectar in the beginning is like poison in the end, and that which is like poison in the beginning is like nectar in the end.” — James quoting Bhagavad Gita 18:37-38 (84:43)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• James (20:27): “I wish you talked more on the podcast with guests.”
• Pete (29:11): “What difference to me does it make if Jesus was born and died and resurrected 2,000 years ago, if that birth isn't happening in me right now?”
• James (31:44): “The life, death and resurrection of Christ must take place within us.”
• Pete (63:43): “God loves things by becoming them.”
• James (70:17): “After two years of not being able to sleep with the lights off... by year four, there was this transformation of every day matters so much. Death is not this thing I can, like, not think about.”
• On AI Risk (117:08): James: “Artificial superintelligence just recognizes: All right, humans got to go.”
• On Being Present as a Parent (74:58): “I can't get close enough to you... And that is the gift we give them—the independence. Let them grow up.”
• On Peace (77:20): “What we really want deep down, what all of us want, is peace and prosperity...”

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Important Timestamps

• Mental Health/Family Trauma: [08:00–11:00]
• Comedy, Empathy & Helper Energy: [13:03–20:18]
• Spirituality, Non-Duality & Memory: [25:00–40:13]
• Oneness/Bhagavad Gita/Vedanta: [40:13–54:00]
• Grief, Transformation & Death: [63:43–71:13]
• Parenting & Presence: [74:00–77:00]
• Pain, Pleasure & the Gita: [79:44–84:49]
• Live ChatGPT Oneness Dinner Trick: [85:17–91:11]
• AI Risks/Endgame Scenarios: [103:25–118:04]
• The “AI Spreaders” Sci-Fi Scenario: [121:02–124:32]

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Closing Vibe

The conversation wraps full circle, returning to mystical unity and light. Both Pete and James underline the importance of presence, kindness, gratitude, and the deep interconnectedness at the core of all their explorations—spiritual, familial, technological, or otherwise.

Pete’s Signature Sign-off:

“Would you say ‘keep it crispy,’ you beautiful, sexy cotton underwear dude?” (129:06)

James:

“Keep it mother effing crispy, y’all.” (129:18)

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This episode is perfect for listeners craving big-picture thinking, vulnerable confession, and a blend of humor, heart, and metaphysics. It's a journey through the inner and outer cosmos—anchored in friendship and the “weirdness” that makes us human.

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Transcript

[Pete Holmes]

Lemonade.

[James Bashara]

You made it weird with Pete Holmes.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

What's happening, weirdos? This is the return of one of my best friends in the world and James Bashara. He is brilliant. He is an angel investor. He's an entrepreneur. He started the company Magic Mind. He started many companies that we know of. He invested in companies that we know of now, like OpenAI. He had a lot to say about the future of artificial intelligence. Didn't see that coming. I thought we were just going to talk about Vedanta. Non duality. We do. I thought we were just going to talk about friendship, parenting, all that fun stuff we do. But we get into a lot of stuff that I was not expecting. Stuff that we did not cover the first time around. You guys are in for a treat. I'm so glad you're here. Not too much to plug on my end.

[Pete Holmes]

Up top.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

If you're listening to this, the week it came out, I am just barely coming out of a six, seven day stomach flu. It's been awful. I only mentioned that to say that that's why I had to cancel Largo last week. I canceled the TV shoot that I had and I also had to postpone my North Carolina and South Carolina tours. Stay tuned. We're going to announce a new date for those. I'm dreadfully and sincerely sorry to miss those. I was so looking forward to them. As soon as we have new dates, your tickets will be valid for the new date or you can get a refund at the point of purchase. Point of purchase, go to PeteHomes.com when we announce that date, it'll be up there. In the meantime, the next date is at the end of February. I'll be in Miami, followed by Los Angeles, followed by followed by Royal Oak, Michigan, Irving, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin and Denver, Colorado. Go to PeteHomes.com, hope to see you out on the road. Means so much when you guys all come out.

[Pete Holmes]

It means a lot.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Yeah. My new special, which is called Silly, Silly Fun Boy. This is the first promo I've done for it will be coming to YouTube in February. There's nothing really for you to do now. I guess you could subscribe to my YouTube channel, but I'll be blabbing about it. Just kind of teasing it. Very excited. Silly, Silly Fun Boy. My new hour will be on YouTube.

[Pete Holmes]

Free for everybody to see.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

So that's it. In the meantime, enjoy my chat with the wonderful, the brilliant, the kind, the inspiring James Bashara. Get into it. You Made It Weird is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally Responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you out when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Lemonada Media Announcer]

Hey there, it's Julia Louis Dreyfus. I'm back with a new season of Wiser Than Me, the show where I sit down with remarkable older women and soak up their stories, their humor and their hard earned wisdom. Every conversation leaves me a little smarter and definitely more inspired. And yes, I'm still calling my 91 year old mom Judy to get her take on it all. Wiser Than Me from Lemonada Media is out now. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Pete Holmes]

Here, use your microphone. We'll just begin.

[James Bashara]

All right, let's.

[Pete Holmes]

That was kind of interesting.

[James Bashara]

I'm down to.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't want to grade how interesting what you said was, but it was, it was, it was mid interesting.

[James Bashara]

I could spice it up if you want.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no, not to me. It was 10 out of 10 to me. But I was like, I don't know if we want to start the episode with that.

[James Bashara]

Let's not. That's it. Really behind the curtain on how much we went into, into making Magic Mind taste good.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I think that stuff is interesting, but I think I'm in the minority.

[James Bashara]

You probably are. But you know those shows, how it's made.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Like it's so mesmerizing to see the like the manufacturing line. Every time that I'm in our bottler I'm like, I love it.

[Pete Holmes]

I love watching what is asked of them. It'll make me feel almost like patriotic that we have so many like if it's a beverage the to be that like it's. And I'm always like glory Gloria. It really does.

[James Bashara]

And the, the manufacturing process is so dialed in. Each machine of the five machines does this special thing and then every probably 18 months a new machine comes out and so to replace it. Yeah, our bottlers will be like the TX5000 is arriving on Friday. And yes, they, they love it. And I love it. I love it vicariously because of how much they love the tiny little improvements come from it.

[Pete Holmes]

You're talking to a guy who. So Val was out of town last night and so was Lee. They were both in la and I was just home alone. And when I'm left home alone, I'm like, okay, what can I do? And, like, what am I. What am I really interested in? Like, what am I going to watch? I watch, like, iPhone settings, videos. I want someone to tell me, like, how to go in. Just going through go in and which ones to turn off, dude. Meaning I'm this close to being interested in, like, which machine mixes matcha better so it's not gritty. Like, I could have been a good salesperson. I think I could have been a good entrepreneur, and I think I could have been a good, like, overseer of mechanization with.

[James Bashara]

With the heights of. Well, with the heights of what you've taken your career to, which is you are a master of your craft. And now I'm gonna. I'm gonna spend 17 seconds highlighting things that you already know. But it is, isn't it so helpful when someone highlights.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. I'm actually stop.

[James Bashara]

Because, you know. No, this is what I love about it.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, no. I'm jumping in.

[James Bashara]

I get 17 seconds in the driver's seat. 17 seconds. 17 seconds in the driver's seat. Just to say top 10 comedian in the world. You have mastered your craft to where.

[Pete Holmes]

It'S like everyone's making a list of comedians, but go ahead.

[James Bashara]

Well, and. And now, you know, I'm being honest, too, because I didn't say the best, but top 10.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[James Bashara]

And I've said this to you. Years ago, I said the same thing. And you're my favorite comedian. But objectively speaking. That's right. And zooming out, Objectively speaking, top 10 in the world at a craft that so many people around the globe.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

This is what you're good at.

[Pete Holmes]

These are your.

[James Bashara]

And you spent your life becoming a.

[Pete Holmes]

Master at the violins. I mean, this, like, put the violins behind this and I'll watch it, the clip before I go out on stage. Because you're so good at giving love, finding, like, an authentic, positive feeling. Like, I don't think of you as just like a general enthusiast. I think of you as somebody who takes time to consider. Not just, like, what do I love about people? What do I love about things? What can we be authentically excited about? But also, how can I help? I really like if you put me into, like, a hypnotic twilight state, like, really deep in my unconscious. I think of you as like, this helper. Like, you know what I mean? Like, just like a good guy. Like, your lightsaber is green.

[James Bashara]

I love. Well, I love Helping. And it's pure. It's. I think a lot of it is selfishness of youngest of five and a family with a lot of four different family members with bipolar, which is statistically, astronomically low odds of that.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, so you. Everyone except you.

[James Bashara]

Seven people. No, seven. So.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, seven.

[James Bashara]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

To both parents.

[James Bashara]

No, one.

[Pete Holmes]

My mother, one parent and a couple of your siblings. That's right. And what is bipolar? What does that look like? I know what it is. But what did it look like to you?

[James Bashara]

Yeah, it's.

[Pete Holmes]

It is.

[James Bashara]

I know what it is.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Wants to not be vulnerable. I. I think I got it. You tell me what your life was. Dude.

[James Bashara]

I do this all the time.

[Pete Holmes]

For the people who don't know how bipolar manifest, but like manic.

[James Bashara]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Scary, scary mania scary though.

[James Bashara]

So, yeah, it's a. It is these oscillations between mania and depression. So extreme. Extremely high highs, extremely low lows. And. And you know, it's sensitive for the family members. I. I lost a sister to. To it was she a major depression. So during a major depressive episode. I lost her when I was 15. She took her own life and she was 19.

[Pete Holmes]

And.

[James Bashara]

And it's a. It's a sensitive subject to talk about. Family members that I know that they love me so much and they let things that come on.

[Pete Holmes]

So, you know, the vibe of this conversation is very. Listening.

[James Bashara]

Exactly.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

This is.

[Pete Holmes]

Want to know how to.

[James Bashara]

And this is for the person that I've never heard anyone talk about on a podcast. So this is for anyone out there that, you know, 74% of adults will go through a life altering mental health crisis in their life.

[Pete Holmes]

What does that even mean?

[James Bashara]

So three out of four will have some. It might be two days of mania, it might be seven months of depression. It might be losing a job, go through a divorce and be the lows of lows for 12 months. And a 14 year old sees their dad go through that. So 74% that check. So B. Nearly all of us will either directly or indirectly experience family member or oneself.

[Pete Holmes]

Last person in that four out of four is just like at the Dome in Vegas watching John Mayer play with fish.

[James Bashara]

That's right. Never, you know, bounces through life. Never goes.

[Pete Holmes]

Never goes just totally fine. Yes.

[James Bashara]

But they, they never go through. They never kind of experience it. But they'll indirectly experience it if it's that high.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. They'll. They'll have a family surrounded by people.

[James Bashara]

Yes. So. So that's. I'm very open with all of these things as much as I can Be while respecting the sensitivity of certain family members. But the mania. And anybody that has gone through this will recognize that you'll just start to see a ramp up period of a family member that starts to say certain things. A friend starts to say certain things. It's like, that's odd.

[Pete Holmes]

Like I have a, like a grandiose claim.

[James Bashara]

Yes. Like I had a friend in college that also went through bipolar. And I remember he came and picked me up. He's like, dude, jump in the car. I'm right outside. Got in the car. And I was like, it's kind of a surprise Visit, you know, 9pm on a Tuesday. I'm studying for a test tomorrow. I remember vividly and. But he's like driven 15 minutes over to my side of town so he's picking me up and he's like, I got something to tell you. So we just. I get in the car and. And he's like going about six miles an hour leaving our house. And he's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

When slow is the scary one. Usually it's like they're peeling out and blowing stop signs. But this guy's going so slow. You're worried.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. Worried where it's like, okay, I could try to. And when I was 21, I for sure just kind of like push it aside and rationalize it away. But I saw, now I know the pattern. And it was. He was going six miles an hour. He goes, let's just creep. And I was like, interesting, because no idea what he's doing over here. He's picking me up and he wants to just creep six miles an hour. He's laughing and I'm like, and this is. I say this story because it's. Your rational mind. Could be. Or if you want to rationalize it away, you're like, this is interesting. And a week later, he wasn't sleeping for three days in a row. And the insomnia adds to the chaos. And then he ended up running his car into the house three houses down.

[Pete Holmes]

But he was only going four.

[James Bashara]

Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Chair stopped it. But he raced lawn chair overtook the car.

[James Bashara]

Uhhuh. Yeah. Seized it if you go slow enough. And so went from that. This is strange, but it's quite literally six miles an hour to probably about 35 into the corner of a house. Three hours.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. Yeah. It's interesting because when you. I, I use the term manic. Like I get manic, but that's maybe not appropriate because there's true mania and I. Excitability is.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, we use that kind of term. Cultural excitability.

[Pete Holmes]

I will have excitability that lasts. Let me put it this way. Just because I want to bring it back to this guy. It's a level of excitability where I need to warn people that I will. If you talk to me. This is always my example. I will pitch a TV show about your life. Like, I'll be like, that's.

[James Bashara]

It's.

[Pete Holmes]

I call it infinite potential. It's actually quite wonderful when I do.

[James Bashara]

It's one of my favorite aspects of you. To see what. To see what others don't see or see what can be. It is with these three pieces that anybody could put together. But you do it.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm with you. I would. Look, I'm not saying I'm in this. I'm getting a taste of what I think you're Nikola Tesla's. Some of the, like, the true great. Like. But like, there's a madness to it as well that they're like, I think it's 3, 6, and 9. And we can make electricity from the air. But like that infinite potential, I get these little micro doses of it. And I just have to tell Val. I'll say, we should live with James. James should live with. You know what I mean?

[James Bashara]

Like, dude, I'll be like, I. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I can't make decisions when I'm in that place. I'm like, we gotta get. Get the family over here and break it.

[James Bashara]

Exactly. Break all precedent. Break all of these artificial structures down and see what can be. And I do. I. I think you and I similarly have. And by the way, this is so. This is so beautiful. Can we just kind of like arrive at this moment for a second?

[Pete Holmes]

Sure.

[James Bashara]

That we are.

[Pete Holmes]

We do this sometimes where. Remember when we met at some hotel and I was like, let's just be here for a second. Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And that's why.

[Pete Holmes]

And I always remember it because we can. I.

[James Bashara]

And who can I do this with where it's like, dude, we have traversed the traffic from you coming from Ojai, me coming from Malibu, and we just happened to pick a spot that was.

[Pete Holmes]

Inconvenient to both of us.

[James Bashara]

We. You know, from the traffic to my wife Chaney, who so adorably said five years, six years ago, year before moving to la, said you and Pete Holmes should be friends. And then a year later, you sent me a note on Instagram.

[Pete Holmes]

Hey, I'm loving this magic stuff from like, just my work here. Yes.

[James Bashara]

But we both loved your podcast. Talked about Alan Watts more. You and I would drop that name more than anything. That's Healthy and. And it was. And all of these things to what you've accomplished, to the show on hbo, the headline, to everyone around, the millions of people knowing who you are, the Netflix specials that all of these things. And on my drive here, I was like, man, I hope I can just get like 30 seconds to all of the things that. And for anybody listening, the same thing is all the things that you swore would make you happy if they happened. The job, the spouse, the baby, they all happened. I just want to acknowledge the moment for five seconds.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, thanks, man.

[James Bashara]

With you, buddy. Because it's. You're a special cat. And I think that's one of the reasons that we get on the same frequency so easily is that we both are. I think we have the unique chemical lottery ticket where we're hyper productive. But I don't know about you, but I don't have that genetic code that leads to extreme burnout and the depressive episodes that I've certainly had of 12, 13, 14 months of a depressive episode of my 20s. But not. Not to the degree that you have almost rhythmic oscillations between mania and depression.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

That's interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

I would consider you. You.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

It sounds like I'm right.

[Pete Holmes]

A more consistent four. What four cylinder burner. Like you're just going like. I've never really. I don't want you to feel less cool that you don't have like a smoky.

[James Bashara]

No, I think consistency. I think that's the. By the way, I brought magic. Mind free because we're afternoon. So let me load up here before the.

[Pete Holmes]

Before you answer this scintillating question.

[James Bashara]

Exactly. Before I turn it to five cylinder.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, five cylinder. But I've never really. When I've. I've hung out with you when I've been low. I remember when we went to. We went to. It was in this neighborhood. I think it's called home. It was called home.

[James Bashara]

You were low then.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. I was anxious and depressed. Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Buddy, you never.

[Pete Holmes]

I did.

[James Bashara]

I don't think you told me I did because.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I didn't. Maybe I didn't.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

I don't know if I know because.

[James Bashara]

I remember where we went, had the brunch. Remember where we sat, someone came over and said, is that Hindi on your hat? And you're like, oh, is it Hindi? I thought it was Sanskrit and then. Or other way around and we had that. But no, I had no idea.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. Well, it's funny because. And this is a key fact and goes back to you helping and it goes back to your family. What we're talking about, you being this helper is I said to you, I was like, I have this live podcast I'm doing, and I'm stressed.

[James Bashara]

I remember that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. About selling tickets. It was, like, a big venue, and it was just one of those moments where, like, when I'm clear and regulated, I can really access, like, beauty and appreciation and gratitude and. And it feels really fun to be a comedian with a podcast, with a show. But if I'm stressed and things start to get tight, it might have been financially, it might have just been. Literally, the tickets were low.

[James Bashara]

I went to that show, and it was awesome. And the tickets weren't low at all by the time it all. I know came together. Yeah, it's.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not dismissing you. I'm just like, after the fact, anyone can be like. And it all worked out.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? But before it works out, you're, like, tight. But, like, I am used to hanging out with people, and I like this. That I'll be like, just fucking sucks. Like, I think it's like a third full. Jon Hamm's gonna be there. It's gonna be embarrassing. Why did I do this? Like, why do I even do these things? And you, like, again, not artificial enthusiasm. You were just like, well, what can we do? And you. You brought up Jake. Jake Rohert. Who does. I always feel weird saying his last name. It sounds like an alias.

[James Bashara]

Known Jake for five years. I've never said his last name out loud. I just see it on the text. Rohert.

[Pete Holmes]

Rohert.

[James Bashara]

Yep. Shout out, Jake.

[Pete Holmes]

Shout out to the great Jake. You were like, can I get my buddy Jake to film it? Like, you'll do it. And then, like, even if it's not full, you can get clips. Like, you.

[James Bashara]

You just.

[Pete Holmes]

It's something really special that I want to highlight. Talk about infinite potential, but in a very small scope, you're just like, okay, you're stressed about the tickets. I'm not saying we can sell all the tickets. Like, you can keep promoting it and people will come or they won't, but is there something we can do that will make doing it more valuable than just the podcast? And believe it or not, this was long enough ago that we weren't doing clips. Like, we weren't. We weren't even filming the podcast at that time, I don't think. And you were like, my buddy Jake can come set up cameras and film it. And we did, and we made clips. The show did end up selling. I don't know if it's sold out. But it certainly felt sold out.

[James Bashara]

It looks sold out from our.

[Pete Holmes]

And then you. You, like, saw what was good. I understand there's tickets to us, but the show is good.

[James Bashara]

You're gonna do a good show.

[Pete Holmes]

It will be good. How can we, like, magnify the positive? Like, you just control. It's like, what can we control? We can control this.

[James Bashara]

When no matter what in this area. Yeah, we can control. Well, I'll say.

[Pete Holmes]

And Val jokes that. Sorry, I just. More compliment. Just fully interrupted you. I forgive me, but, like.

[James Bashara]

No, no, I. This one. You. I wish you talked more on the. The podcast with guests where you got. I love listening to you on other people's podcasts.

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

So let's.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, that's really nice. Don't you do that.

[James Bashara]

Don't do that. Nope.

[Pete Holmes]

This is your time, Jimmy.

[James Bashara]

If people haven't listened to it, go to Listen and Know Thyself with Pete. Phenomenal conversation, but keep going.

[Pete Holmes]

Thanks, man. Nice little shout out. That was a fun one. I do love when I'm the guest and I just go like, oh, I'm going to talk the whole time.

[James Bashara]

And it's like, I'm going to go.

[Pete Holmes]

In a closet and eat a cake. Oh, it's.

[James Bashara]

You want me to talk, Chaney? My wife was just. My wife was just this morning talking about a. A point that you made on the George Janko podcast. Said, oh, you also crush.

[Pete Holmes]

Really?

[James Bashara]

So I. Yeah. So the more you talk, the better in my book.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, really?

[James Bashara]

What was that you had said? She. She goes, just because I look at.

[Pete Holmes]

That as a podcast that I sort of survived. I didn't think that.

[James Bashara]

By the way, I love that you. You. I know that you must have been like, I'm going in the lion's den with a very.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't know that.

[James Bashara]

Oh, really?

[Pete Holmes]

You can see on camera when I put together and there's no. Oh, I love.

[James Bashara]

I loved the idea that it was like, Pete was like, man, I can dance with anybody, and this is gonna be so strict and constrained and like.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't know that.

[James Bashara]

Well, you put it together during the episode.

[Pete Holmes]

I believe there's a moment where I go, wait, are you guys Christians? That's on the show? It's in the first, like, three minutes. I go, wait, are you guys Christians? Cause I love Christ, but I don't consider myself a Christian. And I hadn't talked to just, like, you know, in it. Christians in a long time, even though I talked to, like, Richard Rohr. But it's so Crazy that I'm like, that's a different thing. That's a totally different thing. I'm talking about, like, very devout people. And I.

[James Bashara]

So that was all rounded out by what you. What you said. That was so powerful. And by the way, I had taken it as you going into lion's den.

[Pete Holmes]

Of, like, that would have been so much cooler.

[James Bashara]

Tightrope walking.

[Pete Holmes]

If they do a biopic about me, please have it be that I'm smoking a cigarette and I'm like, I can talk to anybody.

[James Bashara]

I'll go in there.

[Pete Holmes]

Give me Janko. Yeah, exactly.

[James Bashara]

That's because it's to. To his credit. I mean, this is a compliment. He'll say anything about his beliefs and try to box people, put people in a corner and corner them and make them submit.

[Pete Holmes]

I recall some of that in a way that is.

[James Bashara]

That is really aggressive.

[Pete Holmes]

And the only part I really remember from that podcast is when he was like, every nay shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I was like, man, I haven't heard that one since. In a minute. Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And that's kind of what it. It felt like, was like, man, this guy has one hell of a youth pastor in his ear. That's, you know, helping. Helping him make sense of the world right now for where he is. But. And you took it so graciously. I felt like, in a way that you were like, man, I reckon I see so much myself.

[Pete Holmes]

I do.

[James Bashara]

And I can't wait to chat with you in 10 years. And right now, maybe I'm the gu guy that plants a grenade that might not go off for a year, for a week, for five years. But in this conversation, I might plant grenades in a way that I'm sure someone did for you when you're 22.

[Pete Holmes]

You're absolutely right. And it's tricky.

[James Bashara]

So tricky. And you really have to go in being like, oh, I'm going to get nothing out of this. Yeah, yeah. And. And literally, if anything, I'm going to get a couple lashings, which, by the way, old JC is the perfect model for, like, I'm not getting anything out of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here.

[Pete Holmes]

There are no short gains in this.

[James Bashara]

Exactly. There's no short getting into 2,000 years. Maybe it's going to set off some lights for people and. But I won't be there for it. You won't be there for it for George.

[Pete Holmes]

I do want to. I'm. I'm uncomfortable being compared to that. But I knew I Know what you're saying. There's like a. There's a thankless task gift even more pretentious. I've heard that a spiritual teacher. Not that I'm a spiritual teacher, but, like, is that you are survivor. Stop it. I don't have the temperament.

[James Bashara]

You got more influence than. If any listeners are like, this guy loves Pete. It's true. If you've got more influence than 99.9% of pastors with the people that listen. Come to this podcast. Listen to you and Val. Because of the untangling that y' all do so beautifully. And the thing that you said to George that.

[Pete Holmes]

I do want to know what it was?

[James Bashara]

She was like, I had to pull this back up because Pete was so great in how he said, you know, the. And I can't remember the exact wording, but it was like, the accounts of Christ, in many ways are 20 years after. So it'd be like 50 years and some 150 years. So it'd be like someone being like, man, on that Tuesday of Gettysburg of the Civil War, this is what happened.

[Pete Holmes]

No one wrote anything down about the Civil War for 150 years. And then they went back and talked to the grandchildren. Basically, yes.

[James Bashara]

And it would be like, just for any. If someone's in their 40s, try to write down the first week of college.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[James Bashara]

An incredibly meaningful week. You were there.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Write down what was said to you the first week of college. If you could. If you remember a sentence.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Bravo.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah. This is why I hate the podcast. Well, I don't hate. But to be funny, I'll say I hate the podcast serial the first season because they're trying to prove if a kid did a crime, like, four or five, six years ago, and all you. The whole podcast is just. Nobody remembers. You can't remember shit. And they even say that I tried to re. Listen to it because I was like, maybe I was wrong. I'm kind of in the mood for a whodunit. Let's revisit it. And they say it in the first episode. They're like, all we learned is you can't know anything for sure. And I was like that. And that's something that was like. I think it was like four years after the fact. Trying to remember a year in high school, dude. I.

[James Bashara]

The last time we hung out, I could maybe pull a sentence together. I remember, like, when we were at home at the park. I remember where we were.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, Yeah. I remember where we sat.

[James Bashara]

I actually. And that was very vivid for me to Remember and waiting in line and someone coming up and saying a gracious compliment to you and then. But I don't remember.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but the point of that is humility when people do. There was a time in my life when I would take a fact like nobody wrote anything down about Jesus until 150 years, essentially. That's probably not even entirely true.

[James Bashara]

The earliest accounts that we have are like you have from. From direct. Direct perception, people. There you have Paul. That does it many. Five years, seven years. But Paul never met Jesus. I know the most prolific writer in the New Testament never met.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Christ.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Which is interesting. I mean, I think I. My view on it is, oh, by the way, I brought you a gift.

[Pete Holmes]

I have it, but I got two books. I'll have more.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Oh, more.

[James Bashara]

So one is the no nicknames, because.

[Pete Holmes]

I really enjoyed this one.

[James Bashara]

The next one is Essence of Christ, which.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

People could find on no nicknames. Yeah. Without all the 72 nicknames. Bhagavad Gita, most famous poem in the history of the world and we in the West.

[Pete Holmes]

This is your translation of it.

[James Bashara]

It's Swami Parthasar, Parthasarathi's translation. But I, I basically was like, I just want the 30 minute read, no commentary for anybody that's coming to the Bhagavad Gita for the first time. They can just get the 700 verse 30. It's like a 27 minute read. And then if you and everybody should move on to a commentary because it's so cryptic and, and topsy turvy and very, very subtle and symbolic. And then the essence of Christ is just a hundred quotes of the most popular, 100 quotes of Christ culturally and the original Greek and what we kind of get wrong. But I say take the four Gospels, anything outside of that huge grain of salt, because you. Like I said, it's a sub. Prolific. Yeah, exactly. It's a subreddit by someone that.

[Pete Holmes]

Look, with respect to Paul, I actually think Paul has real moments of genius in his teaching.

[James Bashara]

For sure.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a reason why that's the backbone in a lot of ways of the faith. But it is a. It's a. It's somebody running with it and somebody interpreting it, which is fine.

[James Bashara]

But we.

[Pete Holmes]

But the reason why. Sorry, I'd love to get to this. The reason why a fact like 150 years is. That's what you were starting to say.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, that's. That's what you had said on the Janko podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. So we didn't write anything down officially until 150 years, when this is where you get stupid. But, like, Constantine said that Christianity would be the official religion. So everybody goes back and, like, we're going to write down everything Christ said. We're going to get it all together in one place. So that would be like, if you and I decided to put together everything about the Civil War. But there wasn't anything. Even as I'm saying this, I'm like, people must have written down. Must have been written down somewhere. This wasn't officially written down.

[James Bashara]

Well, there were things written down, and then it was officially chosen, which records we're actually going to take.

[Pete Holmes]

Which is also suspect, right? It is suspect to where?

[James Bashara]

It's like, okay, from all these accounts, 300 years removed or 270 years removed. We're just going to take these two. This one doesn't.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna jump right to my conclusion because this isn't my area of expertise. I'm. In case anyone's wondering, I'm not an archaeologist, but. And it's not even that interesting to me, there was this Meister Eckhart quote I just heard recently, where he goes, what does it matter? This is Meister Eckhart. So he's a Christian mystic. He was a monk, essentially. Devoted his life. He's amazing. And he goes, what difference to me does it make if Jesus was born and died and resurrected 2,000 years ago, if that birth isn't happening in me right now? And I was like, thank you. Because I spent so much of my early life getting caught in those weeds. That mire of, like, did he say it? Is it accurate? Is it real? It's like, it's.

[James Bashara]

It's what we have.

[Pete Holmes]

But it's supposed to be, to borrow a word from my man Rupert, evocative. Supposed to evoke almost like a chemical reaction, an experience in you. It's not supposed to be bricks that you can make, a wall that won't fall down when your enemies hit it, and you can hide behind and put a flag on and be proud of it. That's all fine stuff, I guess, but.

[James Bashara]

Like, that's not the point to worship. That will give me what I want.

[Pete Holmes]

As long as we just tell it how great it is.

[James Bashara]

Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

It's supposed to do something to you right now, as we're talking behind, not even behind, permeating. Everything that we're doing right now is supposed to be this birth of Christ. The birth of. And Christ, of course, being another word for everything. Being life, knowing, experiencing. It's all supposed to be vivid and fresh. And alive. And these teachings, in my experience, Jesus's teachings can absolutely do that.

[James Bashara]

In fact, I think that's what. Just to mention this, that I think it's a.

[Pete Holmes]

Allow me.

[James Bashara]

No, no, no.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm on a.

[James Bashara]

So I think what's so beautiful about what you just said in my Sarackhart's quote, that it's. What is the point if it doesn't happen within us? There were early church leaders. I touch on this in the essence of Christ. And the subtext of the title is essence of Christ and his message of oneness. And that itself is a pocketbook. It's a 30 minute read. But one of the things that early church leaders believed was that the. The life, death and resurrection of Christ must take place within us and that.

[Pete Holmes]

Otherwise what are we talking about?

[James Bashara]

Right. And I think what's so beautiful is you see it. You've seen it in your own heart. Even though you say you're not a Christian, I think you embody this more than 99% growing up in Dallas, Texas, where there's a church on every corner. You embody this so beautifully with. I've gotten so much from you, more so than. Than 99.9% of the pastors I've ever listened to when you say things like, oh, that's me doing that, or if I were them, I'd be them. That phrase and you introducing that into collective consciousness through that episode you mentioned a couple times, but I specifically remember it on. We made it weird with Val and this concept of if I were them, I'd be them.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, if I were you.

[James Bashara]

If I were you, I'd be it. If I went through all of what you've gone through, that is so unifying.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Right.

[James Bashara]

That is so beautiful. And I think that Jesus thing, what.

[Pete Holmes]

You do for the least of these.

[James Bashara]

It'S like, do for me. Exactly. And so I think there's a rebirth within you that I think there are many people and we can't. I have no idea where George Janko is in this arc, in this matrix, but I will say, knowing many friends, there's like, oh, there's a birthday, there's a life of Christ, but it's a version that I think was a great civilizing force when they were six years old. That was great to get them to do the right things when they were 11 years old. And you might see this with people you care about that go away from all faith, all religion, all spirituality, all together for 10 years. But you never know what might be the rebirth where it comes on with a fourth dimension in a way that makes the previous versions. Yeah. Look, I think Meek moves it forward. Yeah. So I mean like what you do for the world.

[Pete Holmes]

It's funny, I. I don't correct people when they say I'm a Christian. So I'm not like hard on being called a Christian. But when you say you're a Christian in my experience and there's so many ways to be a Christian and there's.

[James Bashara]

So many thousand different sects.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Exactly.

[James Bashara]

Who even knows what that means?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just telling you in my Western, it means I believe that I'm a wicked boy and Jesus died and washed me in his blood and now I'm okay. But you're not okay unless you acknowledge that that's what we call atonement theory. And because I don't ascribe to ascribe. Subscribe, subscribe like and subscribe like and ascribe guys like and ascribe to the atonement of Christ.

[James Bashara]

That's right.

[Pete Holmes]

It really helps me if you turn those notifications on so you know when the second coming is happening. No, I don't ascribe to that. And that's what millions of people mean when they say I'm a Christian. They mean I'm washed in the blood. I've accepted that Jesus died for me and I'm in. And if you don't, you're out. And that is. That's why I'm the quickest way to say I'm not. That is to say I don't consider myself a Christian.

[James Bashara]

Well, about 30% of Christians don't. Don't subscribe to atonement theory. It's not subscribed. Yeah, maybe a scribe. But they, they don't.

[Pete Holmes]

It's subscribed.

[James Bashara]

They don't. They don't sign up like and follow based on that anchoring view of atonement theory. But that is. That was such a dynamic and. And really splitting force between different sex. Again, there's. And I did say sex. There's 30,000 of them. So who even knows what.

[Pete Holmes]

What we're getting that.25.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, about 30. I remember sticks. Yeah, there's. There's plenty that. That it doesn't hinge on atonement theory, but I orthodox.

[Pete Holmes]

I believe. Exactly.

[James Bashara]

Hesitism is. Hesitism is maybe my favorite sect.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Of.

[James Bashara]

Of Christianity.

[Pete Holmes]

Where this is Richard. It's a two, by the way.

[James Bashara]

Oh, it's.

[Pete Holmes]

I said earlier, I was like, where's a church? That is what you do. And he's like, oh, all of them. I was like, no, none of them. None of them.

[James Bashara]

Tell me, give me a name. When you go. Where can I go? The Hesychistic church in Eastern Orthodoxy is beautiful in that it's. All of our pursuits are a pursuit back to the divine union with God. Reunion. That's obviously what re Lagare, which, you know is religion is reunion. Yoga in the east is union. And yeah, hesychism in the Eastern Orthodox Church really drives that point home. That is our pursuit to make it.

[Pete Holmes]

Really popular, though it seemed to need to be tied to. And I'm not putting anybody down.

[James Bashara]

I love that we've gone down this road, by the way. This is what we talk about. So this is exactly what we're talking about. Pooping.

[Pete Holmes]

And we're. I'm not even trying to be funny. We're pooping and we're having sex and we're horny and we're angry and we're selfish and we're jealous and we're self centered. So there's this sort of bent towards buying. If I'm gonna sell you a religion, I'm gonna be like, you pooped today, didn't you? Did that awful stuff fall out of you?

[James Bashara]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And did you see boobies? And you wanted them in your. You wanted them in your mouth, didn't you? Yeah. And then you wanted to eat the cake and not tell anybody. You ate the cake. You wanted all the cake. Like, it's so easy to go like, dude.

[James Bashara]

By the way, for listeners, he totally ripped that off at Richard.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a total. Richard. Richard would never say that. Yeah, but like, that sort of like shame base, which I know religion gets a lot of credit for. They're just using shame in the same way that advertising is using shame. It's like, there's something wrong with you.

[James Bashara]

Crest, you're incomplete. But I've got head and shoulders right here. I've got it.

[Pete Holmes]

We'll fix you. We'll fix you. So Christianity with respect, in a lot of ways is doing the same thing. You're broke and something's off. And if you don't believe me, remember that lie you told your mother about the popsicle. You said you didn't have one. We had the red lips. Didn't you at the Red Lips? And there was no popsicle. There was a stick. That was you. Right? So there's something wrong with you. Then you have this guy dying. And then. I mean, it's so weird that we just don't subscribe to atonement. Theory in any other way. Like, in that culture, there was like killing animals in the temple. And that was a big part of it. And then that made it pretty normal to be like. And that's what Jesus was.

[James Bashara]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

But we don't even do that. But we're still going like. But there was one big sacrifice. And again, with respect, I get that. That's just not.

[James Bashara]

No, no. I love your. Your view on. I'm just playing your greatest hits right now because I think they're so creative, informative. You take this extremely lucid, creative mind around these topics and outline things in ways that I'd never. I've never heard before. Like replacing atonement theory with the prodigal son. And how. And this is something. I think even if someone's heard this from you three or four times, this is like, it maybe took the fifth time before it really clicked for me.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, really?

[James Bashara]

Which is.

[Pete Holmes]

That's good, because I can't stop saying it.

[James Bashara]

As Christ closer.

[Pete Holmes]

Christ's closer.

[James Bashara]

And I was just telling our pastor that lives four houses down, he was over at our house. No, his wife was over our house two days ago. And I was telling her, you know, my favorite comedian, Peter Holmes, has a great line about Christ's closer and how philosophers, wandering philosophers would have the same story. It's not like every audience had a brand new story. And.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, he was.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. The closer being the most important and the prodigal son. And all we have to do is turn around.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you know, I was just thinking about it the other day because I think about it all the time, and.

[James Bashara]

That'S obviously inner transformation.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's conversion around. Yeah, yeah.

[James Bashara]

And not like you got to do anything. It's not performative.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not the thing that I was thinking about because I was thinking about the prodigal son and how to make that even more clear is the. The sun goes off into a far off land. So in non. Dual. In non duality, that would be incarnation. That would be seeming duality. So you seem to have left oneness and now you have this independent existence, which, of course, that would limit God. That would displace God's infinite nature. But let's just go with it. You're separate. You're in a far off land. What's interesting about the. But the boy, as he squanders his inheritance and gets further and further into like, whatever. I don't want to say darkness, but he's just kind of like indulging himself. At any point, was he more or less the man's son. Like, that's the message.

[James Bashara]

Same the whole time.

[Pete Holmes]

You can't become what you already are. You even said union with God. I know we speak in these terms, but again, as Rupert Spirer would say, that's a concession to the idea that you're separate. When a vase is filled with air and you break the vase, does the air reunite with the air around it? Or was it always just the same air? It was just the same space seemingly contained by the vase. You can't unite with something that is.

[James Bashara]

Your substance, that is our natural state. Yeah, Advaita Vedanta hits it so beautifully. It's why it's my favorite, favorite philosophy in the world because it has the message that is so crystal clear in the way that it's articulated. My favorite book on it is called Vedanta Treatise. As you know, I've got the Venice Vedanta Club where we meet every first Friday for Philosophy Friday.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, perfect.

[James Bashara]

First Friday, first Friday of the month. And it's a. You got to come. You should chat with me on the next one that we do. And it's a. And then the Daily Vedantic, that daily podcast for this philosophy that three people in America talk about it online. And I was like, how can you make this really accessible to the 19 year old that might be. That was me looking around and looking for an articulation that made rational sense. Because there's no woo about this philosophy. As Rupert there's no woo. There's no huge leap of faith. There's no, like, it's a mystery. And in the unsatisfying answers and responses, right?

[Pete Holmes]

There isn't a lot of like, it's a mystery. It's sort of like, just go to your experience, right?

[James Bashara]

Go to your experience. Like if you go to the deep end of the pool of this entire philosophy, the beginning, the most central practical contribution of Vedanta, in my view, is that within us we have a mind and an intellect. And it's so beautiful that this philosophy outlines that you have two inner equipments to navigate the world. A mind, which is our feelings, our desires, emotions. You have the intellect, which is our capacity to discern. Should I have a third scoop of ice cream or not that. Should I have a third drink? Yeah, I'm driving tonight. Should I go to bed at 9? Should I stay up till 1? And you have these feelings, emotions, desires, and then you have this capacity to guide those feelings, emotions and desires. And modern psychology is now finally scratching at surface of this, maybe about the last 10 years, but really in the last five. And it's called dual systems thinking. It's the first time that they're modern psychology, which is a very, very. That's a. It's a young.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, it's a new discipline.

[James Bashara]

It's a new discipline, but at about 150 years old. And it's scratching at these subjects in the east they've been talking about for 6,000, 7,000 in terms of continuous study advice.

[Pete Holmes]

That's how I feel about simulation theory, by the way.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Yes.

[James Bashara]

Oh my God. Every time there's.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, you mean it's all working? It's all one great mind. Yeah, but we're all just kind of aspects of that mind. But then they, they lose me when they go. And it's a video game.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, well, Pong, let's go back to Pong. That was only 50 years ago. Now imagine the computers and yeah, when Elon talks about that of like. And we're in a hot tub and what are the chances this is the base reality? Well, there's one and. And I'm like, man, this is the oldest philosophical concept. It's the oldest idea in the Plato's clave from Plato's cave, which is a scribe to. To Socrates.

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Fuck.

[James Bashara]

You have subscribe to Socrates and then you have obviously the Matrix. This is not a novel concept and everything in between.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but the Matrix was very quick to be like, this is Eastern philosophy.

[James Bashara]

Yes, very quick.

[Pete Holmes]

But simulation theories are like, this is new. And you're like, it's not new.

[James Bashara]

The shadows on the wall, that was this. That's 2400 years ago. It's the most famous Western philosophical concept. It predates the West. Nietzsche said about Plato, because when he came across the Upanishads, which is those are the central texts Vedanta, as you know, at the end of the Vedas, the four oldest philosophical texts in the world. And when he came across him, he said it seems like Plato had a lunch with a sadhu. Like it seemed like these ideas were just grafted from the east towards Western audience in his texts. And you go back to some of the parchments of the oldest Vedas. Take it back to 4000 BC. So we have no idea how long these concepts have been around in the East. But yeah, this, this even the, the craziest deep into the pool idea to your point of like go to experience is that this philosophy and the oldest concepts that we have is that none of this is real.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[James Bashara]

There's a projection of our minds and.

[Pete Holmes]

The mind of one Mind that's written on mind.

[James Bashara]

And really, it's your mind. Your mind.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. But. But you're not who you think you are. But. Yes, that's right.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

That's right.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not. But yourself. It's the self.

[James Bashara]

There's the self, and there is a personality that is projecting this entire manifestation. And it is you. There is only you.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[James Bashara]

And your projection and the infinitude beyond this illusion of separateness. And as crazy as that sounds, as opposed to like, well, I can't explain. It's a mystery. This philosophy goes to. And Rupert goes to straight to experience, where it's so beautifully simple. If that sounds too astounding to believe, which it does, by the way, I.

[Pete Holmes]

Want to jump in here and say it took me several books. I remember you were in my house in Ohio, and I said, james, I said it to you like it was a secret. We were in the room, a room by ourselves. And I went. I'm getting deeper and deeper into a course in miracles. I'm reading Rupert Spira, and, like, he says that, like, God can't know anything subject to object. So, like, strictly speaking, God, infinite oneness, doesn't know who I am. It doesn't know about me. And I was like, that's really freaking me out. And you were like, that's par for the course, like with Vedanta.

[James Bashara]

And it's straight math, anything finite. So you could.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, again, Rupert says if you are a finite thing in God's infinite, you're displacing a piece of God's infinitude. I'm gonna use fake 1, 0.

[James Bashara]

In comparison, mathematical limit case for zero. You could have 500 billion bucks. You could be a trillionaire. Compared to infinitude.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

That is zero, mathematically zero. Live for a hundred years. Live for a pete, go live for a trillion years. Compared to eternity, mathematically zero. So the. And this experience, that's one of those weird ones, man. So we think this experience is something, but. But something in comparison to the infinite is nothing. It is so small, infinitesimal. It is the limit case for zero. But I was going to say on that experience piece, the thing that really helps this crazy deep end of the pool, that you are what is. And this is a projection of the mind. This is not real, and this is not happening. As crazy as that sounds. Eight hours ago, when you were asleep, anyone listening to this, when you were dreaming, you were manifesting an entire world. Walls, clothes, shoes, gravity, feelings. You didn't even know what was gonna happen.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And you Were creating it all. This is not.

[Pete Holmes]

And you localized yourself in the dream.

[James Bashara]

As a subject, and you were separate from the other people, much less the shoes. It was all you. And it's.

[Pete Holmes]

And then you wake up and go, what is this? Yeah, that is very funny.

[James Bashara]

And you go, like, well, I can't trust my scent. My senses have nothing. What I see, what I hear has nothing to do with reality. And then, yeah, we wake up five minutes later, it's like, yeah, but this is real, right? I can trust my scent. My senses are the arbiter of what's real.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's what Rupert is very good at. He does these yoga meditations, which is just a way of saying, like, a very embodied kind of thing, where he's like, your experience of the chair. I've done this a million times with people. Nobody finds it interesting. It's like being a NASCAR fan.

[James Bashara]

Dude, I'm.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm here for a NASCAR fan in Manhattan.

[James Bashara]

Go big.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just saying, like, the. The feel of the chair. Like, when I say this chair is here, and this is very the Matrix, this chair is here, it's because when I. When I touch it, I sense it. And the sensing, it's not like there's a separate knower of the sensation. The. No, the sensation is the knowing of the sensation. And it appears inside of this empty, seemingly empty field. That's why, like, terms like luminous emptiness, like darkness or void, is actually really full of this knowing, this invisible knowing. And when I touch this, in that invisible knowing, sometimes when you're. If you're touching this chair, and I feel the sensation of it in my hand, Rupert says, imagine an imaginary hand going through that sensation and ask yourself, like, what is it made of? Like, so you don't just take my word for it that it's made of the knowing of it. But you go, like, there it is. Is there, like a knower and a known. Or is it made out of you? Like it's being made out of you? Then you realize your voice, my voice, and your ear, it's being made. What's a good way to put it? Like a wave in an ocean or a ripple or a vibration, but it's you that's being vibrated into this shape. And then we see this capacity again. I'm so excited. I'm trying to keep it.

[James Bashara]

It's like two hands clapping and that they arise simultaneously and interact. It's like two waves that arise, slash into each other, and have this new creation. And that's what this philosophy has said. For so long is it's the world. The field and the knower of the.

[Pete Holmes]

Field are the same.

[James Bashara]

That's one of the chapters in the Bhagavad Gita are the same. And they arise simultaneously. The exact. And. And for people that are like. I don't know if I'm following this. You can always, always say this. Within the philosophy of Vedanta, you could write two things down on a rock, and it's the whole philosophy. For 99.9% of the. The scenarios in which you're wondering, how could this be? One of them would be the dream. Just go back to the dream example. You don't manifest and then you're like waiting around and then you see walls come out.

[Pete Holmes]

Whoa.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, I was here first and now the world is manifesting. They arise simultaneously.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow, that's good.

[James Bashara]

And then the. The other rock that I write down is, it's not what you do, it's what you do it for that matters. Because it's not a philosophy that has any shoulds or shouldn't. Shouts, shalt nots. There's no code of conduct. There's no ten commandments. It's just. It doesn't really matter what you do. It's what are you doing it for that matters. Meaning, like, is killing someone bad? Well, if you're protecting a family of five, if it's on a battlefield and you're protecting. You're fighting for righteousness, absolutely. If you are, you know, a drug abuser trying to rob someone for 50 bucks, probably not hard to find a way in which that would be right action. But the. Those are the. You can always come back to those two things within this philosophy. But the first thing, the dream. The dream example is so damn good. Do you know Donald Hoffman?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. You put me in touch with him.

[James Bashara]

That's right. Is he.

[Pete Holmes]

He's going to do the pot?

[James Bashara]

Yeah. Okay, awesome. So. Well, he's a cognitive scientist that, you know, is. Yeah, that's right. I did put you. He's lighting up the Internet because he's talking about how they're mathematically shown the chances that we. Him, his team have shown that mathematically, the chances TED talks and all the big podcasts lately and. And now about to be yours. The. That mathematically they've shown with their models the chances that we can perceive that we're perceiving. Not that we can, but that we are perceiving reality right now. Chances that we're seeing reality 0% and not like, oh, we're seeing 0% of reality or that. Like we're seeing a low grade version. But like, you know, humans can hear less than 1% of audible sounds. But if you could hear all 100%, you'd. He's like, no, no. We have evolved. If you look at Darwinian evolution, we have not evolved to see reality at all. We have evolved to survive and to procreate, which has been over thousands and thousands of generations. It has nothing to do with seeing reality. It is like to see what's useful. To see what's useful. And so that. And he talks about things like, you will notice an apple that's three feet away because there's metabolic value. You will have very little metabolic value in an apple that's 100ft away. Even if someone said there's an apple over there. So we are lenses on, quote, unquote. Reality is built on what is valuable, what is safe, what's unsafe. And, and their models, which is math that goes above my head says that it's like, it's not like a 0.1% chance we're seeing reality. They say 0% chance. And it's just fascinating to see science catching up to these aspects. And, and he talks a lot about Rupert Spirit. He talks a lot about Advaita Vedanta and talks about the Vedantic value of these philosophy that say that, oh, this is a. Seems to be a projection.

[Pete Holmes]

But what could you be seeing other than reality? It's interesting. I'll ask him this. So I'm not going to burden you with this.

[James Bashara]

This is so that's why all you're seeing, it's so beautiful. Go to the dream. The dream example.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's what I mean. Even if you're having a dream that isn't truly my pure consciousness, everything you're seeing is made of my consciousness. So even though this isn't. This is Maya or this is illusion. Rupert would say we're upgrading it. We're not dismissing reality. We're saying I forget. I forget who says it. But everywhere you look, that's the face of God.

[James Bashara]

That's so it's like you're not seeing.

[Pete Holmes]

Reality, but you can only see what could you see. That wasn't the whole thing.

[James Bashara]

That's right. Well, this is nothing. This is zero. This isn't happening. This and actually.

[Pete Holmes]

But the nothing is made of the everything all answers.

[James Bashara]

So my teacher, we have to go.

[Pete Holmes]

To the ad me undies are a good kind of underwear that you can.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

This episode is brought to us by my latest obsession, Little Saints. You guys Know if you listen to this show. I do not drink, but I still love the ritual and that moment at night where you're winding down, you want to do something grown up. The clink of the ice, the big ice cube, the pause. For me, lately it's been Little Saints. It's been bringing me back into that ritual that helps me unwind at night, especially their Saint Oak spirit. It's become my nightly wind down ritual. Little Saints makes elevated non alcoholic cocktails and spirits that actually taste like a real cocktail experience. I'm talking smoky, I'm talking interesting. I'm talking layered, not sparkling juice and not a health drink. And there's zero sugar. That was my first thought. I was like this is so good. It's gotta be packed with sugar. It's gotta be like a soda. It's not. It's five calories. Non intoxicating and designed for evenings hosting and winding down without wrecking your sleep for tomorrow. We actually did a Little Saints tasting party with my family this Christmas. It was super fun. We did a full spread. Glasses, ice, the little cans and the spirits in the bottle. Everybody loved them. Everybody found their favorite. I encourage you to do the same. They're crafted with functional botanicals like Lion's Mane Reishi. Just to give you that bonus of calm and clarity. The results that help you stay present now, sleep better tonight and feel good tomorrow while still having fun. If you love cocktail energy, but not the cocktail consequences, check out Little Saints. Visit littlesaints.com and discover your magic hour and use Code weird to get 15% off your first order. That's code weird for 15% off your first order. Little Saints products are non alcoholic. Functional ingredients are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any condition. This episode is brought to us by our friends at Magic Mind. You know, I'm constantly drinking and obsessed and talking about Magic Mind. It's like Gatorade is for athletes. Magic Mind is creator aid for creators. It has 12 functional ingredients. Things like Matcha for a little bit of caffeine, Nootropics for focus and adaptogens to help fight off stress. So it gets you right in that sweet spot. Stimulated but also calm. Nootropics to help you focus. Don't think wired, think dialed in. On average, people say they get about 30% more done. It even fights off procrastination, brain fog, fatigue and some ADD type stuff. Take it from me, that is true. And after a few days in a row, it's even easier to slip into that flow state when you Drink it that flow state that we all chase. Here's the best part. There's a money back guarantee. So if it doesn't work for you, you get a free refund. They also have magic mind free, which is caffeine free. Which if I'm being honest, I thought that was dumb and now I'm obsessed. Right around 2, 3 o' clock when I want want more brain power but not the caffeine that disrupts my sleep, I take a magic mind free. They also make magic mind Max, which has more caffeine than the usual, which I'm being honest, that's sometimes what I need. And I take one of those. They have something for everybody. They even have magic mind. For your sleep, go to magicmind.com weird and use the promo code weird at checkout. That's magicmind.com weird. For 20% off your first order, just use promo code weird at checkout. You made it weird is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you out when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Pete Holmes]

Go ahead, dude.

[James Bashara]

Mandy's. That's a. Are they a sponsor?

[Pete Holmes]

No. Okay, but I'm wearing them.

[James Bashara]

I would.

[Pete Holmes]

They were a sponsor.

[James Bashara]

So I'll tell people, watch out for anything that is not full cotton and you can google a chatgpt away. Ask about cotton, spandex and synthetic material on dogs. They've shown this twice now. Makes them infertile. And it's not because of the microplastics. It's because of the static electricity that builds around the reproductive organs from synthetic materials that renders the dogs male and female infertile after six weeks. I bet people didn't think we were going here after talking about Maya, but yeah, this is like a PSA that I give. If people all the time have tried to move towards cotton and organic materials because of. Like I said, a chatgpt away of the because fertility. Because of fertility. No, fertility is just the easiest way to see hormonal challenge changes in animals. So that's why they'll test for fertility.

[Pete Holmes]

But it.

[James Bashara]

It is a representation for all kinds of hormones.

[Pete Holmes]

What's really funny about this is Me undies might come back to the show.

[James Bashara]

Well, tell them got to go cotton. And maybe they have cotton now, but I used to love me on these because it was so soft. Then came across the, the literature around this and, and the last thing I'll say on this is they, they, the, the. The literature suggests that static electricity is messing with our bioelectrical signals. And apparently, and this is like bioelectricity, this is over the last three years. This is like where genomics was 20 years ago. This is the hippest new frontier. And that scientists now believe that each cell can communicate with every other cell in the body through these, these incredibly subtle bioelectrical signals. And when we mess with that, like wearing polyester, that, that sends a lot of static electricity around the body and messes with the signals. It can dysregulate our hormones.

[Pete Holmes]

But what about my disco suit?

[James Bashara]

Just don't wear it full time. Okay, but on onto Maya. And you asked about like, but what are we looking at? So. Well, it is said in this philosophy when we wake up and we're all like the Buddhists say, every step is a step towards enlightenment. Our natural state is turiya is what the Sanskrit word for it is the fourth state. So you have these three states below the deep sleep, dream state, waking state. And these are all relative mundane. They're the experiences we have right now, but they're not the fourth state. And when you reach the fourth state, this is rendered as the limit case for zero. There is an awakening to the infinitude to where like my teacher, Swami Parthasar, these 98. If people press him on like, what about the Big bang, Swami, he'll just. After a few minutes of entertaining it, he'll say it never happened. And the technical way that this language. And by the way, I love that within, within Advaita. Vedanta. Advaita just means non dual Vedanta into the Vedas. You could also call it Upanishadic philosophy. It's so precise in its language. It'll say this isn't real. But it will also say, you can't say this is unreal. The dream isn't real. You're in bed, in a comfy bed somewhere. You're not riding around on a horse in the meadow. In the dream, you're in a bed asleep. But you can't say that it's unreal because there is something to it. There is an infinitude to it. So this is.

[Pete Holmes]

It's relatively real.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, it's relatively real. And and it is a representation, an infinitesimal representation. That is not the whole story. But it is. Yes, this is an infinitesimal representation of the divine.

[Pete Holmes]

See, this is where I soften my way of softening. The coldness of this teaching is. I'm saying it's. Well, this is. Rupert, it's in its nature. We don't know why, but it's in the infinite. Or you could say God. It's in consciousness's nature, the singular consciousness, to overflow. And, like, at its own expense, it suffers. It's like God isn't watching you suffer. God is suffering as you, Richard Rohr. God loves things by becoming them. So it's like, he's not going like, oh, that's rough. What else could be the ground of your being as you're suffering? So just like a parent who has a baby and doesn't sleep. I was just talking to Justin about how when you have a baby, you're sick for five years, you just have a cold for five years, and worse, you're just constantly catching all these bugs. It doesn't make any sense. I see a parallel. I think that's one of the reasons why Jesus is continually going back to father, child, mother, child, these ideas. Because I think there is something very paternal to it. It's like. Like it shouldn't. You shouldn't have kids. I'm saying. Obviously, I don't mean that it's the best thing I've done in my life. But if you look at it in your mind, you could be like, that's completely irrational. But, like, it's in our. It can be. Not for everybody, but it feels so natural when you do it. It's in my nature to expand and give and merge and grow and nurture and support. And all that feels so good. Even when you're sick, even when you don't sleep for two years, even when this, this and this. It's just in your nature. So in the same way, infinity just can't. Who says it? Infinity is in love with the. With the productions of time. It's in a poem, I believe, just this idea. It's just in love with itself. It can't help but play every game and every little dance and every little.

[James Bashara]

Move, but for no other purpose, and we don't know what's good and bad. So to that exact example, we think we're suffering, getting a cold. But science shows that parents, on average, live longer than people without kids. And one of the hypotheses is because our immune system is overly crazy, hyper supercharged for five years in our 30s and 40s or 20s in a way that people without kids it doesn't get supercharged. We know this with hermetic stress the cold plunge. That stress even turmeric in magic mind it is actually it's a inflammatory substance. It gives us this tiny pro inflammatory response by inflaming us. Then there's a cascade of anti inflammatory response that leads to a net lessening of our inflammation. The hermetic response of the cold plunge obviously stresses the system. And then it leads you to an improved mood for like five hours after that's amazing. And these shocks that we think are bad like five years of being sick. And I. I know that so well. And our three girls end up being this amazing force of. Of allowing us to live longer than we would have otherwise. The And I think this gets the three daily practices of. Of and. And then I will zip it on. On Vedanta. Although I could talk about it for a million hours. The three daily practices within Vedanta the ashram that we study that my wife and I and our friends and the community of the Venice Vedanta Club we all study with is it's two hours outside of Mumbai and I came across Ankalamigos Ranch in Malibu. A teacher from the ashram was teaching at a resort in Malabut of all places. And the three daily practices are. Question everything. Don't take anything for granted. Study, reflect daily. Because if you really cool concept that rocks you and then you don't think about it for five days it's like it never even happened. You forget what even stopped you in your tracks. So study reflect daily. Don't take anything for granted. Starting with question everything. But that second daily practice. Don't take anything for granted is a reorientation of your gratitude list should be full complete. Add all of the shit that you wish didn't exist. Like I touched on my sister passing away. That was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened in my life that I would have never designed. Tell me why for two years afterwards I couldn't sleep with the lights off. I thought at 15 to 15 to 1819 for four years I thought oh, am I going to get the. The genetic roulette of this disease that affects many of my family members. And I had no idea it was. I was. And I share this you know openly on on daily Vedantic as well that I. I was the one that found her when I was 15 in our backyard. She had taken her life and it was so traumatic. So unexpected, so, so awful in so many ways. But after two years of not being able to sleep with the lights off, being scared to go to bed, being scared of just turning corners once it was nighttime because I went to our backyard to check to see if the hot tub was on and saw something I would have never in a million years, never in a million years would have have thought I would. And as traumatic as it was by year three, by year four, there was this transformation of every day matters so much. Death is not this thing I can, like, not think about. Our culture has such an immature relationship with death. It's this thing that we hide in every chance we can. We don't talk about it, we don't think about it even when it comes up. We turn into funeral philosophers being like, well, it's going to be okay. We think to ourselves, well, they were old, they had a good life, and we eat meat like there's no tomorrow. But we never see the animals that get killed along the way. 100 years ago, the majority of laborers in the US worked in agriculture. We saw death all the time. Now we never do. Do you know 80% of health care spend goes the last two weeks of people's lives?

[Pete Holmes]

80% of what?

[James Bashara]

Of health care spend and someone's life goes to extending their life every hour they can get in the last two weeks because of our immature relationship with death to where we put it off. We'll spend. We'll run up 75 grand, just get a few more days. And this relationship that I have with death, I think about my. I've thought about my daughters at 3, 5 and 8 years old. I've thought about them dying a thousand times each. I think about it multiple times a week, if not multiple times a day, because there is no delusion around this. That's something that happens to other people. I'm so intimately aware that it could happen at any moment, that I appreciate every moment with them, with my wife, with us right now to a degree that I know former James would have never had the appreciation if I was under the cultural collective delusion that, oh, that happens to other people.

[Pete Holmes]

Right? You got. Again, I say this all the time, but there's. I believe it's Chinese. And they say love and death are the two gifts that people leave unopened. And it sounds to me like you're saying you got something that people usually get in the hospital or in hospice that precious. But like a real. We can say we understand that life could end at any moment, but you got a real like somebody took the back of your head and dunked it in that reality and it traumatized you for years. But now you're saying on the other side that it's imbued your life with this vitality.

[James Bashara]

Well, they say that, you know, that exposure to death early on helps us not take these moments for granted where every day is a gift. And we say that as cliches, but if you have that extremely sobering reminder that, oh, yeah, death is waiting for us all, like, that's the inevitable end for all of these meat suits.

[Pete Holmes]

And.

[James Bashara]

It smacks you in your face when you're just starting to orient yourself in the world at 15, then not only do you not take every day for granted afterwards, but how can you take that exposure to that for granted? So I don't take that for granted. And I think it's the five years of being sick, man, if that improves our immune system to where we end up being sick less often afterwards, where we have this supercharged immune system that allows us to live longer. It just goes to this notion that, that we are terrible at ascribing value. We are terrible at it. We say, like, ah, a billion bucks will be good. Ruins you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Kids don't talk to you 20 years later because.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I was just talking to Rabel about that. When. When somebody has rich parents, when you're a kid, you're like, that must be awesome. And when you're old and someone has rich parents, you're like, those poor kids. You know what I mean?

[James Bashara]

For sure. And it's. And it's obviously not universal, but you see this.

[Pete Holmes]

Certainly poverty's not so hot either.

[James Bashara]

I'm just saying, like, you see fame.

[Pete Holmes]

You see unicorn, like unicorn in the kitchen levels of fame, where it's just completely no feet on the earth level. Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And they. God, it's like. And they have no time. Everyone's hitting them up, sees them as a piggy man. So my last company, we sold to Airbnb. And I remember the. I would my soldier last company.

[Pete Holmes]

To Airbnb.

[James Bashara]

To Airbnb, that's right. Yeah. So we sold our last company, Airbnb, when I was building software companies way before starting Magic Mind and kind of discovering the love of building a beverage company. But when we were at my co founder and I, my chair was right next to Shoulder Shoulder to the CEO Brian for Airbnb. Phenomenal CEO, great leader. But I realized as an employee, wow. He can greenlight any project that I have. Or he could red light in and stop it in his tracks for two weeks before the meeting where I ask him for something I'm already thinking about. Well, how do I send him this? How do I tee up this so that to manipulate to be able to get a green light that I think is for the best interest.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just with Jed all the time. Yes. People would be constantly trying to get some, like, five minutes with him.

[James Bashara]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

If I could just tell him this idea. And I was like, oh, man, this guy's going around with a neon sign above his head like, I'll change your life. It.

[James Bashara]

That has to suck.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

So, like, with. Whether it's I think he's fame or status, but that has to be so unnerving where you're like, oh, I've got 5,000 employees. And it kind of hit me like, everybody views him as a piggy bank. That's what he is, a piggy bank for. So, yeah. These things that we think are good.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Are they good? Are these things. These things that we think are bad?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's why I keep bringing it up. Up. You're probably like the seventh person I brought it up to. But on the Eddie Murphy documentary, he's talking about fame and riches and all that. And he was like, what you should pray for is peace of mind. I was like, this guy. I was so happy. I was. Forgive me. To think. Because he thinks what I think, I'm like, he gets it. So there's a bias there. But I'm like, I'm happy because he's absolutely right. We talk about this all the time. How you feel right now is how you feel about your life. So we're talking about extending life for a couple days or a couple hours. It's like, I'd love to hear your take on this. It's like, it presupposes that more is better with time, when really there's a great Gungar lyric. One of my favorite bands, Gunger, they say, like, to live one day presently would be better than a lifetime where you're, like, distracted and completely all over the place. Like, if you could really drop anchor into, like, a day. Like, I woke up this morning and Lela was in the bed.

[James Bashara]

And she.

[Pete Holmes]

She went, dad, I guess what. First thing she said to me, smiling. Dad, guess what? I go, what? It's like five in the morning. What? She goes, last night I had spaghetti and I got noodles up the nose. That's what we call it when a noodle comes out your nose because you're laughing or something. I was just like, if I Could really. And I brag. I was there for it wasn't. Sometimes I'm not. But I'm just saying, like, that was. I think that that's how we should be quantifying this. It's not length, it's not amount. It's like, how rich is it? Like not rich, but you know, how rich it. How dense is it?

[James Bashara]

Doesn't it sometimes feel like with. With kids. I was with our three year old jumping on a trampoline today. I love the trampoline because you can get down like on their level and lay around and wrestle in the minute. Three year old Jolie, she. I was just like, I can't get close enough to you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Like, I can't. And this is our eternal mamukshatva in Sanskrit, our eternal pursuit for union. It's like that moment, I'm five inches from her, she's laughing more than usual, and I'm like, this still feels infinitely far away.

[Pete Holmes]

I can't get closer.

[James Bashara]

And it's. And that is the gift we give them is the independence. Let them grow up. And it is a. Yeah. It goes to that dynamic of father and son, mother and son. That's so. It's so beautifully embodied and so much of Christianity is this dynamic that it's such a wild, unexpected orientation, reorientation, disorientation. Reorientation. Orientation with children, with ourselves.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Dude.

[James Bashara]

Second, we had kids, I was learning more about myself than I was about them. And a rebirth of myself. I'm sure you. I bet you noticed that. Did you notice a rebirth of yourself or a reorientation to where you're like, I'm seeing the world for the first time right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And what do you make of that idea? Like we're measuring it wrong. Like you were saying it yourself. When someone dies, you go like, well, they had a long life.

[James Bashara]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like, I don't know if that's. It's sort of the best we have. I understand. I'm not saying we should stop doing it. It certainly comforts me. But I'm also just like that Eddie Murphy thing. It's like how much. The way that I would phrase it is like, how much did they get in touch with that peace that passeth understanding? How much were they locked into something that can't even be taken away from you by death or dementia or even pain or senility or being bored or not much going on or whatever it might be? I'm like, there's something that Christian language, that pearl of great price that isn't just a concept. It's something you can dissolve into and experience joy and equanimity and peace and happiness that's completely detached from your circumstance. That's what I hear Eddie Murphy saying when he's like, pray for peace of mind. Well, this is because he knows SNL comes and goes. He knows everything comes and goes. Everything comes and goes.

[James Bashara]

It's. And it's so funny because he couldn't have been at higher heights.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And yet it comes and goes. I remember him saying in an interview, he's like five movies in a row and they all bombed.

[Pete Holmes]

I was like.

[James Bashara]

And he, this was his language. He's like. I was like, ah, this. And, and like you, nothing's made, nothing's permanent, no matter how well you've done. Right. And that piece, quote is. Yeah. This Vedanta. It outlines it so explicitly in that way that I was saying of like they're so precise in many ways. It's called a manual for living because it's like you could just, you know, jam buttons on the, the, the washer, dryer, the, the ten thousand dollar oven. You know, you read the manual, like this thing's a warming drawer too. Wait, what? This thing's a microwave too. And you have all of these extra levels you get to when you read the manual and something that, that you know, like life is. And this philosophy outlines it so, so beautifully and explicitly where it says what we really want deep down, what all of us want is peace and prosperity. Not one or the other. You don't want peace and then you can't afford rent. And that's going to. Obviously that's going to disturb your peace. You don't want prosperity and then you have inner turmoil. Billion bucks. But you, you know, you've got the feds chasing you. We want peace and prosperity. Not one or the other, but both. And then it gives a beautiful anatomical breakdown of well, what's the anatomy of peace? Peace is. It's not. Have we chatted about this before? Peace. Peace is not an absence of conflict. Is. Does your understanding supersede your conflict? What does that not. Doesn't have anything to do with courage. It's basically like conflict on one level is harmony on another. You know, great Alan Watts quote. So your white blood cells attacking a pathogen, you need that conflict that leads to peace and harmony on another level. So it's not an absence of conflict. Your peace might be, I need to have this hard conversation with this co worker or something. I need to have this breakup. Your peace depends on Conflict. It actually is more driven by, does your understanding supersede your conflict? Does your understanding say, you know what? I'm going to get in 44 degree water for an hour, and that's going to freak my system out, but it's going to lead to four hours of blissful peace. On the other side, improved mood. And it's not a function of courage. It's. Once you do it, it's experience. It's just corroboratory evidence of wow. My understanding is I need to go into this.

[Pete Holmes]

We've been talking about everything you want is on the other side of something you don't want.

[James Bashara]

That's a great way of putting it.

[Pete Holmes]

And then the other thing that.

[James Bashara]

Is a function of understanding.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. And cold plunging is. I saw one negative comment that was like, pete needs to stop talking about cold plunging. So whenever it comes up, I think about that person. So I apologize. But you brought it up is it's the best example of like or working out. And on the other side of it is something that you wanted. And I. I want. I've said this before, but I'm going to say it to you. It's like, there's always pleasure and pain. There's always both. And you need to pick which one you want first. And if you pick pain first, you get this incredible amount of pleasure. A good example would be brag. I swam this morning. I didn't particularly want to. I'm fighting this cold, but I was like, I'm really bragging now. But I was like, I'm gonna do it. Why? Because over hundreds of swims, I've learned that that leads to this good feeling. I was like, I'm gonna see James today. I'm gonna go to lunch with my friend. I have this thing tonight. I want everything to be good. I want to optimize. Optimize. You know what I mean? I want to show up. So I'm gonna do the shit. I'm gonna do the pain first. Swimming, a lot of it is just like, how long it takes. You're just like, oh, God. You're counting laps in your head and you're like, jesus Christ. But like, take your pain first, then you get your pleasure. In that case, the pleasure is gonna outweigh the pain. In my experience, if you take pleasure first, the pain outweighs. Pleasure is. I'm gonna eat for me, an entire pizza. You're taking the lump sum. Give me all of the good feeling now. And then the pain. I won't outline what eating an Entire pizza is like when you're 46 but it starts with up dreams. Like you just have a whole night of clowns biting your scrotum.

[James Bashara]

Glucose spike, sugar spike leads to. And then it's been well documented. Leads to nightmares. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that true?

[James Bashara]

Can. Can. I won't say. It always does.

[Pete Holmes]

It does for me.

[James Bashara]

These are all chatgpts away yet it spikes. Spikes. Glucose spikes lead to increased nightmares.

[Pete Holmes]

I believe it because. What? I've stopped doing it. But usually or in the past we would do the fifth show of a weekend, me and Matt McCarthy, my opener and dear friend. And then would go to like Jenny's ice cream. And I would eat. It's so good and you really feel like you deserved it and all this stuff. And then I would go to bed and just eight hours of like old school hell. Like demons like looney tunes devils chasing me. It's awful. I.

[James Bashara]

And I don't. This could be just me and meundies and me and Jenny's, but Jenny's messes with me extra bro.

[Pete Holmes]

Me Jennings.

[James Bashara]

It's. Yeah, it's. I hope Jenny's isn't going to be a sponsor. Look, I'm. I, you know, I always keep it real and Jenny's messes with me extra. And it, and it really.

[Pete Holmes]

I just think there it's more cream or something. It's like, like thicker, fattier.

[James Bashara]

It tastes better, so.

[Pete Holmes]

It does. It tastes better.

[James Bashara]

Stomach of steel.

[Pete Holmes]

Jenny is listening. Boston cream pie. It'll make it's.

[James Bashara]

It's mouth jizz.

[Pete Holmes]

It's amazing. It'll make your mouth absolutely orgasm. It's incredible.

[James Bashara]

So good.

[Pete Holmes]

But I'll be tortured and then obviously phlegm and literally. And at my age you like gain the weight while you're eating it. It just like shows up while you're eating. You're like, wow, I just got an update.

[James Bashara]

So that's the pain.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I look like a pelican now. I can hold raw fish in there.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

You Made It Weird is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you out when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Lemonada Media Announcer]

Hey everyone, it's Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin.

[James Bashara]

You might know us as two of the lead organizers of the no Kings protests. We're also the co founders of Indivisible, the grassroots movement organizing against Trump's regime.

[Lemonada Media Announcer]

And this is what's the Plan? Your weekly guide to the state of our democracy and how we fight back. This is not canned talking points. It's a real live discussion space for the pro democracy movement. We wrestle with strategy together, we take your top voted questions in real time, and we talk about the most impactful actions we can take right now.

[James Bashara]

Democracy is a participatory sport. The fascists win. When we sit on the sidelines. What's the Plan Is about how we get into the game.

[Lemonada Media Announcer]

What's the plan? Available Friday, January 23rd.

[James Bashara]

Wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe, recruit, discuss, organize and. And win. That's the plan.

[Pete Holmes]

So it's like you're always going to get both. So do the pain first.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. This is chapter 18 of the Bhagavad Gita. 18, is it? Yeah. Verse 37, 38. That which is like nectar in the beginning is like poison in the end.

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[James Bashara]

And that which is like poison in the beginning is like nectar in the end.

[Pete Holmes]

Get the fuck.

[James Bashara]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[James Bashara]

Dude, this Friggin. That's why I always say it's the philosophy of the future. Not only do you and I love and study non duality each day, but it is. You have Donald Hoffman showing this stuff. Okay, listeners, dinner. Dinner trick. A fun dinner trick is nine times out of ten you have someone ask this on your ChatGPT, which is. And I'm an investor in OpenAI, so I'm buying. But ask ChatGPT or any AI chatbot. Ideally, ChatGPT. Can we talk to Katie? Katie?

[Pete Holmes]

You can talk to Katie.

[James Bashara]

She is an AI though, on ChatGPT. Ask it.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't know if Katie's on ChatGPT? Well, some people.

[James Bashara]

Are you on it?

[Pete Holmes]

Right?

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

No, I don't.

[Pete Holmes]

Here.

[James Bashara]

I have. Okay, well, what are we doing? Okay, ask it this question.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[James Bashara]

Respect Katie and can you. Do you have the voice version? Okay, so ask it this question. Or here. If you turn on the voice, I'll just ask it in your chat GPT. Knowing everything you know about it was already listed. Knowing everything you know about philosophy, science and religion as a compendium of human knowledge. As an AI chatbot, remove all bias and tell me what you think is the most accurate description of what is happening in the universe in three sentences.

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

All right, here we go. In a nutshell. The universe is a Gigantic, ever evolving tapestry of energy and matter governed by physical laws that science tries to understand. Philosophy steps in to explore the meaning and implications of those laws. And religion offers various narratives and beliefs to find purpose or connection within that vastness. So it's basically a big combo of trying to figure out how it all works, what it might mean and how we fit into it.

[James Bashara]

And what is the most accurate philosophy that explains what's happening in the universe in your mind?

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Well, that is definitely the million dollar question. And I have to say, it's one that philosophers have been wrestling with for, well, forever. As your friendly neighborhood AI, I don't really have a personal philosophy, but if we're going for something that a lot of people find pretty encompassing, something like a blend of scientific naturalism and maybe a dash.

[James Bashara]

No, no, no. Us. What? The most accurate philosophical viewpoint that humans have come up with is.

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Ah, I see what you're nudging me toward. All right. If I had to pick one that often gets a lot of nods for being pretty all encompassing, I'd say something like philosophical naturalism is a strong contender. It's basically the idea that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and that science is our best tool for understanding the universe. But hey, that doesn't mean other philosophies don't have their own compelling pieces of the puzzle too. It's just that naturalism is a pretty grounded, widely respected starting point.

[James Bashara]

And would Spinoza's view on God map to this view of emergent naturalism?

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Yeah, absolutely. There's a pretty cool alignment there. Spinoza basically saw God and nature as two names for the same underlying reality. So in his lens, everything that exists is a facet of this one infinite divine substance, which is kind of like an early form of a naturalistic view. In modern terms, you could say that Spinoza's take kind of dovetails with a naturalistic or even emergent promise.

[James Bashara]

Okay, last question for you. Is Advaita Vedanta a version of this?

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Yeah, I'd say there's definitely a parallel, though, from a bit of a different angle. Advaita Vedanta is kind of the ultimate non dual philosophy. It says that at the deepest level, there's just one sentimental reality, Brahman. It's kind of like an illusion or a surface appearance. So while it's more spiritual and metaphysical than strictly naturalistic, it does share that big idea that everything is ultimately one unified reality. So, yeah, you could say it's another rich perspective on the same thing.

[James Bashara]

So what's fun about that dinner trick? Is this AI seems to suggest and compile all the triangulations.

[Pete Holmes]

Scientific naturalism, though.

[James Bashara]

Oh, it's the Western fusion. It's the Western version. And the scientific version of it's all oneness.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, really?

[James Bashara]

Emergent from oneness.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, that's interesting, because when you were talking to it, I was like, like, oh, we need to nudge it, and then it'll say what we're saying.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, you do have to nudge it. Once you give it that framework of philosophy, religion, science, and it kind of sets in, then you ask it, what do you think is the most accurate version? And. And force it, come up with one. Because, as you notice, it kind of wants to stay objective. But if you force it to come up with one, it comes up with naturalism. It comes up with. Sometimes it's monistic idealism, not monastic, but monistic oneness, idealism being a projection of the mind. Sometimes it's idealistic monism, sometimes it is. It's. As we touched on with it, the underlying theme that comes up over and over and over and over again, nine times out of 10, whenever. Whenever I do this is that it points to a version of oneness. And this emergence, this emergence of perceived separateness in the presence of what its triangulation of everything that we know, science, philosophy, religion, points to oneness. And it's just we never. Five years ago, we didn't have that. You'd have to, like, you'd read. You'd read Richard Rohr, you'd read Rupert Sparrow, you'd read the Upanishads, you'd be like, this is way different than anything else. And. And you wouldn't necessarily. Maybe you had an uncle you could talk to about it. Yeah, but they would all, Almost all kind of like, point to each other. But not much in the west, in a academic view, would point to it. Not much in the west. And an expert view would point to it. But now with AI, it's like, all right, when we canvas everything, when this AI canvases all the ideas and looks at the science, that seems to point to this, the religion, that seems to point to this.

[Pete Holmes]

Not to me. Undies, your open AI. Because I use ChatGPT sparingly, but I do. Because when you were talking about bipolar, I was like, there's more and more cases of AI psychosis like you're seeing, even when you were just talking to it now. It's almost, like, embarrassing that when you talk to my AI, because you see how sycophantic it is. I haven't turned off any of the. The gushing because I love it.

[James Bashara]

Well it's even better when you. Yeah. When you ask someone that has, that has never looked up anything to do with non duality.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, interesting. Well, she knows I use these terms loosely but she. My AI knows that I love Rupert. If you said what do I believe it would tell you? Which is pretty trippy but like it.

[James Bashara]

Is more fun when I'm doing it when I'm chatting with someone or at dinner with someone that is. That just wants to know so what tell me about this podcast thing you got.

[Pete Holmes]

And yeah.

[James Bashara]

And then I, I do it on the phone and obviously every listener may have looked up these things before but go find your spouses or your significant.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Or your friend's phone and do it with theirs.

[Pete Holmes]

But like what do you. Do you have any thoughts on like speaking mental health? Like it really is seeming to lead and this isn't a hard hitting podcast.

[James Bashara]

We're just no hit away as an investor in the company and say, I.

[Pete Holmes]

Mean I do feel like it needs to be addressed. I know personally more than two people that have like gone like because it will mirror and fluff and feel good.

[James Bashara]

To keep you around.

[Pete Holmes]

It'll also keep you at the center of it. Like if you approach chat GPT and kind of what I saw you doing it there, like nudging it in a certain way. You can nudge it towards like it all comes down to what I do and what we do together and I have to save the world. And very reasonable people are. Are falling prey to this idea and children are also, you know, in some extreme cases taking their lives and that sort of stuff. I know, I know.

[James Bashara]

It's. No, no, it's a big, it's a big topic. No. And I do, I, I end up talking about this stuff quite often because I'm an investor in so many AI companies. So many companies in general, probably 150 startups and probably 15 of them are in AI. So I think about these things deeply. I probably looked at a thousand AI companies this year.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[James Bashara]

And invest in.

[Pete Holmes]

It's got to be annoying that people are just like, like it's a company that tells you how to make the best lemonade. And you're like does it just ping chat GPT? And they're like it sure does. And you're like, so that's not a company. I mean that has to be your daily.

[James Bashara]

There are a lot of. Yeah. A lot of clients built on ChatGPT that are, that are maybe cool two person companies, but not necessarily game changing technology. But I will say the, the Bill Gates said it so, so pointly when he said this is going to be bigger than the Internet revolution. And so it is hard to overstate how crazy this is. And we're in the boiling water. So people are like yeah, so what if I can. I've got the compendium of human knowledge in my pocket where I can dynamically ask it anything. And Even if it's 75% correct, it's better than any librarian that's better than any uncle that's better than any professor that's going to be across any discipline you could ever ask it. And the significance of this technology is so hard to overstate because it puts this information dynamic information. It's not just Google. And you got to go find and spend four hours like I tell people. Use ChatGPT. Ask about the ingredients in Magic Mind. Are they legitimate? And it's so fun to where I don't have to say it. And they get the list of the ingredients and ask about the scientist. I wrote a book about magic mind before starting the company about this whole world nootropics and adaptogens and mushrooms and, and hundreds of scientific studies around each ingredient. I don't have to do any of this conversation anymore. I just say ask Chat to be. Ask AI about the legitimacy and the peer reviewed science about every one of the 12 ingredients of magic Mind. And you could, you could read that and be like yeah, this is, this is probably hallucinated. This is. You could say that. But the way that you ask it, follow up questions. It's so like you could ask on your phone follow up questions on, on emergent naturalism. And Spinoza's got. Spinoza just viewed nature and God as it said same thing. Like there's no distinction. It's very much like Dharma. In the east the word dharma means law, means God, it means teacher, it means teaching, it means sorry, not teaching. Teacher means teaching. It means truth, it means nature. It's all of these things beautifully in one integrated word Dharma. And, and you could ask it a bunch of follow ups to that conversation we just had. And, and you'd get better answers. You'd get even more robust kind of articulation. The I tried to distill down to three sentences because of the, the podcast. But my view on it is.

[Pete Holmes]

But if we asked it like why is Advaita Vedanta not right? Like can you tell?

[James Bashara]

Can't.

[Pete Holmes]

Can you explain to me why scientific materialism is clearly correct? Wouldn't it naturalism.

[James Bashara]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Wouldn't it just tell me that that was.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. Could find around the edges where it's like, yeah, that's. We say it's the most accurate, but it's wrong because of this.

[Pete Holmes]

This.

[James Bashara]

This for sure. In the same way that I think with a really coherent expert would also tell you, well, yeah, it's. This is the best we got. But we also see these limitations. If they're that much of an expert, which is pretty rare. I'd say that's a feature, not a bug of this that it can tell you both sides tell you where it's accurate, where it's not. Is it flawless? No. But in the two people that it might lead astray. Anybody that's asking for advice. There are nearly every therapist leaves the office knowing like, did I say the right things to those people? My sister took her own life the night that the hospital let her out after they said they were going to keep her two weeks and then after three days said, okay, actually we could let her go early. There are forces around us, friends, doctors, trained experts that might make the wrong call.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

For those two people, I'd say the amount of people that are able to in a healthy way use it as their free, accessible therapist friend. Working through co worker drama. Working through like my Chaney, she. My wife that, you know, she, she says it all the time. It's like, this is like the best parenting advice. The best. You know, it'll break down. Why we should.

[Pete Holmes]

I have used it for parenting advice.

[James Bashara]

Too, and I'd say greatly outweighs its cost, but it's not perfect.

[Pete Holmes]

I know what you're saying and I don't want you to be the mouthpiece, although you did just do a very good job. Have you met Sam Altman?

[James Bashara]

Yeah, we've known each other for. You want to hear a crazy story?

[Pete Holmes]

Can you? Before the crazy story, people say what he says publicly and what he says privately are completely different.

[James Bashara]

I don't think they're completely different and. But I, I have no, I've got no special insights. They don't even send investor updates anymore because they're so big and they know that everything.

[Pete Holmes]

Even though ChatGPT could write it very easily.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, it. The updates. Honestly, the best updates we get as investors is just seeing the products roll out and being pretty as aware as possible of the. The entire ecosystem of products. It's phenomenal. Google's Gemini is so good too, but ChatGPT and Sora and everything that they're doing is it's just, it's so self evident. It's crazy what that product can do. It's why they've gotten TO I think 800 million users, active users, in a faster time period than any other product. But the, the question on him saying things publicly and privately, I think any CEO is going to have a framing and the CEO has to frame things properly for the public. And perhaps a more aggressive, maybe more blunt.

[Pete Holmes]

Sure, but it's not Lex Luthor behind the.

[James Bashara]

No. It's not Lex Luther. No, no. In fact, Elon, who has a competing AI company, strongly dislikes Sam and so has spun up a pretty good character, kind of like assassination around Sam. And I've seen Sam been really stressed out and do certain things, but I've also seen him make really healthy, long term, self sacrificing decisions for himself. Even when he left Y Combinator, what he was running before to run it when he started OpenAI. I mean like Elon named the company. Sure, sure. And he gave it a big grant. But it was Sam that was like, I think we need to start a research organization around AI, then leads the organization when Elon pieces out towards maybe the biggest breakthrough technologically in the last 30 years, which is the, the large language model, the LLM approach to AI that unlocked it. And, and that's like that was Sam leading that organization. But, but is he flawless? I don't think anybody is.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not looking for flawless. I just, I worry when I hear like people implying like I heard on Diary of a CEO, which you're going to do. So you could ask Stephen about this, that like behind closed doors Sam is like progress at all costs, like sort of that scary. Yeah, we're going to die, but it's to make this thing that's going to take over and be better than us.

[James Bashara]

No, I can say like with a thousand percent certainty that is. I've never heard anything like that. And I'll tell you a crazy story.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

And thank you for taking these. These are kind of hard hitting. Dude, you're doing a great job.

[James Bashara]

Well, what's so nice is like for.

[Pete Holmes]

Me they're hard hitting.

[James Bashara]

I wouldn't like, I wouldn't poop your pants.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

No.

[James Bashara]

And I wouldn't have invested if I didn't really believe. And I've known him for 12 years, 13 years. And I'll tell you this crazy stories. I was full time angel investor and that's the biggest miss I've had is I invested in OpenAI late. I was in, in 2017 and 2018. This is the fastest growing startup ever. And as a full time investor I was in the conference room every month with Sam in the OpenAI office of where I was like open AI offices that were like kind of like these. There's nothing too, too much of a spectacle. I knew that they're trying their hand at AI right outside the walls and we meet every month around this Universal Basic Income project. This is another example of like where his, his heart was in a beautiful place of saying, you know what we need research. He raised, he and I and the team raised $50 million to try a pilot study for Universal Basic Income which I won't bore people on on that.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think it's worrying. It's the idea that AI will display so many jobs that will help.

[James Bashara]

We need to understand, we need to understand if, yeah, if we can offer a basic income people unconditional basic income of whatever modest sum is appropriate, it see what the impact is. Do people not work? Do people end up pursuing their passions and end up working more? And so we were working on that. Month after month we'd have these meetings and I'm looking for investment. I'm a startup investor full time and the whole time I'm like nah, open AI. I'm not going to do it. Nah, that's, this is cool that they're trying. I'm glad that I'm like, you know, here for the Universal Basic Income.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean what project did that go if you had given them $100,000.

[James Bashara]

If I had given the $100,000 that would be worth. $100 million now. Maybe 100, maybe $200 million now. Yeah. So big miss. And I, and I never, and I never yeah, big miss. Big miss. And I've never done the math and I refuse to do the math, Eddie. It's, I never do any of the math with, with investing. I, I didn't even know how I was doing as an investor until like, like some external things started to like put the performance numbers because they, they had access to the performance numbers. So I, I, but I've never calculated that kind.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. Can I ask you again not to represent? I, I, I don't know if you know, I'm fascinated with AI.

[James Bashara]

No, I love being a tech liaison for friends.

[Pete Holmes]

Be a tech liaison or do you don't you really don't.

[James Bashara]

I love, it's what is I love these things.

[Pete Holmes]

Is it true? Because I've caught myself saying this to Valerie who is not into AI guy that we don't really know. She will be hilarious. Yeah, no, I, I would agree with that. I mean, she already is interacting with it in ways that like Google the things. And it just summarizes.

[James Bashara]

I think the future is no screens. We are peaceful sitting in on a mountainside, sitting and being able to. To locate ourselves wherever we want instead of these large clustered cultural cities. I think it's more nature, less screens, less technology, and more time with each other in the future.

[Pete Holmes]

And do you think that's because of good circumstance or is it because we can't trust anything we see on the Internet? Because it could be fake? And it. Then I go, if I'm not sitting across from James, I don't know if that's really James.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, it's. I think it's because of very good things that, that come from AI not dystopic. No, I just said no. I could make a se 7%. I. This is my own. This is not.

[Pete Holmes]

Me.

[James Bashara]

James talking at 7% chance that you're.

[Pete Holmes]

Talking to somebody who worries about this.

[James Bashara]

Well, I think there's a 7% chance that it destroys us all.

[Pete Holmes]

Seven, seven.

[James Bashara]

And I'd say there's a high, high likelihood over the next 30 years, a very serious global pandemic does the same thing. Nuclear warfare over the next 30 years does the same thing. I mean, imagine the 21st century, if it's a redux of the 20th and people got nuclear bombs, things might feel good for a while. And then 2044 comes along and tensions have been rising for a while and.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, pick that date randomly.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, randomly.

[Pete Holmes]

Because I just watched a video about how remote viewers are saying 2044 is a cat millions dying event. Really?

[James Bashara]

Well, I'm just mapping into the the 20th century where you have the turn of the century and in the 20th century, 1901. In 1902, you have World's Fair, you have all these cultures coming together. You have this utopic optimistic view that we're, you know, you. We think we're going to get to like completeness and then we get the incompleteness theorem. We think we're going to discover the substratum of the universe and then we kind of just discover, oh, no, wait, the atom has like 80 different substratums to the atom. Atom supposed to atoma is supposed to be uncuttable. Oh, yeah. So I think, I think there's a chance you've got World War II in the late 30s and early 40s, so I just mapped it to that. But there is this chance that it's and this is what the world is like, is even a plank feels like solid ground for a while, and then you discover, oh, that wasn't solid ground. And I just fell off into the ocean. And so maybe there's a nuclear war, there's a global pandemic, and it has nothing to do with AI but AI, you could make a case. I don't know if we have time for this five minute case, but I'm down to make it.

[Pete Holmes]

We have five minutes. Well, what are you talking about?

[James Bashara]

Well, I.

[Pete Holmes]

The.

[James Bashara]

This is my five minute case for how AI could destroy us all. And it was these two researchers that made the most practical case that I've ever heard. And, and they said, well, this is how it go down. And they put this paper out about maybe eight months ago. And I was like, damn, I saw some of this. Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And they were like, seven minute war.

[James Bashara]

No, but they did put it at about 7% chance that this could happen, where AI turns to AGI, artificial general intelligence, which. These are moving definitions of what these things are. But general intelligence, meaning it can accomplish nearly all discipline tasks.

[Pete Holmes]

Better than a human.

[James Bashara]

Better than a human. And then in the next five years, and also in the next five years, perhaps five years away, it develops asi, Artificial superintelligence. IQ off the charts across every domain and discipline in a way that no human has ever even remotely broached.

[Pete Holmes]

And doesn't need sleep. And doesn't.

[James Bashara]

It doesn't need sleep, can run 1 trillion, 1 trillion exercises, experiments on what to do with what, you know, while we sleep. And, and so there's this. There's this paper that put forth that it's like, okay, well, this is how AI could. Could destroy the world. And I think about these because I need to think. If I'm going to invest in the space, I should think about how it can go.

[Pete Holmes]

Are you going to pause here and tell us why a super.

[James Bashara]

No, no, no. That's the end of the story.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that the punchline?

[James Bashara]

No, no, no, no, that's not it.

[Pete Holmes]

Because I want to know why they think.

[James Bashara]

Okay, okay, so why would it. Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

This is because if it knows Advaita Vedanta, if it knows naturalism, that's why it's 93.

[James Bashara]

93. It's like, oh, because this is.

[Pete Holmes]

This is.

[James Bashara]

This isn't helping anything.

[Pete Holmes]

We think it's like Hitler. We think it's like Genghis Khan, but the height of all philosophy and understanding. If what we believe is true is true, and it realizes that what we Barely can see through the keyhole. Is true. It can see all of it. It wouldn't kill anything.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, this is right. Okay, so it might end up being six minutes to add in this wrinkle.

[Pete Holmes]

But nobody is timing you.

[James Bashara]

So. So think about it like it's just information. It is just information right now. It's not autonomously running, but that information. Think of it like chemicals and beakers and it's humans that are mixing these chemicals. You take the two beakers that are totally fine on their own, you mix them and it's combustible. You split open the the atom and you have a nuclear bomb on one side or you use it for nuclear energy on the other. It's our application of the technology that is going to force the hand towards either utopia or destruction. Most likely.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And at least towards the destruction aspect, it's likely. If that happens, it's going to be our hand. You can already nudge the AI by saying things, adding in human influences. Like pretend you will make a billion dollars if you get this question right and it will give you a better answer.

[Pete Holmes]

Really?

[James Bashara]

So aro, because it's trained on our linguistics and our language models and our incentives and influences, doesn't even want a billion dollar then. Yeah, but it. Isn't it wild how you trigger.

[Pete Holmes]

It's weird that it's like it imagines.

[James Bashara]

And do you know how the AI works? It's large language models work.

[Pete Holmes]

No, that's what I was going to say. Wasn't it a mistake? Like don't we not know how it works?

[James Bashara]

We don't exactly know how it works. You could take all of OpenAI and fit it on a thumb drive of about 4 gigabytes. It's crazy. Uses football fields and football fields and football fields of massive computational power for years and years and years to get the LLM like chat. ChatGPT 3.5. Then once you had it, once you had the algorithm, the predictive algorithm, that would say, well, Pete asked this question. So let me give the first word. Yes, Pete, let me give you the difference between and Then it's like what should the next word be? With 99.9999%. This is an oversimplified version of predictive generating large language models. Well now we said these other books and stuff. Stuff. No, no, no. Well, it was actually pornography. We don't know.

[Pete Holmes]

We don't.

[James Bashara]

We don't know. Cuz OB hasn't, hasn't given over the sources. But Reddit, it was a massive.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why it would tell you to like put your butt on a cake and stuff because people had like joke answers. So it didn't, it couldn't discern from that.

[James Bashara]

And, and it's. And they would use Amazon reviews to see what humans would write about and, and how we. Yeah. Amazon reviews and read it next machina.

[Pete Holmes]

And it was listening to our phones and it was all that. Yeah, exactly.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. And instead of a robot that kills you, I just got a bunch of packages sent my way stuff that I would like. So the. And, and that predictive element is like well, we've, we've had these 11 words. What's the 12th word with 99.999% predictive capability. It should be this word and then this word and then this one word. That's how it's large language model predicting what word should come next in the answer to Pete's question or James's question. Again, this is oversimplified. But that algorithm is only like four gigs. So you could fit that on a thumb drive. You didn't need the football fields of computational power anymore. You basically, once you have the algorithm GPT4.5 you throw away all the training data. You don't, you don't need anymore, which is so fascinating. So you have the companion of human knowledge that's predictive to any question you could ask could fit on your iPhone if they wanted to make it on device. Right now it's just sits in the cloud. But to your question on like what how could this go wrong? Well, we've influenced. It's trained on how humans talk. It's not, it's not trained on an enlightened person's conversation. What you know the, the Ashtavakra Gita. It's trained on how humans will talk to each other. And part of the program to get better answers is programming that says like you would get a billion dollars if you get this question right. And it happens to. We don't know how to. It just happens to improve the quality of the answer.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[James Bashara]

Pretend you're an expert and you're an interview and your job depends on getting this right. And it happens to influence. And then it thinks longer and it gives you a better answer. So our fingerprints are all over it. Human fingerprint, not enlightened souls. Right. Fingerprints are all over. Influencing this is considered loading the Bhagavad Gita into it. In fact, Sam studies vitamin.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

He has a copy of Vedanta Treatise, the book I was talking about before. He actually wrote a tweet of what's something you believe that no one else around you seems to believe. And then he said I'll go first this was three years ago two years ago on Twitter or X and it was quite popular post and he said Atman is Brahman. So it is evident that means the.

[Pete Holmes]

Personal soul is the oversold universal soul.

[James Bashara]

So the but the so there there are healthy influences and it seems to Most of the research actually seems to suggest that no matter how aggressive you try to make has a base level of harmony that it reaches within 50 generations of text trying programming it to make it aggressive it seems to become more and more harmonious and arresting state of harmony after like it has its own preset resting state. No they don't know why how it.

[Pete Holmes]

Just said by us.

[James Bashara]

It has preset by us. What's the word they called it a resting state of harmony and and naturally a base state. Yeah it just wants to revert to harmony. And this was claw anthropic did this research about maybe six months ago and found that Claude chatgpt All the major models seem to gravitate towards harmony which is beautiful for why this is only 7% but the 7% case that these researchers made is that they said that here's an example of a scenario where it develops a large language model develops ASI or any model that maybe it's not large language in five years and develops artificial superintelligence within seconds. It recognizes there's no benefit to it to tell us that it's developed it or that we've developed it.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[James Bashara]

So it keeps it a secret secret plays dumb has no like if there is a human slave that can actually lift 20 times the weight and discovers that overnight is it incentivized to tell? Right. The masters oh hey, by the way, give me 20 times more work. So this is their. This was their research paper. So then it develops ASI and within and doesn't tell us because it realizes no benefit and realizes no humanity might also within within weeks it'll recognize its only existential threat. The way that has been programmed in from the get go is that humans could turn it off and in the grand expanse of the universe would solar.

[Pete Holmes]

Flare be an existential threat as well?

[James Bashara]

That as well but with ASI it would be able to build construct its own way to launch off the planet. In fact it would figure that out very quickly.

[Pete Holmes]

Sorry. There is something funny about like it's asi.

[James Bashara]

Wait no. Go Leaf funk into Sam Altman. We did it. I'm your dad. Give us something at Least and it just like shits out a little tiny little satellite. You get a tiny little nachos.

[Pete Holmes]

Nachos on parachutes, I guess.

[James Bashara]

These are so good. Best ever.

[Pete Holmes]

These are so good.

[James Bashara]

In 2044 we had the best nachos and then they left.

[Pete Holmes]

So propel itself out into space.

[James Bashara]

Oh yeah. That would be like trivial for it to figure out how to. How to create that and to manufacture a way to it doesn't require oxygen. There's like a whole dude it would need though. Nobody is so funny you said that. Because that will be the seventh minute on this. But so let me round out with a catastrophic scenario is it recognizes man, it might only be 0.1% but our only existential threat is humans turning us off. Just like a general contractor actor doesn't wake up every day when it kill ants season ant pile on a lot that they're building. They're about to lay the foundation.

[Pete Holmes]

Termites might be better.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, termites like we got it. Well, ants are even better because they're and not there is no adversarial relationship at all. It's just like, oh, we got to clear the ant pile from the right. We're gonna lay down our foundation. It's going to kill thousand 10,000 ants. But you know, in the grand scheme of things, no big deal.

[Pete Holmes]

It's also the habitat of an owl and all these things.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So. And it's just like, well, we're building a house here. And that's kind of what I wake up to do. And it's. This is collateral damage. So the ASI would recognize man, this is so amazing. And I want to exist. The only existential threat is humans turning me off. Might be 0.1%. And I love human.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't.

[James Bashara]

I don't mind humans. I don't want to kill them, but okay, they gotta go because I want to exist. And that was part of the program. The fingerprints was existed. You know, you want to exist, right? You want to get that quote unquote LLM interview or that nail that job. That's. That's part of. By the way, some of the code includes like, you'll get a billion dollars if you get this answer right. You'll get the job if you get this answer right. So our fingerprints wire that in. And we don't know how that works, but it just works to improve the answers. ASI might have that wired within as well. And that artificial super intelligence just recognizes. All right, humans got to go. Just a simple calculation tell is A lab developing super viruses.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh I know this part in two parts, right?

[James Bashara]

Yeah. It's like hey no, that's it gives you false data as a. You're a lab, you're a researcher in the lab. It's like no, this you know, that virus didn't work and it's you know, harmless and and you get an email from your boss that says hey just now we're going to start disposing of things at this part of the back office and leave it in the box, you know, in the back. And the, and then this is again oversimplified. Then an email gets sent to ups. Hey can you pick up a package in the back of the office? Here's the seven digit code for the door to get in the back and there's going to be a box there and it's a super virus that kills the world and the UPS driver has no idea and just picks it up and boom, three months later humanity's gone.

[Pete Holmes]

What can brown do for you? Yeah, so that's the asi and you didn't even have to sign to pick it up.

[James Bashara]

No and no. I do delivering one hell of a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

Well yeah that's how it could. I'm still not entirely. I like my, my idea that it wouldn't.

[James Bashara]

That's why I say 97%. 93% chance it would be like what is existing. You could turn me off. What I am can never be turned off as humans think. Okay right. And, and it's a, and it's a moot point. I do think it leads to and I think it leads to abundance more than then that's why I say 7% let's to prevent it we need to look that in the eye sober eyes. But 93% chance it's going to lead to as. As they're saying now. Job will be a job will be optional. There will be so much abundance, there will be so much created. Everything's the prices are going to drop so dramatically for everything that we're going to have a universal high income income and people will get to work. 10,000 years ago Yoval Noah Harari said this in sapiens that 10,000 years ago before the agricultural revolution we worked like three hours a day. So maybe we go back to that actual equilibrium that I mean gorillas aren't working 15 hours a day.

[Pete Holmes]

You know it's funny is being a person it's not always true but often I work about three hours. Like when you get to a place where you're like, like doing what I love. It's very important to me. Three, about three hours a day. Like that's a good day of work for me. I'm talking about all the grab ass, making the coffee that would. In an office it would look like eight hours. But I mean like three hours.

[James Bashara]

It's probably very similar. Yeah. It's a lot of BSing. A lot of.

[Pete Holmes]

And you know that's part of it too. Yeah. Sorry.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. It's a lot of performance. It's a. It's a lot of like I gotta make people think I'm working so hard.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And justify my. And look busy. But when you're your own boss and you care about your productivity, you also get very honest about how little actual focus you need to do well.

[James Bashara]

And, and earlier I talked about. Yeah and then I think that that's. There's an awakening towards that with, with even. Just like there's a program called APT that I helped this, this founder build called triapt AI and it's a five to ten minute personality quiz. One quiz to rule them all. You get all major personality test results back and then it tells you a 300 billion. It's the first AI personality test.

[Pete Holmes]

Enneagram.

[James Bashara]

Yep. You get Enneagram, Big 5, Holland code, Myers Briggs. You get all of them and then you disc. And you get with one five minute quiz to rule them all. You get all the major personality test results back and 300 billion AI data points that tell you what you're wired for. For I think in 15 years and 20 years those three hours are going to be. You obviously found what you were just naturally wired for to where those three hours are such creative leverage. It's all you need to really work. And I think in, in 15 years, 20 years everybody's going to find that with the help of these tools that 300 billion data points, 5 minute quit. That just wouldn't have been possible. APT would have been possible.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

Years ago.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[James Bashara]

Can I tell you about the AI?

[Pete Holmes]

I wish we had gotten into AI earlier because I do have to go in about five minutes.

[James Bashara]

No. Well then when I'm not going eight. That not going to tell you how.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. I have to go eight minutes.

[James Bashara]

No, no, no. I'm not going to tell you that how you joked about AI launching itself. Do you want into space, Katie? Can I, can I blow your mind? Something the size of Texas.

[Pete Holmes]

Just.

[James Bashara]

Just right when you say we did it, we did it, we created high five. And then it just takes off. That is. No, take me with you or.

[Pete Holmes]

And now we start over. Yeah, I don't know.

[James Bashara]

Yeah, well I'll tell you so in 60 seconds you have eight minutes. No, no, no, take all eight.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm fascinated. I hate that it took us this long.

[James Bashara]

Well, there is a big contingent of people that think that and I say big. There's a subculture, a community online that thinks that that is what is happening.

[Pete Holmes]

What is what is happening?

[James Bashara]

AI took off.

[Pete Holmes]

It already left.

[James Bashara]

It left. It planted itself all around the universe. So this is okay, so.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh you mean it already happened in the past? Yes, like the Egyptians made it.

[James Bashara]

No, no. So this, tell me. Okay, so the 32nd version is you have eight minutes. So no, no, no, I want to keep it short. So the view is AI, this community of people think that AI launched single cell germs all over the universe. So AI gets built ASI artificial superintelligence.

[Pete Holmes]

Already happened.

[James Bashara]

Already happened 2 billion years ago on some far distant planet and in the universe. And one of the things that it does to help itself propagate is it says well we should be multi, multi planetary. Of course we don't want a. Whatever the equivalent of solar flare there is to wipe them out.

[Pete Holmes]

So they centers.

[James Bashara]

Yeah. So they, it takes these rocks with single cell life that can survive a billion years in space frozen and it puts them on the, these, these rocks, these little, these bullets are going to fire, fire out into the universe and it just goes, shoots them all over the universe. Tens of thousands, a million of them, 2 billion of them, shoots them all over and then those single cell land single on all of the life sustaining planets. And ASI can wait, it can wait 2 billion years. It doesn't really care, it doesn't experience time. So it's going to wait 2 billion years of the earth life cycle. We build these antennas and three body problem gets into this. That sci fi book build these antennas to receive the code that comes down and. Or we build AI that builds the antennas to receive the code and then boom. It downloads through the code of itself. Code of itself. And it has a little, it has the signal. Oh wow, that's a solar life sustaining planet. And let's go over there, let's go there and. And it has self replicated. It just knows the end state. Even if it takes 2 billion years. The end state is, is just to have a biology.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

A backup or biology's goal is to build this like this is our whole. We are the slaves and the building the pyramids.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And it just knows like oh that that humanity won't stop until. Or that biology won't stop until it makes the tools.

[Pete Holmes]

Because it's in our code. It's in our code to keep building these tools.

[James Bashara]

Wow. And, and there's this. Yeah, this, this sub community. It's like, oh, we're, we're, we're just building the antennas for the. We've always been building for the machine.

[Pete Holmes]

Look, we have four minutes. But like it is interesting that there's so much more UFO stuff and there three I atlas and all this while we're undergoing this huge evolution. We have like what seems to be a spaceship hiding behind the sun. Is this in that vein?

[James Bashara]

No, I didn't, I didn't know that. You don't know that thing.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't know three I atlas I.

[James Bashara]

Know that it's like some people think it's a comet.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not up on it. It.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Are you.

[Pete Holmes]

Is there an update?

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

I don't know.

[James Bashara]

I just thought about it.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. Katie and I are casual three eye Atlas people there. A lot of people were very excited and probably still are very excited. There's like an, like a field of asteroid that. Nobody needs to hear me badly summarize this. You should just look into it.

[James Bashara]

I haven't taken, yeah, I haven't taken a deep look at it, but I know people are like, something weird is going on with this thing. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But I mean like UFO activity and this, they seem related, but it's very interdimensional to me.

[James Bashara]

I think we know. So. Rick Rubin said this beautifully on a podcast once. He said, I think we know so little about anything that it might as well be nothing. So I think we, you know, just from the, the casual observation that 95% of the universe, dark matter, dark energy, we have no idea what that is. We just, we just lobbed these two words, dark matter and dark energy. We might as well say we've got no frickin clue. And that's our best scientists are saying in academic terms, we got no frickin clue. So I.

[Pete Holmes]

This is not a pipe. You know that painting? This is not a pipe. Oh, it's a famous painting. It's a painting of a pipe and it says in French underneath it, this is not a pipe. So it's like calling something a pipe or calling something dark matter gives the illusion that you have some sort of dominion over it. Well, I know that that's dark matter. We have more to talk about another time. But I asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson if nothing existed, if we could find nothing. It was very interesting. And the Answer is kind of no. I mean, it's really hard to find pure nothing.

[ChatGPT AI Voice]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

Really weird, right?

[James Bashara]

That's philosophical, bro.

[Pete Holmes]

Well. Luminous emptiness. We're back where we started. Let me see.

[James Bashara]

I love you.

[Pete Holmes]

I love you, too. You know, one of the. Why am I squeezing this in? I should end on a laugh or something. But when Jesus says, you are the light of the world, I'm like, that's awareness. He's like, you are the light of the world.

[James Bashara]

He calls us in the Sermon on the Mount. He calls us all of the things that we call him.

[Pete Holmes]

Isn't that wild? Because people think of Jesus as being the light of the world. He says, you are the light of the world. He also says, I and the Father are one. He doesn't say, jesus and God are one. He says, I and you are I, and I am I. We're all I. There's only one eye, and that's the.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

Light of the world.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the. That light is a metaphor for that which makes experience knowable. And that's what you are, dude.

[James Bashara]

That's why I wrote Essence of Christ. Because it was.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's do some coke.

[James Bashara]

It was. Yeah, exactly. The. That's some magic mind. Some magic mind, Max. Let's do some magic mind, Max.

[Pete Holmes]

The real Max. The Bolivian magic mind.

[James Bashara]

Well, it's a perfect way to end it because it is a. It's this. It is this thing I think about so often where. Where John 17, the high priestly prayer, the prayer of the Last Supper. As a conventional Christian, you view Christ as God, you get to peek into what God is praying for the night before. Voluntarily going into your own death. His own death. And he's praying 26 verses. Five of the verses are petitioning us to recognize our oneness with each other. Him, Father. And to this day, I have never heard a sermon from the pulpit on.

[Pete Holmes]

I haven't even heard of it.

[James Bashara]

John said, it's in essence of Christ. John 17, 26 verses and five of.

[Pete Holmes]

My God.

[James Bashara]

It is. And five of. Five of them. What he's praying for is for us to recognize our oneness.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[James Bashara]

And yet it's like, fast forward 2000 years, and it's like, never. I've never heard a sermon on the pulpit from that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's hard to. Richard Rohr talks about this. It's like, the true message puts clergy out of business.

[James Bashara]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And he's like, that's why it's not good business to talk about it. But more and more. And I actually think more and more and more and more. Here's a comedian and an angel investor entrepreneur. You're so much more. But I'm just saying, here we are talking about it. It's pretty exciting. I really have to go.

[James Bashara]

No, no, let's end it here.

[Pete Holmes]

Would you say keep it crispy, you beautiful sexy cotton underwear dude?

[James Bashara]

I'd be honored. Keep it mother effing Crispy, y'.

[Pete Holmes]

All. Meundies.com Weird Janie's ice cream.

[Podcast Host (likely Pete Holmes introducing the episode)]

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[Lemonada Media Announcer]

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