Shane Mauss: How Psychedelics Actually Change the Mind

What really happens when psychedelics change someone, and why do some people come back grounded while others spiral into ego, conspiracy, or spiritual bypassing?

In this long-form conversation, comedian and science-minded psychonaut Shane Mauss joins Divergent States for a deep dive into what psychedelics do to the human mind beneath the mystical language. Drawing on neuroscience, cognitive bias, evolutionary psychology, and lived psychedelic experience, Shane explains how substances like LSD, mushrooms, and DMT increase mental plasticity, loosen rigid categories, and open the brain to new ways of thinking — for better and for worse.

Together, we explore why altered states can lead to creativity, healing, and insight, but also why they can just as easily fuel delusion, conspiracy thinking, and inflated ego. We talk about the placebo effect, Dunning-Kruger, belief formation, and how access to infinite information can make people feel like they know everything while understanding very little. Shane also shares candid stories from inside the psychedelic comedy world, including how Tales From the Trip was secretly launched at Comedy Central, why he’s uneasy about the current psychedelic “gold rush,” and how mainstream acceptance has changed the culture.

This episode isn’t about chasing cosmic secrets or mystical narratives. It’s about how the mind actually works — and how psychedelics can either help us become more open, curious, and flexible, or lock us deeper into fantasy if we don’t know how to think critically about what we experience.

If you care about psychedelics, consciousness, and staying grounded in reality while exploring extraordinary states, this conversation is for you.

Shane's new special comes out 2/18 on ShaneMauss.com!

Special thanks to Drip who did the music, check him out on Spotify and Soundcloud!

 00:00 — Season 2 Opening
 04:18 — From Stand-Up to Science
 07:40 — Creating Psychedelic Theater
 11:40 — Why Psychedelic Comedy Was Taboo
 14:50 — Tales From the Trip Origin Story
 19:20 — Why He Doesn’t Feel Like a Regular Comic
 23:40 — Comedy as Tension and Truth
 34:00 — George Carlin and Big-Idea Comedy
 38:20 — Psychedelics Going Mainstream
 41:00 — Skeptical Psychonauts
 45:20 — Seeing the Dark Side of the Scene
 47:45 — Psychedelics, Categorization, and the Brain
 51:30 — The Crunchy-to-Conservative Pipeline
 54:00 — Dunning-Kruger and Illusions of Knowledge
 57:10 — Why Science Is Counterintuitive
 01:02:40 — Why These Conversations Matter 

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:15.278)
Hey, welcome back to Divergent States. I'm Elite, host, back with Brian. What's going on, man? Hey, what's up, Good, man. So tonight, guys, season one premiere or season two premiere is Shane Moss. How you doing,

I'm really good. I'm excited to be the season premiere.

Right, dude, I was so excited when I got a hold of this. Like, man, it'd be great to have like Shane on just to kind of open season two up. And here you are, man. How you been?

Such a good choice. I've been good. I've been busy, wrapped touring for the year and working on some new shows for next year and have a special coming out. I was hoping to know the release dates by now, but I'll know them in early January. It'll probably come out like end of February and in March. It's a two-part special.

Dude, that's awesome. Yeah, I watched your, uh, the Psychonautics special that, that, that, the movie, um, just kind of just familiar, re-familiarize myself. I was like, Holy shit. It was great to see like all the people you had on just like, Oh, there's Rick Doblin. There's Dennis McKenna. I'm like, Oh, I know. It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:32.654)
2017 was a really special time too and that was a really special gathering back when it was still kind of small, indie, a lot of fire behind it and the psychedelic space has changed quite a bit since that time but that was really exciting. Just about, just about eight years, yeah.

10 years now, almost.

Speaker 2 (01:59.0)
Yeah, don't remind me, get off my lawn. Tell you what. Well, guys, we're going to take a quick music break with Drip. You guys don't forget, join on Patreon. We've got extended conversations, early access. You guys help us keep the lights on that way. Also, we were chosen as the Zendo program, Zendo projects ambassadors.

you

Speaker 2 (02:25.102)
You guys join, you get 10 % off using our code DivergentST10, or Divergent S10, I think it is. And you get 10 % off this Endo Project SET program. Help us out, too, a little bit. So again, we're going to listen to Drip. You guys check him out on SoundCloud, Spotify, wherever you got it. And we're going to get back with Shane.

Speaker 2 (04:17.976)
Hey guys, welcome back. We're back with Shay Moss. great to have you here. Season 2 premiere.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, we're just kind of chatting over. We kind of touched on in the intro, you're going over your early specials and everything. But when you think about those, were you trying to figure anything out on stage?

Well, I, yeah, I mean, so I caught breaks early on in my career. I was like one of the last comics to catch breaks through late night. I had won an award, got a fancy Hollywood, you know, agent manager, got to be on late night.

And late night doesn't really move the needle for anyone like it used to. So this was like 2007. So this was like the last time YouTube was brand new. And I was one of the last people where it was like, you did late night. You can now go and be a full-time touring comedian. And so I kind of accomplished my childhood.

Speaker 1 (05:28.11)
you know, my childhood dream was to be a stand-up comedian and by 2010 I kind of had accomplished what I set out to do and was feeling a little unsatisfied with conventional stand-up and I had started, I was always kind of reading science books as a hobby. I hated school but I liked learning about the universe and evolution and how we came to be.

And so I started reaching out to scientists and started a science podcast, Here We Are, which I'm firing back up next year. I had a couple year break to put this tour together. And I started doing science themed shows. did this show. I did a special on Netflix called Mating Season way back in like 2012 or something like that. And I wasn't really happy with it. was my first time kind of doing a big cerebral show, but I have

I had like really dumbed it down quite a bit to make it work on the road. And then I had this album, My Big Break, that was about breaking my feet and about the evolutionary underpinnings of negative emotions and depression and anxiety and why, even though none of us want to experience pain, why it's a useful thing to have evolutionarily.

And then, and that's when things started clicking into place, mixing science and comedy together, and in promoting that, I happened to talk about, I was going to DMT on Pete Holmes podcast, you made it weird. And I didn't know that there was a psychedelic, I'd always dreamed of one day putting together a show about psychedelics, but I didn't think it was a viable thing. And that's, was like,

to become like the biggest comic out there that could just talk about whatever. That's what I thought was going to have to happen. That's certainly not where I was at. And so I started doing little indie shows. And weekend working at a club, slinging dick jokes to drunks. And then I would go and do a psychedelic show somewhere. And the audiences were so fun. They were so much more interested.

Speaker 1 (07:43.27)
in ideas and information than your average audience. And I just really took to that. And so I kind of, that was my first time really developing a full, you know, like 90 minute solo show that's like a lot more heavy on information and some history and some big concepts and ideas with mixing jokes in. And so that's where the psychedelic thing started.

And I do other science, I have several different science-themed shows that I'm launching next year. these specials are kind of proof of concepts for me. The specials have, there was 20 different artists involved in making visuals for the show, and there was a VJ that blended everything in real time.

So yeah, I did this I did this Vegas residency area 15 and and and so it was a way of bringing what I was saying to life visually and then and I'm interacting with the visuals and things in real time and and So like the arts like already made he would know like kind of the things I talked about but then he had a 25 year catalog of stuff from working with bands so I could riff and and you

I would stop and comment on some of the things that he was, so it was really like a two person performance. So, you know, I kind of created a show unlike anything that anyone's ever done before and I'm hoping these specials work as a proof of concept so that I can do other shows in that style. I have a show about kind of called Myth Understandings that I put together for IMAX and we have a planetarium and dome version that I'm hoping to do more.

next year, but the idea of bringing in a visual element to bring to life some big ideas and get to explore more cerebral concepts than a regular stand-up comedy show can is something that is kind of my mission and it's really challenging and often frustrating and the psychedelic space has been kind to me in that regard.

Speaker 2 (10:00.43)
I'm kind of envisioning it in my head, like as you're talking with the different lights. Have you ever gone to a Dead and Company show and you see their backgrounds and stuff and what they're going on there? It's kind of what I'm envisioning.

Yeah, I saw them at the Sphere actually getting ideas for the Dome show that I'm that I'm putting together and and and yeah, there's there's there's a lot that you can do and it's it's fun for fortunately my my VJ is is has been in the business for 25 years has his first his first VJ set was a birthday party that he threw himself when he was like 21 or something like that and he taped together VHS tapes.

to create and blend the visuals and played it in a player through. And so he's been using all these different tools through for the last over two decades. so, and he has a psychology degree and a good sense of humor. And so we just really work well together. so I don't always do that with my shows, but that's the stuff that I'm the most excited about.

Yeah, I mean, sounds awesome. mean, like I can't wait to see it, but it kind of reminds me, you know, early on, we're going back to what you're talking about earlier. Early on, I did notice watching one of your earlier ones that I think you made like one mushroom joke in there, like at the end, you know, and then then we go in a couple of years. And so how did that develop for you? Was it kind of just like an off, like you said, an offstage thing that just brought it to life? Or was it just like you said, something that was there you were wanting to get out?

mean mushroom, definitely it's a lot of, it's a mix of things. So I had my first mushroom experience when I was 16 and absolutely fell in love with psychedelics and would try to get my hands on any psychedelic that I could. You couldn't just walk into a head shop when I was a teenager. And so I was the guy that like anytime I could find a...

Speaker 1 (12:10.804)
source of mushrooms, I'd buy like a half a pound of mushrooms and just just to like get up get like 60 people together to like trip together.

Like the old school acid test on the shrooms.

Yeah, so psychedelics were always something that were important to me. And so, you know, I had some psychedelic jokes early on in my career and it was something that like, you could do like a joke, you know, and people would be like, haha, you know, kind of, it was more like, it was more like Cheech and Chong style stuff. It was like a structure for talking about why you did some like illogical behavior.

You know, but like actually getting into exploring, you know, what psychedelics do and why they were important to me and everything was something that I didn't conceive of as being something that one could do. was, you know, if I did more than like five minutes of psychedelic material, even in like a 45 minute set, you know, audiences were looking at me like I was.

crazy and I am crazy but not because I talked about psychedelics for five minutes and and so yeah I remember like my second Conan O'Brien appearance wanting to do this adorable little mushroom joke about eating mushrooms going into a Best Buy and unknowingly finding myself in the camcorder department and thinking I was watching a movie about me watching a movie about me and and it was this adorable little joke and I had to fight with the FCC like

Speaker 1 (13:50.894)
tooth and nail just to do this cute little joke. That was like 2007. So that's how far things have come along. there's been a lot of, there's been, I think people would be really surprised to hear many of the barriers that I've bumped into just talking about the concept, including, people might know me, there's a Comedy Central web series, Tales from the Trip.

And even how that happened in the first place is just this like wild, crazy, well, I might as well.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, you can't hold out on us now.

So what had happened was this animator, Grant Lindahl, who he did some of the work for the specials coming out too, and we've collaborated on a few other things, like to do work more with him. He was working with Comedy Central at the time and just kind of doing like, you know, like animating like titles and stuff like that, you know, nothing.

Speaker 1 (14:56.59)
Nothing too fulfilling, but you know, steady gig for an animator and he pitched, he had seen my early psychedelic tour and he thought, what if there was a show where there was like comedians and musicians and you know, celebrities or whatever telling psychedelic stories and then animating them. And he pitched that to Comedy Central and they were like, no way. And this was like,

This is like 2017 or 18 maybe, 2018 even. So this is like not that long ago. And this is what I ran into in terms of pitching things to the industry was worse. Like at the time that I was touring. But with the show, but Michael Pollan's book, came out in like May or June of 2017.

And that was a night and day difference. Once psychedelics became like legitimized and normalized and it was in the front of bookstores, it really changed the perception of things. people were basically all these networks. I mean, I have stories of this, pitching things to Showtime and everything. They're like, yeah, we want sex, drugs and rock and roll like freaking bad, hurray. And they're like doing a thing with like Universal Studios where they have me host a show.

just about someone that smoked DMT and was inspired to make these really unique cakes or whatever. so then the problem became you couldn't say something good about psychedelics. So there was a show, Ari Shafir had a show, This Isn't Happening, and it was okay to have drug stories in that context because it was kind of like, it was kind of.

the disclaimer was inherently built in. was about something like, you know, going terribly wrong. But the idea that psychedelics could be beneficial in your life was something that was really taboo and invited liability and everything else and they didn't want to touch it. So Grant, he decides he just wants to shoot this thing anyway. I didn't know any of this. I just got an email from him being like, hey, Comedy Central's shooting a pilot.

Speaker 1 (17:17.918)
And like, I didn't know he was paying me out of his own pocket and everything. And had me come in. And it was in the Comedy Central building. And I had like no Comedy Central people. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna stop by and say hi. And they're like, what are you doing here? I'm like, what do mean? What am I doing? And it turned out he was like stealing like a little space to film without telling anyone.

And we filmed these, we filmed a couple stories, one is the first time I did DMT, and he animated it, put it all together, and he pitched that around to Comedy Central, they were, you know, for their web series, and they were like, no, absolutely not. And he was frustrated and kind of bored with his gig, and he decided he was going to quit.

and go somewhere else and pursue this project. And he hacked onto their web, the Comedy Central website, and he posted that video as he was heading out the door on their YouTube channel. And then it ended up going viral. And they were like, hey, who did this? And can you make four?

motion.

Yeah, could you come back and work for us again, please?

Speaker 3 (18:44.504)
What a rebel, man.

It's awesome.

That's a story you never hear about. yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. Got made a loss for words on that.

Yeah, that's one of those kind of like legendary stories. I didn't even know it. He didn't tell me till years after the fact. He didn't tell me until like 2022 or something that that's what had happened.

That's how you know he's a true rebel. Like he didn't he didn't come out the gate like looking for like, hey man, you should pat me on the back. did. Because he knew that's like in his gut, he's like, I'm doing it. And later he just shares his stories. It's like, oh yeah, this one time I said, fuck it and just do this thing.

Speaker 2 (19:20.238)
See, this is good.

Speaker 1 (19:27.022)
You know, it's really hard to do what is to pursue your genuine interest and then it's hard to act with integrity and we all wanna like pay the bills and everything else and it really is challenging. I mean, even to figure out, to take what the subject matter that you're interested in.

And to figure out how to make it entertaining is hard enough, but to actually pursue doing something that's in line with your interests is a continuing challenge for me. I don't even feel like I'm a regular stand-up comedian anymore. I don't really like regular stand-up comedy that much, or at least for me performing it. There's still plenty of people I like watching.

So you feel like you want some depth, like a focus on your conversation when you step up to the mic.

Yeah, I have the show Stand Up Science. I was doing a bunch of people in 2019 before COVID and it was like a mix of comedy and science. I would have two local scientists on everywhere that I went. And so the show was like 50 % comedy, 50 % science. And I'm kind of relaunching that, but instead of like a mixed bag of like it might be a hyena researcher and an evolutionary or like a behavioral economist or something like that on one show.

and then the next city something completely different. I'm having themed ones so this current one that I'm working on is kind of the first half of the show is me doing a stand up like kind of science inspired philosophical comedy set about why the human brain really attaches to myths and fictions and

Speaker 1 (21:25.902)
Like I'm listening to a book by Yuval Noah Harari right now, which people might know from Sapiens. But it's like that, but that's kind of in the vein of the stuff that he talks about is an easy example of someone that I find like myself aligned with in terms of how they think. And so, you know, taking some pretty big ideas and figuring out how can we make them fun using, you know,

Roman and Greek mythology, I kind of reverse engineered. was like, want to make something for a planetarium. Space visuals and stuff work really well, and there's plenty of that content that already exists. So what do I have to say about this subject matter? And then I have a show that I almost launched a couple weeks ago and decided to wait till next year.

which is the same. And then, so that's the first half of show. The second half that shows a panel discussion with some local scientists that maybe talk about cognitive biases and logical fallacies and why our brains don't always perceive things accurately. And I have one about the placebo effect that I'm launching that I think is kind of will scratch some of the itch for the people that find me and they're interested in my psychedelic conversations.

The placebo effect is like a really fun topic to talk about kind of how subjective our minds are and how subjective our perceptions are and all these priming effects and suggestibility and it's a really fascinating concept to me. So then I go, how do I make that funny? And usually I start and I go, well, what do I actually want to say? know, imagine the show is like building a house.

I think, what do I want to say? What's the concept? That's the foundation. And then what do I actually want to say? And that's like constructing the house and doing the framing. And then really, I view the jokes as just kind of putting on the finish and putting the paint on. it would look weird if it wasn't there, but it's not what holds the thing up.

Speaker 3 (23:41.152)
Is it personality? Yeah. I love that. That's a really great analogy.

Yeah, it adds the details.

Yeah, so I'm like a, I can be like a deeply serious person and I'm kind of like a deep thinker and everything and so, you know, trying to make that work with comedy and especially in a traditional format is a really fun challenge and, you know, figuring out how to get butts in the seat and find the right audience and, you know, it's not the sort of topics that I wanna like.

just randomly bust out on a Saturday date night show at the Chuckle Hut, you know, and have people looking at me like, what the fuck is this guy? This guy's giving us a fucking ancient mythology lesson suddenly. Yeah, yeah. But same with psychedelics. And so psychedelics are really big, are such a great, I'm always trying to find ways to trick people into listening to me blab about how the mind works and perception and.

this was the chuckle house.

Speaker 1 (24:43.768)
consciousness and psychedelics are just such a fun playground to be able to explore a lot of those ideas.

It's a real, it's a real soft entry point, I guess, to kind of go into the deeper world of consciousness and, you know, ego and everything. It's really cool. mean, yeah, talking about like doing your fallacies and yeah, I can imagine there'd be tough to try and find work or find jokes around like, you know, cognitive fallacies and... I mean, they're inherently...

certainly.

Sorry. No, no, that's go ahead. They are inherently funny.

Here is inherent. No, no, no. It's but you're right. You're right. Because so it's it's funny because they are inherently funny because it's like these funny ways in which our brain misperceives things. Why it's such a tough sell actually, especially in our modern environment of from from what I see, I've been a comedian for 21 years, I have never seen.

Speaker 1 (25:50.264)
the level of prideful ignorance in this country as it is. It's like really peak, know, very, you know, some of the dumbest people are the most like emboldened and entitled and they used to kind of like bite their tongue and keep their mouth shut, but they're very emboldened now and that can wreck a show.

They're at the height of that Denning-Kruger bell curve.

They really are. Yeah, yeah. And those are the sorts of concepts that I love talking about. So Dunning-Kruger, it's inherently funny. This concept that we have this outrageous level of confidence in things that we know nothing about. And then as we learn about them, we go, oh, shit, I don't know anything.

And then you, you, you have to gain mastery through experience before you end up having the same level of confidence as when you knew nothing at all.

It is crazy. You're having. because, yeah, the most competent people out there, they don't think they're like, shit, I don't know anything about this. And like, what are you talking about? You've got a PhD in physics and, you know, you're all this Cambridge and Oxford. Why don't you know? God, there's just so much out there. But it's always somebody who really has just never done it. It's like, let me tell you about quantum physics.

Speaker 1 (27:12.538)
I know it really is. my god. Being in the psychedelic space, you have to endure a lot of quantum this and that being thrown around. As I watched the person struggle to figure to calculate a tip on a bill while they're lecturing me on the workings of quantum physics. you know, so the idea is like, part of it is what I'm really

I've always liked kind of like poking the audience a little bit and antagonizing the audience. There's like two kind of different styles of antagonists and there's the safer one, the more road hacky one is the one that goes like, hey, look at this guy, his shirt's stupid. And then everyone else in the room gets to laugh, my shirt's stupid, whatever. Or you go, hey, aren't people stupid?

is dirt, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (28:08.47)
And you go, both sides are crazy or what? And then the audience is like, well, glad we're all the sane ones in this room. Let's have a laugh at other people's expenses that aren't here. Where I like to confront, I like to suss out the room, figure out what I think might make people a little uncomfortable to have to confront in themselves or what they may not want to hear, and then see if I can.

kind of get away with explaining some of these things. So it can be a little bit intimidating to be like, here's the ways in which we're all stupid. know, most audiences love being like, yeah, people are so stupid, let's laugh about how stupid people are. But that's usually like, you know, for some silly story about something that happened at a convenience store or whatever. It's not like, shit, everything that I thought I knew might be wrong.

It's dangerous territory to take people to that place. So it takes a lot of courage, would imagine.

Well, it's fun to play with attention, you know? A lot of comedy is like using and playing with tension as well, and so getting a chance to relieve that tension is nice. And then I also want people to understand how inclusive science concepts are, you know, that really a lot of these concepts are things that it's not a capacity issue, it's a willingness thing. And anyone that actually is interested can...

really learn concepts like Dunning-Kruger and stuff pretty quickly. But people might hear a term like Dunning-Kruger and go like, shit, am I supposed to know that? Is that some fancy science? And it's really not that complicated. But it can sound intimidating. And especially if we all have our varying insecurities about things. I certainly get intimidated all the time interviewing scientists. And so how do I?

Speaker 1 (30:10.882)
poke people, but invite them and make it approachable at the same time. It's really fun to play around with and it's something that I'm continuing to get better at and I honestly don't know how good I am at it. I'm scared all the time trying to put together my new show. I have a handle on my psychedelic shows. I can get on stage and deliver psychedelic material until I'm blue in the face pretty confidently.

but really trying to push bigger and bigger ideas and find the audiences up for hearing them. And then when I do draw a smart audience, I'm like, fuck, these people are all smarter than me. happens too sometimes, you know? Which is cool. I love that challenge.

shit.

Speaker 3 (30:59.374)
Well, I feel as a comedian, you've got an easy route out. You'd be like, what? I'm a comedian. What'd you expect?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you'd think so. You'd think so.

Yeah, I I don't know. I think it's when I look at it, I've never really thought of it, but there is really that play of tension with an audience and a comedian, how they can kind of like push him to the edge, like almost offensive, but now pull him back with just kind of a joke that makes it kind of relieves the tension.

There's a real

Yeah, just Google listeners, Google my very first Conan set, Shane Moss first Conan set, my opening joke is that's exactly what it is. I just go out, as my debut and I intentionally bomb for like 20 seconds just to twist things and get them back and that relief of tension.

Speaker 1 (31:56.142)
is a really special feeling.

It kind of makes me think of like flirting or something, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a fun metaphor. you know, because there's a lot of different ways to do it. It's not just about, so one of the things that I got sick of is like, was so good at like doing like shock value things and like an aw shucks way that I was like, that's not.

doing anything for me, know, it's not, that's not, that's that's not going to age that well. Little did I know it was going to be the thing that would like take over the world is just a low brow shock value horse shit. but, but, but I, I, I just thought, you know, are there other ways to create tension? And sometimes just talking about like a big subject in

in getting something that's a lot more depth and intentionally seeing how long I can go without trying for a laugh is like a way of like, wait, is this still a comedy show? And then finally, like I push it as far as I can and then, okay, we're still laughing. It's still a comedy show. That's another kind of tension. And that's something that, you know, like lots of people, like Andy Kaufman and all sorts of people.

Speaker 1 (33:13.346)
that played around with this idea, like, wait, is this funny? Is this supposed to? And then you kind of have that twist and kind of makes everything all right.

Go ahead.

Sorry, I've got to say this. With those theme concepts, I've got to be honest with you. As I watched your special, Psychonautics, I thought a lot about like George Carlin. Because it was very similar when I remember I first came into George Carlin myself and watching him, I saw a lot of his newer stuff before his older stuff.

So before he goes on about like the Coke or like putting junk in the box or whatever. Like you catch his older shows where he's like way more political and it almost becomes like a speech that's like sprinkled with comedy in a way. Right. Very specific focus to the conversation. And I really caught that vibe from the documentary. And then as you're talking about it, just that's where my mind keeps going is like that reminds me so much of George Carlin.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:14.892)
Yeah, well thanks. mean, that's something that's very much worthwhile to aspire for for me as someone that could explore like really big ideas. I shy away from politics, but we all have our various strengths and weaknesses and I don't really consider myself to be anything special in the political commentary department and I don't watch.

news or anything. And so, yeah, maybe like, maybe like, I aspire to be like a biologist, biology is George Carlin or something like that, you know? And so, because of some of the concepts that I'm doing, it's inherently, you know, I'm also playing with, where's the edge? Because, you know, people want like an edginess to it as well. So it's not just...

you know, like, too cutesy either sometimes when we're like, we're all learning together. So it's constantly trying to feel like, is the vibe right, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like it feels like that that's kind of that art of stand up a little bit is creating that tension. Yeah. Kind of reminded me of, I guess, cringe humor has been real big lately, too, which is just just building that tension up the whole time. And it's it's it's kind of crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:48.312)
my god, I just I just watched the chair company Tim Robbins. my god, like sometimes I'm like, I can't stop watching. Right is definitely high art. And at the same time, I'm like, I gotta stop this like, mid episode, I'll be like, I gotta pause this in like walk away for a little while and take a reset. This is like, this is

This is why it's high art is because it creates these feelings that like I've never experienced watching a television show before. Nathan Fielder as well, like just this, my God, masterfully awkward genius, a masterfully awkward genius, you know, that of course this isn't for everybody.

I don't even know if it's for me half the time when I'm watching it and still I'm like, well, this is special. know, this is really, this is really something.

Yeah, it blows me away how it came about. I remember, you you've talked about Comedy Central coming out, but and like Twitter mid 2000s. But yeah, that's I still remember seeing those the tales from the trip and just being like, holy shit, that's awesome. People are coming. I mean, even Oprah came out recently and did like a whole thing with Michael Pollan. Holy shit. Now Oprah's into Psycho.

Yeah

Speaker 3 (37:20.206)
She's like you get you get such an

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, what some of my solid one though, there would be an absence if you hadn't done it.

I thought he was going to make the Oprah joke and he didn't do it.

Yeah, exactly. Like, where the fuck was the Oprah joke? It's right there in front of you. Right. It's like you have to, I have a thing about, like I met someone that, like this mushroom cup submitted his mushrooms for this mushroom cup in Denver.

And his mushroom was one first and second place for potency. I was like, that's the fucking mushroom people are so much fun. It's like, that's an easy joke, but solid, you know, first and second place. And, but, but yeah, I, and then speaking of like being genuine too, then this is like a, this is a new awkward moment in psychedelic history where

Speaker 1 (38:27.456)
It's getting like normalized. Sometimes it's like losing a little bit of its edge because like now Oprah's doing it or whatever. And it's not, there's not as much of the black market. You can go into a head shop and get things.

Such a moment. really is.

So then there's all these wellness influencers and things that are latching on to the modern enthusiasm and peddling all sorts of nonsense to people. it's like, well, kind of, it came along with trying to get things legitimized, but now it made psychedelics a little bit.

lame, you know, and, and shady in a new way, right? You know, they used to be shady, because you'd have to go to like an acid dealers house and like pet is iguana or whatever. ripped off, was shady in that way. And and and now it's like, I don't know about this vitamin this person's trying to sell me just because they microdose some

I'm to Ed for half an

Speaker 2 (39:34.35)
Yeah, it's I mean, that's one of those. It's one of those inevitable things, I guess, with the capitalization of any commodity, I guess, is the one that the ones that really bother me personally are like spiritual bypassers. That's such a huge problem in the psychedelic industry is they dress up problems in spiritual language and just kind of, oh, well, and then you I mean, there's no comeback to that if they're just like, oh, it's my auras and shock was remiss.

misaligned and you know, mercury was and you're like, well, what I don't have anything for that. You know, I can't help you with it.

It's no surprise that after 10 years in the psychedelic community, I'm making a show called Stand Up Science about myth understandings and why we gravitate to those stories. And then I have another show about the placebo effect. You know, that's, that's no accident. And part of it has been some of my frustration with some of the, some of the community and trying to strike a balance of like,

When is, you know, sometimes people need like a little validation, a little self-esteem. Other times, people don't really need to be validating their own bullshit to themselves and creating like a bigger ego and everything else. yeah, it's, so it's hard to figure out as a whole because it's such a case by case basis. Who needs what message has never been.

harder to figure out within the psychedelic space. It's become very diverse in that way, which is, I mean, know, it's just kinda, is what it is. It's made me lose interest in the topic, I'll tell you that much, but I still like so much believe in psychedelics, and I just had an amazing psychedelic experience recently that was like,

Speaker 1 (41:33.608)
everything that I needed, when I needed it most, when I was like really hit like in a bad place, you know? so, and these, some of these experiences are so outrageously like interesting and fascinating and I'm so happy that so many more people get to experience this. And so, you know, I just kind of like go back and forth.

with how I feel about the space at any given moment.

I was going to say it's rough out here for skeptical psychonauts.

Oh my god, thank you for saying that. Like I never know what I'm walking into and hearing you say that I was like, oh thank god. Okay, cause like, peace and love to everyone but I also know that the people with the peace and love bullshit on their social media profiles are the ones that show up in my DMs harassing me because I, accusing me of like, can you work for while because I happened to like.

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:21.4)
Please.

Speaker 3 (42:34.606)
for Big Pharma.

interview neurologists and epidemiologists sometimes and like people that actually know how reality works and because you fucking got your your little fantasy, can spirituality from like your silly like, like a YouTube video or 4chan or whatever stupid stuff is out there.

You said something in your special that like really fucking stood out to me and I like immediately connected when you said it but you were talking about people with the ego death and like you're like, wow, it seems like your ego pretty fucking much alive and

done.

Why are you about your ego death?

Speaker 3 (43:17.646)
When I heard you say that, I was like, almost had this moment where I stood up out of my chair and was like, fucking thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know how much to lean into that. I kind of, I have this idea. I kind of want to do a bad trip show too. kind of, and I, you know, it's just that the psychedelic community is still small enough that like, I don't know. I'm not necessarily out there looking to dedicate a lot of time to like shitting on people, you know, especially cause like a.

A lot of, just because I'm not a spiritual person, I have a lot of respect for the things that get people out of bed in the morning, as I know I can't most mornings. And so, you know, I go back and forth with that, but goddamn, there's some silly, silly and dangerous stuff happening out there. And I think some of the ratcheting it up of wanting to be cool, of like, okay, well we...

We've already heard about all those boring traditional psychedelics and now everyone needs to do Ibogaine and 5-MeO DMT and someone chokes on their own fucking tongue because it did way too much of the world's most powerful psychedelic. It's like, I don't know. I go back and forth with this stuff a lot. But it's also part of what makes the space so interesting and so complex and makes it so...

interesting to talk about and then I go to like, you know, I have like a psychedelic conference that I'm going to in January that's like, you know, science conference in San Diego and it is like more harder science and you know, I just end up, I do my psychedelic shows, you know, online I'll have like psychedelic like lunatics reach out to me and I'll get like very concerned. I'm like, you know, I can't have

Speaker 1 (45:22.67)
There's only so many messages that I can get from dudes like you're

only one who can understand my the psychotic break that I'm going through right now.

now and then like having these fucking stand moments because I don't write them back and they're like you know clearly unwell sometimes I get an apology later being like just got out of a psych ward

I was tripping balls when I texted you that.

You know, I see enough of the stuff that other people don't generally see that it gives me pause in like how much I want to promote some of these things sometimes. And then I have these shows and I meet these people afterwards and just like, man, it's just like such wonderful people. And, you know, even if I don't see eye to eye, it's like, you know, a lot of very thoughtful.

Speaker 1 (46:18.37)
Thoughtful people, cool guys. I tend to end up like dating woo ladies. There's like this certain compatibility or something. I used to always have these great conversations with Pete Holmes and Duncan Trussell and Duncan's like this very mystical weirdo that deviates a bit too much into the conspiratorial.

lens for me, it's part of why we had such good conversations and same with, same with like Pete Holmes, you know, a Christian and like the shit that like damaged my childhood and left me like traumatized. I was raised Catholic and you know, I can get fired up about, organized religion sometimes and but it also ends up leading to these like really fantastic

constructive conversations.

100 % like when you're when you're having a conversation with somebody that like you share like maybe 70 % common ground, but you have that 30 % that you don't

The brain is hyper tuned to the differences. You know that humans are the most, like one of the most homogeneous species on earth. They are like, you know, outside of like ants or something like that. But there's like, there's more genetic diversity in like one tribe of chimps.

Speaker 1 (47:50.99)
50 chimps or whatever, there's more genetic diversity in that one tribe of chimps than there is the whole of eight billion people on Earth. That's how similar we actually are. And we have these categorizations of things in our mind in the way that we can.

kind of hyper-focus on what's different. This is one of the things I think psychedelics can be really useful because part of the reason why we have these categorizations is because early in development, we're just like a wash of information. It's not a blank slate because we have these evolved features that lead to all these different propensities to constructing perceptions in various ways. It's not necessarily deterministic, but it's kind of, there's these statistical probabilities.

And in the early maturation of the brain in the first few years, there's heavy, heavy amounts of synaptic pruning, which is where there's neural kind of death initiated between categories in the brain. So you go, this is a shape, and this is a color. And you can create different categories. And then that makes things so.

much easier to understand and to process because you have these things organized, this perception organized a bit more. But then, first off, humans are living much longer than they used to. Depending on how you think about it, another 45 years longer than you used to. 50 % of people used to not make it into adulthood.

If you factor in adulthood, they'd make it to about 50 or something like that. Now we're making it to about 75. so suddenly, there comes a time in our life where we don't need such hyper categorization and our brain could actually tolerate a little bit more ambiguity in terms of how we think about different categories. And this is something that I think's

Speaker 1 (50:14.254)
things like mushrooms and LSD might really show a lot of potential and that this is why we experience these synesthetic states where you see music as color or whatever while you're tripping is because it's creating crosstalk within these regions that don't normally kind of talk to one another. And that...

may be really useful and this might be why it seems that there's an increase in openness that comes along with psychedelic experiences. But then there's this whole other like crunchy to conservative pipeline that's like weird and troubling too. So it's like sometimes you can get so fucking.

You can get so open that you go all the way back around and...

Open them closed now, man.

Yeah, that was probably the weirdest one because anytime I, you know, coming up, it was we'd see like, you know, the anti-vax and the granola hippies. They were that that was them. They were the anti-vax. They were the, know, absolutely. And then all of a sudden, at some point, all these, you know, the other side was like, yeah, we don't like those either. And I was like,

Speaker 3 (51:35.074)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's a weird pipeline. To be honest, though, when I was early, I almost fell into that libertarian kind of pipeline. I.

mean, rightfully so that people have questions about authorities and big pharma and that sort of thing. But it's also like the same thing applies to big wellness and influencers.

I think it was Rand Paul back in the day, back when Rand Paul ran for president and started talking about all that and be like, what? And then, yeah, you come out of it. Finally, eventually, I look back and I was like, wow, holy shit. I can't believe I thought some of that shit.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:18.742)
Well, think a lot of it matches our evolved intuition. we have this, I think one of the problems, and this is another thing where the plasticity from psychedelics could potentially be beneficial, not going to say necessary, but really beneficial for people in that the level of change that

humans are experiencing in a lifetime now. There's just never been any, I'm sure it's always felt like this is the most change that's always happened, and it probably was because change has been ratcheting up since agriculture and since cities and things that technologies have just advanced further. But before that, within a hunter gatherer tribe, these are inventive.

intelligent people having to navigate various environments, but you're still talking about, you know, like having a more symmetrical bowl, you know, like, be like, when I was young, our bowls used to be all upside and another so much more symmetrical than they used to be. Like that was the kind of change from a technological standpoint that that people

were experiencing and now i mean just in my lifetime the popularization of computers internet now a i

I'm gonna say our generation, like we went from like analog drinking out of the fire, the water hose outside and having, you know, to beepers and pagers and now everything, your refrigerator is connected. So yeah, it's just the whole, the whole thing. It is weird. And we have more access to information now more than ever. Like I think that's a, that's a huge thing. Like,

Speaker 2 (54:07.148)
Just to have access at all. mean, it is kind of ironic where to see we're talking about like Dunning Kruger. You know, we have access now to all this information. It's just if you actually choose to go and look into it now.

Well,

There's also, you know, speaking of access to information and Dunning-Kruger, so to take some of these ideas further, there's a lot of research around the illusion of explanatory depth, which is the same sort of thing as like, if you ask someone how much they know about like, do you know how a toilet works? And you're like, oh sure, can push a lever and it goes, but yeah, but do you know like the physics of how it is like, of course, you know, there's no one knows how a toilet works.

actually but but it intuitively feels as if you do you're catching your right your back just in time

Right. I was noting that I was like, man, what a great point to come in on.

Speaker 1 (55:05.112)
So our social brains evolved to take in, to assess the amount, to assess information that we don't have in our brains, but we know that others within our group might have. So this is part of how we were able to do well in as social apes and tribes is you could go like, well,

I don't have that knowledge, but someone else has this specialty so can ask them. But because of that, the brain conflates the ability to access information with already having it. And so one of my favorite studies about this, they give one group of people the story. go, scientists have discovered this new rock with bioluminescent

qualities, they've learned everything there is to know about this rock. How much do you understand about this rock? And people are like, yeah, I think I got a handle on how this rock worked, thing that's this made up thing that they just heard about. And then there's another condition where they go, scientists have discovered this rock with its bioluminescent qualities or whatever and they've learned everything about it, but it's confidential.

how much do you know? And people are like, what do you mean I don't know anything about it? It's confidential. I don't have access to that information. So our brains are mistaking an ability to gather information with already having it, because that worked well within our social bands. And now we have a phone in our pocket that has the entirety of human knowledge cataloged. so that's probably making us

presume that we know a lot more than we used to. The other big problem that I think that this is another thing that neuro flexibility can work on is that, and this is something that would be prime for the psychedelic community that's all into like,

Speaker 3 (57:15.599)
like old sacred things this and that

I wish I could get people to appreciate that the humans have had the ability to, especially in writing, to have these cultural transmissions that can disperse information further and faster and more readily. And it's given rise to all of these new discoveries. And discoveries are

typically counterintuitive otherwise we'd already know it you know if it was intuitive and so you discover that say actually the earth isn't flat and the center of the universe earth is round and like spinning at 44,000 miles an hour or whatever and we're we're going around the Sun and and this is just one of many galaxies that's not intuitive but we we know it now so it's we are like you go well flat earthers these people are are crazy

And they're only crazy in that they're in their refusal to accept information and evidence. But intuitively, the Earth is flat. We're the only species that's ever discovered that the Earth isn't flat. If you Dr. Doolittle any species on Earth, they'd think that it was flat. And this didn't matter when we first discovered that the Earth isn't flat. But now we have satellites and things that need to be managed that's dependent on this information. So if we all had amnesia.

and lost all this information, know, no one would be able to manage these satellites and everything else. And so, and so we are becoming increasingly dependent on all these counterintuitive ideas. We have all these cultural transmissions, the things that we teach fifth graders, the things that we teach kids that are 10 years old, are things that like the greatest minds discovered like a thousand years ago and then bickered over for hundreds of years before they figured out like,

Speaker 1 (59:09.258)
Linear graphs can be useful. was like Descartes actually who's known for I think their 4RM which is a nonsense thing but he's known for that and not like his advancements within math and that's just something you teach to like a 10 year old in like one day and then test them on that and expect them to know that and then you go long enough without

you know, being exposed to this information or not knowing the reason for knowing it or whatever else. And then as an adult, you go like, I'm not going to learn, like, I'm not going to teach myself algebra because that's like, you should already know that. 10 year olds are knowing that. Like, these are actually very, very sophisticated ideas that took humans a long time to put together. it's like, like I'm reading The Origin of Species by

I should.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02.85)
by Darwin right now, just because I'm a big evolutionary guy, but I like to read what the current stuff is to know so I don't get stuck thinking a wrong thing with the mistakes along the way. And Darwin was a genius and made all these counterintuitive discoveries. And I'm reading it, and I was like, I could tell Darwin so many things. I could teach him so much, even though was such a smarter man.

His mind would be blown by like endogenous retroviruses.

absolutely. Even at the time, Mendel had studies on peas that would have given him the mechanism for heritability that helped him so much as he was struggling with it, but he was a monk and that information wasn't accessed. so, you know, people can readily understand, like wrap their heads around, like the theory of relativity is...

not that hard of a concept to learn and take in and people can take a physics class and know that idea and maybe even some more sophisticated ones now. And we've now built a world that is dependent on that knowledge, but none of it matches our intuition. So we probably do have this kind of like uncanny valley-ish, everything doesn't quite feel right. Everything we make is kind of like creating like

a user-friendly world. So we construct a world that matches our intuition, but it's built off of all these counterintuitive discoveries. And so then, you know, when say no mammal on earth has ever wanted to like get punctured by something, but now getting punctured by something is something that can help prevent life-threatening illness for you and your community.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59.48)
this is this counterintuitive thing that you have to go to and makes it that much easier for any conspiracy people or politicians, all they have to do is think, well, what is intuitive that doesn't match what we know about reality? And then just pander to people based on their intuitions.

Yeah, we really got to watch out for that, with, as we're saying, with this day and age of this information, being at our fingertips, that's the downside to it. You know, we say we're going to take a quick break or go listen to some more music. We're to be right back. You guys are here on Patreon. You guys come join on Patreon. You'll hear the rest of the conversation. The rest of you guys will catch you next episode.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49.666)
Thank you so much.

No problem. Thank you for being with us.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03.458)
Alright guys, welcome back. That was our conversation with Shane Moss. I really kind of felt like calling that one the skeptical psychonaut. Yeah, I was kicking around a name for it. I think I decided to figure one out, I really, I really like that. It's kind of got a ring to it.

Yeah, would 100 % agree with that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21.496)
But yeah, before we wrap this one up, I just want to say something about why these conversations matter. A lot of psychedelic culture gets caught between these two extremes. On one side, everything is mystical and unquestionable, and on the other, everything becomes clinical and detached. What I'm trying to build here is a third space, a place where you can go deep, have big experiences, and still stay grounded on how the mind actually works.

That's what this conversation with Shane really was. It's not about cosmic answers or secret truths, but about how psychedelics change the way we think, the way we make meaning, and the way we relate to ourselves and each other. So if you guys found this valuable, the way this show exists is through people who support it directly. Patreon listeners get full extended cuts, bonus conversations, and early access to everything we do.

You're not just supporting a podcast, you're supporting a harm reduction space that stays independent and doesn't answer to sponsors or algorithms. You can find that at patreon.com slash Divergent States. If you're going to be exploring altered states, one of the most important things you can do is reduce risk. That's why we partner with the Zendo Project. They train psychedelic peer support volunteers and help people through difficult experiences without judgment. If you want to support that work and take their training, you can use our code to get a discount.

and help fund scholarships at the same time. The link and code are in the show notes. Brian, before we close, is there anything you want to add?

I think you covered everything man. We really appreciate everybody that's here, even if you're listening for free. Just remember you can always support us by dropping a like, a comment, wherever you're seeing it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56.238)
Right, give us a rating. Yeah, leave us a review. Give us a rating on Spotify or Apple, wherever you're listening at. And as always, thank you for being here and listening with curiosity and being part of this community that believes you can go deep without losing your mind. We'll see you next time on Divergent States.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20.536)
you