Even More Psychedelic Figures in the Epstein Files
Psymposia discusses more notable psychedelic figures who have turned up in the Epstein files — including Paul Krassner, Rupert and Merlin Sheldrake, Paul Daley, and more.
2:06: Kimbal Musk updates
4:48: Ken Jordan/Alchemist Kitchen updates
8:32: Rupert Sheldrake
20:00: Merlin Sheldrake
29:00 Cortes Island
34:20: Paul Krassner
41:05: Paul Daley
Footnotes:
Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein story (Miami Herald): https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article312152427.html
New batch of Epstein files unmasks a 1970s Scientology spy — and he talked to us! (The Underground Bunker): https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/new-batch-of-epstein-files-unmasks
Epstein engineered intimate relationship for Tesla’s Kimbal Musk, emails show (The Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/jeffrey-epstein-tesla-kimbal-musk
Epstein offered $100,000 to bestselling British mushroom expert (The Times): https://www.thetimes.com/article/merlin-sheldrake-author-epstein-files-56jfkr6lv
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] At the time we met, I was an undercover investigator working for the Church of Scientology's Guardians office who were going quite insane trying to figure out who wrote The Awful Truth About Scientology in The Realist. The Realist being Kraner's publication. Imagine outing yourself to Kraner and it comes out in the Epstein files. Hey there, I'm Russell with the Psymposia podcast. I'm here with Normie Pace and James Curtis today making his debut on our YouTube channel and podcast. What's up, James? James is a freelance writer and member of Psymposia who gave us a lot of support on our psychedelic syndicate reporting.
[00:50] He's a contributing author on that. Today we're back with updates from the Epstein files on people from the psychedelic world. Last time we discussed Steve Jervson, Kimell Musk, Deepo Chopra, Ken Jordan, and some others and Austin Hurst. Today we've got a few updates on people from last time and a couple new names that have come up since. So, we want to jump right into the updates on Kimble Musk in particular. The day we released our last episode, The Guardian published an article covering Kimal in the Epstein files. Here, Epstein engineered intimate relationship for Tesla's Kimal Musk email show. This article covered a lot of what we touched on the last time, but had a couple details that we had missed. So, I just wanted to highlight those.
[01:37] The first one being an email not sent between Kimble and Epstein but between Boris who was kind of a longtime associate of Epstein's and Epstein that said in the leadup to Musk and the woman's first meeting Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nicolick labored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing and with Nicolick telling Epstein please prepare the woman winky face. Super creepy Jesus. And then the other detail that was in this article was just noting that this particular woman through a lawyer over the last few years has been speaking out saying that she was trapped, coerced and abused by Epstein while in this circle. So Kimell Musk has put out statements about this relationship being consensual and nothing particularly strange.
[02:22] However, this woman has spoken out not specifically naming Musk, but saying that while she was in this circle of Epstein, she was trapped, coerced, and abused. So, just wanted to bring those updates up since we discussed it last time. Yeah. And I didn't mention this, but Trueon, which is been covering Epstein files for 500 episodes now, did do some more excavation on Kimble Musk and some of these relationships. So, there's significant information over there about this particular relationship. Yeah. And he what was his [expletive] ridiculous statement that he showed up in the Epstein files so much because he was because Epstein had signed it to his mailing list and he had no association with that demon that kind of language.
[03:13] And then also Burning Man did had they put out a statement to say that Kimell had notified them in January or something that he was stepping down? Was was there some Yeah. And there's quite a bit of dissatisfaction with the sort of boilerplate organizational kind of response in the sense in the sort of Burning Man community and forums about it. It's pretty unsatisfying. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of transparency in the first place about, you know, when this has happened. And also there's not a lot of acknowledgement of why people wanted to know. It's just a hey just letting you know Kimble's not on the board. We thank him for his participation and support and is he's no longer associated with the organization with you know no acknowledgement of the larger story and again you know we're not you know we don't have all of the details but what we do know doesn't look good.
[04:13] These Musks they just can't catch a break. You know, first Elon is lonely even though he's rich and now this. Do you get lonely sometimes? Yep. All right, who do we got next? So, the next update that we have from our last episode is just some further details on Ken Jordan. Ken Jordan being the founder of Lucid News, was involved with Evolver and the Alchemist Kitchen. Last episode we talked about him sort of pitching the Alchemist Kitchen to Jeffrey Epstein. This is just kind of a further details on that pitch. Him writing, "Hi Jeffrey, it was great to show you the Alchemist Kitchen on Monday and share how we see things developing in the area of environmental medicine. Our approach is indeed retail oriented as you mentioned, but for us retail offers a strategic approach for entering a much larger space."
[05:05] And this was Jeffrey Epstein's like biggest critique of their business strategy was like the retail was kind of all over the place. He says there's now a paradigm shift in how people experience their health in relationship to plants and the planet. Approaching this through retail both in physical space and online gives us a way to meet people where they are today and enables us to gauge how best to move them ahead on the environmental medicine path. In parallel to what we're doing in the store, we're seeing more practitioners like Bear who are prescribing herbal remedies to their patients and more scientific research in the efficacy of whole plant remedies for health and wellness. The shift is largely cultural, inspired by a change in perspective about how people choose to live a meaningful life. Education and community are a big part of it. That's why at Evolver, we give so much attention to workshops, events, online learning, and publishing.
[05:56] The mainstreaming of psychedelics and the legalization of cannabis are also key parts of this overall trend. If you'd like to explore this territory more deeply, I could bring some people together in bring together some interesting people for you to speak with. Best regards, Ken. Oh my god, it's just such new age like psychedelic slop. The like, oh, it kills me. It kills me the language that like all these wellness groups in the space use. In response to that, he said, "Thanks. Am interested to hear more. However, retail is detail. I can't see the current inventory space arrangement resulting in profit. Not enough items. Not easily read. Too many categories. Food, drinks, dessert, I.e. supermarket, restaurant, Wi-Fi, cafe, meeting, bar, health, bath.
[06:46] Signs need to be larger. People don't like to move." So, I think on the last podcast that we did, I had speculated that it seemed like he was pitching based on the emails that we read last time that it seemed like he was pitching the Alchemist Kitchen to Epstein. And then we ended up finding these emails and he in fact did. Yeah. I think there was a followup to this Gino guy to Epstein. They were sort of all on a chain. There was like introductions going on. I think Deepac Chopra was there. there. Pinchback was in that chain and I think it was Gino who had said something like he was responding to Epstein. So it was outside of this specific chain, but they were talking about how to propagate the environmental medicine meme.
[07:33] Gino like we talked about last time was kind of like a connector of Epstein to a lot of these like woo kind of territories. I mean, given some of the conversations around Jeffrey Epstein's intense interest and investment in eugenics, conversations with a group called Evolver is a bit cringe, but yeah, [laughter] that email is kind of a good starting point for some of the conversations we're going to see in the emails to come in this episode. But I think this episode will kind of give a picture of things that Epstein was interested in putting money behind and looking into. And as we kind of wrap up the updates here, I just want to say off the top, like I did last time, none of what's going to come denotes crimes per se.
[08:21] Obviously, these emails generate a lot of kind of conspiracy and stuff, and that's not what we're trying to do here. This is just airing public information as it relates to the industry that we cover. So, the next couple of emails we're going to look at are between Epstein and two people who are figures in the psychedelic industry. The Sheldres, Rupert Sheldrake is the elder and his son Merlin Sheldrake. The first couple of emails are going to be from Rupert. Does anyone have background on Rupert Sheldrake or have familiarity with I used to listen to years ago when I was kind of just getting interested? There was the psychedelic salon had hosted a lot of the trialogues which were the conversations back I don't even know when they were from the late 80s 90s or some something like that between Terrence McKenna Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham they were always interesting when you're kind of younger though they were always filled with woo like I think Rert Sheldrake had some
[09:22] Concept called them what was it theorphic resonance the basic idea I'm suggesting is that there's a kind of inherent memory in all kinds times of animals and plants. Each species has its own collective memory. So each member of the species draws on this collective memory and in turn contributes to it. The instincts of animals, for example, the behavior of cuckoo, the spinning of webs by spiders are like a memory, a habit of the species. This inheritance takes place by the process I call morphic resonance by a kind of invisible intangible memory. a kind of resonance between present and past organisms of the same kind. The same theory helps explain how our own memory works by a resonance between our own past and our present states leads to the idea that our memories aren't stored in our brains, but that we're tuning into them by this process of morphic resonance.
[10:16] Rupert's notions revision causality. That means induct you into an entirely new way in which things happen. And this is after all where we're all spending a lot of our time. The models that Ralph is working with show that the world is not an engine running down toward a heat death, but a tremendous kaleidoscope of unpredictable creative open-ended activity on every level. I mean, it's really a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision. It's like it's not what most people would consider a scientific I think it's kind of default pseudocience.
[11:04] He's kind of a I mean and that's if you look him up the first thing that comes up is like his theories are contested as pseudocientific and parasychology and like telepathy kind of research to the point on the trial between Shell Drake McKenna and who was the person and Abraham. I was thinking about them the other day as like proto sensemaker content, which sense makers being this kind of group of kind of like YouTube talkers that came out of like the content from Rebel Wisdom. And they have this kind of yes and approach to like philosophical discussion where like you sort of steelman everything the other person has to say and just have this dialogue that goes everywhere and nowhere all at once.
[11:52] How do we enter this postconventional communas coherence whatever it would be without the moment the kind of the peak of it wears off reverting back to game a power structures and game theory. So I'll this is what I was trying to say earlier. I'll say it again but I think maybe more effectively. So when you think about we've got the concept of game A. So when you think about game A there's two pieces to it or two aspects or elements. One element is let's just call it society and the other element here is mind. So there's a particular mind that you're running to be able to run the code of your society.
[12:42] And society is effective to the degree to which it has code that works and minds that run it well. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the like proto sensemaking or whatever that we got from like McKenna was more just like musings on potentials. And I feel like it kind of evolved into like what if that became our whole thing, like our whole identity and we just really believed everything we said with all our heart. I have to say young me did enjoy listening as woo as some of it is now when you go back on it. I still did enjoy listening to McKenna's stoned insights in philosophy.
[13:32] Yeah, they're fun. Every now and then I get in the mood for them still. Like it's not I think there was like right after I first tried psychedelics, I was like all in on them and I was like listening to like all the Terren McKenna talks I could find. And now it's kind of like when you start feeling like I really want to listen to this song I loved in high school. Like that's kind of when I return to it. Some of it still stands the test of time and most does not in my experience. Yes. [laughter] Exactly. Still sounds good in a DJ set, though. If you pop a Terrence McKenna line into some electronic music, it works. That is true. All right. So, what did he say, Ross? All right. So, the first email we've got is between Rupert Sheldrake and Jeffrey Epstein. This just kind of gives an example of some of the back and forth between them.
[14:22] So, if you start at the bottom and work your way up here, Rupert Sheldrake is passing on some links to Jeffrey Epstein on some open science website stuff, a brief overview of the state-of-the-art low energy nuclear reactions rather surprisingly from Brockman's website. Just off to the Steve Rich concert, Epstein responds, "Likewise, by the way, Gellman did not dismiss telepathy. He said that if it existed, it would have a scientific explanation and maybe needed a new theory. To which Shelake responds, "Good to know about Gellman. I agree with him. Yes, it needed a scientific explanation and a new theory. I think my own morphic field theory of social groups could help explain it." So, I think this is just some background on the kind of conversations that were happening between the two of them.
[15:08] They're sort of just discussing their parasychology like takes with one another on telepathy and morphic field theory uncovering the secrets of the universe. And then I think I the next one down I think is just some more kind of context there on funding and the things that they were discussing about funding in the sciences. So Rupert Sheldrake in 2016 reaching out to Jeffrey Epstein saying good talking with you yesterday. I have summarized and developed some of the ideas we talked about for the US science funding in the two brief documents attached. One on wellness research and the other on funding innovative science. So Sheldrake was pitching Jeffrey Epstein on funding wellness studies and what he described as innovative science.
[15:58] Did you guys listen to Bannon's the twohour 60 minutes type interview? Yep. what I could stomach of it. Epstein. Yeah. Blows me away is just how this guy was able to like weasle his way through his money, was able to weasle his way into like all of these, you know, elite science circles at MIT, yada. And you watch that and that conversation just devolves into I guess my word of the day slop. But it just devolves into like absolute slop science. It's like this rundown of Newton. And it it's a very superficial conversation that I think after you after I listened to that I was like, "Holy [expletive] what a charlatan this guy is."
[16:55] Like he really has no grasp on any of these things. It was so apparent that it was this was Bannon trying to I don't know. What do you think of it, Pace? like Bannon trying to pass this guy as some sort of scientific genius. I mean there were many many times where he Bannon you know is bigging up Ebstein calling him the you know the greatest financial mind in the contemporary time. Bannon is clearly producing this information to try and position and present Epstein as some kind of genius. and I don't know a flat read of it. That's not that's so apparent to me that it is not the case when you watch that. It's sucks.
[17:40] It's, you know, Epstein is a person who's wellconed because he has money and he was a human trafficker who catered to the needs of depraved billionaires and others who he wanted to compromise and co-opt and that is lucrative and if that's a kind of financial acumen okay but it's certainly not how Bannon was trying to position him as some kind of person with unique insight on the global economy who, you know, should have been not sitting on the bench in a jail cell during the global, you know, financial crisis. That that was kind of the story that he was trying to spin.
[18:28] But it's like all of that falls apart when you sort of see Epstein for who he is, which I frankly I don't think we have yet fully the science portion of that interview. Like after listening to that, I am I'm not surprised that there was some sort of interest in Sheldrake's morphogenetic field. Sure. I mean at all. There's audio, you know, that's been shared of Ahoud Barack a former government official in Israel who appears to have been like besties and business partners with Epstein and they are discussing essentially eugenics, talking about the wrong sort of people not giving enough to the next generation, not producing enough children.
[19:22] And unfortunately, these kinds of views are actually pretty common among, you know, wealthy right-wing people. Like, what do you know? The people who perpetuate this awful hierarchical exploitative system, you know, easily rank and grade people on arbitrary, you know, criteria. And based on the emails that I've been just kind of seeing between him and people in the psychedelic field and that Steve Bannon interview that kind of goes from economics to like strange science. It just seems yeah fringe economics, fringe science, fringe like all of that he was sort of a purveyor of. Another like kind of research project he was interested in getting involved with was another Sheldrake project, Merlin, the son of Rupert.
[20:10] So, the next email that I've got here is the intro of the two of them kind of being connected between by Rupert. So, Jeffrey writes to Rupert Sheldrake, "It's been too long. Peter Fenwick suggested that Merlin's work on plants would be something I would like to see." People have sorry, please have him send me something. Hope you are well. To which Rupert responds, "Dear Jeffrey, thanks for this. There's a good article about Merlin's work with Michael Mozzle. Oh, Micro Risle fungi. Yeah. Yeah. In tropical forest in the New Yorker. He shares a link. We're about to go off to an island in Western Canada where we habitually spend our summers.
[20:58] More on that later. Merlin will be staying on in London until the end of the month. Then come out there, too. I'm copying this to Merlin so that you can be in touch directly by email. Jeffrey responds, Merlin, if you have some time, let's Skype. I'm funding plant research currently at MIT. So we've talked a little bit about Rupert Sheldrake. What do people know about Berlin Sheldrake? I mean, you wrote a famous book called Entangled Life. He did post-graduate work on, you know, tropical forests and their relationships underground. micro risal networks. These are symbiotic fungi that do a lot of really important stuff that Merlin, you know, has studied extensively and written about, you know, I think well and to my knowledge, you know, Merlin Sheldrake is involved as an advisory board member at the fungi foundation that has a lot
[21:59] Of sort of well-known names in micology associated with it. They have a, you know, broad mission to sort of elevate fungi and fungal conservation around the world. Yeah. No, I mean, I've just I've read Entangled Life and I really enjoyed it. Like, personally, I've recommended it to a lot of people. I think like Pace said like he's written well about a lot of these things and kind of introduced the microisal like network to a lot of people who haven't necessarily thought of the world like that before. And so I think that that's been really cool to me. Like I know I've personally recommended the book. I don't know if I will necessarily much more, but I know that I have. Yeah, it's got a lot of good reviews all across the internet and whatnot. the reason he his name has come up recently in some reporting is the next email here which is him responding post being introduced by his father to Jeffrey Epstein saying just to let you know I've been thinking about the I think that
[22:59] Says I think it's supposed to say electric fungus project we discussed on Skype it is a very promising and exciting line of research have been in touch with a couple of key collaborators who are very keen to take the to take things further are you serious about those 100 G's? If so, I'll keep rolling with the inquiry. It's slow right now because I'm engrossed with writing, but when I finish the book, I would be free to pursue this with some vigor. If you're serious, I'll write up a brief summary of the project in the next few weeks and send it your way. To which Jeffrey responded, "Yes, serious." And I think there's one extra email there where Merlin responds, "Great." It seems like the book is Entangled Life that he's writing at this time. I mean the timeline would be right. I think it's important to mention that you know as we are sort of doing these excavations here it really is sort of seeing how these networks work in a way that in some ways is divorced from
[24:01] You know the specific character of somebody like Epstein and has a window into how people interact you know in a way when we're seeking funding or when you have a like a project or some idea that you want to pitch. You have a really rare window into seeing how many people, you know, approach what it is that they would like to have lavished with funding, which is what many people Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, offering. And many of these people didn't just simply didn't do their due diligence. Some of them should have known better. Some of them did know better. And certainly we're not in the business of giving people like billionaires who have staff to do that kind of due diligence, that kind of excuse.
[24:48] But, you know, in terms of like what we're doing here right now, Psymposia, sitting here sifting through emails with people that, you know, aren't necessarily, you know, one way or another incriminating. It gives us insight into how various psychedelic and psychedelic adjacent projects are pitched and promoted in a behind-the-scenes look that's like very much a part of our wheelhouse. I think one of the reasons why so much of the funders and the investors in the space don't like us very much is because we've been looking into who they are and what they're doing for years. I we had someone back in 2015 who wanted to fund a conference that we were doing and I remember going to look into their retreat center and coming up with [expletive] It's It's not that difficult to do.
[25:43] Like the internet exists. Quick searches can kind of show you people are very quick. But Merlin did come out with a response and to it to his credit I think the statement is pretty good here. I'll just read it. When the times last week, the week before published a story on this and Merlin's response was his comment was in 2018, Epstein contacted me by email about scientific research funding. I had a single phone call with him and an email exchange in which Epstein offered me offered funding. After researching Epstein's background, I broke off all contact with him. I did not receive any funding from Epstein and never met him in person. I am sickened by the pain and suffering Epstein has caused and hope that the release of these documents will help lead to justice for the many he has harmed.
[26:33] My thoughts are with his victims and their families. That that was his statement. I would just say that yeah, that that actually is that's a good statement. That's how sort of a normal functioning human being who does their due diligence would respond to that kind of overure. You know, I mean, it he was introduced by his father, you know, before somebody cashes a check. You should probably do a little looking. It sounds like that's what happened here, you know. I mean, it reminds me of Norman Finkelstein, you know, in response to being introduced by a colleague. He responds and essentially says that, you know, Jeffrey Epstein's abhorrent and should be throttled.
[27:20] The idea that a person who wanted to know to do even just a single Google search would not have come across information about Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 in 2017 in 2010. I knew about Jeffrey Epstein as saying earlier in ' 09. I mean as just a person who reads the news. So, I just don't understand how these other folks, I mean, well, I do understand some of them are clearly not telling the truth. I just want to go back to the one of the original emails quickly here. This exchange was on November 23rd, 2018.
[28:05] Julie K. Brown for the Herald came out with her major perversion of justice series on the 28th. So, was it 5 days? It was five days later that that that series came out. So, I'm guessing he had heard about that because it was a pretty big Yeah, he might not have had to do too much digging. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the research came for him on that one. Like I mentioned in the first email there where Rupert was talking about going to that Canadian island. The next couple of exchanges are going to relate to that just because we have some background on it and I was sort of surprised to see this island come up in relation to the Epstein files. So the next couple of emails, this first one just highlighting where they're talking about it.
[28:52] So Rupert Sheldrake was asked if he has any plans to visit the States by Jeffrey. He responded no just Canada where we spent the summer on a remote island in BC. The next email here, he also talks about towards the end here, we are off to Canada tomorrow and away for two months on a remote island in BC. So he keeps bringing up this island. There was a Facebook post that was made recently that garnered some response from people in the psychedelic space that gave a little bit more background to this island he keeps talking about. And it was Cortez Island. So this is the Facebook post in question was made on February 10th and it read it began Rupert Sheldrake author and parasycchology researcher lives in UK and spends his summers with his families on so-called Cortez Island.
[29:43] Every year he is invited to be a speaker at the Holly Hawk Retreat Center often in collaboration with his children biologist Merlin and electronic musician Cosmo. Merlin Sheldrake is the author of the popular book Entangled Life. So that post was made. A couple people have responded to it. Just a couple notable people have responded to it. One being Ros Watts who is a psychedelic researcher. She responded kind of condemning the Shell Drakes. I think she's specifically talking about Rupert here, saying supporting both Epstein and Brand to convicted sex offenders. Shocking and defensible. I believe Rupert Sheldrake gave Russell Brand a platform if I remember correctly on a show to discuss God and science and things like that.
[30:29] She said she hopes Sheldrake will make a full apology, address it, etc. Another person responded to say there are several Cortez Island residents and visitors mentioned in the files. Even if there isn't evidence for crimes being a part of the elite upper class and associating with these people has always been immoral. Many people have written books about mushrooms and there are many mushroom scientists. There seems to be only one mentioned in the Epstein files. My dad isn't mentioned in the files. None of my dad's friends are mentioned at all. But my neighbor's dad is the super elite come to Cortez because they are welcome and comfortable here. I'd love to see more people make them feel less welcome. They are not normal people. I am not serving anyone whose name is anywhere in the files.
[31:17] I'm not serving billionaires this year and am considering a $1,000 fee for anyone with the top 1% of wealth. This is only $10 million in Canada. How many people live and come here with this kind of wealth? a lot more than 1% of our population. I believe that is a produce and cery company on Cortez Island. And why that's relevant to us is because Cortez Island has come up numerous times in our own reporting. Of particular note, the phase 2 trial participant who was abused by the co-therapist team, Richard Yensen and Donna Drier was essentially taken to Cortez Island to live with them after the trials after her trial period concluded.
[32:04] That was brought up in a lawsuit where you can see here Cortez Island is mentioned by name. And then I also reported on this abuse in 2019 and discussed someone named Richard and Graci who was a big name in psychedelic research for a long time. He gave testimony when MDMA was being scheduled and was kind of one of the big names in bringing back psychedelic research. He was charged with malpractice after sexual abuse was alleged against him. And I wrote that the charges of malpractice were dropped after he resigned his license. And he went on to co-found the Holly Hawk Lifelong Learning Center in British Columbia on Cortez Island. Was just kind of a notable surprise to see that come up in relation to people in the Epstein files here.
[32:53] Yeah, there's a big [expletive] weirdo community on Cortez Island a few years ago. Maps Canada did a I think they did a retreat there when we were reporting on some Maps Canada stuff. the engrossi allegations are pretty vile. His former patient saying that u you know she was she had cancer and that he was saying that you know sex with him would heal her cancer while he was overseeing therapy and giving her MDMA. Pretty dark stuff. Yeah. Cortez Island just repeatedly comes up in relation to these strange characters in the psychedelic world. I think it's an area.
[33:38] Yeah, I'd love to see more journalists or interested in the space dig into what's happening on Cortez. It's come up way too many times at this point of shady [expletive] living and operating there and gathering there. Yeah, it's just notable that like at least three therapists have basically like [expletive] off into oblivion to Cortez Island after like sexual abuse allegations came out against them. Almost seems like they have it could be a safe space for them. Yeah. Awful high crime rate for the safe haven of the rich and wealthy. [laughter] The next person that comes up in the emails related to kind of psychedelic history is Paul Kraner.
[34:24] Pace. Tell us about Paul Kraner. Yeah. I mean Paul Kraner is a sort of a force in independent media. He was a creator of the realist sort of a precursor to like MAD and cracked. It was satire. They like famously had an obscinity like first amendment case against like a pornographic sort of parody of Disney characters. It was actually what the sort of what do they call it now like rule 34 you know it's what whatever the internet is all over all full of you know but in any case you know they he was a publisher in that regard but also you know quite active and involved with and the coiner of the term the yippies.
[35:18] So, you know, a lot of people think about hippies as these radical left political, you know, ravel rousers, and that's not really what the hippies were. It was more of an aesthetic and a kind of, you know, a subculture. But the yippies were politically active. They were anti-war. They were, you know, interested in fighting the drug war, as it were, and pushing back against racial injustice. So there's a lot of history there. I think they recently did a what is it? A movie about Chicago 7 with the Borat guy. There you go. There you go. But yeah, I did meet Kraner, you know, before he died many years ago and had a chance to sit down with him and interview him and ask him some questions that, you know, were interesting to me.
[36:08] I may have mentioned some of it at one point or another, but you know, he was somebody who's rubbing elbows with a lot of the psychedelic people that were active back in that era. He's kind of a merry prankster, right? Well, he Yeah, he was actually a member of that. So, he was tripping hard. So, you know, he had access to LSD and gave it to many people. Yeah. So, that I mean that's Paul Kraner more or less. He went on and wrote some did some comedy and that kind of thing in his later life but passed away I think in what 2019. Yeah. And just based on like my scrolling of his mentions in the Epstein files, it looked like he was connected to Jeffrey Epstein when he reached out via he reached out to a lot of his friends to help pay medical bills at the towards the end of his life.
[36:59] And at that time it looked like he had been dropped from a few of his kind of regular publishers and was in need of some like medical bill payments. A friend of Jeffrey Epstein's I was kind of following the email trail. A friend had forwarded Kraner's request for help with like dental bills to Jeffrey Epstein said like and so he did it looks like pay about $5,000 in medical bills for Kraner. here. Starting from the bottom, John Brockman Brockman was his publicistary agent. Yeah. And that seems to be who connected them. So John Brockman to Jeffrey Epstein, get an address and I'll send the 5K.
[37:46] Leslie Grath, who is Jeffrey Epstein's kind of assistant, I've gathered from looking at these emails, please advise if you need me to do something. Jeffrey Epstein. No. Rich should send Paul Kraner 5K for his medical bills. Richard Khan. Okay, we'll do first thing this morning. So, it looks like Richard Khan sent $5,000 to Kraner. I was looking it up before and I think that that was one of Epstein's financial guys or one of companies or something like that. I looked it up. I'm not entirely sure on that. But Brockman, I believe that Brockman is implicated with Prince Andrew. I believe I knew I had something here. It's Paul Kraner's pot stories for the soul pres presented by High Times, the forward Haron Ellison.
[38:38] So, stories by and about Ken Keezy, Alan Ginsburg, Abby Hoffman, Mountain Girl. He was one of those kind guys. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not totally clear to me based on that email if Epstein sent him any money. He did send him money. I actually found copies on the DOJ website. There's copies of the two checks. One was for 5,000 and one was for 2,000. That was all that I was able to find. But those checks were sent. And then it looks like they had some communication post this funding of medical bills. One Yeah. and Kraner would send him emails about there was a Daily Beast article that referred to Epstein as like a billionaire sex offender.
[39:25] So Kraner would send him those emails and they would kind of talk about the news and stuff that was going on is Kraner was talking about Trump and stuff like that. So, I don't know what really the deal is there, but they were going back and forth talking about current events and Kraner was obviously very well aware of his arrest and all of that. I searched and to see if Kraner had ever kind of come out with a fluff article on Epstein. I couldn't find anything. Yeah. I mean, it's really more of what we knew Epstein was doing, but less effectively after he had been publicly well, actually, I don't know if it was less effectively, but I mean, I think people were happy to take Epstein's large s when they didn't have to wear it, but you know, people going out there, you had to go to Bannon to try and get somebody willing to go, you know, full force and trying
[40:25] To rehabilitate Jeffrey Epstein. But, you know, it seems like people were happy to attend his parties and let him in the back door and fund their projects. And in the case of Kraner, shoot the [expletive] every now and then. It's disappointing. And yet, you money does in fact buy friends and influence in this world. It's like the least surprising thing to find in these emails. Throughout looking at the Epstein files, a lot of people send Jeffrey Epstein like forwarded private messages between themselves and other people. It's discussed in that Guardian article about Kimal Musk, but the woman that was set up with him was forwarding private messages between the two of them back to Jeffrey. And so he could kind of like keep tabs on what people were saying to one another. The last email that we have here is between Kraner and a guy named Paul Daly.
[41:15] And it was forwarded to Jeffrey Epstein. And I think it just provides some funny context on Paul Daly who is part of the Alexander Schulan Research Institute. The resident chemist. The resident chemist of the Alexander Scholan Research Institute. Alexander Scholan being big name in the psychedelic space. kind of the father of MDMA, publisher of Pall and Tall, if anyone's familiar with those, just publishing tons and tons of different psychedelic pretty familiar. Yeah. So, again, this is an email that Paul Kraner forwarded to Jeffrey Epstein that he received from Paul Daly, the resident chemist of the Alexander Schul Research Institute. And the reason we're reading it is it just provides some interesting historical context, some interesting historical footnotes to people in the psychedelic space.
[42:09] So Paul Daly wrote to Paul Kraner. Hi there. We met in roughly 1975 when you were living in San Francisco. I took a series of photos of you and ran across this one just recently. I thought I had one of you standing in front of the sign saying stop when flashing that I thought would be memorable but haven't tracked it down. In the spirit of your button come clean, I wanted to tell you at the time we met I was an undercover investigator working for the Church of Scientology's Guardian Guardians office who were going quite insane trying to figure out who wrote the awful truth about Scientology in the realist. The realist being Kraner's publication. I failed to get that from you, but we did smoke a joint together and that was happily the start of my gradual exit from the church.
[42:58] Drove them crazy. Long story. I've always admired your spirit and read your recent alternate piece on Manson with some fascination. I was wondering what Patty Hurst was going to pop up. I was wondering when Patty Hurst was going to pop up. Anyhow, embarrassed as I am about the circumstances of our meeting back then, I was able to leave that outfit in the nick of time, running a medical cannabis lab now, and I'm the resident chemist at Sasha, inventor of ecstasy, Schulgan's lab. Long strange trip. Best wishes, Paul Dailyaly. Imagine outing yourself to Kraner and it comes out in the Epstein files. I think the one of the interesting parts about this is that Maps the other day had just released a like a little what are they doing?
[43:44] Some kind of promotional video that has Hamilton Watts in it with Paul Dailyaly. Yeah, I had watched that video before reading this email. Hello. Oh, can I help you? Just working on some stuff here. You know, you really can't be in here unsupervised. You are. I'm Paul. Paul, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. That he's doing intelligence for Scientology to find out who they're what do they call him? Suppressive persons, right? [laughter] And it does seem like he left and has some strong feelings against Scientology now.
[44:31] I think can't be stressed enough. But it is funny to learn that he was like one of their intelligence officers in the 70s. What? No, it's like I came across a video of someone who was like, I'm going to show you a quick hack to get like a free like coding handbook. And it was like literally downloading it from the Epstein files because they just like have a copy on there. And that's kind of how this feels where it's like, "By the way, you weren't really here for this, but just so you know." [laughter] Right. Just the strange like footnotes of history that are being discovered in this like trove of emails is bizarre to the point of like it seems like every industry or every niche has some random bizarre little bit of trivia that's coming out of these files.
[45:21] There was a good write up on this from the Substack, the underground bunker that was called New Batch of Epstein Files Unmasks, a 1970s scienty spy and he talked to us. So they didn't they did a little interview with him. It's a good write up if you want to read more about those. But that is kind of all I've got from this batch of Epstein updates. Does anyone have any closing thoughts on anything we've reviewed today? I am kind of surprised at the lack of psychedelic mentions and I know there's a drug list that's going around, but I thought there would be more than there is given his you know there's a lot of like Iawaska retreat type stuff. I found someone today who was texting him like the day before he was arrested saying, "Hey Jeffrey, you should do an Iaska retreat."
[46:15] Yeah. Yeah, I'm just kind of surprised just given his sort of I don't know, woo interests and kind of I figured there would be more. Yeah, I figured there would be more in there. If you think about the timeline of his downfall in the late like 201s, it kind of aligns with the upswing of the industry. So, it was like had he not been arrested and died, I think he probably would have continued because you see the seeds being planted through these emails where he's being forwarded. Peter Teal investing in Compass Pathways and a tie. You see Michael Poland stuff being passed to him, chatting with Deepo Chopra. all these people who got kind of really popular in the like quote unquote psychedelic 20s or whatever were all showing up in mentions and links in his inbox.
[47:09] And so one can only imagine that he probably would have been being pitched on more and more stuff as the industry continued to ramp up. I think that's a I think that's good insight. I agree with that. I also feel like I feel like a lot of the psychedelic people that have shown up after they've already been kind of to like an elite level tier and after psychedelics were already a little bit more normative. And I feel like it's harder to I mean, this is theory because I've never tried, but I would imagine it's harder to con somebody in the psychedelic underground into committing acts that will then be blackmailed and used against them cuz I feel like they just have more of like a radar up for like someone's going to try to get me.
[47:55] I feel like a lot of the ones that we have seen are like people who are already to the point where their viewpoint is more like the law can't or won't do anything to me and so they're already just kind of like guard down mask off like out there. Yeah. I'm already either rich or have like some like guru like esteem and going back and forth with this sort of wannabe guru Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. Which, you know, to your point, Russ, like there's a lot more of that now in the psychedelic industry than there was [laughter] when Epstein died. There's a lot more people who are guard down and kind of thinking that they're untouchable now, I think. Well, maybe a good place to cap it. Thanks for tuning back in for Epstein updates from the psychedelic world with us.
[48:44] If any more come out, we'll surely hop back on. This will probably be our last. So, if anyone has any if anyone has any other good tips, we've I think we've searched quite a bit at this point, but if anybody has any emails or documents that they found, shoot them over our way. I'd be curious if there's any other bigger names or investors or politicians or anybody like that. If there's any drama or intrigue there, be curious to look at them. All right, signing out.
