> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://ghost.psymposia.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # MDMA Pharma Corruption, Israeli Rave Escapism, Anti-Trans Academia 08.24.2026 - URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/mdma-pharma-corruption-israeli-rave-escapism-anti-trans-academia-08-24-2026/ - Published: 2026-08-24T12:00:06.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T01:01:33.000Z - Description: The crew discusses two recent news stories — a recently published New Yorker article on right-wing psychedelia and the news that Resilient Pharmaceuticals resubmitted its MDMA for PTSD application without the new Phase 3 study that was requested during its 2024 rejection. - Author: Mike Elliott - Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript The crew discusses two recent news stories — a recently published New Yorker article on right-wing psychedelia and the news that Resilient Pharmaceuticals resubmitted its MDMA for PTSD application without the new Phase 3 study that was requested during its 2024 rejection. We have an interview Zenab Ahmed, who wrote the story "Israel’s Rave Music Drowns Out the Sound of its Victims" for Current Affairs. And we wrap up the episode wraps up with a second interview with Jane Migliara Brigham and Artemis T. Douglas from The Needle, discussing their story "How a Hate Group Funded and Controlled Research from McMaster University." Footnotes: "How a Hate Group Funded and Controlled Research from McMaster University" (The Needle): [https://theneedlenews.com/2026/08/how-a-hate-group-funded-and-controlled-research-from-mcmaster-university/](https://theneedlenews.com/2026/08/how-a-hate-group-funded-and-controlled-research-from-mcmaster-university/?ref=ghost.psymposia.com) "Israel’s Rave Music Drowns Out the Sound of its Victims" (Current Affairs): [https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/israels-rave-music-drowns-out-the-sound-of-its-victims](https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/israels-rave-music-drowns-out-the-sound-of-its-victims?ref=ghost.psymposia.com) "Two Years After Rejection, Resilient Quietly Refiles MDMA for PTSD Application" (Psychedelia Alpha): [https://psychedelicalpha.com/news/two-years-after-rejection-resilient-quietly-refiles-mdma-for-ptsd-application/](https://psychedelicalpha.com/news/two-years-after-rejection-resilient-quietly-refiles-mdma-for-ptsd-application/?ref=ghost.psymposia.com) "Are Psychedelics Right-Wing Now?" (The New Yorker): [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/are-psychedelics-right-wing-now](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/are-psychedelics-right-wing-now?ref=ghost.psymposia.com) ## 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.* [\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Rather than complete an entirely new phase 3 study in house, Resilient chose to reference other groups studies of its candidate. Part of the issue with the even the original data set is that I heard some of the researchers talk about the fact that the reason that they only had to have a few hundred people in their phase three was based on the effect size for phase 2 research and the phase two research being bunk as well and having these like fatal flaws in them. the premise of having so few num numbers of people as the basis for approval is like really shady just on its own in addition to the other issues. The it seems like the bet is that the political tailwinds of the administration right now is just going to let them submit basically the same thing with a little extra and hope that politics goes in their favor, right? [\[00:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=51s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like they're not actually doing new science. people saying that I deny peace like that I deny humanity it's like oh is dancing for peace zanab isn't engaging with them dancing for peace but what this means I have no idea right like a lot of people say they're dancing for a lot of things and I really try to prevent myself from ending this in a direction that's more dystopian I'll be frank I think there's too much dystopia in literature I think utopia needs to be more present in literature and I think the fact that utopia can arise from brutality and catastrophe I think is not often something that's taken very seriously and I wanted to at least give it a chance. [\[01:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=100s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So SGM the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine is a group that masquerades as a medical funding group but which is in reality ve very much a pseudoscientific group. Their work is not taken seriously by the medical researchers or even the establishment at large. They're essentially a fringe group which seeks to promote anti-trans studies. SGM effectively has a veto on all research funded through this cooperation. And I want to drill down on what Jane just said. It's it is very common for research to be funded through university foundations and such, but they didn't even have that level of abstraction here. It wasn't, oh, SCGM, send us a check to our university foundation and we'll research this, you know, in broad terms. [\[02:27\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=147s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It was send a check to our department and we'll research under these contractual terms. And that's a very different arrangement. Welcome to the Psymposia podcast. I'm Russell here with Brian Pace, Normie, Mike, and Nay. Today, we're super lucky to have two pretty in-depth interviews for you today. one with the author of a recent piece on Israel's rave scene and kind of the development of that alongside the Israel Palestine conflict and another with the staff from The Needle who are returning with us to discuss some recent news that they reported after a year of investigation into some research between what's been deemed kind of an anti-trans hate group and McMaster University. [\[03:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=199s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, we'll be bringing those to you in the latter half of this episode. We wanted to jump in here at the beginning and discuss two recent news articles that were relevant that we wanted to touch on here. We'll be discussing a recent New Yorker article by Michelle Look on right-wing psychedelia and MAPS's or not MAPS and Resilient Pharmaceuticals, previously Los Pharmaceuticals, previously MAPS. Loser therapeutics. Yeah, LOS Therapeutics. \[laughter\] their resubmission to the FDA that was recently announced and we'll have some commentary on that that we'll be getting into. But I think we first wanted to jump into this Michelle look article in the New Yorker. This piece is just kind of a another addition in the long line of recent articles on right-wing psychedelia that have come out recently kind of acting as if this wasn't something that anyone saw coming. [\[04:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=258s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, the New Yorker's publishing an article are psychedelics right-wing now by Michelle Look, who we'd taken a look at her previous blog post on all of this not too long ago as well. But she kind of came out with an article that for the most part repeats a lot of the points she was making in that blog post, but had a few new quotations we wanted to get into and we had some further commentary on it. Normie, did you have anything that you wanted to bring up at the start here regarding this article? It's just sort of like a sloppation of right-wing stuff, you know, that's been going on for a while. It's sort of in the category of like, you know, all the articles for the last decade that have started out psychedelics may hold tremendous promise for the nation's veterans, but it's like we're moving now towards, you know, psychedelics may have implication, political implications, or there's rightwing things. [\[05:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=314s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't know. This is like old \[expletive\] news. like five-year-old news. Not in the case of not in the specifics of say Rick Perry and Brian Huard, but this is old news that's like finally making its way up to garbage like mainstream media. I guess of course if you're reading The New Yorker, you're probably not in tune. You're just seeing it for the first time. Like this is some new thing. This is really old news though, you know, and nothing there's like no analysis and there's not like no deep analysis or no implications. It's just like a surface level kind of slop garbage piece in my opinion. Yeah. You say it's basically just that you don't think it's pushing any doing any new covering any new ground essentially from or is it more than that? [\[06:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=362s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't think so. That I agree. I mean it's not pushing new ground. And to Norm's point when I was reading it, I was surprised that Michelle and writing in the New Yorker that really the implications aren't discussed. Like the implications of bringing Rick Perry, the implications of bringing this kind of right-wing insurgency into the field. It's written as if it's a weird thing, but there's no discussion of why it's that strange or what you should take away from inviting these voices into the space really. So, it's kind of a novel a novelty, a curiosity, but the implications are not unpacked. \[laughter\] Yes. What makes it a perfect New Yorker piece? It's theodine anecdote that a person could share at brunch or over, you know, martinis someplace at happy hour. [\[06:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=413s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Did you know that psychedelics are right-wing now? According to the New Yorker and precisely without any kind of, you know, unpacking of what that might like mean is that good? Is that bad? What are the factors that led us here? What even is rightwing? you know, isn't really fully explored in this piece. Like, you know, it's a it's just a in a lot of ways like a laundry list of various recent characters who've arrived on the scene, you know, in other places and then kind of rounded up in this piece as, you know, here, take a look at Brian Hubard, who you probably saw next to Joe Rogan in the executive order. Oh, you didn't. Okay. Well, here's them. And then there's your requisite, you know, quote from Rick Doblin in there tying it all together, you know. [\[07:43\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=463s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. It's like a napkin, you know. I mean, at this point, if I said like, you know, who were the main kind of psychedelic well-known people out there, political people out there, you'd put Rick Perry probably almost at the top of that list. you know, MAPS has put him on this pedestal to achieve their own political and business objectives and the fact that like Rick Perry is a monstrous human like an incredibly antisocial human like and I guess younger people I don't know if younger people who were sort of into psychedelics or following this like know any like about his history at all. Just I was looking I've known about Rick Perry obviously for a while. He took over the governorship when Bush got elected president back in 01 01 2000 something like that. [\[08:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=514s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) He's overseen Yeah. of Texas. Yeah. He's over He oversaw 279 executions while he was governor. He rejected healthc care expansion in Texas. He opposed the ACA. He backed the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He's a climate change denier. He has this crazy quote from 2014 when he was asked if he believed homosexuality was a disorder. And he said, "Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire to not do that." And I look at the homosexual issue the same way. Like the fact that this guy is anywhere even near like a conversation on mental health and especially like at like mental health including psychedelics is is is insane. [\[09:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=566s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. I mean I do recall Rick Perry running for president and you know proposing when asked to eliminate the department of education and in a lot of ways that sort of thinking on the right pre prefigured doge as we have seen it today. Well, he was specifically asked that he was going to cut three agencies. And when asked what agencies he would cut, he didn't know the third one and his candidacy sort of tanked in the month or two after that. Yeah. And to the quote that you read Normmy about there from Rick Perry, he comes up in the recent series we just published on psychedelics and conversion therapy as kind of one of these main figures that the rights bringing in who has like you said made these horribly anti-trans, anti- like queer statements. [\[10:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=617s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And that's discussed pretty in-depth in our part three interview with Caleb Graves if anyone's interested in that. Another thing about this article that I wanted to bring up is that it is old news. It's exactly five-year-old news. And were Michelle like interested in actually unpacking any of this stuff, they could have looked at, you know, some scholarly research that has been done by people like Nishe and Pace in their right-wing psychedelia paper, which is one of the first papers I read by you, and I loved it. And it really does unpack like the implications, the sort of like precience too. It was like you saw that this was happening, you called it, and then people like Michelle are like, "Oh my god, look." [\[11:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=663s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's just kind of bizarre that like she didn't even bother to not even not cite you, but like even look into it. It seems like it's just very superficial and very Oh, she's extremely aware of going out of her way to avoid it. She was one of the journalists that was she talked she was talking about Psymposia maps was it last year? Yes. And if we if we're interested in kind of reviewing that, we certainly can. I've got the clip. The article itself says that this kind of space would be unfathomable even a decade ago. And yeah, like you point out, right-wing psychedelia. Rightwing psychedelia came out in 2020\. I think even before then, we were kind of on the train of discussing the issues with maps taking Mercer's money and all of this kind of stuff. [\[11:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=713s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And just real quick, I want to point out in terms of like the sort of line of appropriate citation or the history of these, you know, conversations, like even in my own earliest writing on this, which is Lucy in the Sky with Nazis, I was pointing to and, you know, benefiting referring readers to Alan Piper's great work on this, the monograph Strange Drugs Make for Strange Bedfellows. and you know so it reminds me of some of the work that you know was in Martin Lee's acid dreams any you know real his historian of psychedelics comes across right-wing figures all the time Rick Dolin five six years ago whenever it was at this point was going around doing public speeches highlighting how \[expletive\] cool it was that he was able to talk to Steve Bannon about psychedelics in Breitbart they were trying to place articles in Breitbart. [\[12:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=769s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This isn't new news at all. Yeah. No, not at all. This is the consequences of what we were covering years ago. And to the point we were discussing earlier of is Michelle look even aware of our work. The maps hosted I believe this was psychedelic science 2025\. Is that correct? Yeah. Just last year, MAPS hosted a conference last year where they had a panel hosted by a journalist Martha Busby called the dark side of psychedelia, which basically just turned into a like \[expletive\] on Psymposia session because they hosted the journalist who wrote the hit piece about us in the New York Times, Rachel Newer. They hosted the journalist who wrote the long piece about us in Wired. [\[13:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=815s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) What was his name? Also, yeah, John Smley, which is also even it was even more of an attempted hit piece than ended up published, but they had stronger guard rails for factecking and so the published version was less antagonistic towards us as the original draft. Yeah. And then they had Michelle Look on this panel who to be honest, I don't think we had ever made a single bit of commentary about Michelle or mentioned her. In fact, in private chat, I think I had shared Michelle's Rave New World blog as like an outlet that I actually kind of liked the reporting of because it reported from like an on the ground under like decrim kind of like party scene aspect of the psychedelic culture. And I think that's really the only commentary that had ever been brought to our group before about Michelle was like, "Oh, look, this is actually okay sometimes to read." in other articles that I've read by her, she is a very talented writer and very strong presenter as well. [\[14:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=874s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, she has a lot of great ideas and a lot of talent, but I think she has a blind spot around Psymposia and the work that we do to be maybe hanging around the wrong sort of people. \[laughter\] Yeah. So, this was the panel sponsored at a maps conference talking \[expletive\] about us. So, this was her on that panel. See, I think I'm so glad that you guys are bringing up your Psymposia stories. I was really hoping that they would. I was like, "This panel's going to get spicy." And it did. No, for real though, I think that a lot of journalists are scared of taking on Psymposia. And rightfully so. And sources, a lot of people in general are really afraid of taking on Psymposia. Even I when, you know, when I saw this happening, I was like, "Oh god, do I really want to report on this? are just going to come at me next, you know, and then definitely not as a freelance reporter, I'm definitely not getting paid enough to deal with this \[expletive\] which is also another similarity. [\[15:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=926s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) \[laughter\] but one thing I wanted to say that I think is very interesting about Psymposia and the fear around it that a lot of people won't say out loud is I think this is a issue on the progressive left side where we are very scared to call out organizations that lead that are led by queer, non-binary or trans people because of identity politics. And I think that was definitely an issue. A lot of people are like, "Oh, Psymposia, they're so progressive. they're led by these kinds of people. Like they must be in the right. And I think that's sort of like the imp the rippling effect of like the first wave of Black Lives Matter activism. And don't get me wrong, like I'm progressive left, okay? Like I'm totally on that side. [\[16:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=971s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But I think that we need to be more critical about what the issues actually are rather than just siding with certain orgs because of the identity politics that they're playing. See what she doesn't understand is that within her brain she's like infected with propaganda and narrative that was seated intentionally by the industry to make us into the thing that she is unaware was was taking place. So there's like this the people doing it literally it's wild. It's so \[expletive\] ignorant. She's like, I'm not saying she's a bad person or anything like that, but she doesn't know what she doesn't know. And then so she's now on stage publicly advertising what she doesn't know. [\[16:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1018s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's just I can't beond embarrassing. I can't wrap my head around that identity politics straw man thing. It's like no woke one was crazy. Am I right? It's basically like the trend she feels like she's on. I think these people are queer, but that's why we should actually pay attention to attacking them. Yeah. Well, could I say something about that in this particular case? I mean, it's wild to me that anyone could say that the field has, you know, a problem with something that needs to be done to make it easier to come after Psymposia. Like that that is just a bananas like priority to have in light of how much we are constantly attacked by people. And also to present like to say such an ignorant comment and then act like anyone like act like us responding to it is aggress is aggressive. [\[17:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1072s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like that's also it just speaks to the reality tunnel that exists on that side of the field. That this right here is what coming at, you know, this author actually amounts to is ridiculous. like you've been pilled by people who think that you know some meme account or people who aren't affiliated with Psymposia are Psymposia like it's not we'll talk about work that's in the public space especially if it happens to be you know on our beat which this recent piece very much is you know but it's a it's one of those things where people are conflating any kind of critique or push back with some sort of personal attack and it's just not I mean I'm personally offended if someone like describes the work that I do as woke one. [\[18:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1120s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like I'm the most \[laughter\] not woke one person. Like you, if that's your critique against Psymposia, you've clearly never had a conversation with me or know my views at all because like a lot of that stuff in the woke one, which we're now calling it, like that was cringe to me. So like I why am I my some of it some of it's valid some of it was ridiculous to like to just cast that wide net is is is so is lazy is like beyond lazy has she ever reached out for us for a comment on anything she never journalist though right I mean she hasn't really well she no she did cover us I mean she included us as like a reason why the loyos was torpedoed that that was endorsed. [\[19:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1171s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Has she reached out to anyone on this team? No, I mean I spoke to her at a at an event that I was at, was it last year? And I like I said, I'm a fan of her talents and her writing. And I think it's a it's partially a reflection of her like who's in her ear, like what her social surroundings are telling her. And I think that if like for example if she and I spent more time hanging out I think that she would have a very different perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, she stage with \[laughter\] Yeah. Yes. Yes. On stage with the New York Times journalist and wired journalist who wrote like hit pieces about they're not just hit pieces but things that were just wrong. You know, you can read our rebuttal to Rachel Newer and Andrew Jacobs piece. [\[20:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1220s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like they got so much wrong and intentionally distorted many things. Yes. Yeah. Let alone Semley's Well, and Semly's piece just from like a rhetoric perspective since that's one of my wheelhouses. I find it so interesting how overboard he went in humanizing Rick Doblin like in the sense of he has he's this like quirky figure and he describes his like environment and how he's acting whereas like all of my perspectives it's like this abstract screen like there's no humanization of me at all and that's just such a tell about like the one-sided nature of those kinds of narratives you know it's like people who are trying to humanize different perspectives don't only do it in one ction, right? Yeah. So, just kind of jumping off the like lack of citations, there was there's a couple pieces. [\[21:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1271s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I always like when these right-wing articles come out, even if they're like missing a lot of citations, because they always provide me new little trinkets for my collection of quotes from \[laughter\] like people in the space that people would say were wouldn't exist or weren't actually their opinions just years ago. And so she did have a quote from Rick Doblin and a quote from Rick Perry I wanted to review really quick. The quote from Rick Dolblin was that he was saying that we need to show that psychedelics are coming to heal people who society values and we tend to demonize addicts. Quote, the fact that you can take psychedelics and stay Christian, stay Republican, that's the key learning that society needed in order to integrate these drugs. [\[21:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1318s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I just think that the quotes are just becoming more and more explicit than they were years ago. But on that that quote, Pace shared a funny comment in the chat about it, saying you're welcome essentially because \[laughter\] that that was our that was basically the argument we were making in right-wing. And just to stress that was not widely accepted when we wrote that article. Now people looking back at the looking at the article now are like, "Oh, this is so obvious." But it really was not obvious to people at the time. Right. Right. There had been, you know, what a third of a dozen peer-reviewed neuroscience papers andor survey papers that that were asserting they were going to make you less authoritarian and environmental and more liberal and that kind of thing. [\[22:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1369s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's just that's just not Harris and his crew. Yeah. Taylor, they were pretty well debunked even by themselves. I think a little bit later if I remember right. Yeah. But there I even in some of these discourses there were there was like at one point I think Carheart Harris said something to the effect of like but there is the still the possibility in certain contexts and it's like yes context \[laughter\] is exactly the thing that we are discussing as being an issue here. up. Let's see. The second quote I wanted to bring into the conversation here was from Rick Perry who she quotes saying someone asks for in like a conservative perspective like weren't we just saying like just say no to drugs like five years ago and in this conference that Perry was attending and Perry clarifies his position. [\[23:39\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1419s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I am still anti-drugs recreationally. He says I am very much against the legalization of drugs. Rather, he was advocating for these psychedelics to be rescheduled so that they could be researched with the ultimate goal of dispensing psychedelic treatments under the health care system with the same oversight as prescription medications. But other members of Texas's conservative establishment were dub were still dubious. They don't do that and go to a concert," a woman asked of the drugs in question. Another guest unintentionally hit on one of the movement's main unresolved tensions when he asked where I came from and how its supply would be controlled in the long term. Like it's nothing new. It's just it's becoming more and more just normal to have the opinion that I'm pro- psychedelics and anti-legalization and anti-recreational use and like some of these aren't just fringe figures anymore. [\[24:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1469s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) These are like the main voices like propagating this like the policy and lobbying around these substances now. I mean I think it's okay if you get a note from your pastor though, right? You can use them then, right? Just a joke. Yep. get on your couch with your eye shades like he did and they go meet Satan. I think that was another bit from the article where he like met Satan and he goes get behind me Satan and Satan disappears. \[laughter\] He gets to see his dog again, you know. But I don't know why he doesn't just make a AI sim simulacrim of his dog or just you know clone his dog from some leftover dog hair. He probably has the money. So many options. And then the only other quote that I had from the article that I wanted to bring up was from Mason Marx who commented on the executive order. [\[25:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1515s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Mason Marx being a kind of legal scholar. Is that correct? A law professor at Michigan State University who Michelle quoted saying the executive order really couldn't have been based solely or even primarily on science because the science is just so lacking. I was kind of happy to see at least that quote made it into the article. Good for Mason. He's one of the people I could probably count on. Five hands in this space who's actually had five hands. Five fingers. I have five hands. Don't you? Five. What did I say? Normally AI agent confirmed. You can count on five hands. I'm going to try that again. It's one of the only people in this space who's had the courage to like say \[expletive\] you guys. Like and actually put out how he feels about this space. like cuz he came in pretty enthusiastic psychedelics initially repeating some of the kind of like cultist enthusiastic propaganda lines. [\[26:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1572s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And through his work in Oregon like quickly realized what a nightmare this whole industry was just built on like horrible internal contradictions and a mess. What was the quote again? The quote was that the executive order couldn't have been based on science because the science is so like shallow currently. Yeah, completely true. Yeah. Was there an on what it was based on? Vibes. Oh, yeah. The Let me I'll pull it back up here and see if there was any other indication really quick. The order singling out of Ivagane, the only psychedelic mentioned by name, surprised analysts given how much less research exists on it than on psilocybin or MDMA. I kind of forget what the paragraph after that was, but essentially that I think he's implying that it's more based on the characters and figures pushing it right now and the kind of amenable audience that is this administration to these kinds of arguments, politics. [\[27:10\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1630s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yes. Anyone else have anything they want to say about this article or do we want to hop into our next bit on the resubmission of the MDMA application? Well, just to stress like we already said that there's this is a really important topic and will continue to be an important topic, but to cover it in the way that it needs to be covered requires going further than just noting the development. You know, some there's a lot of misunderstanding about why this topic is so important to discuss. Like people like Hamilton Morris have said kind of mocked our work in the past saying that like oh right-wing people take psychedelics too. Who knew? You know then that that's not the point. The point is that when psychedelics are used towards the ends of the people who are on the far right and the fascist side of the government, that can be very dangerous. [\[28:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1682s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the implications of that are important to unpack in part because people don't even realize. They hear all of this glowing hype narrative about psychedelic medicine and then are desperate for healing and searching this out and they don't even realize that they're walking into like a wolf situation, you know. So, it's just I personally feel just a great need like a responsibility to warn people that there's like you know not this is not all light and healing in this area. I wanted to just maybe as a parting comment like just wanted to talk about this somewhat nonsequeter quote that I think was kind of emblematic of the level of analysis of the article in which what is it they quote Paul Austin the host of the third wave podcast and micro doing coach for the entrepreneurial class he's quoted as saying that Austin Texas no relation [\[29:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1743s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I presume is the quote psychedelic center of the world at this point. This is not unpacked. This is not addressed. I don't know other than, you know, tapping into extremely online like podcast sphere narratives about Texas and Austin as being like the new place to be if you're a culture maker in the Rogan sphere. Like there's just no what a weird assertion to just drop in the middle of a piece like this. Well, now now THC even is extremely illegal there, right? Like I don't know what right exactly like on what basis is Austin, Texas the psychedelic center of the world other than that there are as in lots of places where there are culture creators and such people talking about them. [\[29:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1796s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. So, I think that's a good place to leave this story and we'll hop into our next kind of story that's broke over the last week, which is that Resilient Pharmaceuticals, I get the name right? Pharmaceuticals, right? \[laughter\] Okay. Resilient Pharmaceuticals has resubmitted their application for MDMA assisted therapy to the FDA. Resilient Pharmaceuticals is the product of, like I said in the beginning, LICOS therapeutics, MAPS, the MDMA research that started in the 80s. They recently resubmitted their application to the FDA after being rejected and asked to complete another phase 3 clinical trial. What is notable here about the resubmission is that they appear to not be having to conduct that phase three clinical trial. [\[30:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1845s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Here's a quote from Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS and essentially the founder of Resilient, who says, "Two years after the FDA rejected the initial application for MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD, Resilient's new drug application is being submitted without a new phase 3 study." We knew the FDA wasn't saying no, just not yet. We believed the data were valid and that adverse events and clinical outcomes were reported accurately, though positive adverse events had not been gathered at that time. Despite partial functional unblinding, the therapists provided high quality care in treating the placebo subjects as well as the subjects who received MDMA. I'm grateful that everyone who contributed to those trials, the donors, researchers, independent raiders, and most importantly, the participants will see a new evaluation by the FDA. [\[31:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1896s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So that comes out and there's some discussion around like how this is being submitted without a new phase three and there's some confusion about whether data is or isn't like new data is or isn't being included in this trials. So here's kind of just an illustration of some of this confusion. Journalist Jack Gorsine puts out a tweet saying like, "Update per an official press release from MAPS this morning and steady reporting from Psychedelic Alpha, Resilient Pharmaceuticals has officially resubmitted their original new drug application for MDMA assisted therapy to the FDA." And he claims that in a later tweet that no new data was added to which Josh Hardman of Psychedelic Alpha clarifies there is new data and doesn't \[laughter\] specify he doesn't specify it there. [\[32:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=1953s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There is an article in Psychedelic Alpha that goes on to specify what he's talking about there, which is this. He says that rather than complete an entirely new phase 3 study in house, Resilient chose to reference other group studies of its candidate. We understand that data set includes a small VA study with a long-term follow-up component as well as at least one other third-party data set. A memorandum of understanding between FDA and the VA announced last month invis invisages data sharing between the two federal bodies. Given that it was apparently responsive to the executive order, it's a safe bet that any data flows might include information from psychedelic studies such as those triing MDMA. [\[33:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2000s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The company also ran a new phase one study of its MDMA candidate in 32 healthy volunteers. Safety assessments in that trial included monitoring of adverse events as well as labs and cardiac related measurements like EKG and assessment of corrected QT intervals. According to the registry entry, these were specifically recommended by the agency in its additional comments in the complete response letter. Elsewhere, Resilient conducted an audit of its phase 3 data. As we have previously reported, Resilient is presumably hoping that it has addressed the FDA's deal breakers and it is now up to the agency to appraise the reconstituted package and decide whether to approve the MDMA candidate, which we understand may be called Rousanso if it reaches the market. [\[34:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2049s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So that is kind of the current standing of this resubmission of the MDMA data post rejection. So Rick Goblin is is explicitly saying so he's saying that we believed that exactly the opposite of what the FDA response letter said, right? He's saying we believed despite partial functional unblinding and you know the data were valid and adverse events were reported correctly besides the positive ones which was the thing that you know the FDA asked for. He didn't talk about the other thing they asked for about diversity. And maybe this VA one has a long-term follow-up component to it, the durability effects, but like Yeah. [\[34:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2094s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But like it doesn't sound like they're giving the FDA what they're asking for at all, which was first another phase three study, right? It's so small. I mean, the numbers of people in the new studies that they I mean they referred to in some other studies, so we don't know the full number of people, but one of those was like 30 something people. And I was talking to some cancer researchers at Hopkins and they were talking about the numbers of people involved in like phase three trials of cancer drugs and interventions and it's so much larger than what we're talking about here. And part of the issue with the even the original data set is that I heard some of the researchers talk about the fact that the reason that they only had to have a few hundred people in their phase three was based on the effect size for the previous research phase 2 research. [\[35:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2142s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the phase 2 research being bunk as well and having these like fatal flaws in them that the premise of having so few numbers of people as the basis for approval is like really shady just on its own. In addition to the other issues, it seems like the bet is that the political tailwinds of the administration right now is just going to let them submit basically the same thing with a little extra and hope that politics goes in their favor, right? Like they're not actually doing new science or resolving anything. That would be my guess. That appears to be the case. And it just seems bizarre to me to that instead of an entire new phase three trial that was asked to be conducted, they just get to basically present a collage like, \[laughter\] "Hey, we know you didn't like that original one, but we like stapled a few small studies on here that maybe give you what you're asking for." question mark kind of reminds me of like a really wealthy like well-connected family with [\[36:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2204s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) A ch child in a university who's failing a class and then they make a call to the dean and they just accept like this very different substandard product. Yeah. I just think it's very like telling that you know there there what was it mitoamineetamine \[laughter\] was the previous name when it was lyos therapeutics but now it's resilient pharmaceuticals with ryano they've changed like all of the surface level identifiers like for a reason we rebrand when we want to distance ourselves from a smoldering ing trash heap that \[laughter\] the LOS rejection is. And now it you literally trip up any ability to discuss this in a clean way because you know it's oh well you know the loss rejection but the resilient resubmission but wait it's a resubmission but resilient didn't exist [\[37:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2264s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's just it's intentionally obtuse you know well that that smoldering trash heap was bought by Elon Musk's henchman Antonio Gracias just understand that that's the owner This is it's a shell game. Yeah, this is the guy that got on stage with Musk in Wisconsin. This is a Doge guy like sounds like a straight shooter who made a bunch of misstatements about social security. And to the Ranso point, it made it's not exactly a rebranding but an extension of the branding because I'm sure midomine will remain the generic name but they have now chosen a brand name that it will fall under as Ranso. So so happy for them. Yeah. I just think this is just obvious blatant corruption. [\[38:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2309s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Their whole plight here is to get RFK to greenlight this, which it would have to be. And he I looked into it. He directly there is precedent for like the Secretary of Health to override a decision made by like a committee in the FDA. It's happened I think once, maybe twice ever. And I think that's just their whole entire bet is like it's the same psychiatry committee or whatever that's going to say, well, this is the same data. No. And then RFK is going to be like, well, we want psychedelics, so yes. Right. Maybe. Unless they're pressured. This is so this is the division of psych psychiatry products, psychiatric products that is in charge of this. And what was her name? Is it Tiffany Fiani or Fouch? Yeah. Or French. [\[39:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2356s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Yeah. It was something like that. So my understanding is it's going to it's going through that same division. We know there's tremendous political pressure on that division. Well, not even just political pressure, but like it's not just stick, it's also carrot. You know, it's like there's heavy lobbying and wooing going on right now. And you know it's happening because many of the people at the FDA who are engaged in this new psychedelic medicine sector have been going and speaking at conferences saying lines from the psychedelic hype propaganda. And so it's like they are becoming their own little vectors. So I don't even think it's purely pressure in the like coercive sense. I think it's also the classic lobbying you know levers. [\[40:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2402s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And as we've covered in a previous episode, this FDA is historically paytoplay, you know, in a way that it didn't used to be previously. I'd be curious if there's going to be some kind of donation from Gracias or Resilian to like a Maha pack like it was done with like I wouldn't be surprised if something like that happens. I mean it we're just in we're in open corruption with everything now. Like Trump is Trump and Trump media is is openly selling faster access to his tweets for 100 100k months. Yeah. So it's not conspiratorial anymore to just call out or to think that this is, you know, going to be pushed through just because they want it to. [\[40:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2453s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I the FDA at this point, I think, and all the federal agencies at this point are just rubber stamps. and just as stressed, I mean the previous phase three research was like many of the participants were recruited from the underground communities where the PIs were also practicing. So it was not a welldesigned like the data was meaningless in terms of the way that they went about collecting it because people were feeling this pressure to you know need to present how they were doing in a certain way as part being part of this movement. So it's like that there there were just everything wrong with the research before. It's not just like a few things. It was really undermining the reliability of the data as the original CR the complete response letter from the FDA acknowledged that it was like the problems were such that none of the safety data could be trusted. [\[41:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2510s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Well, you can't Yeah. The that's this is the thing that everyone has pretty much ignored entirely. It's not even the data that they have that they even submitted. Like it's not the data that they submitted was just unclear. It was that maps therapists and I brought I was on a call with Doblin after we had a call with Doblin after John Semley published the Wired piece. We had met with Doblin and the maps team at South by Southwest, me and Niche and we had a long discussion and we talked a lot about this stuff openly and maps Rick Doblin's assistant in the meeting there was like five people in the room. Rick Dolbin's assistant in the meeting requested that this was an off thereord meeting and we agreed to that. [\[42:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2560s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And then when John with Wired when he was writing the piece in Wired, Rick told John that he had met with Psymposia at South by Southwest. So the cat was kind of out of the bag and Rick broke the agreement that his team wanted to and this is also the reason that that that the Lost leadership had Rick be quiet because he's incapable of shutting his mouth. But anyways, so we had another Zoom meeting with those people that MAP's team and on that call I had told Rick I was like Rick the elephant in the room here on the data is that your therapists like around the country like everybody knows that your therapists are doing underground sessions with people outside of the clinical trial and then you were recruiting these people into the clinical trials. [\[43:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2615s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, your therapist had these pre-existing relationships and business deals with clients who you're then recruiting into the study. And he was like kind of flustered about that. But this is open. It's like an open thing that everybody knows that they were doing. My point here is that the data that and then that data was then submitted to the FDA. that data is not it'd be like me running a clinical trial and then like recruiting you guys and my family and friends \[laughter\] into it and that I had been like going on camping trips giving them m MDMMA before like what are we doing here? Are we trying we should call that by a more like precise name that that kind of collusion and subtrafuge that that's fraud. [\[44:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2666s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's organized fraud 100%. Yeah. The FDA called it out too. They said that one of the big reasons that they're, you know, rejecting is because what was it 80% of or something 40% trial participants Yeah. had prior MDMA experience. But even that covers up from the fact that we don't know what was the number 40 40 42%. I recall 40 and that's just for reference. compare my question is of that 40% what percent were doing underground sessions and we're already in a therapeutic relationship with MAPS's therapists we don't know anywhere from 100% of that 40 to some other fraction but we know that that number though you know 40% it really is a problem because you know psychedelic and or I guess what are these stimulant hallucinogenic [\[45:27\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2727s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Stimulants, phenthylamine use in the broader public is nowhere near that number. It's much closer to something like, you know, 11 or maybe 15 12% of the American public. And so you have people who are already sensitized, you know, to this who's going to join this kind of study, you know, not somebody who had a horrific experience on MDMA the first time they tried it in a right in a nonclinical setting. that person's never going to join that study. You know, the data is contaminated and it's contaminated because they spiked it. They colluded to fabricate to, you know, send ringers into the clinical trials to say what they wanted them to say, what they dearly hoped was true about this revolutionary therapy as they think of it. [\[46:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2776s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I mean, just imagine another pharmaceutical company that was running clinical trials if this was Imagine it and they would be fraudsters. Yeah. But you know it's like people make an exception for this because it's their thing. They like MDMA. But if there was any other if Johnson and Johnson was running clinical trials where the PIs and the therapists in that clinical trial were engaging in fraud like this, it would be a major story. And in here like people have just entirely ignored it. But I don't think they even realize it's a thing. Yeah. I mean there there's just a very huge lack of coverage of what you know normie in previous discussions you've called a huge story which is this organized attempt to beguile and mislead a federal agency. [\[47:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2831s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's and much of it's quite out in the open. you know, there's a lack of interest from people other than really ourselves and a few other fellow travelers, you know, to really warn the public about this. Except there has been something recently, what was it? An LA Times article that had some interesting information. Do you want to talk about that? You were quoted in this. Yeah. Well, I mean it's an interesting and also concerning article because the author is an op-ed by Laura who was involved in a MDMA for couples. So, and the trial was they took part in the trial in early 2023 and it was a DIAD program couples program for cancer patients and their caregivers. [\[47:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2878s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the author of the op-ed had a very positive experience with MDMA, but unfortunately her husband experienced a severe and lasting negative effects that required months of extensive rehabilitation. Yeah. So, in the piece, she describes that during the dosing window of the trial, the first two months afterward, the medicine seemed to work. We both had more resilience regarding Curt's cancer, past, present, and future. Concurrently, though, my partner had depressive dips, giving rise to suicidal thoughts, something he'd never had before. We were told MDMA floods the brain with mood enhancing neurotransmitters, and afterward there would be a temporary crash. Then things shifted. I didn't notice it at first, given eight weeks of expansive joy, but my husband's brain worked differently after taking MDMA, and he began spiraling. [\[48:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2931s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) At 68, he suddenly had obsessivempulsive disorder, manifesting as ruminations he could not turn off. He stopped sleeping. Gripped by suicidality and explosive emotions he had no container for. It was as if his psyche had been cracked open, potentially making matters worse. Curt's integration provider stopped working with him in the middle of the crisis, switching to only ketamine patients. Over the next six months, my spouse was institutionalized five times for suicidal ideiation and a nervous system he couldn't control. With his symptoms deteriorating, doctors recommended electrocombulsive therapy and he got 16 rounds of that which affected his memory. When the FDA declined MDMA therapy in 2024, it cited concerns about inadequate tracking of adverse events, a gap already exposed by Psymposia, a psychedelic harm reduction nonprofit. [\[49:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=2981s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Nisha Devon, a psychedelic researcher and Psymposia board member, told me the true frequency of negative outcomes remains unknown because quote, "The therapy model was designed to reframe harm as healing." Along these lines, one of our researchers suggested that Kurt's unraveling was evidence of progress. Accelerated FDA approval attracting many suffering individuals will invite recklessness. The field is not ready. And this was something that I think we had been highlighting for some time was and Nache especially was this like tendency of the people conducting the trial to say that things like dipping into suicidal ideiation and things like that were proof of progress from this therapy that this was a natural part of the progress part of the process. and then providing you know either directly providing or directing people towards additional drugs like a ketamine 5 DMT in order to work out that lingering process of the trauma being purged from [\[50:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3042s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The body. Yeah. I mean, for a group that has a therapeutic ideology that specifically references like a like sort of shamanic death and rebirth process as being central to a healing journey. Yeah, if you say I feel like I'm dying or I'm having thoughts of dying, they of course they frame that as like that's normal. Oh, that's even a sign of good things. And it's just there's no evidence for these assertions. And there's been no real reckoning with the pseudocience and the therapy model and the implications of that both for ongoing public health you know implications but also for the quality of the data that they collected and I find it so funny that you know as we and I individually were being so attacked you know over that like two-year window around the initial rejection you know I extend ensively [\[51:43\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3103s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Proved \[laughter\] like even citing the original treatment manual to show that what I was talking about was being was built into the manual itself in a euphemized way. But you can see it there. Like no one has really talked about that bes besides \[laughter\] us. And that's part of what I find so concerning about this resubmission is that well there there have been some like Jules Evans has covered that like some of the cultist therapists are like very pissed at us still because they feel like they have lost some of their power. But there remains a lot of cultist ideas, pseudocientific ideas in great prominence within this field. And until that has been acknowledged and really like faced up to, the public will be at risk. [\[52:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3149s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't think it's going to be acknowledged or there's going to be accountability until these therapists kill someone and it comes out in a high-profile like trial in the defense of like really examining the beliefs that the therapist held, you know. Yeah. I don't really think it's going to happen until there's some real, you know, a big true crime type thing like showing putting one of the therapists on the stand and just really going after them. Maybe you'll see me one day being called to explain \[laughter\] the therapy model, right? Yeah. I don't I think that's the only reckoning that's going to kind of come. It's a difficult thing to even it took us as a team it took us a long time to even like come around so many years inquiring like actually what is because the way that it progressed is it's like first you're in the mindset of decriminalization prohibition sucks [\[53:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3210s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Control substance act sucks MDMA shouldn't be illegal then that progresses into well legalize MDM MA legalized psychedelic therapy and then you come to the point of what is the psychedelic therapy even like consist of what does it mean and everybody's like kind of still stuck oh this is just a good thing without even looking into what the therapy even consists of and like not realizing it's like some bizarre scientology like ritual it's really clever misdirection like a slight of hand trick you know like pay attention into the, you know, controversy about the drugs. And then right over here where you're not looking is some really ripe new age like cosmology, you know. [\[54:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3258s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And one of the reasons that there hasn't been any real analysis on on any of this or any push back is because all the various groups like psychedelics today and all these other like fly by night psychedelic pro- psychedelic in some way shape or form they hitch their wagon to therapist training because it's like the only way you can really make any money in this space. And so now they start like propagating all the MAPS protocols into the space. And so by us calling out, hey, look at what you're doing there with the psychedelic therapy, they can't even comment on it because they're now stuck in this loop of pushing something. So they can't go how do you go backwards on that? [\[55:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3304s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) How do you even be critical about it when you've been pushing this? there's like a sunk cost there and everyone's like implicated. So I was going to say just earlier when you were mentioning how long it took us to come around to realizing what was going on with the therapy. We were not always on the having the position we have today about this. It took us a long time even a group of us looking at this together. So it makes sense as you were saying normie that the public at large is just not really aware yet. I actually watched last night your I think it was like your first live stream ever with David was there and I think all of you were there. I think it was 2020 and you all were like opening beers and \[expletive\] to celebrate \[laughter\] profit and it was a really I it was like this weird transitionary conversation of you sort of all coming to with the medicalization thing like you were all sort of like yeah we're not like strictly against medicalization or something but then you're kind of like but actually we're starting to [\[56:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3364s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Wonder if that really is true. It was very like I saw the point at which you noticed that maybe this is something to like really be worrying about. Yeah. You know, I mean I would say that from that time in there's one thing that really hasn't changed which is that, you know, like for instance, if somebody were to find that MDMA, you know, healed a specific kind of, you know, brain bleed or had something with very good data showing a medical use for it, like of course I would support that. the situation as it stands now, you know, there the state of the evidence is contaminated. It's garbage. It's worse than garbage. It's intent intentionally spiked with nonsense. [\[56:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3410s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And that is not how we approve medicines. You know, I think that nevertheless with whatever you want to call it, rice and so MDMA should not be illegal, should not be criminalized, you know, and so it's in many ways the core of our sort of stance hasn't changed. It's just that the quality of the medicalized product, the project that was put forth is so poor that it doesn't qualify as in my opinion, my non-medical opinion, but still my opinion. I guess it's also my professional opinion. Anyhow, that it's not, you know, that that should not be a medicalized option. So, as like a final addendum on this topic, we did we were saying we wanted to jump into the congressional letters. [\[57:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3458s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah, just because we haven't not the original ones, but we hadn't talked about the fact that there was a newer congressional letter that came out I believe in May of this year. So, we have talked about where did we talk about the other letters? Was it in the syndicate? I think we mentioned it on like the like leftist primer or something like that that we were but either way it's definitely in the syndicate where we talked about the fact that this 80 plus 80 members of Congress like signed an open letter to President Joe Biden there there was a house letter and a Senate letter. Yeah. And we were without naming us, we were scapegoed in the house letter, I think it was, for being, you know, the reason we know that it was us is because the heroic cards veterans group described us as the problem that they're alluding to in their paper, the special interest group that \[laughter\] didn't want, you know, veterans to heal themselves or something. [\[58:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3516s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was ridiculously cartoonish. There was only two groups. So it was Psymposia and IER like that's it right now. Yeah. Who are we talking about here? Yeah. No, no, but it was definitely really referring to alluding to us in there. And so I wanted to just take a look at the more recent letter which came out, you know, more in the proximity leading up to the Trump when was the Trump executive order date? It was right around it was right around bicycle day, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was on bicycle day. Yeah. So, so this was kind of like what? Right after then. Correct. Yeah. This would have been like almost a day or two after that. So, right after Trump's executive order, this new congressional letter came out and it took a very different tone to the their original letter. [\[59:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3564s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like instead of scapegoating us, they mentioned the CRL. Like if you scroll down a little bit, it says like it's important to So, yeah, that right there regulatory. Oh, yeah. At the same time, we understand and respect the AY's role in ensuring that any new treatment meets rigorous standards of safety and efficacy. Recent regulatory actions, including the issuance and public release of the complete response letter for MDMMA assisted therapy, highlight the complexity of evaluating innovative treatment modalities and underscore the need for clear consistent expectations for this emerging field. And when I read that, I was like, it's so like ridiculous and shitty that they can just like target us and smear us and then just backtrack it completely without amending it, you know? It's just like they as if they never did that. Now there's actual nuance here that deserves to be taken seriously, which is what we were saying in the first place. [\[1:00:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3616s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Right. Right. \[laughter\] Yeah. It's ridiculous. Just wanted to emphasize that just to show the minations that are occurring politically behind the scenes here and just how many narrativeshaping projects there are in order to finesse \[laughter\] this into an acceptable situation for the public. So yeah, just to end on that point. So do you all think it's gonna get pushed through? Do you think we're going to get medicalized MDMA? I think so. I mean, there's so much money. I was sharing in our chat just recently about the Tesla strike, failed Tesla strike in Sweden. So I was reading How Things Work by Hamilton Nolan and he was talking about the fact that like the state of inequality right now and how wealth is concentrated meant that like new frontiers and new tactics of strike breaking were able to be implemented even like despite the fact that that that country has really strong protections for labor. [\[1:01:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3674s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They were still just able to blast through those protections in a way that no one had ever seen before. That's what's happening at the federal level here now as well where it's like the amount of wealth inequality that we have allows these oligarchs to just get their way. Yeah. I mean there was a what a Yale or a Harvard study not that long ago. I mean, it probably was a while ago, but regardless, that essentially said that, you know, when you compare the sort of policy objectives of the sort of the extremely wealthy versus what, you know, public opinion is, like for instance, on Medicare for all or something like that. There's basically no daylight. They essentially concluded that the public has effectively no input on policymaking at a federal level in the United States. [\[1:02:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3722s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And you know, I don't know that that's always going to be the case, but I mean, the idea that we are a democracy certainly isn't this is how the system according with reality, right? And so I mean, I guess the thing that that we haven't talked about that is a bit of like an open question at this point is, you know, the whether or not the MAPS therapy methodology will be endorsed or discouraged. What will that look like? And if so, you know, are is there any teeth to it? I highly doubt it because right now you have a workforce that has been trained in these methods. And you know, if what becomes standard post approval is, you know, go ahead and give them, you know, the some other manualized, you know, therapeutic modality with rice. [\[1:02:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3777s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, are they going to adhere to it? you know, and if so, when things go wrong, will it be will it map back to the maps method, you know? Yeah, that's what people should be paying attention. I think it's a pretty ripe target for, you know, if there is a Democratic Congress or executive moving forward. Obviously everything this administration touch touches has to be like reanalyzed and like what you know what was going it has to be a rebuild of HHS and FDA and FBI and obviously all these institutions. So you know what I if it does go the way that I don't see I the fact that they are even resubmitting to me means that they've already been green lit or they I don't think they would be resubmitting. [\[1:03:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3827s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So it's either going to be rubber stamped by the division or RFK is probably going to override them. So if I was going to bet on this, I would bet that this is going to be green lit. But that is going to come with the vulnerability I think in the years ahead of potentially, you know, recalling it from market if they actually dig into the data. I don't know. That's just my sort of speculation. I would say it's I you know I've was asked about this around when all of the rejection was happening. you know what role could RFK play in all this in a salon article on it and you know I said then that making any kind of public health policy by edict and contra the sort of evidence base available that's always going to be a bad move right and you know we see this a [\[1:04:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3890s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Lot with MA you know the make America healthy again this is a right-wing movement It's a part of a coalition that, you know, the Trump administration essentially made promises to and said, "We will make room for your raw milk or whatever under RFK Jr." And I think that inevitably given that this resubmission by Resilient Pharmaceuticals is going to be under the ages of the Trump administration without you know some of the things that the CRL seems to have demanded means that that you know approval by edict is likely going to come to pass. And if that's the case, it will, as in MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD, forever be maja tagged along with the, you know, greatest hits of COVID denialism, currently ballooning, childhood diseases [\[1:05:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=3951s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Preventable by vaccines and, you know, junk nutrition, things like what beef, tallow, fries or whatever as you know, as policy, as health public health policy. I think this is making unavoidable. This is making some people uncomfortable getting in bed with RFK and doing this. I think Andrew Penn had put out a statement or put out a tweet on like what does it mean that this that that the administration who you know is I'm summarizing here but is so antiax you know pro-epidemic yeah is is this the whole quote this is the end of his Facebook post on it or his tweet whatever it was he says so what will it mean if the same HHS that is D prior Prioritizing children's immunization schedules and promoting health falsehoods is the same administration that ends up greenlighting MDMA for PTSD. [\[1:06:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4009s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You should read the next part, too. Is it is this just a case of the ends justifying the means of a stopped clock being right twice a day? What ever happened to all our all of our idealism? I know those are rhetorical questions, but I'm gonna answer the first two, you know, and the idea that like that this is a clock that was stopped and it's right twice a day. It's not right. It you know what they are putting forth as a protocol for MDMA is not something that is going to do what they say it's going to do. going to balloon the harm and misconduct that that already occurred in the clinical trials themselves, you know, as well as the underground. [\[1:07:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4055s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This is the result of when you put a wacky new age movement as like an aesthetic to as a health aesthetic, a public health aesthetic to hide the horrors of corporations of what they're actually doing. That's the point of MA. That is the point of RFK. Put him out there to sell to your ignorant chud, you know, voters who are really and I shouldn't do that. You know, so many of the MAG of voters are the people who have been cast aside by the system, who have not had health care, who have been, you know, just run over by the whole system, they're, you know, they're out. [\[1:08:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4103s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so when anything that that and this is why Trump was elected. There's a reason why low-income voters like one of the first times in history actually voted for the Republic. And there was that 2016 flip. But this is the result of when you give that this wacky new age movement. You put it out there aesthetically. So it's not Monsanto anymore, but whoever is making Roundup now so they can continue doing what they're doing behind the scenes. So they can continue degree of water. Yeah. Whatever. But this is it. It makes a lot of sense when you realize that that's what this is. Yeah. I just wanted since I said I would answer those questions, you know, is this a case of the ends justifying the means? [\[1:09:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4148s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Well, no. Because the justification of this poor science policy is not going to come to fruition. It has not been proved to be this revolutionary treatment for the population at large. it's a subsample of highly biased data with question, you know, the whole project is is in question. And this last question about what ever happened to all of our idealism, as we've talked about this entire episode, this whole project is just about the most cynical thing I've ever seen. Idealism isn't here as we are, you know, horse trading with billionaires and, you know, pushing this through regardless of what the science says or who's been harmed in a clinical trial and the, you know, congressional letters to moving on on what their assertions or who's to blame is. [\[1:09:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4198s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) None of this is idealistic. This is politics, baby. And that's I think that's a pretty solid place to wrap our commentary on this recent news article. Obviously, as this progresses, we will be continuing to cover this. It's going to be big news regardless of if it ends up rejected again or accepted and you'll certainly hear more from us on that. We're going to take a quick break here and when we return we will be back on with Zanab Ahmed who wrote a recent article on the Israeli rave scene and how it corresponds with the Palestinian Israeli conflict history. It's a really interesting interview. Super stoked to have them on. So, expect that when we come back and we'll have one other interview for you on the back end with the staff from The Needle about their recent reporting. [\[1:10:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4246s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Hey there. Hope you're enjoying the episode so far. I just wanted to come and talk to you about our Patreon channel. We actually just recently put out a series that I'm super proud of on psychedelics and conversion therapy. And if you were to go over to our Patreon page, you can see a little bit of that here. This is kind of the basics on that series. The first part of this series will explore a 101 on conversion therapy, what it is, and the harms that can come from this approach, as well as the storied history of conversion therapy approaches being used in psychedelic therapy contexts. The second part of this series is going to look at influential figures on the right wing, advancing this narrative of trans experience and queer experience as a disease in search of a cure. [\[1:11:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4295s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And part three will be an interview with Caleb Graves, an anti-fascist preacher and host of the Psychedelic Theology podcast who recently identified that conversion therapy efforts in the psychedelic field are just a handshake away from Donald Trump. And if you're a subscriber of our Patreon, you'll already know this, but if you're not a subscriber, some of the benefits are early access to episodes like that. So you can see here the whole series was posted days before it aired on YouTube on our Patreon channel. So those are some of the perks here. You can get on and chat about any of the episodes in our chat over here. We've got a couple different chats. One's our Psymposia chat and our content recommendation chat where you can let us know what you want to see us cover. [\[1:12:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4341s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But yeah, those are just a couple benefits of our Patreon. You can sign up at the $5 or the $10 a month level. And we would love to see you there. Thanks. We are very lucky to be joined today by Zanab Ahmed who wrote a amazing recent article for current affairs titled Israel's rave music drowns out the sound of its victims. And then under that is for decades a combination of EDM and drug culture have helped to numb the horror of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. right away. I mean, in the title itself, I really appreciated that it wasn't wasting any time. It wasn't messing around. It was getting straight to the point of this really important issue. It connects very much to what we at Psymposia do. [\[1:13:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4388s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, today from Psymposia, I am joined by Brian Pace, Russell, and Normie. I'm Nishay and we were very interested in reading this piece and noticing a lot of the parallels between our usual topics which relate to psychedelic medicine and the themes that you were discussing with rave music, rave culture and the ways that they can feed into a kind of spiritual bypassing of the material realities in the Middle East. And so just to start up top here, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about your background in general. I know in your bio mentions that you're an activist, raver, freelance writer, and editor, and PhD student in comp and comparative legal theory, but if there's anything else you'd like to share and also as part of that story, if you could lead up to what brought you to the topic of this article in particular. [\[1:14:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4442s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Well, I'm a PhD student in a program that will never end, like as is often the case with PhD studies. That's at SOASS University of London. I've studied in Canada and the United States and other places in the past, including in the Middle East. I Canadian by birth and Pakistani heritage, as people often ask like where are you really from? And I have been doing various things with Palestine Palestine organizing since I was a teenager and then into university studies where I did various different organizing tasks. That was around the time that operation cast le became a new reference point. [\[1:14:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4491s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And then after that I began doing grassroots organizing. I had a lot of issues with grassroots organizing as people who were in grassroots organizing often do. And what happened after that is that raving became more and more a part of my life as it had been since I was a teenager. Then with October 7th, I saw maybe for the first time a very obvious overlap between what had previously been two different sections of my life. Although I was aware of Palestinian electronica and electronica more widely in the Middle East, Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani, you could say in the greater Middle East and so on. [\[1:15:37\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4537s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So the article arose in response to October 7th which brought together what had previously been two very different strains of my life. Palestine organizing as well as electronic music appreciating. And my own academic work is on the Afghan Pakistani border and border making and border maintenance with a colonial legal code called the frontier crimes regulation which helps stabilize the Afghan Pakistani border especially in the Bashon dominated areas that are called formerly the Northwest Frontier Province. And the article sort of has bits and pieces of all of that, as well as my own personal dis disappointment with how electronic music has not just responded to October 7th, but how deading and depolitical it often is. [\[1:16:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4593s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I say depolitical because it's like it's more than apolitical. Like you're actively discouraged from talking about politics. And that's true for queer and trans organizing as well, which overlaps with an in addition. I didn't really have time to talk about that, but it's this article is a first step in a broader engagement that brings together many different sides of my life. There's the academic and organizing work I speak about in my biography, but there's also my own personal life has its continued to evolve. and my suspicion that a lot of these things have been co-opted and that's what I'll say for now. Yeah. Thank you. And there's a lot of overlap I think from with our background story in the sense that we, you know, came from the psychedelic community that was like part of our lives and then we became aware of all of these dynamics and so it's an expression of concern from within the community and not you know some outside perspective. [\[1:17:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4656s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, I really appreciate that that you have that kind of lived experience lens to it as well. And to ask a moment about the form and the structure of the piece because I found it very interesting how the argument was interwoven with the material the historical material conditions that gave rise to the Israeli rave scene and that this design choice served as a contrast to that scene's avoidance of material realities. as you describe it in the article. So, I was wondering if you could speak more to Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. I interrupted you. Could you speak more to your approach to writing this piece, including your decision to arrange these details in this way? Well, what I thank you for finishing your question. \[laughter\] What I was going to so rudely interrupt you by saying is that so analytical with military affairs, which is something that's not often done. [\[1:18:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4711s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think there's this line that is established often between what the military is doing and its logics and the other aspects of material conditions that I've tried over the PhD to really decipher where there can be overlap where military tactics are themselves a part of the changing material conditions in society. there's not always going to be overlap but I try to sort of experiment with that also. Yes, you are correct. there's an element of it where it's avoiding the material reality, right? And on the Israeli side in particular, on the Zionist side in particular, there's an avoidance of material reality. But what I was trying to convey in not so many words is also say that it's partly enabled by this, right? [\[1:19:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4763s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But the way that it is enabled is not always straightforward. It's not always clear-cut. There is a very complicated relationship between Antonio Grumshi talks about this in the Marxist tradition right like that base superstructure relations he calls it that culture and the changing material relationship of capitalist social relations that it's complicated how those things go together right and I try to avoid something as simplistic as to say that this happens explicitly because of this right because my own experience with raving and nightlife shows that it's not always that simple right like what I can say with confidence is that as the material relationships change including what can be analytically understood through the military and its frameworks of structuring reality happens at the same time that the electronic music scene as it is which [\[1:20:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4825s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Makes heavy use of psychedelics and other drugs as it takes its evolution. Whether it's A to B, it's hard for me to say, but it's definitely true that they happen at the same time. And I hope that there will be more work on this to discuss what the exact relationships are, right? Whether it is that one, the material relations causes the ability for electronic music to take the form that it does, which a lot of these responses to my article accuse me of saying this, right? Like rather simplistically, but I took care not to say that actually like I would I wrote the article. Abama I want other people to step in as well to think about why this happens in the way it does and how these flanks relate. [\[1:21:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4878s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Right. It's a very old question in Marxist theory that I'm not going to present myself as knowing the answer to. Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts about the article was the interweaving of that the whole history of the conflict in that area with the development of the electronic music scene. feel like it did a really good job of educating on the broader issues of the space as well as kind of that development of the scene too. I really appreciated that. Yeah. And I did also think that there there was also, you know, aspects like where were the raves able to happen due to the ongoing nature of the conflict and even things like where bases were built or where walls were built, you know, allowing for gatherings in certain spaces as opposed to other spaces, for example. [\[1:22:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4928s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So it did seem like there was some shaping even if it wasn't a reductive you know all of this is due to X sort of an argument. Well, it's al and it's there. It's a question of land, right? Like it's a question of land which land being a basic unit of Marxist inquiry. You see in the anti-colonial tradition various different thinkers trying to grapple with this question of land. Fenon tried to do it. France Fenon in the case of Algeria and Martineique and other parts of the French Empire. indigenous Marxists where you people are in the Americas, they have a lot of different interventions about land, about the centrality of land, how you conceptualize land, how land relates to other forms of capitalist and imperialist social relation. [\[1:23:01\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=4981s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And land is also a big question in China, in South Asia, especially as it relates to agricultural production. into Japan as well there's a question of land and I think in raving culture the idea of land on one end and the idea of security and policing on the other end are huge in terms of where you even stage these things what you have access to rather realistically anything is going to happen to you especially from law enforcement but also from other people right and how these supposed utopias structure themselves. They need access to resources and there's the material resources, the speakers, the fact that you need people to go. [\[1:23:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5031s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There's that side of it, right? The artists, the DJs, the visuals, but there's also the basic questions of where you hold this thing, the security and policing guarantees, and a whole other medley of forces that I will only allude to. So I would ask people who are listening to this who are watching this to consider the question of land as it relates not just to raving but also to Marxist theory and the imperial system as it's evolved over the last six or seven centuries. If I could talk just for a moment or pick your brain about land. You spoke in the piece about one particular place in its role in current and past Israeli electronica evolution and that was Goa in India and yes yeah Goa and you know this is a place that has a lot of history of its own which I really appreciated you pointing to that this Goa trance a music [\[1:24:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5092s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's known worldwide is not referencing any of the local struggles of that that people in that region. But you know a coastal place in India that is not predominantly Muslim that is cheap that meets all of these criteria. It's tropical people you know want to go and attend. It's not that far from a major you know port. It has some connection to historical psychedelia like you mentioned the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band having some recording there and you know Goa is a it's a mainstay in the scitrant scene in terms of where these influences come from but having been to Goa myself at many many years ago the Israeli influence there is is huge and you can see this, you know, annual influx of tourists from Israel just out of the [\[1:25:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5152s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) IDF. And I really appreciated this piece because of the language, the history, the ways that this is so a part of Israeli culture, even down to having names for the Falupes, the people who, you know, after the IOF service then come out and take a bunch of drugs and lose their mind, the flip out kind of thing. So I just wanted to talk have you expand a little bit on on the Goa side of this land question. Yes, thank you. Well, I will be perfectly honest with you that I wouldn't necessarily consider myself qualified to speak about Goa even though I'm in South Asian studies. And I will be honest about that partly because I'm trying to be critical of an issue that I have which is that I don't necessarily know as much about nonBritish imperial structures in South Asia. [\[1:26:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5212s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's still something that I'm trying to understand. Goa was a port Goa was a Portuguese colony until some of the people's lifetimes that are watching and listening to this and that's a lot of where the imperial structures that are in Goa come from originally in including forced baptisms and the expansion of the Catholic Church. And there are also other dynamics between Marathi and Konkani as languages that I am still learning about that I really welcome someone who knows more about Goa politics to intervene there. Where I'm more qualified to speak is about how the tourism and leisure industries overlaps with Israeli military adventurism. [\[1:27:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5260s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's not just an Israeli problem. It's something that I think is a deeper question about tourism and leisure like a Marxist critique of tourism and leisure that hasn't really been done properly like the resorts that someone in the United States or Canada would go to on the Turks and Caos Islands. Mayorca as a symbol of decadence and retreat for people in the United Kingdom and in France and Spain into North Africa, right? And the Israelis aren't the only ones that are doing this with Goa either where it is specific with the Israeli tourists that are there is the state backing one which I think is clearly there through capital investment through the discharge bonuses. the understanding that the military discharge bonuses to individual soldiers would be used in places like this and the involvement by people on the ground for example in Goa as is the case with [\[1:28:43\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5323s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Other places into Southeast Asia to welcome these people in to ensure that that money goes into the local economy but in the process creating a neoc colonial retreat experience for those people. It's not that different from tourism and leisure diff generally. But in this case, it's an attempt to come to terms with something that is a fundamental contradiction, which is that you can have a Zionist utopia where people are able to comfortably be Jewish and be Israeli in the Zionist frame of reference. But what it requires from people through drafted military service in many cases is the ability to kill to the ability to subject others to oppression to violence that nonviolence would be built on violence that the utopia would be built on dystopia. [\[1:29:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5380s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's a fundamental contradiction in the in Zionist frame of thought. The Zionist utopia requires Zionist real politique, right? that can't be squared away is is my basic argument here. I don't say it explicitly, but that's what's guiding the piece. You can't do more with that. It's just in your mind it doesn't work. The two just clash together. So, if you're accepting that the two have to clash together, that logically it doesn't make sense, that logically you have to erase one to erase the other, well, you can't erase the Zionist real politique. You can get rid of the concept of military service of killing for Zionist utopia of denying it afterwards. That's essential. [\[1:30:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5426s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's part of how the machinery works. So the next best thing is to give people the opportunity to forget about it and then that's sort of left on to the individual people and those tourism and leisure hotspots become pulled into that and then increasingly over time it becomes built into the local economy that Israeli soldiers would backpack and do this in that particular spot and Goa has become a hot spot for that. in addition to other places into Indonesia and East Africa and Goa I think has its own long half ccentury history that I would welcome people to study and even tell me more about because that's what I have to say about it. [\[1:31:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5473s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah, to those points I wanted to highlight a quote that you had in your article that I think speaks to kind of like the bonuses you were mentioning that this person Guy Shah Russo in the documentary Flipping Out who works on the Hummus Trail, which maybe you can expand upon a little bit too, that features pretty heavily in the piece. But he says after 3 years of totally destroying their identity, of causing their self-destruction, and of profoundly changing their view of the meaning of human life, they are given I'm assuming that's like Israeli $15,000 as a discharge bonus to go wherever they want to take all of this crap out elsewhere. I think that's a powerful quote. Yeah. No, and this is a commando. He was a commando in Kaza. Like this is this isn't just anyone. And he's there partly. The documentary doesn't say it, but you see like this is quite a bitter and cynical quote. [\[1:32:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5524s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) He's there partly because of his own experiences, right? Like I would imagine like I don't know this man. Right. But the quote here is about you just kind of give them like however so many shekels to be like, "Okay, you go leave." Right. Right. like you're traumatized from doing this thing that's fundamentally reordered your way of seeing the world. The it's brutal and it's predatory, but now you're out like go take that somewhere else. Right? For him, it's like they're basically taking out the trash and then like just leaving it for those people to have to deal with and then they come back as if it never happened, right? like I think I would imagine that he understands this as a technique of power that's hypocritical but like in a way it accepts the hypoc hypocrisy and I really latched on to this quote because I think it gets down to basics about not just what is happening here [\[1:33:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5585s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But what is happening with tourism and leisure generally that people need to be refreshed after long periods doing something that they may find alienating that they may find laborious, oppressive, that the system that they're in doesn't actually have a way of dealing with the effects of what these people are doing. And here it's militarily. So the solution ends up being not actually a solution. The solution ends up being, okay, well here you go, right? Deal with that yourself, right? Go get married and have kids. Then your wife or your husband, like they'll be the ones to deal with your insanity. then your children will be the ones to bear the weight of your insanity into your elder years. Like the system that produced that insanity in the first place, it has nothing to do with it. [\[1:33:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5633s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like these are the methods that you have. You have vacation, you have family units, you have other things, right? We like as a society this has been enabled to you. You have consumerism, consumption. These are the ways that you have to deal with the emotions that this summons in you. Why are you even trying to have those emotions publicly? Right? So, like what he's saying here is that there's a whole system of repression, a whole system of emotional and social repression that requires leaving for a place like Goa to embibe drugs and then push everything down. And then pushing it down is what becomes the way for the system to keep going. and that every so often there's another wave of people that does this that pushes everything down and keeps going. [\[1:34:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5685s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) In a way it's like confession like in the Catholic form of doing right it's like in a way it's like that right like you are giving people the opportunity to manage their guilt to manage other things by doing this other stuff right but you know this isn't actually seen as repressive for some reason and I say that somewhat bitterly as a Muslim them as someone with very conservative Pakistani parents who are quite often frustrated that they're being told that they're almost preodern in societies that think they're above everybody else and their understanding of how the West quote unquote functions. [\[1:35:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5735s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I mean, this is repressive I in a way that I never experienced from my parents, frankly. But if I say that my parents are religious, I'll be like told, "Oh, well that's too difficult for you. You have these she, they, and it pronouns. That must have been so hard." But like, you see, this is considered social progress. This is considered more open-minded. The Zionist Project includes propaganda that takes these details and makes it seem like Israel is the place to be, right? Because you have a society that's b built on people doing this. I don't see it as particularly different from the sort of oppression that I would have grown up with. But if I said that too openly, I would be told that I'm in denial. How fair is that? [\[1:36:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5780s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. What it sounds like to me, I mean, you've said so much, but the externality of this endeavor, the that that the Gaza project and its occupation, the occupation of the Palestinians, the violence that it takes to do that and the toll that it places on all participants, obviously more on on those who are being oppressed, but that to maintain this system, there must an escape valve or as you referred to it taking out the trash and that is what makes a place like Israel still seem functioning and desirable. It reminds me of the ways in which we are seeking raw materials and sacrifice lands in other countries so that in you know industrialized countries we have the shiny gadgets and the polished furniture and all of that. [\[1:37:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5839s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's another dumping ground. It's another form of externalizing the costs or socializing the costs and centralizing the whatever benefit there may be to an oppressive structure. And it doesn't work within the supply chain as it's analytically understood, right? Like because from a bure if you're a bureaucrat, you're just like, "Oh, you know, the problem is the problem's gone." Like it's off the books, right? like there's been a solution. This is the solution right to send it over there. Right. Like that like then everything is out of this defined territory defined remitt. So therefore that that's that problem solved. Coloss right. Right. Right. [\[1:38:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5885s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like that's it. Right. Like you have to actually have a full view of capitalism and imperialism as world systems to really piece together the reality of what's going on. Yes, that these are different kinds of dumping grounds, but in so far as it is a dumping ground, that the dumping ground itself has a long history that far predates its designation as a dumping ground, right? like that. It became a dumping ground for reasons that for politically definable historical reasons that need to be understood that the fact that things are dumped there, even if it's just trauma and emotion, the fact that it's dumped there has a whole historical trajectory of its own, a whole material trajectory of its own. [\[1:38:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5935s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I would welcome anybody who's an expert on Goa again to step in here to really interview how people in Goa feel about this and the effects of having this sort of experience be built into the Israeli tourism and leisure economy to the point where I would argue it's state subsidized through these discharge bonuses not just in Goa but elsewhere. It does recall the history of pollution of as you said about electronics. E-waste ends up in other places and that has its own huge trajectory that becomes in some cases even centers of whole economies to manage this waste to figure out what to do with it. [\[1:39:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=5982s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That it poisons the locals. I would imagine that something very similar happens here. I just wasn't able to fly out to Goa and interview people myself with somebody who knows Marati and Konkani and is able to help me discuss things with local people. I would have loved to be able to learn and understand more about that and challenge my own prejudices and preconceptions and introduce it into the article. The article is pretty long already and glad to have this ability to discuss it. Yeah, a whole book for sure on these topics would be really fascinating to read and you know all the tendrils and that relates actually to the next question. Speaking of tendrils, just we noticed that as we mentioned before broad parallels between your analysis of the Israeli rave scene and other adjacent topics including yoga and psychedelic medicine. [\[1:40:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6034s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So I was just curious to hear if you have any thoughts about how these other topics relate to your argument. So here like I would actually site there was a Harets article recently. This article was released in the last Fortnite but it's kind of en engineed this whole counter response. It's really interesting to watch in Harets but there was somebody who wrote a response to it and cited well I'll back up a second. They didn't cite this. It's my reading of it. The term is art for art's sake. like going back to an understanding of art and literature, a French position in the late 19th century going back 150 and 150 years that something like a rave in its current application in that article isn't actually something that you can solely understand politically. [\[1:41:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6091s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Which is not what I say but this is what the author accuses me of saying that like that there's something about the rave that exists outside of social and historical context like to have fun to experience togetherness which again I at no point did I but I think when you say about psychedelics and yoga and other strains of this I think there you have to go back to that position right that it's enough not to engage with the reality in front of you because you're experiencing something that is for its own sake, right? Art for art's sake, yoga for yoga's sake. In this case, you are reminded of the political economy of yoga. [\[1:42:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6139s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I'm currently traveling to California. There is a huge industry up and down the North American coast of yoga studios and all sorts of yoga ayurveetic things that tends to appeal especially to white women of means or at least of their husband's means but also of other ethnic and religious backgrounds. And to do yoga is to come down to yourself to be grounded to be toned. There's this notion of sexual desiraability attached to it. stretching and so on, being stretchy and all of that is supposed to exist outside of the political sphere, outside of an awareness of economics, of the imperial reality. If somebody brings it up, there might be a tacid acknowledgement, but then after not that much time, there will be a backing away because ultimately there's a desire not to engage with that stuff. [\[1:43:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6197s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's explicitly defended if it has to be, right? That the point of this isn't to engage with the reality of the world. The point of this is to get closer to yourself, to experience joy. And I didn't have time to talk about this in the article, but I have an issue with queer and trans politics often because I feel like it goes down the same road of saying, "Oh, you know, the community needs to come together to be itself, right? To give people a chance to be who they are, but that's explicitly divorced from politics, even if it pays tacet mention to it. And if you push too hard with politics in any of these spheres, particularly in yoga, which has its own imperial history, especially in places like California into Europe, then you'll be shot down not through an intellectual argument, but through a very raw position that to be intellectual is to take things too seriously. [\[1:44:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6257s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And quoting many people that I've known over the years, it's not that deep. Yeah. In the these new age spaces, we so often see there's just this deep, especially in like the western yoga traditions, all that kind of stuff, this deep like individualist undercurrent as opposed to any kind of like collective understanding. Yeah. I was just going to say but an individualism has collectivism, right? Exactly that. Yes. Yeah. these there. We saw I know I saw a lot of parallels between the projects that you're in embarking on in this article of trying to situate these cultural things that are associated with rave and raving in Israeli electronic electronica in to a material and historical and political economic reality as it has been as it continues to be And I very much relate to the, you know, the sense that others who just [\[1:45:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6319s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Enjoy electronic music or want to go to a rave are resistant to that. It is part of what hedonism and escapism is is is about is is not engaging in that. But it when we're talking about something like yoga or psychedelics or just tourism and leisure, one of the common threads is is escapism and escape from a rejection of materialism, a rejection of material reality and material analysis. And so you really do sort of spoil the party when you drag people back into where all this come from comes from and how it is who is benefiting and who is getting paid and who is not who is at the table who is not that sort of thing. [\[1:46:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6365s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There's a lot of parallels when looking at and you're desexual like yeah like I will say as a woman you're desexualized actually like there there are whole meme subcultures where it like you'll have someone that's just like oh I was on a first date and I won't get a second one but now I've explained everything about isi rave colonialism right and it's like and it's played for laughs like right but like but implicitly there's this understanding being reinforced in that sort of meme that like you can't really have it both ways, right? Like you have political awareness a life of enjoyment. You can't do both. Why not? But why not? Like why can't you? No disagreement here, right? I mean that that was our experience in the psychedelic space. if we raised politics we so for instance I don't know at this point seven six years ago one of the big events in the psychedelic industry psychedelic community whatever you want to call it [\[1:47:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6425s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Now was Rebecca Mercer she gave a million dollars or something she was behind the Cambridge Analytica I recall she's been a major Republican sort of a donor financeiered Trump early on Trump parlor as well I think she was a major funer of the parlor app that rightwing Twitter one of the biggest supporters of global fascism. And then when that was called out, the people who called it out were then blamed for making it all political. Keep your politics out of this space. We psychedelics are a safe space where sort of politics are prohibited. The psychedelic scene in the United States resisted this so much that resisted the talking about it. [\[1:47:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6470s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Yeah. So, like a lot of our work has been to call out these like the complicity of the industry with right-wing forces and they've resisted this so much that it was only several days ago that the New Yorker is finally coming around to positions that we years ago at this point. There might be a right-wing problem here. So yeah, just inherently I don't think they like they don't like the incursion of politics into their small little utopia, I guess, is the point I'm trying to say. Well, see as secular, right? Yeah. Is that that's partly what's interesting about it. What you're I refer to North America more broadly when you talk about these figures in the United States. [\[1:48:39\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6519s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Thank you for explaining that. I didn't actually know who that was. the history of evangelism in North America and I include Mexico and Central America because Latin America is having its own evangelical moment that is partly behind the far right explosion especially in South America into Argentina right so what's interesting about it is that the apocalyptic dimension of evangelical thinking I little e evangelical I will say here is is often at odds with these sorts of engagements with political reality and it has its own framing of what is religious and what is secular that lines up with that. Right? And the apocalypse is rapturous, right? [\[1:49:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6565s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like it's ecstas it's ecstatic. Ecstatic, right? You feel it in your body, you feel it in your bones, right? That the congregation rises up and moves together, right? If you look at the North American frontier going back two centuries, I mean it wasn't psychedelics, but the concept of the camp meeting for example, like going into Ontario, expanding westward into the Canadian Great Plains, going to Illinois, like going into the United States South, the Baptist tradition you could argue gets part of it into Latin America, which I don't know as many details about like Christianity expanding through into Mexico, Central America, South America. [\[1:50:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6612s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But I want I would welcome somebody to step in here also to think about this, right? that the history of just ecstatic experience and the belief in the Almighty that rises up through you that's fundamentally against the sort of reasoning and careful understanding of the world around you that it actually defines itself against and pushes down when it comes to even the indigenous people that are trying to be converted right like it's not psychedelics but I think there's a question of experience like divine experience through rapture that I think is very core to how evangelism expands in the Americas broadly through the imperial projects of various different empires also that overlaps more recently with psychedelics with yoga with electronic music with all of these other techniques [\[1:51:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6673s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Of facilitating it and I think initially When a lot of these politicians and media thinkers came across these sorts of substances, there was this hesitation to go in more deeply because politically and culturally how they were constructed. But I can also completely understand why they would eventually drop that opposition and see something through them because I don't think it's actually that different from evangelism more generally. I think you just have to go back a couple of hundred years and really try to understand, especially in some of those camp meetings and the awakenings, quote unquote, what was really going on. It wasn't exactly something logical and intellectual. It was something spiritual and something embodied in your experience of like the moment of joy as like as it occurs to you that the Holy Spirit is with you and that Christ has been reborn through you. [\[1:52:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6733s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I think that's what these people are picking up on. Well, there is in fact mysticism. Yes, I was gonna start there. The one of the things that's bridging the psychedelic kind of rightwing right now is in fact evangelism. It's one of the things that we've highlighted in a few of the things we've recently talked about. One of the biggest proponents of Ibagane on the kind of right-wing is kind of explicitly a Christian evangelist. And one of and Rick Perry being kind of a Christian evangelist, former Texas politician, very right-wing, is also embracing psychedelics now. and you're seeing all of these books being published on like Christian's guide to psychedelics and I'm a Christian but psychedelics gave me this experience that that deeply related to my own kind of evangelism there. [\[1:53:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6780s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah, it's very interesting and I think a few of the festivals that I name in the piece are complicit in this growth of Christian mysticism through a far right reinterpreting of what psychedelics can do for you. one that I don't mention, Burning Man and its popularity among the nation tech oligarchs several decades ago now. But also Coachella, especially as it overlaps with the influencer class, and there's a queer and trans element to that that I would welcome someone to look for further into if they're listening or to see this. Also, Electric Daisy Carnival, Glastonbury, closer to home to me in the United Kingdom, right? Like a lot of these places have leaned into the room that was opened up by moneyed people who wanted a kind of pseudospiritual experience through embibing substances through moving their bodies to sound to music and electronica very much has not [\[1:54:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6843s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Dealt with this as a potential political problem and I think this is partly the result of that is that there has been a new kind of politics that's forged under the radar of these sorts of conglomerations especially at the festivals that I named and a couple of them are in the article and I would imagine there is going to be more of an issue with this especially with Soundstorm in Saudi Arabia. Sa Saudi has its own sorts of economies around this in as well as Jordan as well as Lebanon as well as other Middle Eastern countries. And I think there's a lot to this that needs to be teased out. And I would imagine that it's not just going to end up being a problem as you've outlined it. [\[1:54:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6889s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think it's going to be a worldwide issue. I think it already is. And I think the reluctance to discuss these things politically has partly enabled it. Yeah, we couldn't agree more about that. I think that there is a, you know, a very common story within the psychedelic field that this these sorts of ecstatic experiences generate empathy and connection across difference. And so we just need to get that like flood the world with more of that and it's going to solve the problems that we have. And it's a complete lack of reckoning with the ways that as you were outlining that ecstasy can become a tool of colonialism of fascist state power and that sort of thing the long history of that. [\[1:55:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6934s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And in a way it's not unique for this, right? I was having a joke with my with one of my friends. This was a little while ago about handshakes, right? Where I was teaching people how to shake hands, which is a great thing to know, by the way. like and I said something like a handshake will take you far in the world. But by itself it won't obviously like in addition to other stuff, right? And the and we started laughing about it and thinking about various things handshakes can do that are good that are evil, right? And I introduced a handshake as just kind of like a conceptual device for all of you and for the audience, right? Like a handshake can do all sorts of things, right? You can shake hands with somebody and buy weapons. [\[1:56:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=6980s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You can shake hands with somebody who's like an aranged father that you are now having a new loving relationship with, right? Like by itself, these things can do all sorts of things, right? But what they do is reliant on the context that they're in, right? And I'm familiar with what you're saying like people are just like oh well you know you need to open people's minds up and they will be able to connect with each other and then fraternity and like universal love will govern all which is I mean that's very nice right like that's a very nice way of but like but it's not a very like grounded in the realities of the world way of looking about things is it right like see these in you see this in some of the responses to the article that have come out Now people saying that I deny peace like that I deny humanity. [\[1:57:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7032s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's like, oh, is are dancing for peace, right? Zanab isn't engaging with them dancing for peace, but what this means, I have no idea. Right. Like a lot of people say they're dancing for a lot of things, right? Like I could say that I'm dancing for Donald Trump to be overthrown, right? That doesn't mean it's actually like going to happen in any way, shape, or form, right? Like of course like there needs to be more than this, right? Like I think the position of that this will lead to like an opening and an understanding of love among the people who use the psychedelics. I think you have to go back like a number of steps to like just ask basic ideological questions about how these people see the world, right? [\[1:58:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7080s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like how they conceive of power, how they conceive of how communities are structured, right? A bit of social contract theory as the sociologists might say, right? Do they believe that society is built on people agreeing to things or is society built on something altogether more violent? Right? I would say that society is built on class struggle as a Marxist and an anarchist simultaneously. Right? But someone else may have a different position. Right? But if there is a utopian a basic utopian sense of like humans kind of get together and do beautiful things, right? that like is structuring people's whole worldviews, then of course it would apply to psychedelics and they would come to this conclusion that all you really need to do is give people substances and then they'll stop fighting and the Garden of Eden will recreate itself at some person's house on the coast of Mayorca. [\[1:58:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7138s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Do you know what I mean? Like of course they're going to come to that position. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of how politics functions especially in a capitalist and imperial world, right? And so you here you have another project that you have to do an ideological critique of like where the these attitudes come from. Remember that it's a consumer society, right? Like I think a lot of the people in the Frankfurt school would have had a lot to say about this, right? Thinking of the psychedelic as a commodity, right? that it represents something that is divine that that it represents paradise and I would point everybody's attention to that right like why has the psychedelic been become seen as something that can create heaven on earth and why is heaven on earth something that involves no conflict and only peace and people just connecting without anything to stop them right like is there conflict in heaven. [\[2:00:01\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7201s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I ask all of you, right? Like there might be is would there have been conflict in the Garden of Eden? Some of it's canon actually. \[laughter\] I want to I wanted to just comment very briefly. You know, you said, oh well, you know, is Israelis are dancing for peace and obviously most people are dancing to, you know, celebrate or to participate in community or even just to exercise. But you know in the recent time period post October 77 7th many of us witnessed Israelis throwing raves dancing to block aid trucks into Gaza. Yes. And when those kinds of dance events are happening, when those kinds of raves are happening, it no longer is tenable to simply say that that that is the only way that these events and that this mode of expression and this music and medium is is used in society [\[2:01:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7262s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Is used in Israel is is weaponized. And so I just I really like the handshake idea. You know, we I've often talked about psychedelics as a hammer. You know, you can build a cathedral with it or home or you can knock a hole in somebody's head with it. These are very basic interpretations of technologies of the body and the mind. But I just wanted to comment on that. Yes. No, thank you for saying that. And of course, a lot of the people that have been saying this about the article and the responses know what you're saying is correct. Like know that dance music as it applied in various different ends. It's a bit obscene to deny it. I would also call attention to some people in the United Kingdom who are using dance music to do the exact opposite to try to blockade weapons being sent to Israel. [\[2:01:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7314s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And protests in the Americas against supply chains and ports as logistical centers sending weapons out to is sometimes it's more symbolic but I just want to call attention to that also that electronic music can also be applied in that direction and psychedelics in that direction. I welcome although legally I do not say I welcome people doing that. And just to take a quick look related to the topic of how different symbolic kind of stories about how psychedelics work and the nature of where political problems are coming from can lead to different ideas seeming like good ideas or not depending on the kind of version of what the problem is that you're seeing. [\[2:02:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7364s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I wanted to just if we could pull up a Twitter thread by Nardine Kaswani about the attempted and do you have the whole thread there as well like with the Yeah, I can scroll up or down wherever you want me to head I can head to the top. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just I thought this was very interesting for us when we were a friend sent this thread to us from July 2025\. So just over a year ago. It was interesting to us because we knew about these attempted Iawaska peaceuilding projects for many years. They've been you know this has been developing the field and I had not yet seen people who are involved in Palestine activism and like real organizing hear about it and react to it until this thread came out. [\[2:03:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7416s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So just I thought we could go over it quickly just to react to the tensions between these different stories that are kind of finding themselves in connection to psychedelics. So she begins this thread, a psychedelic peacebuilding nonprofit reached out to us because they'll be in New York City soon. Their mission is to get Palestinians and Israelis to drink Iwasa together to heal collective trauma. Yes, this is real and it's one of the most absurd forms of peace peacewashing we've seen. It mentions they published a 2021 paper. They put participants in a safe container, gave them psychedelics, and said it helped them move beyond fear, anger, and othering. And then she asserts, let's be clear, Palestinians are not suffering because of fear or misunderstanding. They are being bombed, starved, and displaced by a settler colonial regime. [\[2:04:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7462s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's not a trauma bond. That's genocide, apartheid, and colonization backed by weapons, not feelings. There, this entire framework flattens power dynamics. It presents colonizer and colonized as equally harmed, equally responsible, and equally in need of healing. Meanwhile, one side has one of the world's most lethal armies and US weapons, and the other buries its children. This is how peacewashing works. You strip away history, replace material struggle with emotional language, treat genocide like a group therapy issue, and package it all in a western friendly healing model. And we're close to the end here. They continues. They even said, "If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere." As if Gaza is just a tough interpersonal conflict that needs better vibes, not the site of a decadesl long campaign of siege, blockades, starvation, genocide, and military occupation. [\[2:05:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7514s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And then it ends with, "We do. We don't need Iawaska coexistence circles. They won't dismantle the checkpoints, lift the siege on Gaza, or return stolen land. You can't heal away a war crime. We need justice. We need liberation. We need decolonization, not tripping for freedom. So, I just curious if you have any thoughts about that. Well, I mean the comment tough interpersonal conflict. I mean, so I don't know if you've ever tried to use psychedelics to solve an interpersonal conflict, but it also doesn't do much of that, right? Like I don't know where these ideological preconceptions come from. Like I think they come from this Yeah, they come from this deep internal belief that they hold the magic substance. And I think that's mixed with more business or fundraising aspects of group leaders who want to get into a certain area to get funding for to expand their project and in this case to expand the psychedelic medicine therapy project into Israel into Europe into new markets outside of [\[2:06:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7575s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The US. There's that. And there's also, frankly, it reminds me of I used to hang out with men in fraternities when I was in that age group, which is more distant than I will freely admit, right? Like, and some of them would say at times like, "Oh, so and so needs to get laid and like that'll solve everything, right?" Frankly, it reminds me of that in some ways like, oh, you know, they just need to meet somebody and then they'll let go of these sorts of things that they're doing, right? Like there's this really bizarre need for this cure all that I think is quite core to how conservatives see the world. And I think it takes a lot of forms. I think that's partly what it is with something like this. Also, I will see say briefly there's the comment about fear and misunderstanding. [\[2:07:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7624s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I mean there is fear and misunderstanding. I won't deny that. But the fear and misunderstanding is also enabled by the vast inequalities that exist on the ground and like by the use of military power by the checkpoints by the constant harassment the screening by the air strikes by the fact that it's a part of daily life to think about killing the these other people the Palestinians on the ground by the propaganda. Of course there's fear and misunderstanding. Like I don't deny that. But to define the fear and misunderstanding without mentioning this other stuff. I mean like it plays into a fundamental misreading of what's happening that's of course intentional. [\[2:07:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7670s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's of course given to people so that they see themselves the as the heroes, right? And I use they vaguely in this case because I think it's also something that can be put onto activists who are against the Zionist occupation. And I think it's something that people need to be self-aware of in order to get away from this sort of conservative framing. Right? They being I would suppose people who see themselves as the heroes, right? Everybody wants psychedelics on their side. Like that's what I have to say. side. And it's a foil. Yeah. And it reminds me as well of in the United States, you know, the types of conservatives who have a big problem with critical race theory, which I know is also very has a long history in legal studies, but people who view it as, you know, the problem with race in this country is just a lack of trust [\[2:08:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7733s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Between communities and people an unwillingness to move on from the past instead of actually recognizing that the past is still alive with us today. that the inequalities of the material conditions and the oppression of some communities and not others is an ongoing situation that's giving rise to these feelings. And so to address the feelings as the source of the problem is to kind of be completely lost in terms of where what the actual underlying issue is. And it teaches people to not resist feeling powerless, right? So like why else would you why like because the refrain is just to move on because you have no control over this past. Yeah. Like exa exactly right. It's like fundamentally conservative as a position fundamentally like it discourages you from looking at something as ongoing. [\[2:09:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7785s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It discourages you from fully understanding what happened from positioning yourself to prevent it in the future. from stopping the effects from continuing in the present. It's fundamentally conservative. It erases things. That's the function is eraser. Yeah. And there's two more things I just want to because I know we're here in about an hour. If we have a few more minutes to get to two last things. I'd like to turn to the recent IOF MDMMA clinical trial find just because this is you know much in the United States much of the momentum behind MDMA as a medicine treatment for PTSD has been you know really pushed by the organization MAPS the multi-disiplinary association for psychedelic studies and who was which was founded by decades ago by in the 80s I believe by Rick Dolin and Rick Dolin specifically identified his mission as advancing MDMA [\[2:10:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7849s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) As a treatment in order to prevent a future Holocaust. That's what his kind of guiding star has been. So now for his project to be coming to fruition as a tool for treating soldiers that are engaged in an active genocide. I think it goes to highlight the ignorance of that project in terms of how it's being implemented. But did anyone else have any thoughts about this study or any context about it that you wanted to share? It's to my knowledge, you know, our outlet was the first to critique this notion that MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD was going to help at a societal level with peace and that I recognize that this is is specifically for PTSD and not the IASA circles, but that that somehow that psychedelics were going to have a structural effect on, [\[2:11:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7910s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You know, a generational occupation project and it was something that you know was critiqued and rejected and dismissed and yet here we are. I think that's the main thing that I would say. I mean these are studies that are ongoing and continued throughout the genocide the most recent genocide post October 7th. And so it really puts the question to, you know, who is receiving, you know, cutting edge treatments for PTSD, regardless of whether or not they, you know, have been proven to work. I have not once seen a PTSD study that was focused on on Palestinians in this context. [\[2:12:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=7956s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Does anyone else have anything to say? Yeah, I can the one bit of elaboration I wanted to kind of put on the MDMA assisted therapy results in the Israeli soldiers was just a little piece of history. This is kind of like an ongoing point in a timeline that has been a strategic play for the industry for a long time. One thing I reported in 2022 was kind of this long history of MAPS, specifically the organization founded in the 80s taking MDMA trials through the FDA. One of their main strategic goals was to shift the rights views on psychedelics and their main way to do that was to get the kind of integration between psychedelics and the military. [\[2:13:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8003s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And one of the first places they went for that was actually Nicaragua during a Nicaraguan civil war. And they actually had trials canled there. But in the wake of that, the next place they went was Israel. And I'll share my screen here. Can you all still hear me even though I'm off screen? Yeah. Okay, great. But Moshi Cutotler was one of the first people that MAPS pledged a large amount of money to do some of this research, $50,000\. And he was a former chief psychiatrist for the Israeli Defense Forces. And this was kind of a first node in their whole strategy to integrate psychedelics with the military. So, I just see this study and its results as some of this kind of continuing point along this timeline of that that long-term strategy and a form of washing. [\[2:14:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8055s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You hear about green washing, you hear about pink washing. I think this is its own thing like but with a kaleidoscope of colors. Do you wash tie-dye washing? Yeah. Something I want to say because I haven't said it so far is I think with psychedelics in this sense it's partly a question of an efficient use of resources and I think people who practice as in like people who work as care workers and as practitioners of this who facilitate this should also confront that one of the things in that Jerusalem Post article is that you don't really need that many sessions for this to have a deep effect on somebody and I think That's quite appealing for a state effort that doesn't really want to spend much money but wants to maximize results. [\[2:15:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8104s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The logic is very neoliberal in that sense. You know, low budgets, there isn't really a lot of time to spend with people. There isn't there aren't really a lot of resources. This treatment works very quickly, right? So, you know, just give it a bunch of money and then like you can get everybody to the point where they can be back into the trenches or they can be back at work really really fast and they don't ever have to think about their childhood trauma again. That's exactly why Lily just purchased the 5me they purchased the specifically the industry wants a very fast acting psychedelic. So with 5 MEO it's very quick versus when Compass Pathways they're going to be going for approval with psilocybin that's a whole day affair you know. [\[2:15:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8152s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. And there are only so many hospital beds, right? Yeah. Like and there I would just touch very briefly, we don't have a lot of time on biohacking, right? I think biohacking as a concept that you see the Silicon Valley billionaires and a trillionaire soon, if not now, talking about goes into this line as well. optimizing one's ability to do cruel things to be destructive by undercutting the psychological and emotional effects, right? Like that psychedelics become a form of optimizing the self, right? These you do workouts four times a week and then you take a bit of a kenamin, you take a bit of a psychedelics on your day off as your muscles are relaxing and then you're at optimal capacity, right? like I think the whole production chain is scaling out with these logics in mind and I would welcome people to say more about it. [\[2:16:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8209s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. One thing that what you just said brought up for me was the sort of structure of labor relation society the material conditions the political economy that we are subject to. you know, it causes strain, stress, distress, trauma, and you know, yeah, a neoliberal technocratic solution that you doesn't cost a lot of money and doesn't cost a lot of time, but is highly profitable. Yeah, psychedelics can be that, they will fund it. If it's direct brain stimulation, they'll do that. But you know the concept of that there's not enough care there's not enough hospital beds and yet you know a solution of rest and restoration of leisure has also been advanced as parallel in the awareness excuse me in the wellness space. [\[2:17:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8265s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It reminds me some of some quippy tweet that I saw some sometime recently that that essentially said that many vacation and resorts are essentially experiences and walkable communities, you know, and that you know, you go to an all-inclusive resort, you go down, there's the hot tub and there's the massage and there's the bar and there's the place to dance. And it's like that's only attractive because your only your own community that you're coming from is not walkable and is not enjoyable and does not provide adequate, you know, leisure, rest, restoration, recreation, you know, right? So like what we've hammered on quite frequently in this long discourse on you know psychedelics and society and the market and commodification and trauma and all of that is that you know if we spent some of these resources or more of these resources on on changing society to not [\[2:18:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8325s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Cause so much stress and distress and oppression. If we built some walkable communities that people actually want to live in, maybe we don't need highly profitable and technocratic brain solutions. And what's interesting about all of this is not that long ago to be shell shocked was to be a coward like in many different places, right? In Pakistan, in Canada, in Israel, in Germany, in Britain, if you were shell shocked, you were a coward, right? So what's wild about this is that so much of the stigma around mental illness has gone down, right? Which is something I support is that it's less of a an embarrassment to admit that you have mental health issues. But then you see what's mutated out of this is an idea that there's lost human capital here. Mia because people I need psychological support and then another position that arises so quickly of oh well you know I mean there's an [\[2:19:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8386s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There's an efficient way to get them back to functioning the way they should let's invest in human capital this way and then boom it's in the system that created the stigma in the first place like the world changes so quickly and to be aware of those changes requires dealing with the uncomfortable realities of how money is spent and where that money has come from and where it's not coming from, which is taxation and nationalizing resources that are held in private hunts. Yeah. 100%. And there's also been a real unequal normalization of mental illness in the sense that at least in our corner of the psychedelic field PTSD among veterans is given this like real platform and you know almost a sacredness like a kind of a fetishistic kind of quality to it. [\[2:20:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8441s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Whereas PTSD among, you know, for example, women who have been sexually assaulted, people raising concerns about how these treatments are going to affect those communities, they're, you know, mental health is used as a weapon to discount those concerns. So, it's a very unequal kind of it's like a selective normalization or a selective desigmatization of mental illness that I've seen. And but it also leads to some interesting alliances too, right? I mean, as I've recovered from sexual abuse in my own life. I'll be honest about that. I actually dealt with veterans at different points in ways that I did not predict, right? And those were very stable and caregiving relationships and we and they were based in support. [\[2:21:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8491s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I wish those people well, right? Like I would not have expected that at the beginning of those journeys. I'm sure they wouldn't have either, right? And you know like I say that partly I'm sure the audience members and some of the people here and some of the people who are watching in the audience members probably have had those experiences as well. It's quite unstable this and yes I also agree there is an implied hierarchy that's built around notions of patriotism and heroic duty. Yeah. and patriarchy I would say \[laughter\] as part of that complex. Absolutely. And yeah, thank you so much for, you know, all the time you've taken to unpack all of these very interesting, we only scratched the surface of a lot of this as, as you yourself have pointed out. And one thing I wanted to get at as we begin to wrap here is just the if you could speak to the way that you closed out your article because I found that very fascinating and in particular because the end of the piece getting back to what you were saying earlier about handshakes and how they can be used in [\[2:22:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8552s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Different directions. The end of the piece provides a vision of a future where music could be part of a reconciliation between different cultures. But you know that that won't be possible so long as Palestinians are remain oppressed and disenfranchised. So I was wondering if you could speak to that idea and your decision to end the peace in that way. Well, it's partly a self-care technique as you may have heard the concept of self-care, right? Like I've been challenged by many people in my life or as time has gone on in my own healing journey to not discount the possibility that things could be different. Right. And I held myself to account with this, right? Like just because there's a ridiculous Zionist position that everything is peace on the dance floor currently, I challenged myself in the conclusion. [\[2:23:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8605s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Is it possible for there to be peace on the dance floor? Just realistically on the face of it. And I had to answer to myself, well, Palestinians would have to have a lot more power than they do across the board and specifically the refugees, right? And then I thought to myself, well, that's not impossible, right? The material relationships would have to change, right? And that's where the conclusion came from is is the underlying reasons that there isn't peace on the dance floor, that there is not peace, love, unity, and respect. If those shift, then maybe as an output, and maybe plur on the dance floor helps shift the material relations. wrapping up with a little bit of Grochi too. [\[2:24:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8651s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I need to be open to that as a possibility, right? Like there is utopia, I think, as a possibility. And there is utopia that could come from this whole catastrophe that's unfolding in the Palestinian territories at the moment, right? And I include 48\. I include Israel proper within that. There is a possibility for a utopia. And I think losing track of that would mean that you almost give Zionists the ability to define peace on the dance floor. And I really try to prevent myself from ending this in a direction that's more dystopian because I think that there's also just I mean I'll be frank. I think there's too much dystopia in literature at the moment. [\[2:24:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8699s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think utopia needs to be more present in literature and I think the fact that utopia can arise from brutality and catastrophe I think is not often something that's taken very seriously and I wanted to at least give it a chance and when I drafted it I realized that it looked amazing the way it was and then I just went in and I edited it and I'm really glad that I did that like it could have easily I could have done something else and I'm glad that I didn't. I think we do need real grounded but hopeful narratives and that it's the only way to be well it's the only way to be Marxist at all because any postcist future is built on the ashes of the current system. [\[2:25:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8748s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so I really liked that there was this open door. And I would imagine that if there does come a day of some kind of a just peace in that region, there will be dancing and there will be music and I hope it's good music. Here's \[laughter\] my article. Yeah. Yeah. Read the article. Yeah. We'll include the link in the show notes. And since we have reached the end of our time today, Zenab, I just need to thank you again so much for coming to join us. And is there anywhere that you would like to shout out in terms of places that people can find you or anything you'd like to add at the end here? Yes. Okay. So my handle is Pakistani Pakistani. Pakistani in the anglicized form. [\[2:26:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8793s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's on Instagram, Tik Tok and Snapchat. You can email me. My Gmail is pakistan@gmail.com. Pakistanarchygmail.com and I'm a student at SOASS University of London. I'm in the law department and so shoot me a text, shoot me a message and we'll connect. Amazing. Thank you so much and yeah, it was very easy to find you because of your sharing of those handles. So, thank you for I'm really glad that we could use that to connect. Well, thank you again. Yeah, have a great rest of your day. Bye. See you. Thank you. Hope you all enjoyed that interview with Zanab. The next one we have for you after this break is going to be with Jane Migliera Bighgam and Artemis T. Douglas from The Needle about their recent reporting on the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and their partnership with McMaster University. [\[2:27:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8843s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Enjoy that one. Hey there, it's me again. I'm just back between interviews to talk to you more about our Patreon channel. Another thing you'll get at our five or $10 level is the bonus content that is tacked on to the end of any of our standard episodes. That's anywhere usually from about 20 minutes to over an hour of content tacked on to the end of our episodes. I just wanted to show you a recent clip from one that I had a lot of fun with. It was a kind of Jeopardy style Patreon pop quiz here. I'll just let it play through one of the questions so you can see what I'm talking about here. All right, let's go with 400\. All right, historic figures for 400\. This notorious psychedelic icon developed a video game that was released in 1985 called Blank Blanks Mind Mirror, a psychological simulation and party game where players rate personality traits on numerical scales to generate graphic mind maps while navigating role- playinging life scenarios. [\[2:28:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8905s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Beep. Who is Timothy Liry? That is correct. Timothy \[laughter\] Lir's mind mirror was the So yeah, we had a lot of fun with that one. And if you are a Patreon subscriber to this episode in particular, we actually have a little demo of this particular video game for you. I think Mike, Nishay, and Normie gave that a test run. So you can see that at the end of this episode. I'm Russell here with my colleague Nishay today and we're joined by some special guests. Returning from The Needle is Jane Migliera Bighgam, the managing editor at The Needle, as well as Artemis T. Douglas, the editor-inchief at The Needle. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, our pleasure. You released some interesting reporting recently on a group called the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine or SEGM. [\[2:29:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=8957s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I wanted to get our audience familiarized with this group because they're funding research that is going into anti-trans legislation and policy recommendations as you report in some of your recent reporting. And this is kind of a topic that we're interested in at Psymposia as well on the psychedelic side. Sort of like the ideologies of the funders that are kind of pushing research into the space and lobbying and policy recommendations and things like that. I think it's really important. So I wanted to talk to you all about SEGM itself just in general kind of to start with. Can you give us a little background on the group like when did they start? what's kind of the ideological aims of their project and what had they been involved in prior to your most recent research? [\[2:30:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9006s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) All right, so SGM, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, is a group that masquerades as a medical funding group, but which is in reality very much a pseudoscientific group. Their work is not taken seriously by the medical researchers or even the establishment at large. They're essentially a fringe group which seeks to promote anti-trans studies and virtually their entire public record goes towards that particular goal. This is what they're interested in. This is what they are funding and this is what they use their extensive war chest on. Most recently, they have become known for how they were funding Master University, a Canadian research institution into promoting a number of anti-trans studies and this had been the subject of controversy for several years. [\[2:30:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9059s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The cooperation had been cancelled by some of the researchers involved due to heat brought on. However, the terms of the agreement had never been made public, nor had the amount and there's also some ambiguity as to how much money had changed hands as a result of this. Because of our reporting, this information has been made to has been made publicly available as we have been attempting to get gain access to these records since last December and we've only now been able to release this. In addition, SCGM is I just want to dial in on their name. They say they're evidence-based gender medicine, but that that that title evidence-based is a misnomer. [\[2:31:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9105s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Everything about them is a misnomer. But if you look and in that article you popped up, if you want to pop it back up, we talk about this, but basically the recommendations, the system to grade evidence for medicine, if you look at other routine medicine and you look at transition medicine, a lot of various types of medicine are actually considered very low quality. But groups like SEGM take that from a professional term of art used among medical practitioners properly situated in the context and try to and in some cases successfully do weaponize that and saying oh it's low quality in a way that people misunderstand to mean oh there's no evidence of this. [\[2:32:37\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9157s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And we see that with the SEGM partnership with McMaster University. One such example is with their study into mistctomy which we can go into a little bit more but I want to drill in on this. The researchers said that they had low quality evidence that mctomies led to necrosis and death. When you read the actual details of the study, what it meant was there was no evidence that mctomies led to more necrosis or death. But they were able to frame it as like, oh, this lack of evidence is now evidence towards something that isn't happening. And so I think that that reveals the whole purpose of SCGM is to take the existing consensus and warp it towards really away from defending trans people and transition medicine. [\[2:33:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9208s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's actually worse than Artemis is letting on there. It's not they had they said that they had a high level it was high level of evidence regarding the claims thatctomies led to necrosis and death. However, if you dig down into the actual article in which they do this which is one of the other articles we have in reality they are saying that they have proven to a high standard of evidence that there is no link between masectomies and necrosis. They just declined to mention this in their abstract, which is the point in which most people will read it. And again, this is a very dense medical study. This is not something most people are going to read into unless they're a subject expert. So for the casual observer coming into this, they're going to think, "Oh, mystctomies lead to necrosis and death." [\[2:34:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9258s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) When even their own study refuted that claim. Yep. And a little bit more background on SCGM. They started in 2021\. Well, they started as a nonprofit in 2021\. They have a couple million dollars in their war chest right now according to our best guess based on their 990 filings and they have been branded as a quote unquote hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So hopefully that sets the stage. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And do they kind of front themselves as protrans or how do they like present themselves? That's a great question. If you look at their mission statement, they don't front as necessarily protrans, but pro-evidence, but they do it in a way that can confuse people. [\[2:35:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9311s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) If you look at their 990s, and I'll let I'm going to pull that up, and I'm going to let Jane answer, too. But if you look at their actual mission statement from their 990s, it's it'll kind of reveal that. But yeah, go ahead, Jane. Sorry. Essentially, they are trying to present themselves as a normal medical group with normal medical that's funding normal medical studies. However, however, they really don't have that reputation among the actual medical researchers. They are essentially just known as the anti-trans medical group by these groups. And this is a reputation they've had for effectively as long as they've existed. And are there when you're looking at their 990s, is there any hints as to who is funneling money into this group or where their kind of war chest is coming from? [\[2:35:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9358s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I wish it's not disclosed. They don't disclose their financials or their donor list. I mean, they do to the IRS, sure, but it's not publicly filed. So, we don't actually know, okay, how and who is funding this group. We just know that they have a relative amount of funding. That's kind of insane. So if you look at the summary and anyone can fact check this if you go to the 990 either through the IRS or through you know ProPublica's nonprofit explorer that that archives most 990s the and I'm quoting from their 990 here SCGM's aim is to promote safe compassionate ethical and evidenceinformed health care for children adolesccents and young adults with gender dysphoria and that is the boilerplate that they put on all their 990s. [\[2:36:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9416s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You have to remember that evidenceinformed me and honestly I think and it's my opinion that their definition of safe, compassionate and ethical are all going to be slanted towards cis people's experiences. And so what I mean by that is they're going to look at cis comfort and cis experiences as the default. And so anything that deviates from that is not safe in their view or at least that's how they act. And they conduct just based on some of the reporting that I've read from you all these kind of like systemic reviews that often will purport low evidence or something. [\[2:37:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9461s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But isn't that kind of an issue in the trans healthcare space in general is that there hasn't been a lot of like legitimate or large-scale research done and so all they can do is like summarize these things up as low evidence and then push that out or something like does that play into how they report information? Yes. A lot of the studies in partic I in particular a lot of the studies regarding the use of estrogen and progesterone are highly outdated at this point. For example, many much of the database on the use of estrogen prior to a couple years ago was essentially a batch of studies done in the 90s, a drug which called Promearin, which is a very different compound to the drugs given to trans women today. So yes, we don't have a lot of these big studies analyzing the effects of estrogen on trans women. [\[2:38:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9510s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This isn't because there's like no this isn't because like nobody's particularly interested in this. Quite the opposite. In fact, the fact is the matter is there have not been these largecale research efforts to document the effects of these drugs leads to a lot of misinformation around them. For example, a lot of the trans women I know have a mountain of anecdotal evidence showing that the drug progesterone when given in conjunction with estrogen promotes breast growth. there. This is a claim that is generally disregarded by doctors, not because there are studies to the contrary, but because nobody has really bothered to test this until very very recently. I believe there was a study earlier this year or last year that coming out which covered this topic. [\[2:39:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9555s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) However, this is not a level of evidence that most doctors actually look at and as a result, most doctors are unwilling to prescribe progesterone for the topic of breast growth because they h they just don't know. And so this lack of evidence on the protrans side and lack of documentation in a medical context leads to a lot of error leads to a lot of errors on the fact of doctors and eventually leads to trans people themselves having to take up the mantle of figuring this out all on their own very often with zero budget. Yeah. And before we kind of jump into the specifics of the reporting on SEGM and McMaster, I just wanted to turn it over to Nishay in case they had any questions or anything about SEGM here at the beginning. [\[2:40:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9602s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was making me think of like organizations like Autism Speaks where it's like the framing is technically like we're trying to help autistic people, but in all of their perspective and everything they're putting out, at least historically, I haven't kept up with that organization, but historically, it's all been coming from a neurotypical vantage point as like the normative perspective and trying to like fix people who are deviating from that norm. So there's a long history of I think this kind of you know on a surface read the rhetoric is looking like it's helping but when you dig deeper into the actual you know where they're directing their energies it's from this very kind of like hostile perspective. [\[2:40:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9648s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So I just I was thinking about just connections to other historical examples. I know that they are generally regarded as a hate group by many autistic advocates. I don't know enough to comment on the analogy between them and SGM. And I can say that your read is is somewhat correct. To be honest, I haven't kept up with watching Autism Speaks either. So, I don't know how much that they're actively funding studies either now or historically that support their goals, whereas SEGM's entire existence has been that. And so I think that there there is a salient comparison to be made there, but it is the mechanisms by which the two groups have acted might be a little bit different. [\[2:41:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9693s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. No, that makes sense. I think part of the reason I was just interested in raising the connection is it points to the real importance of developing literacy around, you know, reading beyond the surface level representations of what organizations say they're doing because I think it can be very easy to slip into kind of thinking that this is a good thing if you're not kind of alert to that possibility. And in kind of getting into the specifics here and jumping into like your most recent reporting on McMaster and CGM, can you talk about some of the kind of topline takeaways from this reporting and like what you found around the funding for McMaster University, what was being funded there and how kind of how much control SEGM was given over these research projects. [\[2:42:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9742s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) All right, I'm going to go into that. There's really two different major findings that we found in this. The majority of the documents themselves are actually fairly uninteresting. They do a lot of contract negotiations like figuring out, hey, how much am I getting paid? There's a bit of negotiation back and forth. That's actually the majority of this. However, we highlighted two really important things that we think that the general audience needs to take away from this. Firstly, how in November of 2021, SEGM was saying that their priorities had shifted and that they're now going for to be funding studies not just on things related to adults, but actually I'm going Yeah, good. Good on you. You highlighted our priorities are shifting and we m may want to move on straight to systematic reviews of key interventions of social transition, puberty blockers, cross- sex hormones, non-genital surgeries, gen and genital surgeries for those under 26. [\[2:43:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9799s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Now, I want to point out that this was in November 21\. This was a fringe talking point even at the time that this happened and even among anti-trans proponents. Again, the at this time the most common argument around trans healthcare was do whatever you want with your body but keep my kids out of it. That was a very common line even among Republican politicians. So the fact that a major medical group is willing to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at studies that go that explicitly target for example surgeries which are go for those under 26 aka adults is a notable shift and it shows that this it shows that there's some amount of fore planning on of this by these anti-trans groups in that the policies that are going to be advocated for a couple of years down the line were being plotted out as far back as 2021. [\[2:44:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9858s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And if you scroll back to the bottom of the very bottom of the article right now, we can see that I believe as of June, a ban on health, many basically all forms of trans healthcare for youth under 26 is now recorded in the platform of the Texas Republican Party. Seeing as the seeing that as the Texas Republican party has a massive amount of power on the state, it is not unreasonable to assume that there will be a formal ban on trans healthcare for those under 26 in the next electoral cycle, that being the 2027 to 2028 legislative session. Yeah. In all likelihood, Texas is going to ban healthcare for many forms of adults. and this was already being laid out in 2021. [\[2:45:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9905s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It showed a level of planning which has generally not been ascribed to these groups. I'm going to go on to the second finding from this. If you go up to where they start discussing the actual terms of the agreement, if you go back a little down in appendix A of their contract, McMaster hands over editorial control to SEGM. Quote, the research team will conduct systematic reviews of the literature and the other evidence synthesis agreed between the groups using the highest possible methodological standards in full consideration of the needs in SGM and the nature of the evidence available in these contexts of interest. The re research team will update SEGM about their progress on a bi-weekly or monthly schedule as needed. Wherever the team research team needs to use innovative methodological approaches to conduct any stage B evidence synthesis, they will obtain approval from SCGM before proceeding. [\[2:45:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=9955s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I'm not going over all the quotes just because there's a lot of them, but in total, it means that SEGM can veto the changes which McMasters researchers are using to create these studies. In effect, this means SEGM has total editorial control over the research created by McMaster University regarding these subjects. And for those who aren't familiar, a study, an academic study like this is comprised largely, if not entirely, depending on who you talk to, of its research questions and its methods. And if you look at the disclosure of the mistctomy study we previously covered, the McMaster researchers very clearly stated that they collaborated with SEGM on their research question. [\[2:46:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10006s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So that was already known. this document that we got as part of our Freedom of Information request over in Canada and what Jane just underlined, the fact that the methods were subject to a essentially a veto by SCGM means that there was no aspect of this study under in its composition, its execution that would be meaningful in terms of determining its direction. that SEGM didn't have direct control over. And I really want to underscore the line in full consideration of the needs of SEGM. That is a very strong line to be putting in contractual language and yet it is there. [\[2:47:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10052s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And have you looked into whether is it the McMaster IRB that's overseeing the trials or who are the IRBs involved in these studies that are getting funded? Do you know? That's a good question. You know, I haven't looked at that. It might be worth just looking into. The reason I ask is because some of the really sketchy psychedelic research that has happened was not accepted by university IRBs and then they went to for-profit IRBs that are kind of a bit more paytoplay than some university IRBs. So that was why it was on my mind. So from kind of like an explain it like five perspective, just for people who aren't like immersed in academic research or anything like that, how abnormal is this to seed this kind of control over to the funding organization? [\[2:48:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10102s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Very a lot of these organizations, for example, the universities, it's not unheard of that universities will take funding in order to cover a specific subject. That happens all the time. However, universities normally have much poor editorial control over the final products which their researchers are putting their names on. And yet, in reality, this didn't happen with SGM. SGM effectively has a veto on all research funded through this cooperation. So, this is not the norm. This is a very large exception and it would explain why they were why McMaster University and SCM were so reluctant to release this information to us. It's why it took what eight months from us requesting these documents actively receiving them. [\[2:49:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10152s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I want to say that it wasn't just Mc like the process of getting the documents wasn't just McMaster. McMaster flat out denied the records all of them. We had to go through the Ontario Privacy Commission and basically do an appeal and our case worker there was wonderful and essentially, you know, needled them into giving us the documents over this process. But it took her that long to convince them to reverse their decision basically. And so it's one of those things where yeah, the documents don't look great for McMaster because it's not a standard process. And I want to drill down on what Jane just said. It's it is very common for research to be funded through university foundations and such, but they didn't even have that level of abstraction here. [\[2:50:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10206s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It wasn't, oh, SCGM send us a check to our university foundation and we'll research this, you know, in broad terms. It was send a check to our department and we'll research under these contractual terms. And that's a very different arrangement where the money for the research and the control over its methods and its research question were all SEGM. And I think another thing that's important to stress is that SEGM is and has been for years has been branded as a hate group. So, it's one of those things where it would be possible to do your due diligence on the group that's funding you to do very specific research. [\[2:50:51\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10251s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I can't speak to whether or not those researchers did their due diligence and were okay with the trade-off or not. I wasn't there. What I can speak to is that as someone who has performed academic studies who have that have been IRB approved myself, I've done three. I'm working on a fourth right now. If a nonprofit were to say, "Hey, can you help us with this research?" I would have very clear firewalls. If I said yes, it would be like, "Okay, yes, I can help with this research, but here's the line." And I would have, if possible, someone in addition to my IRB, someone at a different university review my protocol to make sure that I'm not overly biasing my own study from the get-go. And I think that that level of care is is maybe abnormal as well, but it is it's very important to be very careful when you're taking these industry sponsored studies that you're not biasing your own science from the get-go. [\[2:51:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10307s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I just want to underline that. And just to the specifics of that funding, you all reported that they were the McMaster researchers for these research studies were paid over $300,000 Canadian, which is over $215,000 US to conduct some of this research. Can you give me some specifics on what research they actually conducted and how it has been used since it was published? Artemis, do you want to focus on the MCM study considering we did a deep dive into that one study? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good call. So the mistctomy study itself is kind of a it's kind of the best case that we can point to but it's also a worst case scenario and what I mean by that is it has been cited by both the federal government and in private medical associations and through that sighting by private medical associations has been indirectly cited on the state level here in the United States. [\[2:52:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10368s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so the HHS report cites it, the federal government cites it, and in the passage of Oklahoma, I believe it was HB3586, the bill I colloqually call the right to abuse a trans kid. They call it the right to raise act. Basically, it removes consideration of a child's being trans and being abused around that that being trans, being forced to be sis, as something that case workers can step in. And so now that now unsupportive parents of trans kids in the state of Oklahoma have full reign to do whatever they want, even if it's abuse, to try and make their kids stay sis because of this bill on the debate floor. [\[2:53:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10414s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I watched this live on the debate floor for this bill right before it passed. The Oklahoma legislature, one of their legislators cited the ASPS position statement, which in turn cites this SEGMC study. Yeah. And so it's one of those things where the exact impacts of these studies is hard to trace because they just snowball so quickly. And we know this much about this one study, but we also know that Miss SEGM has been funding more than just this one study. We just know about the McMaster partnership thanks to grassroots activism that got it cancelled and made it enter the news cycle in a way that was easy for us and others to kind of watch, right? [\[2:54:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10468s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so that's the big thing is like we don't actually it's not in the public record how much more they've done other than what they put in their 990s which is anyone can check those. I mean they funded multiple systematic reviews and it the language implies that they had more than just the McMaster partnership but we don't know that either way and they've funded multiple open access publications as well that they didn't necessarily fund the creation of. So, but yeah, dialing it back to the mctomy study, this anti-trans science or really pseudocience sits alongside that relative der of accurate transition medicine science like Jane was mentioning earlier to create something that snowballs into lots of negative effects really fast. [\[2:55:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10518s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It reminds me as well of there's one of the leading purveyors of psychedelic pseudocience, the multi-disiplinary association for psychedelic studies or maps. They or the founder of that Rick Dolin has said very openly that you know that they don't do science, they do political science with a goal of changing the culture and that's kind of like their orientation. So it sounds like that's kind of similar here. Like there's a preconceived outcome in mind and there's reverse engineering to how can we create the trappings of legitimate science in order to manufacture that outcome. They're aren't as open as it open about it as that other group you just mentioned, but the end result is the same. Yep. And I want to underline that they to kind of give an idea of how they're able to mechanisms by which they do that. [\[2:56:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10571s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Since their founding they have been run by academic named Robert D'Angelo he is psychoanalyst and I'm and in his own publications as an academic there's one that he puts very front of center on his own CV kind of here's my academic bio website that most academics have some version of called and I kid you not it's called quote trans is not the new gay end quote and I read that article. And in that article, he basically excoriates his own industry, his own field of academic study, psychoanalysis, for its historical abuses and conversion therapy against gay people and then uses that critique to say that supporting trans people is the same thing. that somehow supporting that trans people exist and you know not just [\[2:57:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10632s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Affirming us but helping us get to where we want to be and all of that is somehow the same thing as conversion quote unquote therapy violence and I think that that particular article is very revealing of the moves that groups like SGM regardless of like you know Robert D'Angelo could quit tomorrow and he could no longer be the president of SCGM that mechanism I think is still there of misdirecting actual critique and actual histories of harm to justify further harm if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so you all are kind of heavily on the beat of SEGM. Is that something that you will continue to follow into the future and are there things currently in motion that you are looking at for the future of SEGM and what they're working on right now? [\[2:58:01\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10681s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yes. Yes, we are still have we still have a number of open questions about how yes, we know that they're funding a ton of studies and we know they have a ton of funding, but the details of this are still quite obscure. We believe that McMasters University, McMaster University's cooperation with them is simply the tip of the iceberg and there's and that there is more out there to be found. We are still looking for this and we are still accepting any tips regarding this connection. A lot of some studies that were made public through them have this acknowledged in their documents. Others don't. We also don't know where their money is coming from because they it's millions of dollars over the last half decade that is essentially unaccounted for in its funding. [\[2:58:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10726s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We don't know where that's coming from. And finding that out is going to be a major part of identifying where the funding for these anti-trans studies is coming from. this information is not public but we are actively looking for it that we are. Yeah, that's really interesting and that I would love to see that come to fruition because we in the sort of psychedelic reporting space are lucky enough that weirdly the funders are loud and proud of what kind of money they are putting behind the kind of ideological research that they're doing. So we have had kind of the opportunity to track a lot of these funders and their ideologies directly. But that's really interesting that it's very much behind that sort of opaque wall in the space that you all are covering. Yeah, for sure. I do think it's interesting that whoever is funding SEGM and SEGM themselves have put up this wall because a lot of times anti-trans groups are a little bit maybe not loud and proud, but as you've said, but they're a little bit more like yeah, [\[2:59:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10788s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Of course we're funding this. like they're a little bit more obvious about what they're doing. And I think that the reason for the wall is likely because it does allow SCGM a certain level of ability to attempt at being like that that that appearance. I'm not saying they're succeeding, but you know, not having their funders be obviously anti-trans actors does let them, you know, pretend that they're, you know, a neutral scientific advisory board and they're really not. And I think that could be why the wall is there. But yes, we'll keep investigating and kind of see what we can come up with. Yeah, seems like there's a clear strategic play there for why they would I do want to I do want to emphasize the strategy of that wall. a lot. [\[3:00:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10838s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It used to be that being anti-trans was just a strictly right to farright position. This is again this might be shocking to people who don't remember what the attitude was around being trans a decade ago, but the widespread anti-trans hysteria is a shockingly new phenomenon, especially as it spread beyond the right wing. For example, a lot of the anti-trans bias in the New York Times, for example, is is again a fairly recent phenomenon. It used to be much more tolerant in this regard and the work of New York Times a organization which presents itself as neutral has been a major player in spreading the anti-trans hysteria beyond the right wing and towards more centrist and even some and even increasingly some left-wing figures. [\[3:01:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10884s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So having some groups that that have the kind of neutral pres presence helps to spread the panic and I believe that SEGM is using similar tactics. I also agree with that assessment because using the New York Times example, a lot of their journalism or whatever you want to call it has been cited in things like Supreme Court cases that have and other court cases that have undermined our rights and our civil liberties. And so if you look at that and you say, okay, I think that's a mechanism that SEGM is trying for by pretending to be this neutral entity. They don't only launder into a kind of a discourse, you know, across ideologies, but they also launder into the world of evidence, which is their whole game. [\[3:02:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10932s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Strategically, it's why the ASPS was, you know, it's maybe not why, but a success of that strategy that the ASPS, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, was willing to site the McMaster mastctomy study funded by SCGM. And so yeah, I that is very much that play acting at neutrality lets them do more than if they didn't have it. Yeah. Well, that really, you know, aligns with our experience, you know, in the New York Times as a group that has been targeted in the New York Times with a bunch of lies. And just seeing the way that that article I mean the journalist of that article Rachel Newer, one of the two writers was has been open about the fact that she was shopping for people who would have a specific perspective against us and you know only looking for that predetermined perspective and but like because this is the New York Times and it's seen as the paper of record it's not just in Supreme Court you know [\[3:03:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=10994s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Context it also ends up in places like Wikipedia. So these lies about our organization and us as individuals are then laundered into the you know status quo objective perspective on things. And this is just ultimately a consequence of the state of profound inequality that exists in the society today because billionaires have the levers to pull to decide to steer society in a specific direction and they can manufacture performances laundering, you know, consensus perspective when it's actually just some people at the top really want things to be steered in a certain way. Exactly. [\[3:03:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11039s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Well, as we come up kind of on the end of our time here, is there any like major takeaways that you all took away from the reporting that you produced or even like the process of reporting this? I know it was a long time coming. You had a lot of great experience it sounds like with the Canadian kind of freedom of press junk like outlets and things like that with the caseworker and stuff. I'm more familiar with the US side of that, but that's really interesting that Canada kind of has the same thing going. What are your kind of big general takeaways from the reporting that you all were able to just produce? Just how different the process of creating studies that lead to anti-trans conclusions. Just how different those that process is from the process behind the studies that release information that has protrans. [\[3:04:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11086s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The protrans side it's much more standard. It's much more regimented in the typical me in the typical manner of the field and it leads to results that lead to say transition is effective for the people who want it. By contrast the all the studies that have anti bias are so obviously rigged from the start that it's very clear that they had to rig it from the start in order to come to the conclusions they did. And once you dig into the process by which these things were made, it becomes obvious that these were not created with the be with the full scientific rigor you would expect of medical studies. Absolutely. And I think really it's important I want to say that the entire anti-trans panic is is largely manufactured and the way that actually you describe Neshi as the it's you know a few billionaires and their pals putting their levers on public [\[3:05:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11148s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Discourse and while we don't know exactly which billionaire or pal or actor is funding SEGM we do know that they have millions of dollars and have had millions of dollars come in most of the years that they have existed. And that money doesn't come from nowhere. And so really, not only is anti-trans science obviously, as Jane is putting it, in many cases, obviously rigged from the start, it's also motivated from the start. And I think that's a very important thing to walk away with is like, okay, this study says something negative about trans people or about transition medicine, who funded it and why is a really important question that people need to ask and have some media literacy around around these topics. [\[3:06:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11196s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I would say it also reflects just the classic fascist play of, you know, creating a scapegoat to distract attention from the real sources of the problems in society. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I do that then. Yes, there I want to comment on that. Yes, there's the aspect of the fascist playbook of distracting from issues of society. However, that doesn't mean that the people pushing it don't actively believe it. And I think that's a trap that a lot of people covering this from an outside perspective fall into. They think, oh yeah, they don't believe it. So it's not really like, again, they'll substitute it, but they're going to keep targeting trans people because they believe that trans people deserve to be targeted. [\[3:07:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11242s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yes, that is circular reasoning. I acknowledge that. But they are going to keep doing it because they believe it is just. whether or not the tactics actually work, they're gonna it's going to keep they're going to keep they're going to keep hammering this particular point and people who recover this have to take that into account. Absolutely. I think that just is if you look at not to make it all about one man because it's not I it's not just Robert D'Angelo but if you look back at that trans is not the new gay study in the context of what Jane just said it shows that he's very convinced of what he's doing and that what he's doing is ethical and promoting safety, compassion, and evidence when in fact he's not. [\[3:08:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11292s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) He's promoting a normative cis supremacist worldview, but he doesn't I would say just based on that one output, he thinks he's, you know, waging an ethical fight. And I think that people have to, as Jane said, contend with just because it's, you know, motivated by distracting from actual failures in society and promoting fascism doesn't mean that the foot soldiers doing that promoting aren't bought in. Oftentimes they are. Right. Right. Yeah. There's all those overlapping interests, whether it's distraction or true belief, they're all sort of using one another to end up in this space where we're at right now. Absolutely. Yes. Well, at the end here, Nishay, anything else that you'd like to ask or say before we kind of wrap up? Well, just say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your amazing research and also for taking all that time to, you know, dig into the trenches to and to report out so that people can be more informed. [\[3:09:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11349s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I think, you know, the more that the kind of connections across these various fields like trans medicine and psychedelic medicine can be brought into the open, the more that different communities can rally and support one another through this very difficult time that we're in. I want to specifically add on that point because we don't know if this is true regarding SGM in particular, but a lot of people pushing the anti-trans medicine arguments are a lot of times pushing the kind of pushing the psychedelics are good for like a right-wing perspective arguments and very often these things happen to overlap. For example, Jordan Peterson being a prominent example of this. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I'll just put a brief plug for our psychedelic conversion therapy series that is in the process of coming out over the course of the week that we're recording that that covers a lot of those dynamics in detail. [\[3:10:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11402s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And yeah, it's just it's this thing that we're seeing more and more often right now is the same forces that are rolling back protections on LGBTQ rights and rolling back restrictions on conversion therapy bans are often the same people who are showing up at the White House for executive orders promoting psychedelics. And that's a very concerning mismatch of ideologies there in my opinion that we there was certainly things going on in that regard throughout like history of psychedelic research, but there's like this weird spearhead happening right now of this convergence of like the Christian right with psychedelics. I just saw another book published today about Christianity and psychedelics. Like the this seems like a big publishing thing like that's happening. [\[3:10:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11447s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But yeah, all of these kind of more right leaning forces are very much embracing psychedelics. And if you look back over kind of the history of a lot of our reporting, that's something that we've kind of talked about as a focus in the psychedelic industry over time, a strategic focus in their lobbying efforts and their like funding acceptance efforts was to court the rightwing because they saw that as their potentially biggest adversary. They're like they saw the kind of mainstream society sees us as like leftist hippies. So we need to shift to curing veteran PTSD to accepting money from people like Rebecca Mercer and things like that. So it's been a very conscious effort on the part of the psychedelic industry to court those forces. [\[3:11:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11494s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. That explains how the public perception of psychedelics shifted so quickly over the course of 2020\. Yeah. Yeah. Well, kind of in the end here, if we want to scale back just a little bit, do you all want to give a plug for The Needle here and kind of tell us what you're all about and what you got coming up in the future? Sure. The Needle is a trans news outlet. We f with a heavy focus on investigative an investigative journalism and cultural coverage. We've been pursuing these things since our the very founding of our organization last year, and we are actively looking for more funders to continue funding what we do. things for trans people are actively deteriorating at a rapid pace to the point where many of the most prominent people in trans advocacy are if not leaving the United States actively planning to do so if XYZ red line is crossed. [\[3:12:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11548s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This is a very difficult time to work in this field in large part because everybody's scared. Everybody's kind of hunkering down and a lot of our core audience that being trans people does not have a lot of expendable income which with which they would use to fund it. Our reader base to funer base is a lot smaller than many other outlets with similar reach for this reason. That is why we are calling on anybody who can fund our research, fund our investigation and fund our culture coverage to do so. We need the support of the public. This would help immensely in order to get this information out there. Yeah. And I al I also want to throw out we are specifically looking for an underwriter for an Irish expansion of our coverage. [\[3:13:16\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11596s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We're calling it the Ireland beat because Ireland is in the process of negotiating and drafting a new model of care for transition medicine that will determine what trans people in Ireland have for probably the next decade. and very few there's really only one trans really it's an LGBT publication in Ireland and we want to bring our bias for us approach of trans reporting buy and from trans voices to back to Ireland I've done some reporting on Ireland already yeah if anyone is willing to organizationally underwrite an Irish beat to make sure that the fight against trans medicalism in Ireland is covered in trans voices. [\[3:14:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11646s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We're open to talks as well. I do want to add one last point on Ireland in particular because it is a topic of immigration for a lot of trans people from the US who are looking as I said a lot of trans people are leaving the United States in rapid numbers and Ireland is one of the most common destinations there. So having coverage there mean having coverage in Ireland means having coverage of where trans people are going increasingly. So that's going to be a very important beat to cover. And having lived in Ireland for about a year, the Irish trans community that that exists is very vibrant and active and they deserve to have, you know, good journalism as well that is by and for trans people. [\[3:14:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZasIOH73M&t=11696s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so, yeah, we're looking for anyone who wants to partner with us on building an Irish beat. You'll do a lot of good impact and yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's great info and I didn't realize that about Ireland, that that was such a destination for people leaving the United States. So, that's really important. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your work. I really appreciate all the reporting that you all do and it's always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. I would love to have you on in the future. Yeah, same. This was great and I appreciate both of you for bringing us on and talking to us today. Yeah. Yeah. Our pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you.