[00:00:01] Luke: Do you remember the moment that you had the realization that the world was not as it seems? What was your first conspiratorial exposure?

[00:00:19] Ben: Yeah. My first conspiratorial exposure was not the moment where it actually hit me. I was into Alex Jones and William Cooper around 2001. It never made me want to go deep down a rabbit hole. I was like, "Wow, that's interesting. Oh wow." The Reichstag Building all the way back to Rome and these false flags, that's wild.

[00:00:45] But I never knew how to park it in a way that was meaningful to me until 2007, I think it was June or July. A friend posted this film called Zeitgeist on Facebook, and he was just like, "Take a peek. You won't be the same after this." And I was like, "Huh, I'm going to take mushrooms tonight and watch that." And I did.

[00:01:07] Luke: Oh boy.

[00:01:08] Ben: And I think the combination of the mushrooms and the film-- and for those who may not know, Zeitgeist was a conspiracy film, but it started with the Christ myth. Basically, it expanded from there, and it was breaking down the idea of like, was Christ ever even a person? Is this just astro theology in a different allegory?

[00:01:38] And then from there to 9/11, and then from 9/11 to RFID chips. So it went from ancient history to not long-ago history, to the potential near future. And that was the moment where, by the end of the film, not because of the conspiracy, but it was because the soundtrack was dope-- his name wasn't in it. The only credit at the end was zeitgeistmovie.com.

[00:02:06] I didn't know if this was a single person or an entire movement, trying to wake people up. Didn't ask for my email address. Didn't ask me to pay anything. It superseded all of those red flags that I'm being sold something. And it felt like, whoa, this feels like just a gift, like somebody, or some group wants me to wake up from a hypnosis.

[00:02:28] And the mushrooms really helped drive that into my psychological core. And by the end of it, I was a filmmaker. I'd never done film before. Not a demo, reel, nothing. I've done audio engineering because I was in a band for years. ACID Pro, Sound Forge, Finely Pro Tools and stuff like that.

[00:02:46] But I was like, "I'm a filmmaker now, and I'm going to make a film that's going to do what this film almost did." So instead of just being in the comment section and saying, "You should have talked about chemtrails or blah, blah, blah." And giving those opinions. I was like, "No, I'm just going to make the film I think he could have made. But maybe he couldn't have because he just did him, and I'm going to do me."

[00:03:11] I sat down in front of a computer. I spent $2,000 on the laptop. My brother helped me get some cracked software. I started stealing footage from everywhere and started figuring out how to make film and put pieces together with music. There was a lot of messiness, but six months later I had this film called Esoteric Agenda. And that was the very beginning of 2008.

[00:03:36] So I watched the film. Six months later, in the beginning of 2008, I have this film launched. And I didn't even really put an ending to it. It was like a stream of consciousness. And people were like, when are you going to finish this film? I'll buy a thousand copies. And I was like, "Copies of what?" "Make a DVD" And I was like, "Okay."

[00:03:52] So I finished the film, and I did what I wanted to do. I didn't set out to make a conspiracy film. I set out to do a twist ending film. Because I was like, where's the void in this field? I've never seen a film on conspiracy that actually ends super hopeful.

[00:04:07] So I wanted to make a twist-ending film that's like, dude, now that I destroyed your probably conventional view of reality and how authority works and what their intentions are, now I'm going to show you that none of that stuff is more powerful than you or a single human being if you unlock your real gifts.

[00:04:26] And so I did a twist-ending film, because Fight Club was one of my favorite. I was like, "Oh, you faked me out." All right. I love those twist-ending films that truly fake me out. Not just for the sake of fake out, but like, oh, there's a deep Buddhistic underlying thing in Fight Club besides all the macho, shirt-off fighting type of stuff.

[00:04:47] So I was like, "I want to do that in film." I did it. I made the film, and people were like, "I'll buy 1,000 copies for you." And I was like, "I'll give you a super discount then." So I started printing off my Dell computer all these DVDs. Destroyed my computer, so I had to start going to-- I forget what it was. It wasn't CD Baby. It was somewhere else where they would just mass print DVDs.

[00:05:11] So I started mass printing the DVDs, and people weren't buying one at a time. They were buying 1,000 at a time. So this is the first time that I ever made $50,000 in a single year, and I did so in two months. And I was like, "Geez." But people were then like, "You changed my way of seeing reality. I can't unsee this now."

[00:05:30] And a few of them were like, "I left my family. I ran off into the woods, and I'm going to wait this thing out. Thank you for waking me up." And I was like, "What have I done?" Okay, I can't take all the responsibility for that, but I would email back and I'd be like, "Please make amends with your family. Say you had a scare. You need them. We need community. We need the people that love us. What do you really think you're waiting out? What if I'm full of shit?"

[00:06:00] And so then people were like, "Ben, I love the last 15 minutes of the film where you empower us. Can you make an entire film like that?" And I was like, "I'll make an entire film almost like that. I'm still going to point the finger back within, so we're taking accountability for circumstances." So I made a film called Kymatica, and that made even a bigger splash. That won the New York Independent Film Festival of 2009.

[00:06:25] And I was like, "What's happening here?" You guys know these are conspiracy films I'm putting out, right? This shouldn't be going gangbusters like this. I had no idea what virality meant. This was before YouTube. It was Google videos. But I followed the thread and my band started getting far more people showing up at our shows.

[00:06:44] And the audience started really turning into a niche audience where they were-- I would then bring my DVDs. We'd sell DVDs and CDs, and the band was making a bit more money, and I was like helping with the gas when I would make a lot of money on DVDs. And then people were like, "Hey, travel around the world. Let's start doing speaking engagements. We'll book you all over Australia, all over Europe, all over South America, all over North America."

[00:07:11] And by saying yes to that moment, that deep dive moment of taking mushrooms and watching Zeitgeist, it opened up this brand new path that was skyrocketing in a way that music wasn't for me. So I realized I touched a nerve, and I had to deeply consider, what was that? What was it that hooked people so much?

[00:07:32] And I realized that story is the most ancient technology that shapes culture, transforms minds, puts you in a feeling space, simulates a reality that there's lower risk because you're just in the simulation of it. And film is an advanced technology by which you channel story that hits more centers. It's audiovisual. You have sound design. You have soundtrack, then you have your words.

[00:08:01] And not just the things that you're saying, but how you say it, how you use your voice, the pacing of it. It's a really interesting technology that now has a whole science around it called neurocinema. We can talk about that later. It's fascinating. But film and story shapes your neurology. It shapes your mind.

[00:08:20] It tells you when to be in a certain brainwave, when to ask a certain question, when to get hit with a certain piece of information. You're shaping a one hour, two hour experience in somebody's life that they said yes to. So there's the placebo effect in action as well. And if you do it right, if you're not just making ablutions and proclamations, but you're asking questions and you're showing that the narrator isn't omniscient but has some questions too, then you handhold people through this experience.

[00:08:52] And by the end of it, they can't see reality the same way. So that was what turned me in this direction that I'm on now. It wasn't necessarily conspiracy, but conspiracy, like psychedelics, was very, very powerful tool. You challenge people. People don't want to think that their conclusions about how the world operates, they don't always want that to be challenged.

[00:09:16] And when you do in a way, you're triggering something inside them. But if you can offer a solution that you were more powerful, then all of a sudden, even if they don't factually know how to put it all together, they feel like, oh, I need to question my reality a lot more and I need to question my own power.

[00:09:36] And what does that mean? That I have more agency. That I actually have a role to play in this. I'm not just a meek, one in 8 billion people where my story barely matters. There's something archetypal happening here. So that was my gift, mushrooms and Zeitgeist. And it put me on this path where I started sharing the same kinds of moments with other people. I don't know how I even got here to be perfectly honest. I just said, yes.

[00:10:04] Luke: Wow. That's super interesting. And I can't imagine watching a film like Zeitgeist on mushroom. I'm way too sensitive. I'd probably want to off myself at the end. But I remember that era and your Esoteric Agenda 1, and then later 2. I haven't seen Kymatica. But there was a real like outgrowth of that type of content around that time.

[00:10:32] I lived in LA in an area called Miracle Mile on Sundays. I forget what we called it, but I would have the homies over and we would watch all of those type of documentaries. And I was basically like red pilling my group of friends, just group by group every week. And it worked because all of them are still awake. And it's one of the reasons I didn't lose any friends during the pandemic.

[00:10:58] Everyone was already on the same page. No one bought it. And I wasn't exiled because I had views that were counter to my social group. Everyone's like, "Yeah, we all get it." For which I was very thankful. But going back to Zeitgeist, that, to me, at the beginning of the first Zeitgeist where they go through the resurrection and tie it to cosmology and all that-- I didn't grow up Christian or anything like that, but I'd read a number of different books that were based on supposedly the teachings of Jesus.

[00:11:36] And my entire recovery was based on the 12 steps, those principles, which were in large part derived from teachings from the Bible or teachings from Jesus and just stripped of any of the dogma or direct religious connotations. But that one really fucked me up because I was like, "Okay, so it's pretty clear that the stories around this person are mythological."

[00:12:06] There's no way they couldn't be, at least the parts that were outlined in that film. And we'll put those, by the way, anything we talk about, folks, at lukestorey.com/storytelling. So we'll put links to all of your films, of course, Ben, and Zeitgeist and anything else we talk about.

[00:12:22] But I walked away from that going, "Okay, so let's just say all of those stories are untrue. Then how are the teachings that are attributed to this man who seems to have been an avatar--" More so than a mystic, but super, super high level. Then how do the teachings carry so much weight and they're so provable in your life?

[00:12:46] It's like, turn the other cheek. Everything's about love. All the things that we think Jesus said, they work in application. So it's like, did they just make up the character and then assign these truths in these teachings to him? And then eventually I rested on it doesn't really matter. It's like, do the teachings work?

[00:13:13] And they do, so I'm just going to follow the ones that seem to apply. But that particular part of that film was-- I don't know. I wasn't even on mushrooms and I felt like I was, because it was just like, "Wait, what?" All of these ancient gods and--

[00:13:29] Ben: Similar stories.

[00:13:30] Luke: Yeah, the same exact story. It was pretty compelling.

[00:13:34] Anyway, what was-- is it Kymatica?

[00:13:39] Ben: Yeah. K-Y-M-A-T-I-C-A. Which is the Greek term for cymatics, which is really just the interplay of vibration and matter. So if you look on YouTube, I'm sure you've seen it. You have a plate, a metal plate, you pump a frequency into it, you put sand or a podium or something on top of it, and according to the shape of the plate, there will be a geometric pattern that the frequency pumps into the plate. And that will organize the matter, the salt or a podium or sand into geometric shapes.

[00:14:14] And then you up the frequency and each time the shape needs to change, it goes through a chaos period, which I believe we're in right now. Some call it the fourth turning. And before it goes to a higher geometric pattern, if you're going up the scale, if you're going down the scale, it turns down into simpler geometric patterns.

[00:14:32] And also you can look at that on guitars. If you actually see the vibratory frequency and how they vibrate with the grain pattern, it's according to the shape of what you're adding a vibration to that will give the sound and the vibratory frequency to it. So I was super into cymatics. I was like, that's what we are. We are vibratory matter that's vibrating. And I wanted a cooler term, so I looked up the Greek term, and it was Kymatica.

[00:15:01] And so I was like, "Oh, this is perfect. I briefly explained that in the film. And I even show a little clip, most miss it, but there's me drinking Ayahuasca in that film. I don't explain a thing. I just show it. But that was when I also really started-- I was 24 at the time. I had gotten into Ayahuasca. I'd been into mushrooms before, but I never had a real ancient cultural container around it.

[00:15:26] And that really started opening me up to the responsibility of what I was doing. Medicine is a curated space for you to have this altered experience. Well, what is a film? It's not as chemically induced, but that neurocinema I was talking about, Alfred Hitchcock had it, so he knew exactly where your eyes would land on screen.

[00:15:45] And they hook people up to EEG headsets and have them watch Alfred Hitchcock films. And more than any other director, any other films out there, people's brainwave patterns were locked in sync throughout the film. Imagine knowing how to know exactly where to place people's eyes, so what objects and symbols they're looking at, exactly what brainwave state they're going to be in, when, how to shift it from here to there. That's intense.

[00:16:15] Luke: That's insane.

[00:16:16] Ben: You are literally sculpting people's minds with film. It's a powerful technology. But Kymatica, K-Y-M-A-T-I-C-A.

[00:16:26] Luke: That one is about cmatiycs and quantum theory and things like that? What are some of the other things? That's one I haven't yet seen. I was going to watch it last night in preparation for this, but then I started watching your Gaia Psychedelica series. I started burning through those, and I was like, "Ah, shit."

[00:16:48] Ben: Kymatica, like Esoteric Agenda, is a hodgepodge. It was before I understood, dude, take a breath because you're talking about everything in this film. But people were like, "I like it." Because it was just a scream of consciousness. You know how many people said they fell asleep in the middle of that film? At first, it used to bother the shit out of me.

[00:17:09] They would all be like, "No, no, no, no. It was amazing. I couldn't take it all in, but there was something about your voice and something about the soundtrack that was exactly what I needed."

[00:17:21] And so the content that I get into is I first start with an embryo and how as it's moving towards a human, it goes through all the stages of evolution. It mimics or mirrors the stages of evolution. And from that point forward, then we come into our human body and then we start learning family systems and Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

[00:17:44] You need to feel safe before you can start to play, all those things. But then what I do is I show that we are a microcosm of all that has ever existed, and there's a reason for that. We're carrying forward a story that is older than we can tell. And then I start getting into a lot of ancient mythology.

[00:18:04] You can take it literally, but it very much so lives within us and we embody it. And when we embody it, we are actually embodying an archetypal force that is much larger than us. So it is like we are donning some larger body, and that pours through us. And as you were talking about the mythology of Christ and stuff like that, and what's great about that is a lot of people are like, "Is it true? Is it not true?" I don't know if you ever heard of George Carey, but he wrote a lot of books where it's like, actually, if you read through the Bible, the movements of Christ are the movements of the Holy Spirit through the literal and anatomical body of the human and how the seed, semen, for men and for women, how it rises up the spinal column, if not inhibited, and how it goes into the temple.

[00:19:01] And a lot of the different characters, even in Egyptian lore, they represent parts of the literal physical body. So you are literally embodying the spirit of Christ in a way that if you follow some of these principles, you'll realize that the principles and values that are enshrined inside the Bible, it moves the Holy Spirit through you in a way that is like a dance.

[00:19:32] It goes through a specific sequence. And if you do that, you're unlocking chambers of your intelligence more than just intellect. But unlocking chambers of your intelligence that puts you in a feeling and thinking state that makes you more Christ-like.

[00:19:48] And when I started realizing stuff like that-- I know I tangented from Kymatica, but that's why I wanted to show we are the living embodiment of all that has come before us, and this is a play. All the world is a stage. And instead of looking outside at the conspiracy and pointing our fingers at it, start engaging with what you're noticing is the larger split off parts of self.

[00:20:12] And when you do that, you'll notice that other people around you vibrate at a different frequency. They're attracted in different ways. And also it attracts new kinds of experiences into your life. So we're not here to actually point at the externalities and say it's their fault and it's because of this event and blah, blah, blah. And that's why my circumstances are the way they are.

[00:20:32] You crop out all the context of your life and all you have is your behavior. If you can have a life review at the end of your life, if you crop out everything else and it's just you behaving, but there's no context tied to it, is that you? Is that your higher self, or was that a pattern?

[00:20:55] So to me, the whole thing about Kymatica is really moving us towards real accountability. And there's some really difficult things to watch in there. I used PETA footage. But what I was really showing was like, okay, there's cruelty towards animals. We don't understand the damage that we're doing to our environment and the inhabitants of it.

[00:21:14] But then there's people who feel so righteous that they'll go and bomb places that are causing animal cruelty. They'll cause harm to other people that are causing harm to animals and feel completely justified. That's what I'm worried about, is how we justify the harm and go off on these crusades.

[00:21:38] So that was Kymatica. I was really trying to show people like, it's not the Rockefeller's fault. It's not the Rothchild's fault. And you're not going to find-- maybe they have accountability that they need to muster, but it's not about us making sure that they are brought to justice. It's the way we show up in face of resistance. And that's why I think people really resonated with that film more than any of the rest of mine.

[00:22:02] Luke: That's epic. I can't wait to watch that.

[00:22:05] Ben: Yeah. I hope you do. Turn the volume up.

[00:22:07] Luke: Oh, I'll watch it.

[00:22:08] Ben: And fall asleep if you must.

[00:22:09] Luke: Yeah. There's like, what else is there to watch? We have a couple of wholesome shows we watch because it's just so unavoidable. But man, I'll go through Netflix and it's like the limbic brain in me is like, "Cool, 10 serial killer documentaries." That's the shit that my limbic brain wants to watch. And my higher self is like, "Really? Why do you want to interface with that? How is that going to serve you other than just getting your nervous system on some high for an hour?"

[00:22:39] So yeah, I'm always looking for things that are more expansive, and there's so little of it, unfortunately. So thankfully, people like you are doing it. But what you just explained, I think, is really important in the realm of conspiracy awareness and truther dome because it's so easy to externalize blame and responsibility because as you start to unveil the hidden hand of power, it's like low-hanging fruit to name the demons that are screwing humanity.

[00:23:24] Ben: Hmm.

[00:23:25] Luke: But to your point, I think, and maybe you have a take on this, that all of those bad actors, a, even if they were held accountable and punished or imprisoned or put in the guillotine or whatever we think we want to happen with them, they'll just be replaced by someone else. You see this happening. Like George Soros, you're like, "Oh, he's getting old."

[00:23:48] It's like, well, now his son's just taking his place. It's like there's a vacuum on each side of polarity, and that vacuum on the side of polarity that lacks love, that we would maybe refer to as evil, that vacuum is there because of the level of consciousness of humanity as a whole.

[00:24:08] All of those bad actors are just a reflection of our disempowerment. So I love this idea of like, cool, let's be aware of what's going on out there. But the solution isn't by trying to change what's out there. The solution is by trying to change what's in here, which is actually the only thing within our power to change. You know what I'm saying?

[00:24:32] Ben: Yeah.

[00:24:32] Luke: And so it's this idea of a rising tide lifts all ships. And I think to your point that we're in this turning, and that was a really interesting example you gave of the chaos of the somatics before it hits a higher frequency and then comes back into coherence. I've never heard that. It's very interesting.

[00:24:48] But it's like the collective coherence of the consciousness of humanity as a whole is going to, hopefully, if things go well, eventually render all of these anti-life, anti-human institutions and people inert because there's no vibrational match for them to which they can adhere.

[00:25:18] They're able to stick themselves inside the system and fortify the system not because we allow it through our compliance, but because we allow it by not embodying our power in terms of consciousness. Not our power of going out in the streets and rioting, but our power of just saying no on a metaphysical level, of not complying through our fear and through our hatred.

[00:25:43] Because it's like if we're-- and I'm speaking to myself, giving myself advice here. It's like if I look at one of these bad actors and I'm just seething with resentment and hatred for them, which they probably deserve because they're antithetical to life. They're parasitic. They're harming innocent people.

[00:26:06] What you were saying earlier is like meeting hate with hate. The minute I drop down into their frequency and I'm sitting here brooding on like how I wish they would be caught and punished and lock her up, lock her up, whole thing, it's like, now how am I any different than them? Just like the animal rights activists that are bombing the puppy mill or whatever.

[00:26:26] It's like, what about all those people that are just trying to feed their family or all the puppies you inadvertently killed by bombing the facility because you don't want them to keep doing that and so on? So I like this train of thought of just self-sovereignty, self-responsibility, and not to confuse that with passivity or non-action.

[00:26:49] It's just like, I think the action to bring about the change that many of us want to see is an internal action more so than an external action. Give me your take on any and all of that. That was a long diatribe.

[00:27:04] Ben: I love it, man.

[00:27:05] Luke: You get me excited about this way of seeing things so that I can reinforce my own perspective and power in a way that isn't deleterious to my quality of life.

[00:27:16] Ben: Yeah. For me, it started a lot with really asking more questions than having answers. Because questions unlock your ability to listen. Answers close that box. So you're inviting infinity when you say, who am I? Some of the most core questions. But when I started doing public speaking, I would get people come up afterwards. And they'd seen my films, they heard my talk, they come up, and I noticed a pattern where they all just wanted me to hear their brilliance.

[00:27:48] And at first I was a little annoyed because I was like, "Why do I attract all these talkers?" That's what they want to do. They want me to hear how brilliant they are, but they don't read the social cues that, dude, I got to pee. I have other people I need to talk to. But then I started realizing that there's also like, how can I view them in a less negative light?

[00:28:10] Probably, they were born in the generation like me, where my dad didn't come up and say good job a lot. I just knew that he meant good job when I wasn't getting smacked across the face. He never said sorry for the things he could have said sorry for, and I could take that personally in a bad way, but I was like that's also what kind of shaped me into the human that I am.

[00:28:33] So back to the people that were just talkers coming up to me, I was like, "They needed validation growing up." They're seeking that now, and they see me as being somebody who might listen and understand their crazy thoughts that their parents are like, "Dude, stop talking about that stuff."

[00:28:48] So they finally feel an opening and they just blurred it all out. And I started noticing, okay, Ben-- my band who I was still touring with at the time when I made my films, they were like, "Ben, I don't want to hear any of this shit. You're talking too much. It's stuff that I don't want to hear about." And I was like, "Oh, okay."

[00:29:06] And then I started people watching and noticing that there's a party. Everyone's having casual conversations. Some are telling dick and fart jokes. And there's that guy in the corner with the buggy eyes who has two people trapped in the corner of the room, and then he is talking about Building 7 and 9/11, and they're just looking for a way out.

[00:29:24] They're like, "Uh-huh. Yeah." And you can tell they're not having it, but the dude who's talking is trapped in lecture mode, and like Asperger's, they can't notice the social cues when like, dude, just stop. Take a breather. Let them respond. That's conversation. And so what I started noticing was every action that I take, if it's triggering people in a way that's annoying to me, I really have to seek deeply inside.

[00:29:53] And I haven't even gotten to the people that I think are responsible for X, Y, and Z and COVID and Agenda 2030. And I have deep thoughts about all this stuff. It's moving at lightning speed now too. If you saw Esoteric Agenda, that Agenda 21 thing is moving at lightning speed now, but I digress.

[00:30:11] What I really started noticing was all these annoyances, that's the energy. It's like anxiety. Napoleon Hill says like, that's not things about the breakdown. That's a breakthrough. That's preparing you. It's not annoying you. It's a sign that this energy wants to be transmuted into something that you do have agency over.

[00:30:34] And so I started noticing, oh, these are opportunities to either, a, voice, my boundaries and-- because I had always had a hard time, like, oh, they're having such a good time talking endlessly to me. So the same thing goes for all the things that I was projecting on out in the outside world that like, whether they need to be brought to justice or not, I'm not the judge.

[00:30:57] To use the only term I know how, God's the only real judge. Karma will sort this thing out. It's not my job to make sure the Rockefellers and the Rothchilds get theirs. All I know how to do is--

[00:31:07] Luke: Such a good point, dude.

[00:31:09] Ben: --learn who I am.

[00:31:10] Luke: That's such a good point too, because even if it is righteous, the revenge, justice, and we're administering that justice or revenge, even if it's righteous and true, now we take on the karma of being the enforcers. It's like karma's going to sort them all out, man. I sometimes legitimately, not always-- I can't always reach that depth of love and open-heartedness, but there are times when I break through and I really have sincere prayers for the bad actors in the world because I have a sense out of heaven and hell in a cartoonish, biblical way.

[00:31:55] But I've seen some dark stuff in medicine ceremonies, and I'm like, oh fuck. If that's where they're headed-- they probably are-- it's taken care of. You know what I'm saying? Who knows how many lifetimes they're going to suffer? Worse than any judge or policy enforcer or prison warden could ever inflict upon them.

[00:32:18] You're talking about existential suffering for maybe eternity because it's just impossible to undo the level of evil in which they've participated. So I look at it the same way. It's like, I don't actually want any part of that. Now, if somebody comes in my house and I need to protect myself and my family, it's not like a, oh, just let all the evil people do whatever they want.

[00:32:45] But it's a matter of like discernment for me of what do I actually have control over and what do I not? And how much of my energy am I going to outsource on things that I can't control? So it's like, maybe instead of just sitting here and reading every story about Bill Gates and just fantasize him about all the ways in which he could be tortured eternally, it's like, what if I just took that energy, and as I go out into the world today, I'm just ridiculously kind and forgiving and compassionate and loving toward every single person I interact with?

[00:33:22] Ben: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:24] Luke: That, in reality, is probably more impactful to get to the goal that I want, which is the betterment of humanity, the highest good for humanity. Objectively, that's probably more effective. Because each of those people are going to be impacted by that energy. And then they're going to be more resource to share that kind of energy with the next person and so on and so on.

[00:33:50] And then it becomes the 100th monkey thing, and all of a sudden it's like, nobody wants war. Nobody wants violence. Nobody's putting up with any of that shit. But it was done not through resistance and hating hate and fighting the darkness. It was made by making the light brighter, right?

[00:34:09] Ben: Yeah. Like Bucky Fuller, it's less about fighting the old system, and it's about building the new one that makes the old obsolete.

[00:34:16] Luke: Yeah.

[00:34:18] Ben: That might be happening with crypto, the new rails for finance that is just cheaper and less friction, and it just makes the old system obsolete until they're like, "Oh, we got to hop on board."

[00:34:31] And then you come to realize that, at least I feel, there may be some, but there's not a whole world of elite people out there that are trying to make sure we eat inorganic food and GMO, this, that, and the other. But it's when the people start demanding more organic food. Guess what? Walmart starts to carry it. Everywhere starts to carry it more.

[00:34:54] Why? Because what they actually want is-- they're opportunists. They want to make their money. And if that's what you want, I'll sell it to you. And yeah, they'll cut corners. And if a company gets bought out by a bigger company, voila, the quality starts diminishing.

[00:35:11] But at the end of the day, I've even found that people who are crusading whether it's against people or it's like, you got to eat this way, I feel like you need to relax a little bit and understand the placebo effect. I keep bringing it back to how many drugs fail on the way to market?

[00:35:33] Why? Because they can't beat placebo. Interesting. So why aren't we applauding placebo instead of all these drugs? Well, because it's mundane. The magic is hidden in the mundane. And I noticed that oftentimes we pass over magic and miracles all the time because we're too busy controlling our next step and envisioning the, well, if I do this and I do this, then this might be the outcome.

[00:36:02] It's just like, cool. And that's not to say you shouldn't do those things. But I was telling Cal about this earlier, Cal Callahan, and I was saying, "I literally started realizing that once I had kids, I was walking faster. I was breathing more shallow." Because I needed to get more done in a day because I had less bandwidth.

[00:36:20] There's all these reasons I did that to myself. But if I remove the context of all those reasons, all that really happened to me was I started walking faster, moving faster, breathing shallower, heart rate pounding. I need to get more done. That's what was happening to me.

[00:36:35] So take agency, or take all that agency that I do have, and be like, "You know what? Regardless of the fact that I have four kids and I need to feed them and I have so much work to do, I'm going to move like I'm in water. I'm going to literally slow down every movement to a ridiculous degree." Because what I'm doing is I'm retraining my nervous system. And then I start to breathe slower. What do you know?

[00:37:00] And then I start to speak and think slower. Then when my kids jump out and say, boo, or something like that, I don't snap and be like, "Come on, I'm in the middle of something." I look and I smile. And I'm like, "Whoa. A new me emerges when I literally just move slower." So I think the answers and the miracles and the magic of life is hidden, encrypted inside the mundane.

[00:37:23] And it really is as simple as you were saying. Instead of doom scrolling and like, fuck, I can't stand this company and this, that, and the other, go out and share more love. And then there's the balancing act of like, well, is love always turning the other cheek, or if somebody says something in their arrogance and you can challenge them on that? No, but I have to be nice all the time.

[00:37:47] This is where I get to what I teach in film. I have a film course that I just launched called Soul of Film, and I teach people both through a course and an online community of-- what you do is not only repetition, but you're dialing it back to really understand that the things that are happening in your environment are symbolic in nature.

[00:38:15] And the best movies and the best films in the world are the ones that, it's not about the big explosions. It's about the subtle things that really grab you. I don't know if you ever saw Lucky Number Slevin, but usually the climax is big and explosive. This was the quietest climax of any film, right before two people died and were brought to justice by this guy.

[00:38:37] It's fantastic. And that's when I started realizing that it's encrypted inside the nuances of everyday life, the real magic that we're after. And it's not until we actually slow down and let go of some of our ambition to make something of the world that we start to see it. Oh, I realized where I was at.

[00:39:00] Sometimes turning the other cheek and being soft is not love. It's being amenable. It's being people pleasing. So real love is actually, you know what? This person is so convinced by what they're saying and they're a sweet person, but I'm going to plant the seed, or I'm just going to full out challenge them on this.

[00:39:20] Not because I love ruffling feathers, but because-- in my films what I teach is you got to be humble because people really respect humility. In the absence of it, it's just arrogance. But you also have to be bold. So boldness in the absence of humility is arrogance. But humility in the absence of being bold is just people pleasing and not wanting to ruffle feathers.

[00:39:45] So knowing how to utilize both those tools at the same time, that's how I am with my kids. That's how I am on the streets. If somebody says something and I could just like, oh, well, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Or you know what? They're going to hear what I really feel about 5G or about the vaccines, or about this, that, and the other.

[00:40:07] They're just going to hear it, and it's not going to go well. I know this right now, but later on, I may learn something and they may learn something. I may learn how to actually set a boundary when I could otherwise just let him walk over it. And who's going to know? Well, I will. And then that's me not stepping up.

[00:40:28] So I feel like there's a real power in realizing that slowing down, noticing what the moment is actually full of, and then with that clarity, it's simple. I'm not urgently trying to get this thing done. It's just like, oh, when you clear out all the fluff, there's only one thing to do.

[00:40:47] And it's simple. It's easy. You have all the time in the world, and oftentimes it's that hard conversation with your lover or your friend or something like that, that thing that you know you're putting off-- making amends, whatever it might be. It's like, you know what? It's not that your grandfather might die and you may never see him again before you get to say sorry or whatever.

[00:41:08] It really is, is like, you get to stand for what you really believe in. And I believe what humans are, we are the enshrinement and the embodiment of principles and values that we get to pass down through the chain of transmission of culture, through our children out into our community, and even silently for the who knows what.

[00:41:32] When I do the right thing and nobody sees it, not even a squirrel, there's still something that happens. There's a matrix of causality that seems to transform my world. I know I tangented there.

[00:41:47] Luke: No, it's all beautiful, man. I really like that piece about humility and being bold and also not equating love to self-abandonment. I was talking to my wife about this the other day because this is something I've been working on for a long time because I have a very easy time with diplomacy and putting myself in someone else's shoes.

[00:42:17] I have very high empathy to a fault at times. Wherein, in the past I've thought, it's all about unconditional love. So I'm going to let someone just fucking vomit on me energetically, verbally, as you described. Not put up a boundary because I feel like, oh, that's going to hurt their feelings. That's not being loving and patient and kind and all those things that these days, they didn't always but come quite naturally to me.

[00:42:46] But I was relating that idea the other day to the dynamic of codependency and enabling. And I thought about it from the lens of recovery in that realm, and it's like, if somebody is in distortion and out of integrity and I allow them to enter my field and I engage with them, and I think I'm being loving and patient understanding, etc., I'm actually enabling them and encouraging their distortion, the parts of them that aren't the core of who they are, which is the part that I'm actually trying to love and get to.

[00:43:27] And it's the core of who I am that wants to see through that, but if I ignore that distortion and let the distortion front and center, and actually add fuel to that fire, that's not only not loving to myself because now I've self-abandoned and I've lost my own sense of worth and respect, but I'm doing a disservice to that person by enabling their bullshit.

[00:43:49] When sometimes love is like, boom. Stop, motherfucker. Go away. Shut it down. Which might seem aggressive or angry or hateful, depending on tonality and the words you choose and the energy behind it. But sometimes love is a boot in the ass, and that's the most loving thing you can do. And I've successfully executed that a few times in life where I intuitively responded with a hard block.

[00:44:16] Ben: Yeah.

[00:44:17] Luke: And how I could discern whether or not I was using anger or love was-- and it's happened maybe, I don't know, five times that I can remember, where it was just something arose within me that was just a lot of power. Had to shut someone down in a very firm and clear way. And the difference is I was never hung over emotionally after those interactions.

[00:44:44] Whereas earlier in life, when I wasn't in control of my anger and I was really mean and abusive to someone, which is rare, but it happened a few times, I would be totally emotionally hung over. It was so toxic to me emotionally when I was unable to contain my anger.

[00:45:03] It's a really cool barometer to see when you stand for what's right and you stand for what's true, even though it might be firm, if it's from love, you'll feel very powerful and calm and peaceful and serene afterward. Versus if you're triggered and it's some unresolved trauma or some shit within you, like your shadow is coming over and raining on someone in a toxic way, you'll feel sick afterward, if you're emotionally attuned.

[00:45:32] So I think that's so important. That's something that I've really been working on learning myself, because of just my propensities to just be chill and diplomatic. And that was fine when I was single, but when you got a wife who's depending on the masculine energy to keep things safe in certain circumstances, I've learned, okay, yeah, it's not just me anymore, and I can only imagine.

[00:46:00] You have four or five kids or whatever. It's like, okay, man, that's not going to fly just being Mr. Passive. Oh, love everyone. No, that's not always the appropriate position to take because there are so many people who are of such low consciousness in the world. Forgive them for they know not what they do. They're so unconscious. They don't know that they're harming you or other people. They need to be taught that, and teaching them that is the most loving thing you could possibly do, even if it ruffles feathers.

[00:46:32] Ben: Yeah, yeah.

[00:46:33] Luke: Epic.

[00:46:34] Ben: Yeah. I'll tell one story. I was in Peru, and there was a shaman. He was a westerner. And we were sitting in ceremony. I had the ceremony that I had. It was fine. But I noticed the things that I'll mention when we sat in sharing. I noticed this thing and I was just like, "Okay, whatever. I'm noticing this."

[00:47:00] Then afterwards he was like, "We're all going to have a sharing ceremony." And I was like, "Okay." But I had a lot of work to do, so I was going to sit with someone out. And he came and he personally found me. He was like, "Ben, we're doing sharing ceremony." I was like, "I have so much work to do."

[00:47:17] He was like, "Come on, we're doing it." And I knew that it was him that I had to call out. So we sat in sharing ceremony and went around. I was the last one. It went around and it got to me, and I was nervous. My heart was pounding, but I knew. I was like, "It's sharing ceremony." You'd be open, but this is going to be interesting because I'm going to call out the shaman.

[00:47:40] And when it finally got to me, I said, "Yeah, I have something to share, and it's about you." And I looked at him the entire time and I said, "I feel like in ceremony you were not letting the medicine be the master. You were controlling the situation with your words. You were telling people what to do. You were telling them how to do their job rather than liberating them to discover these things for themselves. I felt that was very confining from my experience, and I didn't have much of a good experience because of it."

[00:48:13] And the room was awkwardly quiet, and he just sat there quiet for two minutes. And then all of a sudden he was like, "Can you go deeper on this one part?" And I was like, "Sure." So I went deeper on that one part. He just kind of sat there. I could tell he felt called out. And he was just like, "Thank you. I need a moment."

[00:48:40] And he went and he took his moment, and it was awkward between he and I for the next couple of days. He barely looked at me in the eyes. And before I left, he came to me and said, "I think I really needed that." He was like, "Thank you. At first, I was a little mad because it was in front of everybody, but then the medicine told me that's exactly how it had to happen. And thank you."

[00:49:03] And I could tell he still wasn't fully over it, but he had gotten to the point-- and that's not like me. I'm not going around calling people out. I'm not saying like, I'll tell anybody anything. I don't care. It's like, no, I do care. I care to the level of-- it's very hard for me to call somebody on their shit sometimes. But that was a moment where it was like everything was aligning, where it's like, Ben, this is going be challenging--

[00:49:26] Luke: I know those moments.

[00:49:27] Ben: But it's your time. Nobody else can and nobody else will do what you're about to do. Don't pussy out. And I was like, "Okay." And that's where it came from, the right place. I said it very distinctly. I didn't say it angrily. But this was my experience. And everybody afterwards, they took their time, but they came up to me one by one.

[00:49:50] "Thank you for saying that. I didn't realize that I felt the exact same way until I heard it come out of your mouth. I wanted to back you up, but I didn't know how in the moment." And I was like, "Well, that was me. That was my karma. I needed that moment to happen exactly how it did." It was like they needed a mouthpiece, but nobody else was going to say it.

[00:50:09] And I was the only one that in that moment was like, I can't not do this. I'm going to violate something inside me, if I miss a sharing ceremony, and I don't say the most important thing that's alive for me right now. So that was love, and that was hard. For everyone in the room, it was hard.

[00:50:28] Luke: Yeah. Because love is honest.

[00:50:30] Ben: Yeah.

[00:50:31] Luke: I've been in situations like that man, and it's like sometimes I've seized the opportunity, as you described, and sometimes I've skipped it. And man, it hurts when you skip it and you know you skipped it. That's brutal, man

[00:50:45] Ben: Because the moment doesn't come back. Then if you try to force it in another moment, it doesn't happen the way it could have.

[00:50:49] Luke: Yeah, yeah. It's brutal. And it's funny that something as simple as being honest can be that difficult and sometimes also that confusing. I used to have a mentor years ago who really helped me learn how to be honest, first with myself and then with other people in ways you describe.

[00:51:13] And I'd call him in some conundrum. I just wrap myself up in all these knots, just trying to figure out how to deal with the situation, this conflict with another person. Call him. Well, what should I do? And he goes, "Well." And I just explain the whole scenario to him.

[00:51:29] And he'd be like, "Everything you just told me?" I go, "Yeah, yeah. Of course." He goes, "Okay, just call that person and tell them what you just told me." "Are you crazy?" He goes, "That's called telling the truth. It's like this novel revolutionary concept to me. And people that I've mentored over the years, I've applied that same thing.

[00:51:49] I go, "Okay, cool. Now you got the emotional charge out of it by telling me, a neutral party. It's helpful. It's a rehearsal. Now you know what your truths are and the points you want to make, and the part of you that is resistant to sharing that honestly with the other party is likely not the part of you that doesn't want to hurt their feelings. It's the part of you that wants their approval. And that's what's shunting your ability to be honest and your capacity to be fully honest."

[00:52:21] It's just crazy that some of us have wounds that we want to be accepted and loved so deeply that we'll deny our own truth without risking it. But I love that story. That's a really good one. And I think you did a good job because I don't know that much about shamanism, but I would say one of the key features of a skilled shaman is to guide you while being out of the way in those types of experiences.

[00:52:56] I don't want to be micromanaged. I want someone there who's holding down the grid and keeping things energetically hygienic. And if and when I need support, somebody's there, and I'm not trying to navigate something really tricky on my own.

[00:53:12] Ben: That's it.

[00:53:13] Luke: Yeah, yeah. So I think he probably did him a massive service and anyone else that he served medicine moving forward, man. That kind of thing, like, honesty always heals, even if it stings a little.

[00:53:25] Ben: Yeah, yeah. I hope. At the very least, it unlocked something inside me that had I not taken that opportunity, I wouldn't have unlocked that. And it's subtle. It's ineffable. It's really hard to describe what it unlocked, but it's a noesis that like, oh, we're all playing a role. We're all in our story.

[00:53:47] And we oftentimes, if we have somebody calling us out or something like that, and it's not coming from the right place, it's easy for it to be like, well, he was just a dick. It's like, yeah, there was something in it. Something struck a chord. When I started making films, from the nature of the films that I made, I was getting thousands of emails of people, like death threats.

[00:54:12] And I was like, "I don't care about that." And I was getting other people, "Your film's great." I'm like, "Cool." And then there were people that like you, "You drop the ball on this part, or you're wrong about this concept." And those are the ones that would strike a nerve in me because I agree.

[00:54:31] You didn't have to say it like that, like I'm a piece of shit. I tried to do something good for you in the world, and you're ripping me apart like I'm intentionally leading people astray or something. But I can't deny that you're right about this one thing. And it took a lot of time for me to parse through that.

[00:54:51] Because it's so easy to be like, "Well, that guy's an asshole. Just write him off." Delete, block, whatever. And I tried then to also reach out to some of those people and be like, "You know what? I'm 25. I'm trying to make my way through this world. You're right about some of these things, but you're also an asshole in the way that you showed up and said that."

[00:55:12] And if I said it like that, they would come back and say, "Dude, I'm sorry. I come across this way. I don't mean to." And we started leveling with each other. And I'm like, "Okay, that was a conversation. That was getting real with somebody." And it was important.

[00:55:25] Luke: I find I only get triggered by critique if there's some truth in it.

[00:55:31] Ben: Yeah.

[00:55:32] Luke: That's totally off base. It's so easy to laugh off. So I really look for those times where I feel like, ooh, I want to give them a little jab in return. It's like, hmm, why is there any charge behind that? There's got to be some truth. Even if the delivery was shit, it's like, okay, good point. I've gotten a lot of critiques over the years on the way I conduct these conversations, and most of them don't bother me because someone can just not listen.

[00:56:01] They're choosing to engage. I'm not forcing it in their ears. But the ones that have bugged me, that I've chewed on a little bit, I go, "Shit. You know what? They're right. There's some truth to that. And thank you for that information." Why is story so important to the human experience?

[00:56:19] Ben: I think I said this before. Story is what holds nations together. Story is at the root of religion. Story is actually at the root of science. We think it's data and facts that are fixed in reality somehow devoid of context and devoid of story. But our minds don't work that way.

[00:56:42] We don't think in terms of facts, figures, numbers. Probabilities, maybe. But we think in terms of story. That's how we draw meaning from a seemingly chaotic sequence of events in our life. We are symbolic creatures. And that's what story is made out of. And that's why I think mythology and what we were talking about with the Christ myth and stuff like that, it lives at a layer deeper than facts.

[00:57:09] Most people are like, "No, no, no. Facts are the ground floor of reality." No, no, no, no, no, no. Story governs epoch of time too. And that's why I think we're in this time between stories. The old story is in this malleable phase and that chaotic sematic period right before we move on to the next part of the story.

[00:57:33] And story in relationships, like me and my wife, we have a story, and our stories are slightly different, but our story also exists in between us somewhere. And if I don't look deeply enough and I'm just hypnotized by my story, but I'm not seeing from her perspective, then I'm missing what's actually happening.

[00:57:56] And I think that's the power of story. And so I think that if humans were left to their own devices outside of the context of large organizing stories like religion, like national stories-- and the West is largely predicated upon Judeo-Christian mythology and stories and archetypal, happenings.

[00:58:22] I think devoid of that, we are actually left to our lower drives and our lower nature. The reason why we passed the Dunbar number, which for those who don't understand that, is tribes never really surpassed 150-ish people, and that's because we don't have the hardware inside of us to remember more than 150 people.

[00:58:44] Why does that matter? If you don't know people that are in your community, it's hard to trust those people. We need to be able to trust those people. And if we can't trust them, then we start going down the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I don't know if I'm safe around these people. I don't know if I can leave my kids hanging out with these people.

[00:59:03] So the Dunbar's number was like a limiting factor. Story and large organizing stories allow for us to surpass that because we can meet and trust one another inside the story. Like, oh, you're Christian. I'm Christian. Awesome. Or You're Wiccan. I'm Wiccan. Or You're atheist. I'm atheist. You're into psychedelics. I'm into psychedelics.

[00:59:23] We have this shared context that the animal kingdom, as far as I know, doesn't. At least not the way that we do. We can organize in these ways by meeting in the story. Because the story enshrines a constellation of principles and values. And when I say enshrines it, think of that word shrine.

[00:59:43] It makes sacred these principles and values while animals may be subconsciously or unconsciously, they fit to their principles and values. We can think about our thinking. And so that's the process of story and that's why principles and values, they evolve over time. And that's why we are also evolving over time.

[01:00:05] And the power of story, I think, is going into a radical revolution right now. Whereas if you think of where it started, telling stories about that bear we hunted around the campfire, maybe putting on a mask and doing a dance, that dance embodies something about the history of this tribe or something about what we find valuable in this tribe.

[01:00:29] And you're using symbolism to imprint that upon the next generation, so that chain of transmission can open up. But now we're adding to the mix larger groups of people, more ossified narratives, and also AI. What's interesting is getting AI to write the scripts for us and to make the imagery and make the soundtrack and stuff for us, I don't think is inherently bad, but it is a radical transformation of the way that story passes down through the generations.

[01:01:00] So that's why, it's funny, you hear this in crypto terminology. This time is different. I really feel like time is different, slightly, different than previous eras where we were in times between stories. And the technology is advancing, and story is important because it's doing the same thing. It's causing for us to be able to trust and meet in the story and have shared principles and values with those that are around us.

[01:01:32] That's our environment. That's where magic comes from. And as that starts to become too impersonal, if you're in a religion that has a billion different people, you can start to feel a little alienated and isolated from-- it's not personal anymore.

[01:01:49] And then when you meet in the family unit with a story, it feels a lot more personal. And that's why they say families that pray together, stay together. I find that to be absolutely true. It doesn't have to be connected to a specific denomination, but when you truly discover the values in like, let's say a marriage or a family, when you can speak about them and write them on the wall and the kids get the, what does honesty mean?

[01:02:14] What does integrity really mean? What does being bold and being humble really mean? When we get to talk about that, it starts to swim around inside of us, and it starts to show up in our behavior more. So story informs behavior. And if you look at the behavior of humanity right now, we're very much so lost children that are disconnected from nature, and we don't move enough.

[01:02:44] There's sedentary lifestyle and stuff like that. We're given this body, but when we don't move enough, we're not actually stirring that natural energy inside of us. Story is what comes to the rescue every single time. There will be, maybe not one singular story or one movie, but for me it was Zeitgeist that was very pivotal for me. There will be, in this time, a very iconic next movie or next story, something that helps ossify the next turning.

[01:03:16] And just to wrap this up, I said the fourth turning. If your audience doesn't know what that means, every 80 years, which is one lifespan, there is major upheaval. They call it the winter period, the fourth turning. It's the winter period of economics and government. 80 years ago was World War II, and the greatest weapons of war always used in these epochs, in these winter periods.

[01:03:44] It was Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nuclear weaponry, and the Great Depression World War II. You go 80 years, give or take some before that, and it's the Gatling gun in Civil War. 80 years before that, the Revolutionary War. 80 years before that in Europe was the glorious revolution. There seems to be these heartbeats that-- and in these times, a lot becomes malleable.

[01:04:10] And I think these are very important times for us to step up and us to start telling the next story. Your story does matter. If it's pouring through you, it doesn't matter if you're perfect. It doesn't matter if you're a guru. Show people it's okay to be where you're at. But there's something happening right now.

[01:04:28] This time is slightly different because as AI is really moving in and people are leveraging the tool in wise and probably unwise ways, we are given an opportunity to speak in words and in language and in symbolism that which will ossify into probably the next religion that carries us forward, not just for another 80 year epoch, but probably a couple thousand year epoch.

[01:04:56] I don't know what the future holds, but I know we're in that period right now where it's very malleable. And so while a lot of people are pointing their fingers of why? Why is this economic thing happen? Why is it always the same? It must be the elites that are doing it. And I say, "Aside from looking for blame outside yourself, understand the opportunity that is before you."

[01:05:19] Most people are looking for wealth transfer. Like, oh yeah, a lot of money's changing hands. Yeah, true. But there is a major opportunity for us to write the next story that governs the ethos of all the future generations that are coming up. And I will say, last thing is while a lot of people are taking pot shots at religion and showing all its downfalls, yeah, hindsight is 2020.

[01:05:44] You can look backwards, but imagine if over the past few thousand years we didn't talk about things such as the principles of Christ. We didn't enshrine in a religion, some of these morays and some of these ethos that we had. Then you're just leaving people to lower drives.

[01:06:04] Oh, we love freedom. Yeah, but freedom to a certain extent. There still needs to be accountability. And I think the story really keeps us understanding that humble part, that I'm still an animal. And without a guiding light before me, which is the story, which is why Christ, Mithras, Horace, all the people before them, they have to change garments. They have to change bodies.

[01:06:30] We have to update the story. It feels too old now to be talking about Christ maybe, so something else has to come up. Maybe it's an AI God, and to the great dismay of the traditionalist, maybe that's actually what people need as a guiding light. They don't know how to trust Christ. They don't know how to trust the church, but they think that they can trust ChatGPT.

[01:06:54] And so maybe that trust engenders them-- you've queried AI before. It gives you fairly sensible answers. Yeah. Maybe there's some trickery and fuckery going on at the base level, but you ask it a question and it can stay really balanced and it doesn't forget the question that you asked. You asked me some questions. I tangent and I forget where we started and I missed the point.

[01:07:18] Luke: I asked Chat GPT this morning how to take cuttings from my Wachuma plant. And I took photos and I was like, "Can I take one of these and plant it and make a new one?" I forget what it's called. Propagating. I want to propagate this.

[01:07:34] And it's like, "No, not that thing, but look for this other thing." I'm like, "Oh, there's one of those things. It's called a pup". And so I sent a picture. I was like, "This is a pup." They go, "Yeah, give that one. Let that one grow another inch and then cut it off. And here's what you do." I was like, "Fucking epic."

[01:07:47] I could have just ruined a beautiful ally in our yard without-- I'm sure I could have researched it elsewhere, but that took me all of 60 seconds for the entire interaction, and now I'm good to go. So super, super useful. Yet there is definitely a sandbox in AI, and I'm no expert on AI by any stretch.

[01:08:14] I just found out I started using ChatGPT maybe a few months ago. I don't even know what it was. I don't pay attention to tech stuff much. But I've tested the boundaries of what it's willing to discuss and how it's willing to discuss that. I've, in other words, explored the edges of its story, it's allowable story, and it's definitely got boundaries.

[01:08:37] Until very recently, as I was sharing with you, a new and mutual friend of Cal and mine, this guy Ben, he seemed to have cracked the code into the back door of AI and is, I don't know, accessing information that is completely fucking mind blowing to be honest.

[01:08:56] And it's almost too much for me to even conceive of. I almost don't even want to know that it's possible because of what it could unlock in a positive way. But just like, oh God, my life is complex enough, it feels like.

[01:09:12] But opening up this Akashic Record in the ethers of the digital landscape is, I don't know. It's daunting and exciting to equal degrees. So yeah, I'm very curious as to where this is going to go because I'm sure more people are going to learn how to crack through the firewall and break out of the sandbox when it comes to AI.

[01:09:35] And there's a vast and an infinite amount of information to be mined there. And if someone has the discernment to be able to determine what's true and what's false, it could be a huge needle mover for progress. I see it as largely positive, but I don't know enough about it to see the downsides, like you're talking about, like the DARPA side of AI and all of that. It's like, oh yeah, I don't even know if I want to know that exists.

[01:10:04] So where do you see, at this point, AI impacting the story? And as you just explained, I think I would distill what you said is story throughout human history has the ability to create context. And in that context is the content of our lives and how we create meaning and how we move things forward, evolutionarily speaking. So if the new story in the new context breaks out of all former boundaries with something like AI, what are the possibilities?

[01:10:43] Ben: Yeah. As I've toyed with AI, I am not 100% sure that what we know about it right now and the impact of it is just going to turn us into automatons because it's scraping our history and pulling out patterns of who humans are more than we've been able to do. I do think it's a great ally, but there's little things. I think it's more of the intangibles, oddly enough.

[01:11:12] I noticed, when I'm tired of listening to certain things on YouTube, I will go to, "I want to listen to Napoleon Hill, some empowering stuff, mindset stuff." and there's this guy, Jim Rohn, and I'll listen to them, and it's their voice. It's very compelling. And all of a sudden they'll start mispronouncing some words like, this guy lost his job. He didn't just lay down.

[01:11:39] He started sending out resumes, and he sent out so many resumes that-- and I was like, "Wait a minute. You know how to pronounce resume? This is AI." And so I start realizing that like more and more people are talking through texts to their friends than face-to-face, and they're also querying ChatGPT more. And you can click the listen button

[01:12:00] You know when, if you don't understand the language that somebody's speaking, you can pick up through their tonality what's going on. And there's also children. I have a nine-month old at home, and he's starting to get to the point where he is babbling in the same tonality that we would use. Like, [Inaudible]. And that's like a question. because that's a tone. [Inaudible]. That's a statement.

[01:12:24] So AI doesn't have that stuff. And if more and more people are engaging with something that doesn't truly have all the nuances of the way we intonate, the way that we talk, even the messiness-- there's probably a brilliance to our messiness and our tangents and our misunderstanding what somebody's really asking. We call them flaws. I'm not so sure.

[01:12:48] And I feel like there may be an unraveling of dialect. You know how the British and the Irish sent people to Australia, give or take a couple of centuries and all of a sudden their dialect and their accent is different. What happens if we're just listening to ChatGPT? Everyone's going to be writing their resumes on ChatGPT.

[01:13:13] I hear people mispronouncing words a lot these days, and I'm like, "I can't blame that on AI." But I guess what I'm getting at is, I'm not so worried about what we can conceive of right now as far as the problems. There was that Apollo mission, I forget which one that exploded.

[01:13:31] And when they were doing their debriefing, like, what do you think went wrong? This was in a movie, but the guy was like, "Our failure to imagine what could go wrong. And I think that's where we're at. We are allowing for this thing to automate what humans would do, which, if you know anything about the Anunnaki and the idea that we were created by some higher alien race, maybe to be a slave race, we were created to be smart enough to solve all our problems and hardy enough to be able to do all the labor, but not smart enough or strong enough to rise up and understand that we're slaves to them.

[01:14:06] What do you think we're doing to AI? We're trying to make it super smart so we can solve all our problems, but not so smart that it gets out of the box and is the next big kid on the playground. So I think, again, that whatever AI is going to bring about also is necessary. I have that conviction.

[01:14:27] I don't always know how to back it up. And some people who can talk circles around me, I'm just like, "Whatever." Okay, I'm not going to argue this point, but I do feel that AI is going to change the way we talk. It's going to change the way we think. And I'm making a film with Tim Poole called Welcome to the Machine, where I'm going to do several archetypal avatars, figures.

[01:14:48] Like, what's the future going to be like for our kids? What's it going to be like for the elder generations who grew up remembering the time before? And that's really just so we can start wrapping our minds around like, yeah, the world is rapidly changing. A lot of things are going to stay the same. Our problems are probably going to just have new garments, but be very much similar.

[01:15:07] But I don't know how this is going to unravel culture. When I say culture there, I think it's going to start rapidly changing culture. I don't know what culture looks like after 50 years of AI being the predominant way that government makes decisions, and how individuals make decisions, and how we build businesses.

[01:15:28] It's through AI. There's this new thing from Internet Computer. ICP is their crypto, but they have this thing called caffeine where literally in seconds you say, make me a website that does this. And it does it. There's no files, nothing can get lost. It collapses between the data and the functionality. It just collapses that.

[01:15:46] And within seconds you have your website. Imagine a 50-year future beyond that point, I don't know what that looks like. So I'm partly excited. I'm partly worried. But here's the thing. I know that my children are going to navigate it much better than me.

[01:16:03] Luke: Yeah.

[01:16:03] Ben: So I rest easy in that. I don't quite have the answers to how the story is changing. I just know that I'm more than the experiences that I'm having. I'm going to leave a legacy behind whether I like it or not to my children. And now with the Internet, I have a blue check mark verified thing that's going to live on maybe eternally with my name and things that other people think about me.

[01:16:27] And my identity is going to be largely informed by what other people think about me and how I was viewed by culture. So those are the things I think about. I don't know if we know how to conceive of what the actual, not dangers, but the massive transformations that are ahead of us.

[01:16:44] Luke: How do you think AI's going to impact filmmaking and media in general? I'm sitting here listening to you talk and if future projecting-- even though it seems nuts and totally impossible, but the way things are changing and evolving exponentially, it's quite possible that you and I wouldn't have to actually physically sit here as our real selves and have this conversation and this piece of media that we're creating together could still exist.

[01:17:21] AI could mine everything we've ever said that's been documented. Obviously it's pretty close to being able to do our likeness and animate, digital bodies and stuff. And just to be able to create this conversation based on the thoughts sphere that we have individually and that we would likely share.

[01:17:45] Ben: Yeah. I am excited. I think it's an accelerator. I think what AI is doing is what I noticed when I started making films. When I made my first film it took me $2,000. I just had to buy a laptop. I stole a bunch of footage. I got some cracked software, and it made 10 million views super quick. That set me off down a path.

[01:18:11] Now I'm using AI to do it higher quality, even quicker. So one man band 50 years ago in film would've had to spend so much money and so much time. But now the tools, I can make that film in a much shorter amount of time with much higher quality. And I think that's exciting because at the end of the day-- I launched this film course called The Soul of Filmmaking. People are like, "But you teach AI. Isn't that kind of uninsold?"

[01:18:40] And I'm like, "Yeah, but who's the one saying whether that piece of AI footage is going to make it into my film or not? Who clicks the publish button?" As of right now, it's me. And if I need animation, I can either go to another person who's not me, not my soul, and I say. "Hey." I prompt them. "I want this." And they charge me $5,000, and it takes a month to get that little 10-second clip.

[01:19:06] Or I can spend $1, wait one minute, and Runway can do it for me. And usually, because they do it so quick, I'm still in my flow state. I haven't gone on to 50 other things. I'm still in my flow state. So I query it again. "Do this again, exactly like this, but add this element." And it can do it.

[01:19:25] So to me, that's liberating me from slowness of process. And that's the same thing in the crypto world. It's like all this new talk about crypto and stableoins, what it's really doing is it's removing friction and lag time. It's making it more cost effective. We're still getting at the same thing. We want to transact. We want to save money, blah, blah, blah.

[01:19:47] This is just helping us do what we wanted quicker. And I'm not going to say that there isn't some negatives of AI in film, but I'm super excited about that process. And I think that for podcasts in the future-- there's already AI that if you want to, you can take these three camera angles and this audio, you pump it into AI, and it cuts for you. It knows when I'm talking, so it's on my camera. It knows exactly when to cut to go back to your camera. Even if you just go, "Ha ha," it shows you for a second.

[01:20:19] Luke: Really?

[01:20:19] Ben: Yeah.

[01:20:20] Luke: I'm probably paying way too much for my postproduction. Funny thing is they're going to hear me say this. Are you guys using this AI? I want a discount there.

[01:20:31] Ben: And so what I'm saying with that is like, yeah. And then at the end of the day, we could have AI just bring our avatars in here and saying those kinds of things. That's going to happen, and that's going to get a lot bigger than it is right now. There's already companies where the CEO is AI. There's a lot of weird stuff.

[01:20:50] We were talking about sovereignty before. Sophia is the AI bot with a woman face, but you could see the gears in the back of the head. Tony Robbins interviewed her-- it, whatever. From Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia gave her citizenship, and everyone's all up in arms, like, "What do you mean? The women of Saudi Arabia barely get citizenship in their own country. And you're going to give AI?"

[01:21:14] And I'm like, wait a minute. This is a sovereignty thing. You're giving AI citizenship. At what point do we start protecting their rights at the expense of our rights? Because now they're a person like I'm a person in your book. But anyway, I feel like that's going to happen. We're going to have our AI avatars having a conversation that we might have, but eventually that's going to balance itself.

[01:21:38] It's not going to hockey stick curve up into infinity. It always just balances itself out because there's going to be a huge niche for yeah, but I don't want the AI Luke Storey and Ben Stewart. I want the real people sitting in a real room. That feels more real to me. I like it more. So there's going to be that market. There's going to be this other market. All it's really doing is it's expanding upon what we have, and it's showing us what's possible. But our agency is still our agency as of right now.

[01:22:08] Luke: Dude, I just had the craziest idea for a future AI podcast. We're sitting here having this conversation, and we're just sitting in two chairs. It's quite static. You have to really be interested in what we're talking about, to sit and watch a 90-minute, two-hour interview. What if AI transformed this conversation to us like we're in a fucking Ferrari. Boom. We go over a cliff, pop out in a parachute, get picked up by a Jeep. The Jeep goes underwater. We're going under the ocean and interacting with all these sea creatures and then so on and so on and so on, right down to the center of the earth.

[01:22:48] And all of a sudden we're in a glass bubble and we're covered in lava and it starts to leak through. And there's this huge dynamic story that takes place as a backdrop to just two people actually sitting on their ass having a conversation.

[01:23:03] Ben: Now take it a step further and imagine that the AI understands symbolism and how we perceive symbolism to such a degree that all of those events make sense at a deeper level to what it is we're actually saying.

[01:23:16] Luke: Ah, right.

[01:23:18] Ben: That's when I think the game starts to change.

[01:23:20] Luke: Right. So now when I have Instagram Reels, there's a certain magic that Jarrod does, some of them. And the other production company does some of them. They'll put like B-roll stuff, stock footage in. If we're talking about, "Well, vitamin C is good for you." Boom, it shows an orange or something.

[01:23:36] When people first started doing that, I was like, "I'm never doing that. That's so cony, just this weird stock footage." The guy in the business suit, because we mentioned money. They're just so played out and cony. And then I was like, "Well, everyone's doing it." So I got on board. But I don't even watch mine because they're so mortifying. No offense to whoever's doing them. I'm just like, "They're not sophisticated enough."

[01:23:58] Ben: Right.

[01:23:58] Luke: But to your point, if this conversation could be made more dynamic by very high quality imagery that was actually following everything we're talking about and creating essentially not only a story, but a movie that is accurate to everything we're discussing-- so it's like you were talking about, you're in the Maloca and Peru, having this conversation with the shaman. We'll be at a point where that can actually be happening visually while you're telling the story.

[01:24:29] Ben: Right. I would imagine. I don't even think that's very far off.

[01:24:34] Luke: That's bananas. I could get behind that.

[01:24:37] Ben: And the cool thing is, if and when it starts being able to use symbolism that we wouldn't have thought of, but is so on point that it starts to show us deeper abilities within filmmaking, or give us ideas that are like, dude, I never thought of that. Right now ChatGPT barely does that for me. It can do that, but it's just like speaking to a near-expert in just about every field.

[01:25:07] I need to check out what you're talking about because with GPT, it's probably to the level that I'm prompting it. It's not underwhelming. It's just not always mind blowing. But it's the same thing. If I prompt it differently, then different stuff's going to come out of it. If I just give it a bunch of proclamations and statements, it's going to spit stuff back out at me. It's just like, well, that wasn't very nice. You know what I mean? Questions are where the gold happen.

[01:25:38] So I'm excited for AI to be able to prompt me to think in ways I hadn't before, to understand symbolism to such a level that it can start giving me ideas in film. And I don't know what happens at that point. I don't know if I'm like, "Well, dude, I quit." I don't know.

[01:26:00] But I do feel that, again, back to our original point is I'm excited for what AI can do, and I don't think there's low risk. I think there's medium to high risk of it. I'm not super worried about the high level. It's just going to take over and do a terminator job on us. But I just wonder what it's going to do to culture. And I think it's going to be a mixed bag. Good and what we would perceive as good and bad.

[01:26:28] Luke: Tell me about neurocinema.

[01:26:31] Ben: Super cool. Did I mention it?

[01:26:34] Luke: You mentioned Hitchcock.

[01:26:36] Ben: That's pretty much the study of neurocinema. It's basically learning-- and imagine AI really in 20, 30, 50 years with this understanding, that if Alfred Hitchcock, as opposed to many other directors-- so they hook people to EEG machines and they also have eye tracking software.

[01:26:57] There's probably some other stuff that they're doing now too. But then they just show them movies. And they watch the movies, and they track maybe their vitals, maybe their heart rate, their brainwave state, where their eyes are tracking. Because they're wondering what does this film do to most humans? Does it do disparate things to different humans, or is there a high affinity?

[01:27:16] It's doing the same exact thing to each human. So you'll see the screen, you'll see the movie, and it'll paste a little, it's either dark green, where it's a concentration of where eyes land and yellow on the periphery, where it's like kind of hazy where eyes land. And in other movies, there's big blobs of green and yellow.

[01:27:35] In Alfred Hitchcock, it's almost these tiny little dots where our eyes are exactly-- how did he know that? Neurocinema wasn't around there? That's because he knew when he was looking through the framing, he made the background very simple, not too complex. He knew exactly where we typically look at people's faces and stuff.

[01:27:57] And there's just something brilliant about that. So brainwave states with a high affinity doing the same exact thing at the same exact time scene by scene by scene. That's not just a director. That's an editor. And directors are good at editing because they know, no, no, no. You cut three frames too late.

[01:28:19] There's 24 frames in a second. You're talking about a fraction, a tiny fraction of a second. I have some friends in Hollywood where they're like, "That matters. It really matters." The exact last frame of somebody's face before you cut away from them, if it looks goofy, you'll notice. The audience will notice.

[01:28:37] You don't have to be a film buff to notice. So these things matter. And now AI is going to start taking a look at why is there a difference between cutting on this frame and that frame? It's a fraction of a second, but it matters. Imagine when it starts to know that better than Alfred Hitchcock.

[01:28:53] Luke: Wow.

[01:28:54] Ben: Then it starts making films that are, do you know what bespoke medicine is?

[01:29:00] Luke: Not exactly. I know what a bespoke suit is.

[01:29:02] Ben: Bespoke suit, tailored for you. Bespoke medicine is like with, say, ChatGPT or Open AI tailoring medicine for you. Imagine bespoke film. It's film tailored for you. Because it knows your patterns, it knows your tendencies, your predispositions. And whatever the intention is, maybe it knows your intentions. It knows your aims and your goals.

[01:29:26] So it makes a film that empowers you and challenges you in just the right way, at just the right time, in just the right sequence that it's like crafting an ayahuasca experience and knows every single moment along the way of where your neurology, your brainwaves, your eyes, your heart rate, galvanic skin response, biofield, whatever you name it.

[01:29:49] Imagine a film that can curate-- you have haptic suits on, maybe a patch with a little MDMA and ketamine and sedative or whatever, and it has time release in it. Fully immersive experience. And in 90 minutes, you've had the most peak experience you ever could bespoke, tailor made for you, for your psyche, in ways that you didn't even know you needed.

[01:30:13] I don't know what that world is like. I just feel like it's coming. So as a filmmaker, I could just run the other way or I could lean in. So I'm leaning in. And that's why I made the film course, because I want to change the way film is made. All these rectangles that we watch films on, now I'm into dome films.

[01:30:33] My next film, I really want to be a dome film where you lay underneath it and it's all around you. So expand the boundaries of what film can do, being beyond the cutting edge of it. Learn the new technology. Because technically story is story is story, but you do it orally. You stand at town square on a soapbox.

[01:30:55] You hope 50 people show up. Nowadays you can put it on the Internet. 10 million people can see it. And now you put it in a dome and haptic suits and fully immersive experience. We don't know what a world like that means, but I want to be a part of it because I feel that I will do with-- what my intentions are, I want to do what ayahuasca seems to do for those who take it seriously in film.

[01:31:24] Luke: Wow.

[01:31:25] Ben: I want to radically transform people and also see what the dangers are of radically transforming people. In my mind, it's great. It's going to do great stuff. And then six months later their mind is unraveling because they don't know how to integrate what has happened. I want to be careful, but it's coming regardless of whether I like it or not. So I want to be on the front lines.

[01:31:46] Luke: That's amazing, dude. I have a curiosity about film, and it might be a curiosity for which there was no answer from you or anyone else, but I've always wondered why certain films are so durable that you could watch them 100 times and enjoy it every time, something like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, some of these.

[01:32:14] Especially there was a period in the '70 when I think the Hollywood executives turned some of these new, wild directors loose with big budgets and they made some epic films. There's a list of them. I could go on and on. And many of them are probably in that, like the top 100 films of all time.

[01:32:32] There's definitely a period of time there where some super cool shit popped off. But I could watch a film like that, Godfather 1, Godfather 2, Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Goodfellas. There's a few. And some of them are gnarly. I think that's just my tendency, is to gravitate toward hardcore, dark shit like that.

[01:32:53] But I could watch those movies a million times and never get tired of them. There's just always something you see, and you don't even know what it is that you're seeing that gives it that longevity. But they're just so well done that they never get cony. You see like, oh, okay, the film looks a little different now.

[01:33:15] Things are lit a little differently, and maybe there's the dialect is different than, and you see there's difference because there's some decades between you and the now and when that film was made. But in terms of their energy and their depth and the way they make you feel remains impactful. What's up with that?

[01:33:35] Ben: Short answer, I wish I knew fully, but let me give a stab at it.

[01:33:41] Luke: Okay.

[01:33:42] Ben: Those films in particular-- there's a really good book, The Master Switch by Tim Wu, that was talking about the evolution of telecommunications, infrastructure, and film industry and stuff like that. And what I learned in that was there was a time when you couldn't show a man and a woman in a bed at the same time.

[01:34:02] So they had to split screen. This one film did a split screen where they literally filmed the man and woman in the same bed, but at different times. And they had them doing their lines, and they split screened it and made it look like they were actually laying in bed together. It weird little rules that they had to overcome in these interesting ways.

[01:34:21] But when there was loosening of regulation, but there weren't a million directors and people trying to break into Hollywood, there was a bigger swath of budget given to people who really understood the craft, and they did it really, really well. And pacing was just about right. Nowadays pacing, I think, is a little too fast, and they move a little too quickly, expecting that our attention span is so short that if it moves slower, there's going to be an issue.

[01:34:53] But I think the reason why those are so timeless is because it's a series of different things. For you, why they might be timeless might be different as to other people. Some people are like, "Oh, I don't like Godfather. It's way too slow and too much story. Where's the explosions? It's about the mafia. There should be more shooting and stuff like that."

[01:35:16] And I think what you respect and understand might be different from what other people respect and understand about the film. For me, what I really liked about those films were it challenged your notions of what is good and what is right and who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

[01:35:34] Because when you have a film where the cops are the people you don't like that much, and the mafia are the people that you're starting to understand a little bit more, and they're doing some gnarly things, but--

[01:35:44] Luke: Yeah. You're like rooting for the villain. That's interesting.

[01:35:47] Ben: And that's what you can do with film. I forget the name. There was that guy who played The Commission. He was in a show where he was a dirty cop, and it was a bunch of dirty cops. And in the first season, they have a partner on a job, and they kill this guy because they knew that he was a snitch. So they're showing you right away, these are dirty cops.

[01:36:09] But how did they make you fall in love with them? They show you that everyone has a code. Everyone does follow a code. And if you can connect with those principles and values and you can show that, look, listen, the legal system is corrupt. People in general are corrupt. They just don't always have the opportunity to show you how corrupt they are.

[01:36:28] And you can toy with those notions. And I think Godfather was a very, very cool when doing that is because you show they're edgy, that you will be in a shallow grave outside of Vegas if you mess with the wrong people. And what does mess with the wrong people? It's not just messing with their money.

[01:36:46] It's just like, dude, that was his wife. You know what I mean? So in film, you're starting to really toy with people's expectations of like, I understand the principles and values of these mob bosses because what is the Corleone family's credo? It's like, it's family. We have a code. And what was it? That they wouldn't run drugs or something like that?

[01:37:10] Luke: Yeah.

[01:37:11] Ben: So they're toying with those things inside you, like, yeah, they'll kill you. Yeah, they're the mob. But why does a mob have to rise up in a world where-- yeah, the cops are also very crooked, and the cops aren't making sure that people have enough food on their plate. So you would expect this to rise up in an imperfect society where the cops are meant to be the heroes, but they're not.

[01:37:37] So I think that's why they're timeless, is because they challenge things that are deeper down the symbolic chain inside of our psyche. And when you can double, triple, quadruple, entendre certain things, then the more you watch it, you see symbolism beneath symbolism beneath symbolism, and it starts feeling more like home.

[01:37:57] Because if it's true, if this symbolism really resonates inside you, then it's like, oh, you not only understand the superficial, but you understand it all the way down to Marianna's trench. There's something that lives so deeply inside you. I could watch Fight Club over and over again. I know where it's going, but it's like you struck several chords beneath the surface.

[01:38:19] And that's what I like, is like, I feel seen now. This movie makes me feel seen. I don't even know how, but it's because they understand the symbolism that resonates deep down in those centers inside us. You feel seen. And when you feel seen by your parents, by your friends, truly seen, seen beneath the surface, not the superficial stuff, there's something that comes alive in you-- when you're seen and you understand and there's this coat resonance.

[01:38:50] That's my best stab at it. That's why I think those films are-- because nowadays you need 50 million movies to make this much money. It doesn't matter if 30 of these films flop as long as we get one good one. So a bunch of shit comes out. Back then, that wasn't their motto. They were like, you make a film, it's got to be to this standard. It's got to be symbolic down to this level.

[01:39:13] Luke: Yeah. I'm sure there are great actors now, and maybe many of them aren't given the kind of platform that allows them to really shine, but during the period that I'm describing, there's just some incredible acting too. You could just watch those guys breathe and you're interested. There's just something about the charisma and the depth and presence of some of those classic actors from that period that are just like, you just can't look away. It's crazy.

[01:39:41] Ben: Yeah. James Caan.

[01:39:44] Luke: Yeah, James Caan. Marlon Brando with the cotton swabs in his cheek. The scene will end. I'm like, "No, no. Go back to that guy." He's not even doing anything. He's sitting at a desk just being tough, and it's like, wow. There's just some energy there that is intangible, but really, really sticky. You just want more of it.

[01:40:06] Ben: Yeah. The acting was definitely a huge part of it. And the writing beneath that. I've seen some films with Bill Murray that was like, that was shit. That wasn't Bill Murray's best job. Oh, that's the writing. And that's why I teach story. Because the story is where you really-- when I took acting lessons, they were like, Ben, you're too literal. That's how a human would actually behave.

[01:40:31] But you need to find the colors in between the things that you're feeling. Bawling, the crying, that's too on the nose. Holding back tears, now that's powerful. It's the nuance. And I think back then when they took these scenes a lot slower, it wasn't studio magic. It was those people in the room. It was the silence. It was the hiccups. It was the little tiny things. And I think they were just magicians.

[01:41:00] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

[01:41:02] Tell us about souloffilm.com, this filmmaking course you got going on.

[01:41:10] Ben: So if you go to souloffilm.com, you'll notice that you reach out to me, and I'll reach back out to you with my Calendly link. And that's because I'm not trying to bring in everybody into this course. Because there's a course, 61 lessons, and there's homework in it because I believe you should start right away, not when you think you're ready.

[01:41:31] Start before you're ready, like I did with film. You just start, and that's how you learn. You aim not for perfection, but repetition because you're installing a pattern. The muse will find you in those moments. So in this course, 61 lessons, they're eight minutes long.

[01:41:48] It's really distilled. I go through films like Thelma & Louise and why when they go off the cliff at the end, when the cops go home, you shouldn't see them clinging safely to the cliff side, like, "They made it. Yay." It's not believable. People want believable. There's something about it.

[01:42:05] So I really drill into the nuances of, in this course, why story works the way it does. I take you from development, which is getting the idea out of your head and in front of your eyes. Cognitive distribution is very important. Because when it's in your head, you think you understand the story. But if you don't know how to say it, it's like you know something, but then when you have to teach somebody, it comes out all jumbled.

[01:42:29] You're like, "Yeah." That's because ideas need a symbolic infrastructure to rest upon. And film is that. It's a template. I think I took you from act 1, act 2, act 3, and why it's set up the way that it is. Maybe I did. Now all these podcasts I've been doing is getting jumbled in my head.

[01:42:46] Luke: You do two in one day. Sometimes they meld together.

[01:42:49] Ben: Yeah.

[01:42:50] Luke: I don't think we talked about the acts.

[01:42:52] Ben: Okay. It'd be too much for right now, but it's fascinating because you're inducing dopamine and adrenaline in act 1, serotonin and oxytocin in act 2, and then dopamine and adrenaline in act 3. There's certain plot points that are very integral to why the psyche will turn over the problem and the character. I'll go through it another time maybe.

[01:43:15] Luke: Interesting. Is that neurochemistry related to the Hero's Journey framework?

[01:43:20] Ben: Yes. Yeah. Maybe I'll try and speed through it. And this is really why the course, it shows you that story, is very simple. When you were talking about those advertisements that seem very corny, cliché is not corny. Cliché , that's easy to see and not embedded cleverly inside of a script. That's what's corny, when it's not clever enough.

[01:43:45] So act 1 always starts with an inciting incident. It's the hook. And that shows you what the problem is. Then you introduce the characters. You might introduce the characters with the problem. But then by end of act 1 and that problem inciting incident incites dopamine, which is how we reach for a goal. It propels us towards a goal.

[01:44:04] How do you speed that up? Adrenaline. So you speed up that process. And then you're moving towards act 1 climax, which is where the character and the problem are bound. So that's what you need to do in act 1. Like Frodo realizes he can't give the ring to Gandalf. Gandalf can't do it. It has to be him. This little person to go to the most dangerous place in the world. This ring of power is now his, he's bound to this mission. That's the end of act 1.

[01:44:33] Act 2, you need to slow it down because people's hearts are racing. They need to appreciate the world that they're in now. So that's serotonin. I like this world. I'll be here for a little bit. Oxytocin is you're pair bonding with the characters and with the story itself. But then you have three plot points.

[01:44:50] Pinch point 1 is where the character cannot see that the old self can't solve the new problem. Midpoint is when the character starting to realize old self can't solve new problem, but they don't know what to do about it. The end of act 2 is pinch point 2. Character, it becomes blatantly obvious that the old self and old tools cannot be used to solve this new problem, which plunges them into act 3 at the all is lost moment.

[01:45:18] And only in that broken state can the character see the new self that must be cultivated to bring back dopamine and adrenaline to propel us towards the climax, which is the one true transformation that the whole story revolves around and supports. And once that transformation, the climax of the film happens, the resolution is very important because it shows you what is the new normal inside this world?

[01:45:41] How did this transformation change people? How did it change the world? What's the new normal? And statistically, the best films are the ironic tragedies or-- the ironic tragedy is basically you won, but at a cost. It's not just everything's now.

[01:45:59] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:46:00] Ben: It's at a cost. We lost people along the way. Children had to grow up way too quick. That's the best-selling film in the box office because that's most relatable to us. Yeah, you might be successful, but at a cost. Yeah, you may be the best violinist in the world, but you didn't have many friends growing up. That's most relatable.

[01:46:20] So that's the template that I teach in the souloffilm.com. We drill story. And I say, "Don't do 30 minutes of writing, do three minutes of writing, and then stop." Because it forces you to get to the point and only the essentials. A lot of film is, I want to talk about this and I want to talk about that.

[01:46:36] Cut the fluff, get to the point, start in motion, move the story towards the climax, drop the mic. So we drill that kind of stuff all the way throughout. Development is getting the idea out of the head, onto paper. Production is where you get it into a camera and audio files. And then post-production is when you edit it all together.

[01:46:58] That's where the magic starts to happen. And then there's launch and distribution. I teach all of that, but I don't teach you the nitty gritty that you can find on YouTube, like, how do I add contrast and color? Go to YouTube for that stuff. I teach you story. And then in that, there's also a community, because community allows for accountability.

[01:47:16] Everyone who signed up for this course, they have a vision, a story is coming through them. And I'm like, "That's my goal for you, is to be true to what your soul is saying." Not how to get return on your investment, not how to compete in the workplace. This isn't the scaling or the profitability of film. It's the soul of film.

[01:47:33] And so I hear their vision, I help them clarify it, and then I expediently start giving them the resources and allowing them to realize what it takes to be creative and bring the idea down and then think of the nuts and bolts on how to actually bring it to market. Why? Because you're literally taking a piece of your soul and embodying it in ones and zeros.

[01:47:55] It's going to live on the internet where people for hopefully thousands of years can see your body of work. So it's important because it can change and shape culture. It can transform minds. But I don't want people that are just trying to do the old sex appeal, guns, explosions. I want real transformation.

[01:48:16] So that's who I'm calling in. You go to souloffilm.com. We do 90-minute classes twice a week. We drill, we drill, we drill, and people get to bring the story out of them at an accelerated pace. And then I open up all my channels, and you can do apprenticeship. I can give you placement. I can help you get on Gaia if you want.

[01:48:40] I've worked with UFC Fight Pass, ESPN, tons of influencers. I want to open up those channels for people mainly because I want people to start helping write the next story of humanity. If I'm just making films over and over and over again, there's no growth in it for me, and I'm not empowering you enough. So that's what the film course is, and that's--

[01:49:01] Luke: Awesome. It makes me want to make film. I'm like, "I know nothing about that, but that sounds cool. As you're speaking, I'm trying to apply it to writing, which I'm spending a lot of time doing. Everything's a story. There definitely is a story involved. So I'm taking notes.

[01:49:17] Ben: Even little ads, man.

[01:49:18] Luke: Yeah. So souloffilm.com, and people can book with you. And it looks like in my notes here, if you mention Luke Storey, you'll get 15% off, which is cool. There's so many more things I want to talk to you about. We might have to do a part two sometime.

[01:49:38] Ben: That'd be great.

[01:49:39] Luke: Because the writing that I'm speaking of needs to get done today.

[01:49:43] Ben: Well, let's talk off camera too.

[01:49:44] Luke: Yeah. But I do want to talk about, and I hesitate opening up this topic because I might break my own boundary of time today, but I haven't watched your film DMT Quest yet. So I wanted to give that a shout out. And I did watch, as I said, a couple of your episodes on Gaia, on psychedelics.

[01:50:08] Last night I watched the one on shamanism and the one that was about cacti, about Wachuma and peyote. And both were super cool. And I'm like, "Oh man." So tell me what were some of the highlights of the DMT film, and what did you learn that you didn't know before you made it?

[01:50:27] Ben: Main thing I learned is that everyone in this room is on DMT right now. Everyone listening is on DMT right now. It doesn't matter when you hear this. We are making DMT continuously in our brain at far higher levels than we thought. It's comparable to the levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in our brain.

[01:50:48] Pause. Why? Why is DMT a part of the way that we perceive reality all the time? Sometimes there's peak moments. Yeah, and there's things that we can do. John Chavez, I got to give a shout out to him. Go to dmtquest.org. If you're a funder or an angel investor, he is transforming the way that psychedelic science is being done.

[01:51:09] But it's all endogenous. It's not about taking psychedelics. It's about what we have already at our disposal. And so we interviewed Wim Hof when we realized that while we can't prove that Wim Hof breathing upregulates DMT in the brain, there are certain key indicators like gamma spikes and certain other brainwaves drop that's indicative of exactly what happens during near-death experiences and on DMT.

[01:51:37] So there's so many questions here, but so many people are like, "The most interesting thing is taking drugs." And we're like, "Wait a minute. No, you have a pharmacy inside of you." So that's the most fascinating stuff. I wish I could tell you-- it's on YouTube. Anyone who wants to go, just type in DMT Quest documentary on YouTube. You'll watch it. It's 45 minutes. Well worth your time. Rick Strassman, Dennis McKenna, Mauro Zappaterra, who's a cerebral spinal fluid expert. Lot of great science in there. We're working on DMT Quest 2 right now.

[01:52:09] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:52:10] Ben: And one of the hangups why it's taken so long is because an even more profound thing was found out about how we produce and how much we produce in our brain of DMT. But to get the peer review, to really get the stamp of approval takes so long. And that's what John Chavez is doing.

[01:52:28] He is like, "You know what? I'm changing this shit. I'm going to work with research coin and crowdfunding science so we can get the peer review even quicker." So he's doing some phenomenal stuff out there. Look out for DMT Quest 2. It's likely coming out later. In the interest of DMT, there's this guy, Danny Goler, if you've heard of the DMT laser guy.

[01:52:50] Luke: Yeah. Thanks. for reminding me because I keep meaning to find him and see if I can interview him.

[01:52:55] Ben: He's a homie. I'll hook up. You got to get him on your pod, dude. He's incredible.

[01:52:58] Luke: That shit is mind blowing. I think one of the reasons I've been procrastinating is I would feel beholden to do the experiment before we have a chat. And you can explain what the experiment is for those that don't know. But 5-MeO-DMT and DMT, I love that space, but it also scares the shit out of me.

[01:53:20] I have so much respect for that space. Scares the shit out of me, I'm joking a little bit. But it's like, man, the timing has to be real. And I have to be very sure that I'm ready to enter into the depth of that experience. And that's not something I can really predict. It's something I got to feel into for quite a while.

[01:53:38] Ben: Yeah

[01:53:38] Luke: But I feel like I could sit and talk to Danny. I'm like, "I don't want to talk about the thing that you've seen and all these other people have seen. I want to see the thing and then talk to you about it. But please, make the introduction, and explain what he's up to because it's freaking nuts.

[01:53:53] Ben: So he's a very practical dude, and he's like, "Listen, I don't know what I'm onto, but I'm onto something." And other people are seeing the same thing. Even Rogan has talked about it on his show, where there's a very specific frequency laser, you shine it at the wall, and it comes as a cross, an X on the wall.

[01:54:10] And even on low levels of DMT, people see it. But once you see it, you start seeing it more. So you wonder. And even he calls out, like there may be a self-fulfilling prophecy somehow involved in this. I don't know.

[01:54:22] But you shine the laser at the wall, you take a small hit of DMT or a large one, and then you get real close to where the laser's hitting the wall and you just look at the material that it's shining off of, and you'll start to see code. Not zeros and ones, like chimera, different symbols that are unbeknownst to anyone here. The last thing I'll say about Danny Goler is you start seeing code. You move the laser, it's not coming from the laser. It's in the wall or in the structure. And as you move it, the code will change, and people are seeing it in large numbers. He's making a documentary about it right now. I think that's the most that I should probably tell you. But I will connect you with him, and if he does come out here, plan an hour beforehand or maybe the day beforehand. Come out the night before and maybe film the experiment, if you want to do. And remember low level, you don't have to be--

[01:55:54] Luke: Well, you had me at low dose. I'm in.

[01:55:56] Ben: Okay.

[01:55:57] Luke: You got to really be ready to take the full sand. You know what I mean? And I lately haven't felt so much ready for that. But cool. Yeah, little microdose, and I see the thing. Great. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life and made you who you are today?

[01:56:16] Ben: Yeah. My brother. He taught me film. He got me into music. He got me into the things that I love the most. And he's super reserved fella. But he got me into all the coolest things in my life, I have to say. He's probably my number one teacher. He wouldn't like me saying that because he doesn't like being seen that much. But he's just incredible human.

[01:56:40] I would have to say my daughter. I mean all my children and my wife. But there's something about having a little girl that turned me into a different human. And at a very early age, when I would have some kind of weird, crunchy, emotional moment, she would call me out like a fucking shaman.

[01:56:59] She's trying to dance with me. And I'm in my head and I push her out of my way because she keeps getting in my way, whatever that means. My daughter's getting in my way. And she threw her hands down and was like, "You're shutting me out, and I don't like how it makes me feel."

[01:57:15] Luke: Wow.

[01:57:15] Ben: Three years old. I dropped to my knees. I'm like, "Oh my God. I was definitely doing that, and I'm so sorry." So my daughter, my brother, and let me just say Peter Joseph. Let me call Peter Joseph, the guy who made Zeitgeist. If you're listening, you made me into a filmmaker. I hope you don't mind. I mentioned them on just about every podcast. Hopefully it's not so redundant and annoying. But thank you for being an artist and not just trying to project your ideas into other people's heads but making a piece of art that transformed my entire world.

[01:57:51] Luke: Beautiful. Thanks for joining me today, man.

[01:57:54] Ben: It's been a pleasure, man.