E161 - Pete Holmes: Life is a Cosmic Joke - Finding God, Wonder & Freedom in the Unknown
Know Thyself
André Duqum
4.8 • 658 Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2025
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedian and spiritual seeker Pete Holmes joins us for a conversation that weaves together humor, mysticism, and the search for truth. Pete opens up about his journey from growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household to having life-altering psychedelic experiences that redefined his understanding of God and religion. Together, they explore what it means to move beyond belief into direct experience, why we can never truly be separate from the divine, and how comedy can serve as both healing and revelation.
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0:00 Intro
2:46 Asking the Deeper Questions in Life
6:27 From Fundamentalist Christian to Psychedelic Experience
11:29 Reinterpreting Religion through the Lens of the Mystical
17:10 The Prodigal Son: Reclaiming Our Birthright
22:02 Go From Belief to Direct Experience
26:50 His Experience on the George Janko Podcast
28:41 Ad: PiqueLife
30:05 How His Understanding of God Has Changed
34:45 Mental Exercise for Experience the “I am”
40:36 We Can Never Be Separate from God
45:10 Existential Comedy & Wondering at Life’s Mysteries
55:28 Ad: Wix
56:30 Balancing Being Spiritual & Being Human
1:00:05 Lessons from Psychedelic Experiences
1:07:12 The Power & Responsibility of Comedy
1:18:27 Are Comedians Traumatized?
1:23:03 Future of Comedy in a Changing World
1:32:40 Conclusion
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Episode Resources:
https://www.instagram.com/peteholmes/
https://www.youtube.com/@peteholmes
https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/
https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/
https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast
https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Spirituality will never not be compelling to me |
| 0:02.6 | because it's asking what doesn't change, |
| 0:05.1 | what is consistent, it's your knowing. |
| 0:07.5 | What makes being a comedian so wonderful, |
| 0:09.7 | you're supposed to say the unsayable? |
| 0:11.5 | I think one of the things we're doing |
| 0:12.9 | with art, with conversation, with everything, |
| 0:14.8 | is recognizing that we are in this really strange situation. |
| 0:18.4 | We do really lack perspective. |
| 0:20.0 | Well, that goes back to what is this? |
| 0:21.9 | How would you articulate your evolution of understanding God? |
| 0:25.3 | I was a fundamentalist Christian. |
| 0:26.9 | But what happened was I had an experience. |
| 0:29.7 | What I like to say now is I believe in God, but I don't think God exists. |
| 0:34.5 | The idea of God somewhere else, something else that you can find is absurd. |
| 0:38.3 | There's nothing missing here. |
| 0:40.3 | That's the good news. |
| 0:41.3 | It's all right here. |
| 0:42.3 | It was nowhere to go. |
| 0:43.3 | You can't become what you already are. |
| 0:45.3 | And that's step one. |
| 0:46.3 | And step two is to investigate the nature of that knowing. |
... |
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