Hello friends, it's me Duncan and you are listening to the Duncan Trussel Family Hour podcast.

And as many of you know, I've been diving into the strange worlds of virtual reality.

A technology I have fallen in love with, not just because of the incredible wild spectrum of experience that it offers from standing on the wrecked hole of an underwater ship watching a massive whale swim by

to experiencing a relatively karma-free three way, but because of the philosophical implications of the technology, when you put virtual reality goggles on and look at your hand or look down at your body and your hand and your body isn't there, it forces you to ask what is considered by many to be one of the most important questions that a human being can ask, which is, who am I?

And so I'm not my body. Who am I? If when I look down, there's nothing there. The experience that virtual reality can offer is weirdly similar to one of my favorite stories that Ramdas, formerly known as Richard Albert tells.

And I found a clip of him telling this story. I hope it's okay for me to play it here.

This is Ramdas talking about the time that he took synthetic psilocybin at Timothy Leary's house.

And when I got back in the spring one night on the night of a large snowstorm, I was invited over to Timothy's house. I was visiting my parents in this suburb near Timothy about a few blocks away.

And I walked a few blocks to ingest psilocybin, the synthetic of the Mexican mushrooms. And then I went off into the living room by myself.

And this is the report of that few moments at that point.

But now a few hours later, I had gone off by myself to reflect upon these new feelings and senses. A deep calm pervaded my being.

The rug crawled and the pictures smiled, all of which delighted me. Then I saw a figure standing about eight feet away where a moment before there had been no one.

I peered into the semi-dartness and recognized none other than myself in cap and gown and hood as a professor.

It was as if that part of me which was Harvard professor had separated or dissociated itself from me.

Well, I cried. I were tired to get that status, but I don't really need it.

So it's over there and I'm over here, so I'll give it up. I won't get frightened.

Again, I settled back into the cushions, but at that moment the figure changed. Again, I looked lean forward, straining to see.

I was a little bit more nervous, but now I'm a little bit more nervous.

I was a little bit more nervous, but now I'm a little bit more nervous.

I was a little bit more nervous, but now I'm a little bit more nervous.

Chalice, pilot, etc.

With each new presentation, I again and again reassured myself that I didn't need that anyway.

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