Talking with former Marine signals intelligence operator and security consultant Matthew John Heath, decorated for valor in Iraq and detained in Venezuela for 752 days, on intercepting morse code and decrypting the invisible, on doing hard things because they’re hard, on being in Kuwait when the towers fell, on Nasiriyah with 33 Marines wounded in a single firefight, on thirteen years of boots on the ground in Iraq, on war as sacred and force as last resort, on accusations of explosives and phantom planes, on Venezuelan military counterintelligence, on torture and God’s grace, on prisoner swaps, on oil, on Maduro, on biometric IDs and surveillance states, on the internet being free and speech being anonymous, on Mao Zedong, on living like a fish in water, on operational and personal security, on trauma and coming home, on helping others get free.

Excerpts

On Being Detained by the Venezuelan State

 They start screaming at me, pointing guns at me, order me to take off all my clothes. Where are the explosives? Where is the plane? Where’s the CIA base.

And I’m in shock. I’m handed over over to the military counterintelligence, and that’s where things got pretty rough.”

On Being

 I liked the idea of doing something hard just because it’s hard.

On The Battle of Nasiriyah

In one firefight we had 33 Marines. Seriously wounded. Gunshots and shrapnel, and that’s out of about 120 guys. So we had a 25% casualty in, in one firefight. So when I say we had a pretty, pretty stiff resistance.

On War

 I don’t believe in using war just as any other policy tool. I believe that the use of force is almost sacred. I think that, if you break the glass and you pull the lever, that should be a big deal. I’m very supportive of the United States… If you cut my finger, I bleed red, white, and blue.

On Propaganda

 These are all propaganda tools for internal political purposes. Many dictatorships they need an external enemy to unify the domestic political situation. I don’t know, I can’t speak to how many people believe this, but I can tell you that it’s a very common tool in these dictatorships

Connect with Matthew @ https://matthewjohnheath.com/

Talking with psychotherapist, guitarist Matt Baldwin on his collection How to Play Guitar, an “anarchist cookbook for the creative process, an heirloom seed library of underground values and culture, a map of inner and outer edge places” (Tartantula Press 2025)

On motivation from V. Vale, the philosophical underpinnings of punk, on Nassim Taleb’s anti-fragile thinking and auto-didactic survival strategies, on John Fahey psyche, on low-res analog magic, on creativity as automatic cascading thought, on taping paper to paper at the kitchen table, on making art without handholding or explanation, on psychotherapy as edge work for the creative unconscious, on hypnosis and ontological shock, on alien abduction and lost time, on ketamine, on UFOs and the government’s, on synesthetic perception shifts and reality’s mutability, on rescue music, on DJing in therapy, on uncertainty as the engine of therapeutic change, on not-knowing as technique, on urban exploration of the haunted margins, on freight hopping and riding trains into wasteland, on survival and longevity as an artist, on stepping outside surveillance into forgotten spaces where trees grow through living room floors, on being, on enjoying being wrong, on religion and spiritual practice, on practice, on life.

Interview Excerpts

On Returning from the Edge

 I think I say that in the book somewhere, it’s valuable to go crazy if you know how to come back.

On Paradigms

 What did it destroy? It destroyed something about my reality, and how I think about reality. So it was this kind of weapon against my paradigm that I was holding onto.

On End Points

I think it’s more a case of, it’s time to face the answer rather than to find the answer.

On Music in Therapy

It’s all you have to do. Just listen to the music. And that was very reassuring. And if you do that, you realize that the music is this carrier wave that pulls you through the experience. And it can energize the experience or it can make it more tranquil.

Interview contains samples from Matt Baldwin’s Album NEW UNIVERSAL SOLAR CALENDAR

Intro: Did you See the Eyes

Outer: Old Sand Roads

Links:

Matt Baldwin’s Psychotherapy Practice: https://mattbaldwin.net/

How To Play Guitar by Matt Baldwin

Speaking with Guy Duperreault, writer, yoga teacher, COVID refugee, and uncompromising seeker of truth. Guy speaks from Oaxaca, Mexico, where he landed after refusing a vaccine mandate cost him his engineering career in Canada and set him walking across the U.S. border with four suitcases and a partner.

Years later these changes have materialized into what unfolds into a discussion that is part spiritual autobiography, part civilizational diagnosis. From Edward de Vere to the Bhagavad Gita, from Kundalini practice to the economics of manufactured consent, Guy draws from eclectic sources with the confidence of someone who has stopped caring whether it sounds respectable. His central provocation that all morality is the rationalized removal of compassion opens into a wider meditation on intimacy, anxiety, and what it means to listen to your body when every institution is asking you not to.

On the fake and the fabricated, on muscle testing and intuition, on leaving Canada, on synchronicity as guidance system, on economics as fakery, on trauma, on the body as truth-teller, on his critiques of feminism but not the feminine, on accountability, on the relativity of time, on Oaxaca, on expression of God, and more…

Connect with Guy Duperreault | Becoming A Refugee in the Time of Covid

Excepts

On Action

Whenever I’m blaming or complaining, I’m giving away my ability to choose action.

On Feminism vs Feminine

We deny the history through mythology of the power of the female. So one of the great lies of feminism is that women are weak. That’s bullshit, right? They’re much stronger than men in many respects, and men respect them much more because women have the ability to create life in a way that men do not have.

On Being Victim

 I was a victim of a narcissistic mother. And not only she was a narcissistic mother, she was also angry. And it turns out that she confessed to me when I was 18 years old that she had actually killed me as an infant and that I needed to be revived in some way. I have no recollection of that. Michelle has informed me that the way she killed me was by beating me to death, which I didn’t know.

Post Script from Guy:

Perhaps include a link to my essay on have to and should. That simple change of language has the power to transform life.

Spell Breaking Language-Keys to Unlock Language LocksUnseen, We Live Bully Stockholm Syndrome And Other Oddities of Being Alive in a Miss-Spelled See of Words

Guy Duperreault. Oct 30, 2023

Speaking with writer, collapse philosopher, novelist, and blogger Ran Prieur in a conversation that unfolds with a slow, organic rhythm, a pleasurable meandering walk through modern life and its ruins. Ran, as always, is philosophically rich, grounded, and quietly radical. In line with his long-held ethos of anti-industrial, post-collapse thought. I enjoyed reengaging with this contemplative tone in moving naturally between personal insight and social critique, offering a model for intimacy that remains intellectually serious and open.

From technology as spellcraft, to collapse as ongoing reorientation, to spiritual practice as a form of quiet resistance, on his new novel, on writing, the conversation avoids doomer clichés: it’s not about despair, but about seeing clearly. Ran speaks with a rare patience that reveals thought in motion pausing, circling, revising inviting us to listen more closely to what remains alive, to re-enchant.

For an earlier conversation with Ran, I invite you to listen to my 2022 interview with Ran Prieur.

Excerpts

On Mind and Matter as Play

 “Matter is like a game that we’re playing. It’s like you’re playing a board game and if you’re playing a board game, you have to follow the rules of the game. And that’s what matter is. It’s a game. The mind is playing and that we’re all in. And while we’re in it, we have to follow its rules, but underneath it’s all mind.”

On Returning to the Non-Human World

 “We’ve pulled all this stuff where humans are going deeper and deeper into a world of our own creation, and we’ve lost the vital force which we can get by going back to the non-human made world.”

On The Zeitgeist

“ We are the fish. And our whole culture is the fish and everything is going faster and brighter as the net closes around us. That’s my sense of the zeitgeist. “

 “AI is not the painter, AI is the pallet.”

More Ran Prieur

Some works / people mentioned in the interview that might not be clear in audio transcription

Purse-Seine: a large wall of netting used in fishing to encircle and capture schools of fish

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre

John Vervaeke, Ph.D - psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto.

Talking with writer, garage mystic, and Lotus Sutra enthusiast, Jigoku — anonymous poster and publisher — on Buddhist intellectual responses to civilization shift. On his treatise Theory of the End, on shitposting, on Buddhist white pills, on the Lotus Sutra, Nichirenism, utopianism, and modernity, on his analysis and response to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, on Devadatta as archetype, on Jacques Ellul and the relentless onslaught of technique, on the esoteric, on on Kishio Satomi and the Nichirenist response to modernity machinery, on Nick Land, on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, on Dan da Dan, on the Hungry Ghost press and sutras on Namu Myoho Renge Kyo…

Hungry Ghost Books

Talking with J.J Montagnier, writer, traveler, and scholar of cycle science, the systems on the hidden rhythms of history, the meta physical energy trends that shape civilizations and that that help us navigate moments of collapse and renewal. On the Mayan calendars, Vedic Yuga cycles, and the mimetic rivalry and the Jungian archetypes that move beneath politics and culture. On liminality and transition, peak oil and peak centralization, and the coming age of decentralization and spiritual resurgence.

On J.J’s lifelong journey across continents seeking wisdom in ancient teachings and living systems. On his path from Jungian psychology and archetypal studies, on the Tower of Babel as metaphor, on the relationship between material energy decline and spiritual energy ascent, and on how these forces echo through our present moment.

On how to prepare for what comes next not through fear or apocalypse fantasies, but by maintain openness, awareness, reverence, and adaptability.

Excerpts

 We are in a Tower of Babel scenario where we have had convergence for decades and we are now finally, reaching a point where we will have peak centralization, which will be temporary because when we see a major material energy decline, it would be very difficult for the centralization to be maintained and or at the same level.  

We are transitioning from a high materialism to a low materialism, more or less.

As we enter an era of physical energy declines. We might also enter an era of spiritual energy inclines in terms of we will become more spiritual, less materialistic consciously at the same time when we are, we actually need to adapt and adjust to less energy material energy in reality.

 I think the transition we will be going through will require an openness, a greater openness, let's say, to meta metaphysical concepts. Simply because I think life will become too weird really to understand what's going on without having some metaphysical understanding of what's unfolding.

J.J’s latest essay discussed:

https://energyshifts.net/mimetic-rivalry-in-the-tower-of-babel/

J.J. Montagnier is an independent writer based in the Southern Hemisphere. His main areas of interest are depth-psychology, consciousness, ancient civilisations, mythology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and metaphysics.

https://energyshifts.net/

For those interested in more depth and information on Mayan systems: Mayan Wisdom Project is a valuable resource:

https://www.themayanwisdomproject.com/

Beyond the Bad Trip: Psychedelics, Myth, and the Rediscovery of Spiritual Health

Talking with Dr. Thomas Cook, psychiatrist, writer, on navigating the crossroads science, spirituality, and myth. On psychedelics (“bad trips”) as way markers back to the natural state, as tools for dissolving the walls of modern state, on genuine religious connection. On depression ego inward-facing, a comforting puppet show of self-talk, and the bad trip as its opposite: a shattering, outward-facing vision that shocks us back into relationship with the world.

On the modern epidemic of skepticism, rationalism, and invisibility, and how psychedelics remove the Ring of Power to return us to childlike awe, returning us to visible beings once again. On demons, entities, and Tolkien’s Sauron as metaphors for the hidden darkness we deny. On Christianity, paganism, and the rediscovery of primal virtues through psychedelic experience.

On the failures of the pharmacological model of psychiatry and the limits of mainstream science, on folk medicine and scientific humility, on microdosing and sacredness, and on building a moral framework sturdy enough to contain powerful experiences. On the value of different tools, on the dangers and risks of psychedelics, on other ways. On madness as non ego. On introjection, on family as the root of culture, broken homes as the source of modern illness, on monogamy, jealousy, and the natural laws embedded in the human soul.

A conversation discussing Dr Cook’s latest essay on “The Benefits of Bad Trips”, on psychological surgery, psychedelics as spiritual compasses and tools to reconnect with awe..

Dr Cook’s Essay: The Benefits of a Bad Triphttps://beyondmentalhealth.com/the-benefits-of-a-bad-trip/

Dr Cook’s Medical Practice

2022 Leafbox Interview with Dr Cook

Excerpts

On His Latest Essay

 So the original motivation is to give a hardheaded, more traditionally psychoanalytic explanation for why a bad trip in particularly heals depression…

 Psychedelics free people not just from rationalism, but also from moralism and depression is a form of moralism. It's a moral disease. It's a moralistic disease, and science is not moralistic. It's ontological….

On Skepticism

 I see the atheist skeptical position as similar to the depressed position.

 That miraculous, wondrous outwardness that you get from psychedelics, that psychedelics restore people to a genuine religiosity, not a fake one.

And they may even break down a person with fake religiosity. I think if they use a psychedelic, it may terrify them that they're not a believer anymore. They now you're back to the square one. Now you're back to where you were when you were a little kid. And you might feel like you're a pagan again.

You may go out in the yard and look at the flowers and be tempted to worship them. And that's not a bad thing. That's natural. That's all humanity as it's in its starting point. We, for, that's just the starting point in humanity. You have to have sympathy on it.

On Universal Soul

 It's hippie dippy, but it's also Native American. It's also Catholic. It's also Pagan. It's also Roman. It's also Viking. It's also Samoan. It's also Eskimo. Just look around the world. What do people value the most is family and their souls and the state of their soul.

Dr. Cook does not recommend the use of any federally illegal drug.

A conversation with Canadian independent journalist Byron Christopher, exploring the shadows where public narratives meet private truths. Byron shares his unlikely path from small-town disc jockey to frontline reporter, reflecting on the pivotal moments that shaped a career spent chasing stories others wouldn’t touch.

Known for what he’s called an “Armageddon-like, blood-and-guts” style of crime reporting, Byron speaks about his approach to journalism and his belief in what he terms No News Release Journalism.

On the urgent need to diversify news sources in an era of collapsing public trust, and the ethical tightrope every reporter must walk. Byron recounts landmark investigations, from exposing allegations against Canadian oil companies operating in Sudan to tracking the twisting saga of convicted murderer and escape artist Richard Lee McNair.

Along the way, he shares stories of being a target of state surveillance, navigating dark and difficult subjects, and working on controversial cases, including UFO investigations, sensitive sexual abuse reports, and his work on Weibo Ludwig.

Part memoir, part introduction to fearless reporting, this interview offers a window into what it takes to stay human while holding power to account.

Excerpts

On Influences in Media

Here's the government lying to us. And the media went along with it. And that's what happens when you're on the take, where your bread is buttered and you fall into line. There are many examples of government influencing media, and I ran into that when I worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, very similar to the BBC in England and ABC in Australia.

On Interviewees:

 I treat them fairly and with respect. And I think that creates a trust, but I don't cover it for them… there's a place where you can draw a line there, but my goal is to get information from them. And you're not gonna get it by being adversarial ever. And that works with crown prosecutors, judges, lawyers, people on the street, any, so I said to him, I'm here. I'm not your friend, not your enemy. Talk. Tell me what's on your mind, what's your point of view on this?”

On UFOs and Shattering Beliefs

He said, there are UFOs, Byron. And I said, okay. And that kinda shatters your belief because here they are saying that Roswell is not true and nothing crashed there and word comes out over time. Yeah, there were crashes.... Yeah, there's like little doubt anymore that we're not alone in the universe, and I don't know what else we've been lied to.

Yeah, it's a strange world, my friend, and the more I delve into it the less I seem to know is totally confusing at times.

On Being a Target of State Surveillance

That's a surveillance house. I said, on who? He said, you stupid. You've done stories on the oil and gas industry. They'd be doing that to you right away. And I said, I don't believe it. And he said, no, you Canadians are naive about that.

He said, I'll tell you how you bust that house. It's a surveillance house. It would be run by the similar to the NSA in the United States. We have our own group here called the Communications Security Establishment, CSC. He said that's who those people are. If they're monitoring you. I said, I don't believe it.”

…you should know that the communication security establishment in Canada, that's our NSA, has files on one in four Canadians. That's documented evidence brought up in parliament.

Byronchristopher.org/

Byron Christopher on eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig

Talking with Luke Dodson, writer, mythographer, seeker, navigator of sovereign archetypes on cycles of collapse and renewal, on Jungian echoes, Campbellian journeys, and the sovereign myths that guard and dissolve empires. On the lawful sovereign who consolidates, the terrible sovereign who expands, and how their endless duel haunts the present moment. On his transition from writing on socio-political issues, on Extinction Rebellion and climate apocalypse liturgies, on doomer fantasies, on the current situation in the UK, to focusing deeply on spiritual and comparative mythological studies. On the nature of occult practices, spiritual grounding, on the toolkit of orientation, daily rituals as compass, and myth as a technology for navigating psychic weather. On the spiritual matrices, on entities, on the parapolitical, on self work vs outer work, spiritual research as spiritual practice, on the complexities of mythic archetypes and their reflections on modern spiritual and political landscapes…

Excerpts

On Collapse Cycles

“A better word than a collapse would be the ending of a cycle.

And in order for a cycle to end, something has to die so that something else can come out. And we see cycles in everything in nature. It could be, you could argue a base, some sort of cyclical process. So we have this negative association with the term collapse, and we have this idea that it's, oh, it's it's bad thing and we need to have infinite better things in the future… I think it, it would probably be better if we collapse, because if we don't, I think that the future would be, I'd be more concerned about the future of a non collapse.”

On the Role of the Soul in the Spiritual Ecology

“Beyond the physical, the body extends into subtler and subtler levels. Most of us believe we are confined to flesh, but experiences suggest otherwise: premonitions, psychic contact, thinking of someone just as they call you, or calling them to find they were thinking of you.

An occultist might say these are points of contact…our subtle bodies signaling across a more refined level of reality, like sending out a flare into the astral level… that another picks up unconsciously.

We are encountering these layers all the time. We don't necessarily just realize it, we don't necessarily have a language that can conceptualize it.”

On Self Work and Externalities

“It is much better to work on changing yourself than to work on changing the world outside. 'Cause first of all, it works. It is easier and it's also less dangerous because if you start to move things shove things around. In the outside world, if you're not really careful and you're not making sure that you're really in line with where things want to go naturally, where the Dao wants to flow, as it were, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of instability.

'cause there's always second order consequences and third order consequences of everything you do. And in like occultism, that's kicked up to the max because of what you put out, you'll get back. So if you, for example if you put a hex on someone, you're putting a hex on yourself sooner or later it's gonna come back at you.”

On Self Monitoring

“ A lot of self-monitoring because anyone who's dealing with archetypes and then archetypes in their own life is at risk of going completely insane.”

On Utopian Visions

“ Fully automated luxury space communism just sounds horrific.”

Connect with Luke Dodson

Flint & Steel

Talking with The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo, author, mythmaker, visual artist, and a self-described Bardo Bard on his new book Lore Spores: Tales & Tools for Enhanced Enchantment. On parasitic possession as pedagogy, the protean potential of mimicry, and language as both spell and vessel. On sculpting the soul through shape shifting, the value of taking on personas, DMT in pair with Vipassana meditation as a microscope for cellular cosmology, and channeling the subconscious through a Hermes-brand archetypewriter. On the metaphysics of coffee withdrawal, personal folklores, pareidolia as daemonic interface, and how a flesh-eating parasite helped him unlock his inner light body. On using tea leaves and pareidolic doodles as oracular portals, the high weirdness of Scottish rap and Shrimp Pimping alter egos, and the mythopoetics of microbial gods. Also: on “Deep Face Blackface”, Goenka impersonations, gay protection, on scanning faces in clouds, the de/conditioning powers of psychedelics, and why being an adult might just mean learning how to play seriously and where the soul is.

Experts

On Being

People always say “Be Yourself.”I say, don't be yourself, be somebody else.It's not until you take leave of the limitations of who you believe yourself to be, that you can become who you really are, that you can become full expression.

On Elimination

A process of elimination leads to a process of illumination.

On Adulthood vs Childhood 

For me being an adult is really being a skilled child, 'cause that's the soul really. It's that untarnished part of the self that comes into the world that we must protect at all costs. And that doesn't mean, not adulting or not, doing the necessary things or growing up and maturing, but preserving all of that stuff and you just, becoming more skilled in the things, because I think play is a way to learn.

On Revaulating Meta Reality 

Meta reality instead of materiality which looks at matter in a different way because, we think of ourselves as singular self hoods moving through this world. You're Robert. I'm Michael. That's a chair. That's a guitar.

But there's actually all these cellular processes and these microbial bacterial processes and all these other living collectives that build and sustain and heal and break down this world of matter upon which the. Of the hallucination of the self rides.

 And that got me to reevaluate my worldview in a lot of ways. And looking at like the micro, the microbial microbiological implications. 'cause usually we tend to think of things as a dichotomy of materialism and idealism or spirituality which I think there's a secret third thing, which is hinged, hinged on language and the way that affects perception and affects the world.

On improvisational adaptational

I'm not a guy that gets tattoos. I'm more like a mutilation by flesh, eating parasite kind of guy. So when I was going through that the parasitic period of my life is that I'd never had expectations of life where somebody had told me that I wouldn't have flesh eating parasites mutilating me.

So just stay open-minded and improvisational and adaptational as things come, I think it's the best attitude to have rather than preconceived notion that that, that bump into the actuality or that are at odds with the actuality of life's unfolding.

The Ungoogleable Michaelanglo

Originating in The Netherlands, The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo is a creator of cosmic, comedic, and contemplative content, here to serve The Lore.

His work finds expression through visual art, written and spoken word, music, film, puppetry, uncanny impressions, performance, and Oracular Interactions.

​He is the host and creator of the podcast Self Portraits As Other People, the narrator of Consciousness and The Bicameral Mind: The Julian Jaynes Society podcast, and the author of The He & The She of It, Impatient Transformations, and Lore Spores, Vol. 1.

Self Portraits as Other People