Psychonautics

Psychonautics

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Psychonautics episodes

  • Serious Vehicle Accidents Info for Arizona Drivers (Victim & At Fault)

    Serious vehicle accidents have significant impacts on anyone involved. Sometimes they change lives completely. Whether you're the victim of a vehicle accident or the at fault driver, you have legal rights to advance. Trial Attorney and Partner with Long & Simmons Law - www.longandsimmonslaw.com, Matt Long gives some tips to anyone involved in a vehicle accident. You may need to navigate insurance issues or civil and criminal court processes. Regardless of which side you're on, knowledge is power and everyone is entitled to fair representation. If you're in need of legal assistance related to a vehicle accident in Arizona, contact Long & Simmons Law at 602-795-8808 or [email protected]  

    8 min
  • Trial Attorneys Talk - Child & Intimacy Crimes

    Two dads and criminal defense attorneys talk about the realities of Child & Intimacy Crimes, the recent CNN "grape" academy article and provide tips for parents to help their kids tell if they're being hurt or abused. More information at www.longandsimmonslaw.com 

    Matt Long: Hey, everybody. This is Matt Long with Skeptical Mystics. And on this episode, I sit down with another criminal defense attorney. We both specialize in child and intimacy crimes, and we're both dads. We talk about the realities of those crimes and the recent CNN article about the rape academy.
    We also provide just a little bit of advice and tips for parents to help keep their children safe and protected and to empower them to tell if they ever find themselves in a situation where they're being hurt. Knowledge is power, especially as it relates to our kids.
    Aaron Reed: Sup Aaron? How you doing?
    Matt Long: I'm good. We have a
    Aaron Reed: weird job. We do. I would agree with that.
    Matt Long: I mean, you see people at their worst, at their weirdest. Yeah. And that includes, I'm gonna say civilians, regular people, but police. Yeah. Prosecutors, judges.
    You see, especially in some of the cases that we handle, it's an interesting peek into humanity.
    Aaron Reed: It is. There's a lot of different dynamics and different cases and different people, different personalities, and it all kind of intersects, and you have to manage all that. It's very demanding, but rewarding
    Matt Long: job. I
    Aaron Reed: wouldn't do anything else, to be honest with you.
    Matt Long: But I brought you in because I've been in the child and intimacy crimes
    Aaron Reed: Yep.
    Matt Long: World for, man, twenty some twenty some years now. And it's a different area, and you're another another attorney who works in that area.
    Aaron Reed: It's not an area of the law that's for everybody.
    Matt Long: Right.
    Aaron Reed: It really isn't. And to do it at the level that I think we do it at, that you do it at, that the people that we know do it at, it takes a lot. Yeah. It does.
    Matt Long: And give us your firm name.
    Aaron Reed: So I work Katz and Reed. We're based in the Biltmore area, kinda not far from your office here, probably four or five miles from your office here on 16th Street, just off the 51, and me and Duane Katz have been partners now for four years.
    Matt Long: Uh-huh.
    Aaron Reed: And then he hired me back as an employee back in 2018.
    Matt Long: So,
    Aaron Reed: yeah, I've known him for a while
    Matt Long: now. Yeah, and Long and Simmons, been doing this for ten years in private practice, but before that I was a prosecutor and worked in sex crimes, child crimes, computer crimes. There was a transition and the idea of, always ask the question, right? Yeah. Well, how do you do what you do?
    And so I wanna pose that question to you. Do you get that question a lot? How is it that you represent the worst of the worst?
    Aaron Reed: Yeah, how does it impact? Various forms that question is something that I think every defense attorney's had at some point, but to me I always tell people the same thing, that my job is to police the police. My job is to try to find the truth in a given situation, whatever that might be. And my job is to help a person accused of a crime navigate the system. And that's what our country has allowed to happen.
    And if you're charged with a crime, if another person's charged with a crime, would you wanna navigate that by yourself? Would you wanna do that alone facing a government that has endless resources? Would you wanna do that or would you want help? And that's how I always like to answer that question because people, they like to ask it sometimes in a condescending way. You're kind of a scummy guy for representing scumbags, but at the end of the day everybody's a human.
    Everybody deserves their rights, they deserve to have someone there to help navigate those rights, and that's what I do. Mhmm. Period.
    Matt Long: You know, was talking to someone the other day, they asked me about, oh, so you're on the other side now. I said, guess that's one way to look at it, but I don't really view that because there's just evidence.
    Aaron Reed: Right.
    Matt Long: There's not really the state's evidence or defense evidence, there's just evidence.
    Aaron Reed: Something that happened.
    Matt Long: And you're doing the same thing, making the same analysis. As a defense attorney, you can't just sling bullshit. Yeah. And if you sling, if you try to sling bullshit, if you try to just
    Aaron Reed: lie Yeah, or I don't.
    Matt Long: You lose credibility and that's not gonna help anyone. So you gotta make the right arguments.
    Aaron Reed: You gotta make the right arguments. You have to be knowledgeable enough to find them, right? To make But I like that, what you said. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, we go against each other. Whatever the adversarial nature of it is, but the goal for everybody, regardless of who you are, is to figure out what happened.
    And if you can't do that as a defense attorney, or if you don't have the wherewithal to do that as a prosecutor, or the ethical backbone to do it as a prosecutor, then you shouldn't be doing it. Oh. And you, as a former prosecutor, you've had to navigate a lot of different types of cases, types of crimes, types of things, and child and intimacy crimes are something that you've had a lot of experience with, and you've gotten to see how it operates from both sides and how prosecutors should probably behave in certain situations, and how they shouldn't.
    Matt Long: And as you were saying, know, you're there to challenge police, but I identify, people ask me, actually a defense attorney, was in court, and they said, Are you a prosecutor? I said, No, I'm the opposite. They said, Oh, are you a defense attorney? I said, No, that's not the opposite. I said, I'm a prosecutor hunter.
    Aaron Reed: I like
    Matt Long: that. I'm looking That's at what they've done improperly, unfairly, incompletely. And it's the same thing with police because prosecutors are an extension
    Aaron Reed: Yeah, adjacent.
    Matt Long: Of what the police investigation
    Aaron Reed: And
    Matt Long: when the allegations are so serious, the truth doesn't matter. Sometimes that seems to be the case.
    Aaron Reed: I would say more than sometimes. And, you know.
    Matt Long: That
    Aaron Reed: can't Which is scary.
    Matt Long: That can't be the way. No. It just can't be the way.
    Aaron Reed: That's not the way the system's designed to be.
    Matt Long: I wanna talk a little bit about child and intimacy crimes in the news today.
    Aaron Reed: Sure.
    Matt Long: And did you see the CNN article that came out?
    Aaron Reed: Yeah. The Rape Academy. Yeah. I did. I read that.
    I was very, first of all it was interesting that CNN infiltrated that the way I that they thought that was kind of interesting.
    Matt Long: Yeah, what jumped out to you?
    Aaron Reed: Well, see me, I think the fact number one, the scope, the worldwide nature of that kind of thing, and the discussions behind it, but it is a weird intersection between going too far and having this fetish and trying to figure out what's over the line and what's not. And I don't think those are always very clear. I think it's difficult for investigators to probably find those answers in those kinds of cases, in those kinds of contexts. But yeah, thought that was very interesting. I know you had read that article as well.
    What did you think about Well,
    Matt Long: first of all, that it highlighted something that we deal with a lot, which is Telegram. Yeah. Is that Telegram is an app where there's a group of people we'll get on, and it's something that we are seeing a lot of crimes happening on the app.
    Aaron Reed: That encrypted kind of thing.
    Matt Long: Yeah, and what it is is you got a lot of people wh...
    35 min
  • Law, Order, Chaos & Death Justification (The People v. The Government)

    A Trial Attorney, A Retired FBI Agent, A Former Police Officer & A Death Investigator discuss the "Laws" of officer involved shootings and use of force involving Federal Agents given Arizona's "Stand Your Ground" laws in light of the recent statement made by the Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. Topics include the Law of Procedure, The Constitution, Self-Defense Laws in Arizona, Second Amendment Issues, The Supremacy Clause and Judicial Oversight.  

    53 min
  • Myths & Reality of CSA (Part 1)

    Trigger Warning: Talking Honestly Through Child Sex Crime


    We we identify as the Wayfarers and we introduce you now as another one of the Wayfarers and it and it comes from an idea of.
    Well, the reason why we picked it is is is the idea of being a lifelong learner and that you're never landing on really on anything but constantly in search for.
    Growth, progress and those types of things. And it stems from also this theologian from the the group that we're affiliated with he identified as a wayfarer's theology.
    Which is to never be fixed, to constantly be open to to new things and new, you know, new changes and and and openness. And he identified that in conjunction with being a Church of dissidents.
    And I really liked that because that's definitely been our journey of being dissidents and being heretics in virtually every group that we've been a part of, including my, my, my last.
    Faith community, as it were, as a prosecutor, and I really did find prosecution being a little cult as I as I got out of it. So that's.
    So, So what we what we said as our tagline is, is that we are interested in fruits, not faith and ideas over beliefs, and that we talk through the issues rather than talking around the issues.
    And I thought that's a really particularly good framing for when it comes to sex, death, drugs and violence.

    Carli Moncher   3:14
    Thanks.
    Oh.

    Kristin Long   3:23
    And so our topic today will jump in with sex, sex, consent and child sexual abuse. And So what better, what better person to come and talk about these topics than what we call, Hillary, a.
    What is an SM? Subject matter expert. SM. SM. Yeah, SM. SM. SM. Oh, that would be with an I. That was with the I started going down. I did start saying SMI cause I was.

    Carli Moncher   3:50
    I thought you meant seriously, mentally ill. I was like, wow, that's different.

    Kristin Long   3:59
    He's called me, Carly. He's called me a lot of things before, but not that.

    Carli Moncher   4:04
    Yeah, I've been called worse, so.

    Kristin Long   4:06
    But Carly is our is our subject matter expert on topics that are so avoided and misunderstood, and that is child sexual abuse.
    And so let's dig in. I thought I'd start with a couple things. First, what and anyone can jump in as as well, but but Makara, the first one's for you is if you started point to a couple of just the.
    So one of the prevailing myths and misunderstandings about child sexual abuse. What would be just one?

    Carli Moncher   4:50
    I think the first one that comes to mind is that any victim of CSA or child sexual abuse is going to run Intel right away.
    And that we know over and over and over again is just not the case.

    Kristin Long   5:09
    Yeah, the one that I thought about is that.
    People don't appreciate just how common and how prevalent and how many people they know have that experience and will never tell, have never tell, told and may never told. So we're here now.
    Talking about telling, talking. So approximately how many kids have you talked to about these types of subjects?

    Carli Moncher   5:49
    Um.
    Somewhere in the in the thousands. I don't know the exact number anymore.

    Kristin Long   5:56
    You haven't kept kept track of that, I take it.

    Carli Moncher   5:59
    Not anymore. There was a time in place.

    Kristin Long   6:01
    Yeah. And then the other so, so.
    The concept or the the idea of telling, talking, you know, in our family we have, we have a mantra, a rule that is everyone in the home gets to think their thoughts, feel their feelings.
    And talk about the thoughts that they think and the feelings that they feel. And that was something that I I learned in part from you and other people about how important it is to make that a a principle and to to make sure that kids at a very early age.

    Carli Moncher   6:29
    Mm.

    Kristin Long   6:43
    Are free to do that. And you know, people know my some people here know my daughter. She's never been real shy. And yet there's been times when I've shut them down, shut her down and and she'll remind me, hey.
    I thought we get to think our thoughts and talk about our thoughts and that's right, we we get to do that. So now before we get into some of the other things, the other thing I wanted to talk about for a second is.
    This idea for the.
    Maybe if it's what you all think about the idea that I've heard. So I want to run a want to run it by you about the idea that.
    Acute and severe childhood trauma, and especially things like childhood sexual abuse, is a numinous or a spiritual experience.
    I just use a word I know that can be loaded for some people, so I'd love to get just anyone's impression about the use of that word and the concept of child sexual abuse as a spiritual experience.

    Carli Moncher   8:03
    I would say that specific term ruffles my feathers a little bit. Um.
    I would use the terminology maybe spiritual trauma or spiritual damage, spiritual inflection.

    Kristin Long   8:19
    Mhm.
    And I've heard and I've heard spiritual injury and even spiritual emergency.

    Carli Moncher   8:22
    Virtual experience.
    Mhm.
    Mhm.

    Kristin Long   8:32
    Well, when I hear, when I hear spiritual, I do think of identity it because these can be kind of this identity crisis. So it's a spiritual in like finding themselves, it does present an injury a.
    An obstacle. And the what I how I heard it from it was actually a oh shoot, end of life doc. Oh, hospice. Was it palliative care? Oh, I think, I think, yeah, palliative care.

    Carli Moncher   8:58
    Hmm.
    Hospice.
    Mhm.

    Kristin Long   9:07
    Who who who worked worked in that area and she talked about the idea of spirituality simply being about person, about identity and personal work and coming to an understanding of reality and one's existence.
    And the relationship between their self, their being and another person or their environment or reality. And from that perspective that helped me at least say, OK, I I I also bristled when I heard that.
    And and but with that context, I thought, OK, that makes sense to me because when a kid especially experiences something very, very traumatic, very impactful, especially something like a sex crime.
    That just fundamentally changes their sense of self, their sense of who I can trust, who I can't trust, what a parent is, what a love, what a loved one is.
    It's really connection with all and it's and so often it affects one's relationship with their taught or perceived deity, God or religious.
    Community. So what? What are your thoughts on on that?

    Carli Moncher   10:32
    Yeah.
    I think given the context, it's I can understand where it's coming from. I think my concern is that people will interpret that word or misinterpret that word experience as it's not so bad.
    It's just an experience like every other childhood experience that helps to shape you and.

    Kristin Long   10:52
    Mm.
    And I'm feeling a little different about it when you said spiritual experience.
    Related to child sexual abuse, I'm thinking, oh, where's Matt going with this? Is he SSI? Yeah. So I thought, OK, well, spiritual experience to me is always positive.
    So child sexual abuse is negative. And I'm thinking, OK, maybe maybe Matt's thinking spiritual experience means when you feel something, you're not really sure where it's coming from. So in other words.
    If you're experiencing something spiritual, you're you're maybe thinking you're receiving inspiration. This kind of overcoming you is you're not. You've never experienced this before, so you're trying to process it. And what it is, it's a negative. It's the opposite of what you think spiritually.
    Is, but it's ...

    1 hr 12 min
  • The Evolving Theology of a Cosmic Polygamist & His Prophet

    Are Mormons Christian or are they a Sex Cult? The political history of Joseph Smith and the LDS people explain why their theology changed, why many believe the LDS religion is not Christian & why it is so important to LDS people that their god have a functioning body. Spoiler alert - sex is the answer. 

    32 min

About Psychonautics

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Psyche — Greek for soul, mind, the interior life of a person.