Yeah.

But, uh, the bottom line is that, uh, it's a- What it exposes is this deep underbelly of, I think, hatred for truth to some extent, but also the number of people who are willing to align with anyone who says that they're an aggrieved party, and it doesn't have to be that you do it in a productive manner or present your ideas in a compelling and illuminating way, saying, «Listen, we feel as though we're not getting a fair shake for this reason.» Now it seems as though if you're violent, vengeful, and, uh, grotesquely, uh, assaultive of other people, that doesn't matter.

That, that seems...

It seems like the drama itself, even though horrific Uh, folks are ready, somehow they're desensitized, and they're ready to say, "Well, these people seem to be upset."

Wow.

And he's had his dir- he's contracted with his director friend to have some of the folks, he believes this, some of the folks in Newburyport have been replaced by actors.

So he comes here almost like a, a drama, so that he wants his life to be wholly different and certainly not be boring, because he doesn't wanna know who is acting and who's real.

Question is, when that occurs, do you become more yourself than ever because you've handed in this script that isn't you from your prior life, or do you lose yourself? And people find out by the end of the book.

Yeah.

But, uh, the bottom line is that, uh, it's a- it- what it exposes is this deep underbelly of, I think, hatred for truth to some extent, but also the number of people who are willing to align with anyone who says that they're an aggrieved party.

And it doesn't have to be that you do it in a productive manner or present your ideas in a compelling and illuminating way saying, "Listen, we feel as though we're not getting a fair shake for this reason." Now it seems as though if you're violent, vengeful, and, uh, grotesquely, uh, assaultive of other people, that doesn't matter.

That that seems, it seems like the drama itself, even though horrific, uh, folks are ready...

Somehow they're desensitized, and they're ready to say, "Well, these people seem to be upset."

Wow.

And he's had his dir- he's contracted with his director friend to have some of the folks, he believes this, some of the folks in Newburyport have been replaced by actors.

So he comes here almost like a, a drama, so that he wants his life to be wholly different and certainly not be boring because he doesn't wanna know who is acting and who's real.

We're going to get some other aspects in that in a second, like the marketplace of what heroin was, how they reacted to the onset of methadone.

Yes.

So, I mean, an analogy would be if people were getting obese because of cupcakes and they were stealing them from the nice bakeries in Manhattan and coming from less nice neighborhoods where cupcakes are still expensive.

You might say, listen, the way to not have them enter our homes and steal our cupcakes is we give out.

or something that's a lot like them that's very desirable.

And also it's a business because the government will pay you to give out cupcakes or methadone.

And then you find, you know what? We're not getting anyone thin.

I've done it 50 times.

Right.

It's so out of the box that almost any reaction you'd say, "Well, maybe." Now, what has his reaction been? It's been fairly transparent.

Like in that 60 Minutes, uh, interview, I, I was really listening with what psych- psychiatrists call the third ear, trying to get a sense of, well, what am I feeling as I listen to this person? I had a sense of being profoundly sad myself.

I think I got that from him.

Uh, I think that his answers seemed authentic.

There was no attempt to over-dramatize.

That's what would give me more pause, somebody who would say, "There isn't a minute that goes by that I'm not plagued with intrusive memories.

But I want you to tell us a little bit about how that unfolded in, in the best way that you can.

Talk to me about that premise and how, A, maybe somebody could apply that in their own life, or B, how Cain applies it in the book.

Absolutely.

Well, finding what is truly important for you is lifesaving.

It's life affirming and lifesaving.

You can't really deny your core self.

If you live at a distance from who you truly are, it opens up potential space, which is the breeding ground for things like anxiety and depression and the rest of the maladies that we give labels to.

But a lot of these labels in our diagnostic manuals, what they're really talking about is this sense of, I am not myself.

And the problems are the same problems.

So I was, you know, me and I were thinking, how can we violate HIPAA when we talk to Dr. Abloh again? And it's like of all of those famous people that you've, you know, counseled and treated, who is the craziest? Why don't we just start with that?

Who was the craziest? Well, you know, having treated people who I've testified about in court, you know, if you go to the sort of cross-dressing Harvard dermatologist who killed his wife, that might be one of them.

You know, I mean, in the annals of my case files, there are some pretty amazing stories.

What's interesting, though, is that none of those stories are unfathomable.

all of the stories when you start to dig deep you can see the likely next chapters coming down the tracks based on the earlier ones so doesn't seem to me that anyone's born evil in the world things happen people for better or worse seem to be doing their best a lot of the time their best may may not be very good at times but also it's been just a pleasure to work with folks who are looking for their core selves more than ever as ai starts to empty us out uh into the machine if you will people uh are raising their hands saying i just i gotta do something to anchor myself And that's what I love to do is help people find that core narrative to say, no, this is who I am.

I am right.

And that wards off a lot of anxiety and low mood and lots of other things that can happen to you if you feel like you're lost, drifting and unanchored, which is pretty easy to feel when everybody's now going to make the decision whether to use their minds or not, because you could easily defer to an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude and say, well, am I just being a fool trying to put together reasoning and an argument and my ideas to present to others? Shouldn't I just cede that to a machine? It's faster.

And when we give that to the machines, I mean, that's the terminators from my perspective.

Mm-hmm

... that what you're thinking is actually valuable and the way to go.

What AI does when you're using it too much, uh, without any regard for the self, is that it is basically saying, "You don't need to be involved anymore.

You're a passive participant.

Just ask the oracle what it thinks, and convey that to other people as though it's yours." So we don't have to be chipped because everybody's feeding us AI-derived material.

So that means that individuals, the millions and millions of individuals who have creativity and instinct and gut feelings are being short-circuited by a machine that's now taking center stage and homogenizing everything.

But the point is though, to every time go to AI for everything, I, I, I can't wrap my head around why people would wanna do that.

Well, that's correct.

How do we put guardrails on that if we don't do it to ourselves first.

Well, I'm not sure that we're going to put guardrails on it.

And it's essential to do it for ourselves because the self's under assault.

I mean, I have people come to my life coaching practice, for instance, saying already that, hey, this is making it much tougher for me to feel well like me.

Why is that? Well, we're being channeled into like a collective mind.

And so people who use AI, and, well, all of us are going to end up doing that.

It's hard not to use it at all.

that once this causes

What's the other one?

It's like John Wayne is holding office and people don't know what to do about it.

The other thing is that he is not in any way ambivalent about things.

He expresses things very definitively.

If you waffle...

If you want to play both sides and the middle, then this is going to make you very nervous.

And you're going to take it out on Donald Trump because he adds up the numbers.

Is that true?

What's the other one?

It's like John Wayne is holding office and people don't know what to do about it.

The other thing is that he is not in any way ambivalent about things.

He expresses things very definitively.

If you waffle...

If you want to play both sides and the middle, then this is going to make you very nervous.

And you're going to take it out on Donald Trump because he adds up the numbers.

Now, what else did Miranda said has to do with daddy issues? Is that true?

no you're right it's like 1950s uh really tough masculinity we haven't seen that in a president in years so that's a good point what's the other one

it's like john wayne is holding you know office and and people don't know what to do about it uh the other thing is that uh he he is not in any way ambivalent about things.

He expresses things very definitively.

If you waffle, if you want to play both sides and the middle, then this is going to make you very nervous.

And you're going to take it out on Donald Trump because he adds up the numbers.

And then in a very direct way, he'll say, look, here's how it looks arithmetically.

You don't have the leverage you think you do.

Now, what else did Miranda said has to do with daddy issues? Is that true?

So

that's important.

And then also I think it's impossible to weigh and measure all of these things that go into, did someone become Charles Manson or not? By the way, Charlie Manson said when he was sentenced to death, you can't kill me, I'm already dead.

Right.

Yes.

Can you be resurrected? We know what the Bible says about that.

Of course you can.

What are the secrets?