That's Charlie Sheen and Whoopie Goldberg from one of the biggest bombs of the movie year 2017, that being the movie 9-Eleven, and of course it was a disaster because, as you'll learn in today's interview with very excellent Bruce DeTorres, we all already know what happened with 9-Eleven. What's really interesting is how we continue to process what we know. I mean feeding the beast on a personal level. I know enough about 9-Eleven. I got it. It was an inside job. I know enough about JFK. I got it. It was an inside job. Why do I need to personally feed the beast? Don't I need to, as you're talking about, be with people. Just really be present on stage, because we're all on stage. Yes, and we are the show and we are the audience. And if we are here because we intended to be, because we are the manifestation of our own intention to exist, I like to think that we have 100% power because we have 100% responsibility for what things are to us. And then we've got a level of responsibility for what we actually cause and create. We have to parent ourselves. We have to pretend that we were raised by perfect parents.  They're there and you're not alone. Ruck and hold and you're going to be okay. And we have to pretend we had a perfect father. Why say his job is to fire us up to say, you can do it. Come on. We got a lot of do today. We got a lot of wood to chop. We have a lot of animals to catch. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to lose the tools. We're going to break up on you might lose a tooth and we're going to clean ourselves up. We're going to have a big meal. We get to go to bed exhausted. And we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Come on. And all that leads back to the reoccurring question of this show over the last couple of years. What's this evil thing all about? Let's say we took the rich and powerful and we put them on a bell curve of evilness. They'd fit. They'd fit. They wouldn't all be on one side of that curve of, oh, you're rich and powerful. Therefore, you're evil. It's quite liberating to imagine the quote unquote rich and powerful, the elite of the elite, the 1% of the 1% who have their hands on the levers of the control fit into the bell curve that at one fringe, there are supremely psychopathic and evil tyrannical tyrants. And at the other hand are folks who would be saint like and benevolent to us, right? And the vast majority in the middle just muddle through. And whoever is in charge today, they'll be evil if evil's in charge. They just don't care. They're just going to waddle through.  Turn that TV on. I don't want to think. What's there to think about? How can I improve this? I really, really enjoyed the chance to have this dialogue with Bruce Titoris. Hope you enjoy it too. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Sekaris. And today we welcome Bruce Titoris to Skeptico. And he's here to talk about an interesting book we're just chatting just a second ago about. And I'm very, very, very grateful that he reached down to me about this book because it's such a Skeptico kind of book in so many ways. It's titled God School 9-11 in JFK.  Bruce, welcome to Skeptico. Thanks for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Alex. So let's start with kind of the classic kind of thing. Tell folks a little bit about yourself. You have an interesting background, especially in terms of, you know, a lot of people I've spoken to on Skeptico. You're more of a, you know, fine arts guy, acting, musicals, directing, that kind of stuff. And yet you're kind of entering this world that intersects with some of the stuff that I've done. So tell us about that. Tell us who you are. Well, sure. And thanks. I was an actor into my 30s. It's all I had wanted to do. And I also was a lifelong reader. I fell in love with reading way back in the first grade. So those were kind of the perfect storm for some things that happen in my 30s. Basically, as I practiced acting, it refined itself into the specific point of laying all my attention on my scene partner. Specifically, I was coached, let my performance come out of me in response to what my scene partner was doing right there in the present moment. And it transformed that night on stage, what that experience was, Alex. So it's kind of fast forward the answer. Can I interject something? Don't, don't fast forward. I think, I thought that was a very interesting part. It was the kind of, because we've heard about this, those of us who have not been in acting, we've heard about this kind of transcendental nature, particularly as it relates to being in the moment, which kind of connects with all these other spiritual traditions. And you are talking about experiencing that in a very real way. And I don't want to just blow past it like, well, you know, and other actors, no, man, it was significant to you. It was significant to a lot of other people in your field. Talk about that a little bit. Okay, it was astounding. The way I say it in my book is, I paid attention to my scene partners that night, like, like my life depended on it. And I, this is probably the exact language, because I worked hard on the language, I refined it. I followed their speeds and volumes, rising and falling and accelerating and slowing down everything they did, according to what I was getting and working off of them. And I said my lines as my breathing at those moments just happened to produce them. And the audience exploded with laughter. And in a nutshell, and I'll spell it out precisely, for the first time on stage, I wasn't thinking at all about giving a performance. I was focused on watching and seeing their performances. I wanted to see, I didn't want to miss a thing they did. So I paid attention like my life was at stake. I had never been so interested on stage before. And I'll say it made, I'd never been so interesting on stage before Alex, because I got back to New York. We were doing that in Pennsylvania, that play. And it seemed like I got cast and everything I auditioned for, because it eradicated any self-consciousness. It eradicated most of the fear. There was always some nerves before an audition. But as I remember, to pay attention and see exactly how my quote, unquote, scene partner, what they're doing, how they're listening, to never lose them and never let them lose me. I had the kind of oceanic is the word some folks have used, the experience of the melding and the merging and the sharing and the bonding. And I've since read so much about reality and philosophy and mysticism to know that I become one with whatever. So that was amazing. But I was unprepared. And you know that from the book, I started paying attention to people in real life the way I did on stage.  And I had to bring my whole life to a halt to reevaluate. Oh my gosh. And it was a horrible moment. Yet it was the best thing that had ever happened to me because it made me surrender, kind of like an alcoholic who finally goes to AA. All my tricks don't work anymore. I want to start from scratch. And it all began just with paying attention and then doing a lot of journaling, a lot of the soul searching, a lot of the real work that humans have to do to figure out who am I? What do I want? Why am I here? And I decided to stick around because it was a real existential crisis. I really hated myself. I hated the way I treated people. I hated how immature I was. I couldn't believe how immature I was in my 30s. It was so unacceptable. It was so unacceptable. But I decided to stick around, as I thought, just to see what would happen next. And then I read a book that had an idea about energy. It was Think and Grow Rich of All Things, you know, by Napoleon Hill, which talks about thoughts. Spiritual book in so many ways, yeah. Many ways, right? Many, many ways. And shall I continue with the narrative? Sure. Or, you know, we could actually leap right from there into the book in a way because your book, God School 9-11 and JFK is in a lot of ways kind of this spiritual deep dive as well. I mean, it's a history book. One of the chapters of the book is a brief history of the United States. That could also be the title of the book, a brief history of the United States. But instead, you sandwich it between two things. You sandwich it between a very big picture, universe, unity, consciousness, we're all love. And the end of the book that says, ah, you know, I talked about all this stuff, but in the end, it's all about love. It's all about unique consciousness. So we have these two kind of bookends that does kind of leave this big question. And I think this is like one of the fundamental questions and one of the level three questions that I like to talk about, you know, because like, I was just mentioning this book, people check it out because it's like, it's great. It has a certain almost lyrical quality to it.  What does that mean? Is that really true all the way? So, but then you just move on to the next thing without really belaboring it. But I have to say, as I said, you know, when we're chatting for just a second, this book is also an invitation to this deeper conversation, what I call these level three conversations, which you are just alluding to, which is what then does this all mean? So I want to keep bouncing back and forth between the stuff JFK 911, you know, JFK 60 years ago, 911, 20 freaking years ago. This is history. There's so many people, you know, my kids, I don't know that they relate to this in the same way that you and I relate to the history that we are from parents and grandparents.  So do you know what I mean? I mean, this is really, I think, our challenge in this interview and in a larger sense in this ongoing dialogue is like, how do we relate to this history? Because I think that's what your book in a way essentially is about, is like, here's the history is messed up as it is. And then how do we relate to it? What do you think about that? Is that a good way to, can we frame it up this way? Or is that kind of? Oh, I think you nailed it. And in fact, I worked on it for years and years, Alex, and there were many, many times where I thought, oh, this is good stuff. Oh, there's going to be a handful of people who get it exactly the way I think I'm saying it. And Alex, you're reflecting back to me, some of the greatest fondest hopes I had for what this book could be to some people. So, oh, you know, the angels are singing right now for me, because you write such a thing all alone for years and years and years, and you wrestle with paragraphs and sentences, should it be this, should it be that? Have I said too much? Am I saying too little? So for you to have said all that, Alex, okay, so yeah, I'm right on board and how you framed what the book is and what the book is and what I'm trying to say. And I tried to stay on point, which is the truth sets us free. It's good to know the truth of all the stuff that's in the book. Pulling back right to your question, originally, all I was going to write was a book about my thoughts about what energy and consciousness is, because I was excited about that. That's what I said out to Wright. I should recount that, I think, just for those who are listening. The idea that I got about energy that I thought was unique was if energy burst into existence 14 billion years ago to become this universe and everything in it, that's a theory. I thought, oh, and the black and Napoleon Hill said thoughts become things because they're made out of energy. Okay. I thought Buddha said that. I'm just kidding because it's you and I'm sure go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Right, right. Well, I'm just following the narrative of the inspiration for what I was writing, but yes, it's everywhere and that's thrilling because it's corroborative. But I thought, okay, why did, if energy did that burst into existence to become Yumi and everything, why? And I had the simple thought because it wanted to. Is energy the intention to exist? So now pretend I'm jumping up and down and yelling at the top of my lungs the way that that blew my mind because it explained to me how all the soul searching I had just done, why do I think what I do? Why do I have these habits? I recognized any way I want to look at anything. Any questions I want to ask myself, those answers will come rushing, almost attracted, law of attraction, whatever I want to look for. However I want to see things, that's how I can see it. And dare we hope that as we cherish a thought and give it lots of love and energy and attention and gratitude and live as if it's already real, do we start seeing those things in our real lives? I'll say yes, that's my testimony, that's my personal experience. So this is, I got excited about these ideas that this is a completely spiritual realm. To see our Creator everywhere, if the intention to exist is our Creator because it came into existence to be you and me, to see our Creator everywhere makes this heaven. I go and I explore all this in a number of pages in the book, whether we are the one eternal thing that existed. And when you're eternal, the only thing you don't have is perhaps someone to talk to. So it, the one and only, is appearing to itself, ourselves, as Alex talking to Bruce, as Bruce talking to you. And that's how I felt on stage when I bonded and connected to the people I paid attention to as if they're worth paying attention to. That's what I discovered on stage. Bruce, why don't you pay attention to people as if they're worth paying attention to? And then I felt love. And then I've dealt with the folks in my real life and had to, had to just retool my whole life to orient myself towards feeling safe, feeling everything is okay. I'm unharmable, things are lovable because I say they are things, things become lovable when I decide to love them. And I go on and on and explore that in a lot of ways in the book. Oh, and Alex, back to your various student observation about those sentences in my book. I wanted, I used to love going into bookstores, discovering a book I'd never imagined before and not being able to put it down because it was so compelling. That's the quality I wanted in my writing is that if you are lucky enough to pick up my book in a bookstore or anywhere, I wanted to grab your eyeballs and pull you sent like just they are irresistible rungs of a ladder that you just have to keep going through going through going through and also reading so much about all of my topics. I didn't want to say anything I didn't have to that's already well covered in those other books all my sources and those are in the back of my book is 46 pages of sources in the back of my book. So like you observe, you know, I say something in a sentence I don't really elaborate. I go to the next development I want to kind of talk about and I did intend it to be a great handbook to someone who's skeptical about so-called conspiracy theories or what's real and what's fake or what's the true history of some things. I wanted my book to be a very valuable tool for that purpose for a newbie so to speak. Okay, so great. And it accomplishes that goal in a lot of ways. But man, this is where we're going to have the level three kind of conversation. Because as soon as you venture into the historian role, you know, brief history of the United States kind of thing. It's tough. And I'd go from the from the super big way that it's tough. And that is, are we feeding the beast? You know, because part of this is this desire we have to know and to know and to know. And there's a spiritual side of that that we've talked already so much about because look, let me digress, which is maybe I do too much. But this is not a spiritual book per se. The majority of the book by quantity is something that people who are comfortable with exploring parapolitical conspiratorial ideas would be super comfortable with just a ton of information. Like you said, I love the sources because you really do kind of this extended bibliography that almost reads like an extended table of contents. Somebody can jump to the sources and just read it, you know, and you can learn a lot. And then you can also say, I want to jump to this point that point, that is the body of the book. But given that that's the body, the book, here's the feed the beast issue. It's like, if none of that's, if the ultimate end message is unity consciousness, is spirituality, is connection, why do we want to focus so much on that? Are we are we feeding the beast? Are we staring into the abyss? And why would we want to do that? And I realize we're jumping way ahead. But let's do that because we don't want to just talk about 9 11 in school and JFK, you, you just framed the single purpose or intention that I imagined for the book, which is I was writing this book about energy and consciousness and spiritual nature, reality, etc. Union. And then discovered 9 11 was an inside job. Obsessed about that. And the energy book was in a drawer. I had, I had written what I wanted to write about it was about 39 or 41 pages, Alex. Okay. And then I got obsessed about quote unquote truth of the world's events. For 10 years, I studied all that stuff, never thinking that I was going to put it in a book or put it in my book. And in 2014, I got the idea that those are problems solved by the truth, the truth of their nature, as opposed to the official stories that are lies that are used to manipulate and exploit us and do a lot of damage and cause a lot of harm. And also the truth of our nature, because the beast is slain when we recognize it's just like the movie The Matrix, there is no beast. Or if there's a beast, we am it. It's our perception, etc, etc. We can get very practical, we can explore and practice how do you live. This is the conundrum of good and evil, you know, if there's a good God, the universe, why does he let good things, bad things happen to good people? This is level three. And as adults, as a man my age, recognizing I'm a general right now in a tribal arc of youth, to warrior, to general or manager, we're not chiefs yet, you and I. They say very little and we go to them when we really can't solve anything, but they're watching us. They've got no teeth. They're very weak. They're watching how you and I manage affairs because we're at the managerial level for life, for the tribe, to take care of the first thing is our own soul, our own peace. You know, I'm very inspired, there's nothing, there's not a lot about in the book, maybe next to nothing, very inspired by the Native American traditions, their relationship to spirit, what they felt reality was. And to summon them, to live in that space, to allow for sacred space, to perform rituals that, you know, free us from the ego, to dance in a frenzy at night around a fire in order to kick up our heels and forget our troubles. Because we've got to tell ourselves we can handle the truth because at the objective material day to day level, there's really, really frightening and horrible and mean and painful suffering that's happening out there. And the level three question is, what are these, what good are these every fairy ideas day to day, Bruce, when I'm trying to make a living and my wife and I are arguing, if you don't have enough money for this, any other thing, and is this real or not? Should I get this injection? Should I not? Yeah. And it's, I'm convinced, and this is not easy because we're all just humans and we all have runaway minds and fears until we decide to work with them. We have runaway minds and fears until we decide to work on that. Why? What am I afraid of and why? Or we dive into alcohol, drugs and mindless distractions and those addictions. One way or the other, we're going to either anesthetize ourselves, or we're going to take some deep breaths and we're going to try to cultivate and feel what's real. And what I say in the book, maybe try the ends are somewhere is, listen, we got to, we've got to get alone. We've got to cultivate peaceful mind and open heart and feel what's real. If we can quiet the mind, I don't think anyone says we can ever stop thoughts completely, but if we can quiet them enough, we can feel what's real. And paying attention is the tactic to experience, see, feel what's real. I'm claiming it's love. And when we look in the eyes of someone else who wants to look in our eyes, what we see is the exact same consciousness we see and feel ourself because I claim at that level where only love is real and everything is love or everything is energy. Love and energy are just words for what is. It's a unity. It's us. So when we look in each other's eyes and with someone that we love and we care about, we see love. We see ourselves. It's a reflection of consciousness. Those are reasons to be cheerful. Now, how does anyone apply that? That's very individual. What does that all mean to you, Alice? That's kind of what it means to me. What does all that mean to you? Well, I guess one of the things I was driving towards, because I honestly struggle with this, both personally and I see the struggle within this community that I've kind of stumbled into, because I didn't start with the conspiratorial community. I didn't really start with the conspiratorial bent. I didn't know any of that stuff. When I started Skeptico, and I really started from kind of a scientific angle just because the biological robot, meaningless universe thing seemed like bullshit, and I wanted to prove it. And that's what led me to the conspiracy. But JFK was really interesting. It wasn't really my time, but looking into it, just a fantastic story.  I find it infinitely interesting. I love it. I'm always digging into new information. But to me, it's like reading comic books. I don't pretend that that is going to inform my spiritual understanding. And I do worry about killing up another podcast on JFK, because I look at myself and I say, am I feeding the beast? Am I feeding somehow my desire to know, to know something, to know something that somebody else doesn't know? Because I'm there. I am there with that energy. I'm not denying it. It's fed me for a long time. But I see the, if we're going to have this level three discussion, I also see the other part of that. It says, why do I want to feel superior to someone else because I know something? And at the same time, I can't resist that urge.   But you know what they are functioning? I just had, so let me, let me pause there, because now you know what I mean about feeding the beast. I mean, feeding the beast on a personal level on a, I know enough about 911. I got it. It was an inside job. I know enough about JFK. I got it. It was an inside job. Why do I need to personally feed the beast? Don't I need to, as you're talking about, be with people? Just really be present on stage because we're all on stage. Yes. And we are the show and we are the audience. And we, if we are here because we intended to be because we are the manifestation of our own intention to exist, I like to think that we have 100% power because we have 100% responsibility for what things are to us. And then we've got a level of responsibility for what we actually cause and create. So two great handles that I hold on to that really, really work for me. This is the best thing about ideas.  They don't have to be true. They fire me up and I choose to pursue being fired up is we have to parent ourselves. We have to pretend that we were raised by perfect parents, a mother who loved and reassured us and comforted us when we fell down, scraped our knee. They're there and you're not alone. Rock and hold and you're going to be okay. We have to love ourselves like that. And we have to pretend we had a perfect father who I say his job is to fire us up to say, you can do it. Come on. We got a lot of do today. We got a lot of wood to chop. We have a lot of animals to catch. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to lose the tools. We're going to break a bone. You might lose a tooth and we're going to clean ourselves up. We're going to have a big meal. We get to go to bed exhausted and we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Come on to encourage some mother's love. They're there. We're safe. Alex, we're safe. We're safe. Especially if death is just a transition to experiencing our real self, our transcendent self. We never really could be harmed.  So when I'm alone and freak out and wondering, you know, why do this? Why do that? Am I going to have enough for retirement? All the classic real beastly, scary thoughts I can get for myself, I have practiced, practiced, practiced, writing and rehearsing and remembering and writing and rehearsing and remembering these ways of looking at it to just to summon like a Native American. Thank you all the fathers and all the mothers and all the grandmothers and all the grandfathers who are here right now. Show me what I need to see. Give me what I need to know. Let me serve. Let me help. Let me serve because it's everything's got to flow. We can't hold on to anything. Not a fear, not even an obsession. We have to, it's all got to flow. It comes through us so we can give it and as much as we can shape it toward being good parenting, as I think of you as a human who needs the great love of a mother and the great encouragement of a father and choose to talk to you like that. I'm feeling it and it becomes, you know, that self-fulfilling thing, that self-experiencing thing. And it's my fantasy that this is what, you know, this is what people need because I need it so bad that it works so well for me. And as I've been unfolding the book in the last couple of months, it's kind of, you know, things are kind of happening without a lot of effort. I follow through. I'm a professional. I know what I want, but it's just I seem to be kind of in a zone that I belong in. And, you know, that's me trying to talk all around these issues right now, you know, so. No, that is, that is beautiful. Very, very, very beautiful. Okay, so Bruce, let me pull you back though. The truth, do we risk becoming obsessed with the truth just like we can become obsessed with anything? I keep hammering on the same question I'm going to hammer it from a different way is that when we really look at the motivations, at least what we suspect to be the motivations behind these evil doers, which I love that phrase, right, evil doers for history lesson. Who said evil doers? W, didn't he? That's right, baby. W. Evil doers. Because he was the ultimate evil doer, wasn't he?  And those are really a lot of times of people who talk about evil doers. So, but if we look at the motivations behind these people, part of it, you know, you look at that evil doer and part of it is like the whole, you know, skull and bones thing. And it's like, I can't tell you because it's a sacred, ain't it? And it's like not just you can't handle the truth, which is one thing we get, but the other vibe we get is you don't deserve the truth.  The clues are all over the place. JFK, the clues are all over the place. They're begging you. They're begging you, Bruce, not the normies. They're begging you, Bruce, to crack the code.  Now I know something. Now I'm better than someone else. Now I'm an insider kind of thing because that's their ultimate gain is this lack of connection. This I am better. I am different. I am elite. Yes. And that is what gets triggered in you, obviously. And that's a very, it's a very valid and understandable and reasonable thing. And what it triggers in someone else, complete maybe fear and over roam horror or terror, maybe all that information could just drive someone straight into alcoholism, despair and even suicide on a fast track almost relatively, you know, in the course of a couple of years, I could easily see someone just because the more you look at it, the more confirmation you get. Yeah, that's how, you know, and my book would do a fair job of convincing. I make the case that we live in opposite land. Everything we're given us is nonsense and baloney. And it's by folks who want to do nothing but enslave, exploit, sicken and remove a lot of us. Okay, how do we be cheerful in the face of that? There's no, there's no one easy answer of it except to challenge each other. What are you going to make out of it? What are you going to make out of whatever new thing you hear today? Whatever new thing you hear about JFK or if someone who just discovers, someone who gets my book and who, until my book, they believe the official story about all these things and they go, this is persuasive, holy stink, right? And then they look at some of the sources because you shouldn't know and should ever believe just one book you read about something. And then it's literally like finding out there's no Santa Claus. It's really, really, really, really upsetting. It's a huge trauma and they did leave all those clues. Now I'm just bouncing all over the place. You're right on the beam, Bruce. You are right on the beam and I want you to, I love the point that you made and maybe it is kind of a repeat of something you said earlier, but what you do with this, we can see it around us and we can see people who take this information and you can kind of say for no fault of their own, they're either set up for this through traumas that they've experienced in the past or whatever, but it is so overpowering for them that it really leads to kind of this destruction of their life and we've seen that. And I love what you're doing because you're kind of saying we have to walk, despite that we have to walk into the fire. Because there's no looking forward, there's no turning back. We cannot turn back. No. And read, you know, Joseph Campbell's work. Maybe because I wanted to be an actor and I put myself in these, the things I watched, I was like, I'm pretending I'm this and pretending I'm that. It's easy for me to relatively easy because I still have my dark nights of the soul like anybody else. But I would encourage someone who's wrestling with the despair, you know, choking on how negative and horrible and murderous and evil, how effing evil life on planet earth can seem, you know, when you look at the social structures and the economic structures and politically and militarily what's happening, it's there's a lot of evil to to to deal with and we have to look at it just like you just said. And this is what our imaginations are for and specifically to develop that spiritual imagination. I would tell someone once a specific answer to this specific problem, I would say, do whatever it takes to experiment with having a spiritual imagination.   What's there to be afraid of. And if you imagine, it's literally a fear test, it's a courage test. You know, we're floating around as eternal spirits. You don't have to have a life on earth because you believe it's real. And it's terrifying. Why would you do that to yourself? I don't know, Alex, but let's say we did it anyway. We can go deeper. We could say, because some souls are trapped to do that over and over again until they realize it's a game, it's an illusion, you're doing this to yourself.  It's thrills and shocks. It looks very, very real. It's just a ride. Because if, if that makes your life an ounce easier, dwell on that. And here's a particular resource. It's a YouTube channel. You read about it in my book by Anthony Sheen, C-H-E-N-E production. He has interviewed lots of folks who had near-death experiences, NDEs, and they talk about, they died, what they experienced, they realized the truth of their spiritual nature and the nature of existence is all, is all love. It's just love. And we're all connected.  And then often they heal and this sat in the other thing.  And you start looking for reasons why that's true. You'll find them because the real mystics know, whatever we look for, we find because it's us and we create it, we attract it, and that's how infinitely powerful we are. And here's the last example before I'll throw the conversation back to you, Alex, to continue this or go any other place.  And the guy said, they could beat me, they could starve me, they could make me work in the snow, sleep in the snow, sleep on concrete, but the guards couldn't make me stop loving them. So he performed a miracle. You would think Nazi guards in a concentration camp are unlovable, but by loving them, this guy made them lovable. And by making them lovable, he made his own life, if not lovable, durable, because if you love where you are, you can get through it. How do you love your torturers, Bruce? Oh, that's a level four question. It is. It is indeed. Let me toss another log on the fire, complicity. You know, this is something that really used to rile me up, especially in talking to Christian people, especially talking to Catholics and say, okay, we knew it, but now it's been laid bare, satanic, dark, completely compromised organization, not a few bad apples, fundamentally at its core, evil. How can you go to church on Sunday and put money in that basket? How can you be complicit? A little bit wiser me says, I'm complicit. I'm complicit in everything. I'm complicit in JFK. I'm complicit in 9-11. I live in a beautiful house in Southern California overlooking the ocean, while people 30 miles from me in Tijuana, I've been there. They live with cardboard and corrugated stuff that they've scraped out of the junkyard and it battered me up on the wall. And there are probably people in San Diego County who live that way as well, but I am complicit. We are all complicit. And that doesn't take away from the spirituality that you're talking about, but it does put a different spin on how we relate to these horrific evils that are being perpetrated all around us, doesn't it? How do you wrestle with that one? Well, it brought to mind what may have motivated the Kennedys. And this is documented, those nine children of Rose and Joseph Kennedy were taught, you don't have to worry about money. You don't, because their parents were so rich. To whom much is given, much is required and much is demanded. They seem to have internalized the sense that to be worthy of that good fortune that they didn't cause it all. They had to kind of pay it forward or pay it back, you know? So here's the thing. I love this because now we're going to take another, veer off in another direction and dive into facts.  Because he was elected in a rigged election. His father, Joe Kennedy, who was connected to the mob because he used to run alcohol from Canada down, he hires the mob to throw the election in Illinois, which is a swing state that gets it.  And they also do that in West Virginia and they win, right? And then he goes on to, you know, he's got the Dr. Feelgood thing, right? And he's getting injections in his throat of amphetamines and all sorts of crazy drugs. And he gets one right before he goes on stage with Nixon. And it probably is the debate that wins him the thing. So no one's clean in this thing. And RFK, his brother, Robert, youngest attorney general in history. He's screwing Marilyn at the same time his brother is. And a lot of people think he was probably in the room when Marilyn died. And it was probably his people that decided after they grabbed that diary of secrets that she had that RFK might have been the one who went and said, okay, yeah, I guess it's best to pull a Bill Clinton, kind of eliminate Bill and Hillary, kind of eliminate all the possible skeletons in the closet. He's not clean in this. He's not perfect. And to recast that history as somehow, you know, the Camelot kind of thing, I don't know. They did so much good in their public careers that to emphasize what you, and you didn't emphasize it, you just docked, you just chronicle, you know, and I'm not necessarily in complete agreement that, that they probably did all of those things, we could go through each one of those separately. But the balance, it again, it reminds me of all that we got from the founding fathers of the United States should not be flushed down the toilet, because a percentage of them own slaves while they were espousing freedom. Let's throw out hypocrisy and keep the good because no one on this dear planet is morally, ethically perfect consistent at every phase of their whole lives. So we get to cherry pick, you know, first, I got to interject because to me, that is so much what your book is about. It to me, it's almost about the opposite of that is that no, we're not allowed to cherry pick because what you do is just immerse us in the whole soup, and then it forces us to realize that any taste we pull out of that soup is us, our palate cherry picking on our own. But no, it is totally legitimate to focus on the fact that George Washington was a slave owner. It's completely legitimate to say his perspective, his worldview that he was unable to climb on top of, which by the way, he was the only one who did release his slaves when he died. So he gets a check mark for that. Thomas Jefferson, the great liberator, he didn't.  I mean, I guess you can get consent in the same way that if you're a Mormon and you have the newly passed law that the governor of Utah passed that said, you know, I kind of think that polygamy thing, it's kind of more complicated than we thought. And you know, guys who want to marry two or three women into their little cult, into their little coven, that's maybe that's not such a bad idea. I think that that's what I take away from God School 9 11 and JFK is walk through this with me and go through the spiritual journey that you're really talking about that and realize that however I pick and choose, you can find fault in it. You know, there is no perfect walk through that that history. What do you think about that? Well, I agree. There is no perfect walk.  It's probably the same issue. If there's a good God, why does he let bad things happen to good people, the conundrum of human evil of every atheist to on Bill Mars show? Right, right. And I did you really wrestle with that question? I don't. I mean, to me, that's kind of I used to. I had for years. And I have, you know, when you get to be my age, you realize, you know, what, I'm not going to worry so much about certain things. But I want to make this point about this, though, about what do you do with these George Washington had slaves for all he said about liberty? And I guess I guess Alex, it's what? Well, what do we do with their example? You know, there's there's the the Republic they created, the ideals that are that we are supposedly pledged to and dedicated to and falling short of.  You know, so at the end of the day, it's okay, how am I going to live? And what am I going to try to force my government to be and to do? Well, how am I? What am I going to do with the harm that my government is perpetrating right now in my name with my money? You know, we are morally, legally, ethically responsible for all the atrocities that the American government has ever committed. We it's very fashionable and very easy to point fingers at Washington and say corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. But they're the cart. We're supposed to be the horse. We're supposed to hold their feet to the fire. Is it a lot harder now? Yes, are there unprecedented technologies used to divide and conquer us and keep us afraid of each other and prevent us from organizing any effective action? Yes, not withstanding that. We have to remember the goals of sanity, peace, love, happiness, and get through day by day and when it comes to the founders and slavery, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath or in the same with the Kennedys. Now, in their defense, there's a great case to be made. No one became president then or now, Republican or Democrat without some mob help. There's a great case to be made for that. And the test of who and what the Kennedys are, are their legacy in their public lives. And your honor, there's an equal case to be made that the worst allegations about Bobby sleeping with Marilyn Wasi there and the mob stories of how entrenched the Kennedys were with the mob have been demolished by other researchers. So that's a whole other court case. That's a whole other trial that would have to happen that we'd have to see all the evidence. We'd have to see both sides confronted with what's the word when you're confronted in court, cross examination to see if either side holds up. And then you and I would be able to give a valid verdict on how likely was it that Bobby had anything to do with Marilyn's death. I think we're far from that. I shouldn't say because I don't know what you've read. I don't know what you've looked at about that. But that's what I would say in general about that. I've looked at enough to say, because that used to churn my guts to think that either of them had anything to do with hers, with her death. And I would point to the work of Jim de Eugenio in particular, in dismantling forensically the accusations along those lines to the degree that I can rest.  But I've done such a deep dive that, okay, I'm not 100% certain, but I'm persuaded and I need it to be because it was very upsetting that folks who were heroes to me. And at this point, I'm proud to say that the Kennedys are heroes to me. That's what I would say in response to that. For the sake of anybody listening, so they know like, well, it ain't necessarily the way Alex said, maybe I got to look at it from all these other angles. Absolutely. No, no, and we do. But then that gets back to, and it is good to do a little bit of a deep dive into what we're talking about. So if we did want to add a little bit of detail to that, just so that people can shoehorn themselves into this conversation, it's speculated that Marilyn Monroe was being closely monitored because she was keeping a diary. It came to be known that she was keeping a diary and that she had some legitimate important secrets, if you will, pillow talk from her relationship with John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Are you not down with the idea that RFK was also sleeping with Marilyn? I am very open to it. I'm not convinced. So let's say we go. I don't mind about the diary. You have to because I've seen the refutations of the sources where those stories kind of came from. Okay. So anyways, her death, Marilyn Monroe's kind of suicide is pretty clearly not a suicide. It's a takedown. It's an assassination in some way. And there's some pretty dark figures looming there. So that's enough that anyone can kind of see where it is. Before we leave that, Alex, may I ask, are you familiar with Christopher Fulton's book, Poisoned, The Inheritance, Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination? No, I'm not. Who is the author again? Christopher Fulton, F-U-L-T-O-N, came out a couple of years ago. And the point he makes in there is that JFK didn't necessarily sleep with all the women that he had private meetings with that and Marilyn among them. He may have slept with her. He may have had an affair with her, but he may also have been using celebrities to send messages back and forth to people outside of his regular presidential channels, which were monitored by the CIA and the military so that he could advance his agenda unscrutinized by the CIA and the military and the State Department. So that's just even just just another angle on the Marilyn situation. Yeah. Right. I mean, trying to your publisher, who is fantastic in a lot of ways, but you know, there's like, you can fall into the JFK thing there, to their credit. I mean, there's 200 books there on JFK that you can dive into and a lot of different stuff. So, but it is history and it is important to understand his history. What I think is even more important and that's why I love where we're going earlier in that conversation. You are going to then have to confront that history, deal with that history and kind of go through that history, which is what you're talking about so beautifully, Bruce. That idea about imagining two perfect parents is something that's profound that's going to stay with me from this interview because I think it's beautifully said. And I think when we balance that with, I can hit you with whatever I want to hit you with about JFK or RFK because you're battle tested now.  You're just battle tested. You know how to go through the information and how to hold the rudder steady no matter what new information comes up because you're still going to be at that core, okay, you know, which is what you're talking about. And to me, again, that's what, that's what I resonate with in the book. That's what I think the book is about. How do we learn these skills because it is a skill that we totally get is super important right now is to be able to hold the rudder.  No way you anticipated that 10 years ago when you started the book, but that's the latest, you know, storm at sea to keep the metaphor going that you again have to hold the rudder. And of course, you're going to get upset. And of course, you're going to be energized by the ideas and the facts. But it's really not about that. It's about how you process how you go through it. Maybe I'm repeating too much what we talked about already. But any thoughts on that? Yes, I try to train myself to be ready for anything. My power going out in the middle of this conversation, it could happen. And then what do we do? And will vaccines be necessary everywhere? I don't want to say too many words that could get flagged on different platforms to the detriment of your viability and your show's viability. Yeah, I often imagine that this is what it was like being in Germany in the 1930s. When the Nazis came in in 1933, and then little by little, they did things to scare the population, to tolerate new clampdowns, restrictions, rules, regulations, until they became the full blown awful, awful thing on the planet that Nazi Germany was. It was a little incremental, but it was relatively fast. So it's just to be ready for anything. It's literally to be ready for anything. And to know this is the privilege of being my age. I'm not going to say yes to everything just to buy a little bit more time. I'm not going to go on the boxcar. I'm not getting in the boxcar. Even if they say it's for my protection. Oh, I'm not doing it. I'm not going to help anyone arrest me. They can drag me down the concrete steps. I don't care. But you got to be my age to say that. I couldn't have said that just a few years ago, or let alone when I was in my 20s, 30s or 40s, you know, you're desperate to live and you're desperate to, you know, make something of yourself and, you know, prove something and get some answers to some questions. And I got to throw a little story log on the fire. He's familiar with Rich Martini and his book, Flipside.  I mean, the past life stuff is super solid. So then when you look at what Lipton did in the between lives, it's kind of how do you allow one into your worldview and reject the other. So Rich Martini, who is a Hollywood producer, he did this movie in this book called Flipside. One of the stories he tells and he videotapes and shows is a woman who's on this weekend retreat to do a between life regression. She regresses back. She is a concentration camp participant, Jewish, and she's being led to the gas chambers and she remembers being led to the gas chambers and she wants to resist now. She's like, Oh my God, now, you know, and she decides makes the conscious decision that no, it's okay. I will stay with my people. That's what I'll do. I'll stay with my people. And she goes into the gas chamber and she dies. And in the process of dying, she realizes that in many ways, her burden was less because the real burden that she saw was the guilt that was being held by those prison guards who were there who were victims to a certain extent and that they weren't, you know, so they're complicit, but they weren't really complicit. And they were carrying that soul crushing burden that they had of what they had done. And they would carry that through their life and maybe into future lives. So this to me is back to one of these fundamental questions of, you know, what do we do? And what do we think we're supposed to do when the boxcar comes? Very personal. I'm trying to organize a thought and an answer, you know, because what do we do and what are we supposed to do when the boxcar comes? Well, I guess we've got a process that each for ourselves, I can only tell you, I really hope I've got the courage to just gently and slowly just sit on the floor. I'm not going to help myself go anywhere. And what are they going to do when that happens? I don't know. Will I cry? Will I lose control of my bodily functions? Or will I cave? Will I go ahead? Will I go along? You know, um, hopefully it won't get that way. This is very scary to imagine. It's a very scary scenario. And scary things come our way. You don't get through life without a few scary things.  This is an exercise to orchestrate fear, to keep those parents at bay, the good parents that are inside us, that spiritually guide us, the elders that spiritually guide us. One way to keep them at bay is fear, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how we can be easily controlled.  Life could be called fear management, you know? Yes. Oh, you want to have a human life where eternal souls having a beer, evaluating, gee, am I in the mood for another human life or not? You know, remember, it's all fear management. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's great. Yeah. We have to imagine it's a great meaning, great purpose. We need that.  And it's looking at this, that it is this kind of spiritual adventure that we've designed for ourselves quite intentionally. I love a lot of the survivors or the returnees from near death experiences say, I realize that it was everything that happened was I knew it was going to happen, you know, before I came in, before I incarnated, you know, so that's playful. So if we can cultivate this idea of, you know, perfect safety, even in the midst of all this, there's always going to be things to scare. I think I have in my book, or maybe it got taken out toward the end, the little parable of the man being chased by the bear. And he comes to the edge of a cliff. And there's a tiger at the bottom who's snarling, but he's got to climb down because the bear's coming. And he's halfway between the bears pawing from the top, trying to get him. And the tiger's jumping up from the bottom, trying to get him. He's clinging to the side.  And he eats it.  And I've broken that down to think the bears are past always chasing and the tiger is our frightening future just looks hopeless. But the present moment is our is delicious. It's this is our strawberry this right here right now. So that living in the moment kind of wisdom, how do you connect that to what we're living through right now, what we're going through? You know, the example or the story that I always cling to, and I use so often in this, because I'm kind of drawn to the non dual perspective, although I don't want to cling too tightly to that is the the hugging Saint Amma, who is I was turned on to by my friend Rick Archer at BatGap. And I went and actually spent a weekend in LA and visitor and got a couple hugs and they didn't do much for me. But I respect where she's coming from. But tirelessly working 18 hours a day as an elder woman digging latrines in India for the untouchables doing everything she can with every ounce of energy she has. And when she's asked, you know, Amma, you tell us that this world is not what it's about. This is an illusion. And yet all you do is about this world, all this energy you do is about this world. And she says, world, what world? And to me, that is, I'm not there, you know, I'm with you, buddy. We are side by side. I get it when you said, you know, we are the the manager general type. We she is the elder. And I am the manager general type who does get fired up by that. I'm going to go research that RFK thing I want to know. And I'm going to try and gain hold of my emotions to not get too sucked into wanting to know more. But I do sure as she had appreciate the elders who remind us, world, what world? Yeah, that reminds me what I think I've heard about Mother Teresa, similar experience. She had an aha looking at some suffering soul, lying in the street and just hug them. You know, and the other sisters in her convent founder and said, what are you doing? We've got paperwork to do. We've got, you know, meal. And she just and then the person died. She did. I think that's her legacy. She was just hugging and comforting the real sick, dirty, diseased people with her own hands as much as possible. Right. I think that's that's her she was on stage, bro. She was on stage being present. Wasn't she she was on stage sharing the stage with that other actor and being in the moment? Wasn't she? Tell us, tell us, Bruce, in the time we have left, what else you want people to get and understand from this fantastically interesting book, God's Ghoul 9 11 and JFK, the lies that are killing us and the truth that sets us free. Well, tangibly, I would feed people should go to my site where you could read all about the book Bruce D. Taurus.com D E T O R R E S.com. And there'll be a way if you can buy it if you want, but at least you'll see on the front page these amazing reviews that it's gotten by folks who are respectable minds who've written a lot about these topics. What I want folks to get is the the hopefully candor at the beginning. I spend the first many pages talking about myself and my thought processes and my own emotional kind of challenges because I'm a human and that'll you know I'm not coming from a pedestal. I hope I don't come from and I might because I do say things with great assertiveness later on my opinions. I'll stand strong for my opinions and I try to make the case in them, but the book really helps us grow up. If you have any doubt about any of the major topics, that's who it's for. The critique about you know everything in the title is real, but it's just not the official story. You know, so the God chapter takes on organized religion to paint a bigger picture of who or what the spiritual force is. Bruce makes the case. It's you my friend and it's me and it's every moment and it's every life and it's every animal and it's every child and I just want to indict and convict the mass media and the federal government as liars and murderers. Why? So we take what they say today with a grain of salt and we do our own research and we confirm. Is this an enemy or is it not? Is this a remedy or is it not? That's the major function of the book and the great takeaway hopefully is a spiritual imagination and a description of our power. What we focus on is what we have. What we focus on is what we grow and we get to decide am I enjoying what I'm focusing on or not? And if I'm not, why not? Why can't I enjoy what I behold? And then it encourages us to do the soul searching, to get up early, do the journaling, ask the hard questions, who am I? Why am I here? What's a good life? What's the nature of good? What's the nature of evil? And what do I want? And to develop a moral philosophy. This is what I think is good bad. This is what's right and wrong for me and I get to be with me 24-7. I better be a cool dude. I better become a cool dude. I better be someone whose company I can stand because I'm stuck with me for the duration and there's no more fun and powerful way to get over yourself than to pay attention to somebody else and care. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Why are they doing this? Why do they do that? And to ask and to care, not to use them as a crotch, not to become codependent and attach yourself to them like a slave. That's very easy. Years of experience talking there. That's the big snowball of my book, Alex. Okay, let me in skeptical fashion kind of do a counter narrative, if you will, because this stuff just never gets talked about in our community, if you will. And that is, so consider the possibility that you could come to the conclusion reasonably rationally looking at the data that there kind of are too many people on the planet, it ain't so good.    So let's say you and a couple of your friends got together and you said, you know, it does seem that the population thing is a problem. And it could get worse. It could get a lot worse. If we keep increasing the amount of people that we're trying to put on this planet. And what if we went one step further and somebody said, Yeah, you know how it's going to get worse. We got a lot of people right now who just eat rice or beans or other stuff. What's going to happen when they want to eat protein, which takes a lot but is a lot harder on the environment. And God forbid what's going to happen when they say, Hey, I should be able to drive at least a little moped if not a car into town. And I should be able to have that iPhone or at least some kind of device with a lithium battery that pollutes the environment. So you know, there's it's not just people. It's technology of the people we already have. So what if your little cadre of friends got together and said, you know what, this is kind of as a responsible group who are kind of have some influence. This is something we should address. What do you do? What do you what do you do in that situation? And you know where I'm going with this? Maybe what you do is what we see right now. Right, that's a plausible explanation for the policies that are tightening around our neck, I'll say. But if sane and rational folks could address that reality, first, confirm that that's the reality. And let's assume that it is. I thought while you were describing that, let's add to that a focus on rules and regs and governments that protect the rights of the people on an even playing field, not the special interest, not the giant club. Oh, I have no interest really in doing that. That's never worked in history. Again, I'm now taking the other side of this. That's never worked in history. And it's not going to work in the future, Bruce. So you're as part of the committee and I'm just shouting that down.  I'll do whatever I have to. I'll Clinton eyes you and move you out of the equation.  And if you're waiting for a consensus, forget it. You're never going to get it. I don't know how long I'd stay. I'd be I would last on the committee with, you know, can we put it to a vote? Who can we appeal to the other members? I don't see anyone around. But you know, let's let's say you represented everyone I had to work with and you all agree to that. Like, oh, okay, there's no there's no political. There's no consensus possible. There's there's just what the rich and powerful are going to do or can do. You're speaking as if we represent the World Economic Forum. And hold on. Let me just add to this. This might be way off target. I think that's kind of a mischaracterization of that. It's not that the rich and powerful want to rule the world for their own evil gain. It's that there's only one way to rule the world. It's the Roman way. It's total war. It's total domination. It's you can't change anything unless you're in power. So make sure you win.  And that's why we have a Jeffrey Epstein, who is a front man. He's not really the person pulling the strings. But that's why we have human compromise, right? Let me catch that guy back in the 50s. Let me get J. Edgar Hoover, a picture of him dressed up in women's clothes and in a compromising homosexual position. And now I own that guy for life.  Well, today, those pictures wouldn't carry quite as much weight.  But human compromise is the way to go. And whether I'm a good player or a evil player, if I'm not willing to play that game, I better step aside because the guy who's playing that game against me is going to win. That's just the rules of war. I guess I'm stuck in a desire, a need, a belief, a conviction that if the rights of human beings could be honored and recognized, if human beings could defend their own rights in such a way, it's tough to compete with. I can't rule out. I think as you just did that the rich and the powerful, did you say that they're not trying to control us from evil or selfish intent? No, I think what I was trying to say is in this kind of just stream of consciousness thing, is that let's say we took the rich and powerful and we put them on a bell curve of evil-ness. They'd fit. They'd fit. They wouldn't all be on one side of that curve of, oh, you're rich and powerful. Therefore, you're evil. There's rich and powerful that are evil. There's rich and powerful that are good. And there's the bell curve. There's all the people in between. But keep going because I like where you're going with the dilemma. You give me great hope. No, I love the bell curve. I love it as a model for Alex. My takeaway from this, okay, I don't want to get too dramatic. That's a little too easy for me. But I will say it's quite liberating to imagine the quote-unquote rich and powerful, the elite of the elite, the 1% of the 1%, who have their hands on the levers of control, fit into the bell curve, that at one fringe, there are supremely psychopathic and evil tyrannical tyrants. And at the other hand, are folks who would be saint-like and benevolent to us. And the vast majority in the middle just muddle through. And whoever is in charge today, they'll be evil if evil's in charge. They'll be good if evil's in charge. They just don't care. They're just going to waddle through. That gives me great hope because there's fewer purely tyrannical and evil-minded. There really, really are. Which is all the more reason to leverage human nature. Because that also fits in the bell curve. There are deviance and criminals that psychopaths at one side. There are real saints like the woman who just hugs people in her 80s and cleans latrines in India. But the vast majority in the middle just want to love and kiss their grandparents, love and kiss their kids, have a couple beers, put their feet up and watch the boob tube at the end of the day. They really don't care what's happening politically. They really don't care what's happening in Tijuana.  A belly full of food and decent shelter? Turn that TV on. I don't want to think. What's there to think about? How can I improve this? That's beautiful. You know, the quote that I sometimes cling to for the bell curve thing is Gandhi, who was political, was a political person. We can kind of forget that because we always picture him as this saintly guy. But he was right. He did the deal with Pakistan to divide the countries, but he was mixed feelings about that. He did the deal with people that he didn't agree with in the parliament in order to get things done.  He was under, he was a man of the world in a lot of ways. He was an attorney by training, but he said, good always wins out. And he said it from a practical stand because no, no, wait, look at history. Good always wins out. And then I think is the essence that I take away from what you're saying is that, you know, in our human nature, we do have that potential. So we see the potential for evil and sometimes we focus too much on that. But maybe that's what I'm saying. And you're at least open to the idea. There's a hell of a lot of good in a hell of a lot of people. And it comes through in some pretty unusual ways that we might not identify as good. And maybe part of our challenge is to reorient ourselves to what it means to be, to be good in that complicated way that you're talking about. And also, practically, in a very, very simple way, turn off the phones, turn off the TVs, unplug from the mainstream messaging, because that's all designed to whip us up into a frenzy of fear, worry and insecurity and panic and spend time in nature in order to feel what's real. Because I contend, and this is the big macro spiritual idea that only love is real. And that's what we feel in nature. That's what we see in animals. That's what we see in children. That's what we feel in the rhythms of nature. And that's the preponderance of who we are. We have these rational minds that can drive ourselves crazy with fear and security and competition.  I love the quote that you just shared from Gandhi, that good always wins. I liken it to all the empires that have risen and fallen. Typically it's through corruption, you know? And then maybe there's a revolution and maybe some do-gooders, you know, hold the flags and they quickly become as corrupted as anybody who holds power over others. And they exploit people until that collapses. And yet, like a snake always shedding its skin, life always reemerges. Poetically, I say, we could pave the planet with concrete. And a blade of grass is eventually going to bust on through, you know? And that gives us all hope. That's the nature of reality. That is awesome. I love that line. My new Dharma Brother. I guess you've always been my Dharma Brother. I just didn't realize it to know.  What an awesome book. God School 9-11 in JFK.  Bruce, fantastic having you on. I really enjoyed it. Amen. Me too, as well, Alex. May this be the first of many. Anywhere, not just on your show, but just, you know, henceforth. Right on to that. Thanks again to Bruce DeTorres for joining me today on Skeptico. The one question I tee up and there could have been many, but we'll start at the end. Do the rich in powerful fall in a bell curve distribution? I like that question. That's a real Skeptico question. So give your answer. Check out the Skeptico forum. Track me down any way you like. Lots more to come. Stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care. Bye for now.