65: Simeon Schnapper on Researching & Investing in Psychedelic & Alternative Medicines

JLS Fund
Lucid News
MAPS

Peace Corps
Transcendental Meditation
Maharishi International University
Colombia College Chicago
Merkavah Mysticism
Kabbalah
The Only Dance There Is
The Dyadic Psyclone
Tibetan Buddhism
Robert Masters
Jean Housten
Quote – Karl Jung
The Doors of Perception – Aldous Huxley
Mescaline
Ibogaine
Michael Pollan
Default mode network
John Belushi
Del Close
David Luke
The MINDS Foundation
Kogi people
The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience
FDA rejected MDMA-assisted PTSD therapy
Autonomic nervous system
Gabor Maté – Compassionate Inquiry
Amanda Fielding

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi, welcome to this new episode of the mango TV podcast. Today. I’m very excited to have Simeon schnapper. Simeon’s passion and expertise span over 30 years in the fields of research, philanthropy, advocacy, policy, criminal justice reform, and the science of psychedelics. If you were wondering why he was here, he provides valuable guidance to a wide range of organizations, including nonprofits, psychedelic and impact startups, family offices, heads of states, and several newly formed governments.[00:01:00] 

He co founded GLS Fund. A groundbreaking venture capital in this field and spearheaded the world’s inaugural psychedelic investment summit at the start of the decade. A recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and is an Aspen Institute fellow.

While embracing a global outlook of impact and when not living on airplanes, visiting portfolio company, he splits his time between Manhattan, Montenegro, and Western Central Africa. Welcome Simon, pleasure to be here. So, you know, I always say the same thing. My. Listener will be probably sick and tired, but you know, this podcast is pretty out there.

We cover things about, you know, cosmic orgasm and cosmic consciousness and, but, but, but the structure is very conservative is very, you know, traditional. We do very biographical past, present, future. So if you don’t mind, can we start with the beginning from birth? 

Simeon: Absolutely. So in the first 14 seconds of my birth, I know, but in all [00:02:00] seriousness, I I it’s actually fitting to to, to start with birth and my parents because I had a very blessed upbringing.

I had these two parents Melvin and Ladina Schnapper, who both heard a calling during the Kennedy speech, where he said, ask not what your country could do for you, but what you can do for your ovation to join the Peace Corps. And spread democracy and education and all the other rhetoric of going elsewhere and giving and being humanitarian and teaching and learning.

So both of my parents heard that and my mom from this little town in the middle of nowhere in the upper peninsula of Michigan Applied and then found herself in Ethiopia. My dad, who is living in D. C. and I think was in his master’s program. He was a linguist. He really led African languages specifically.

He also applied and [00:03:00] found himself in Nigeria. So they were two of the early, early people in the Peace Corps. And that was very much a part of my childhood. There was some Peace Corps, I think when I was five maybe a little younger. We were living on the Island of Apia in Western Samoa and it was a Peace Corps gig.

So Western Somalia, Western Samoa, 

Giancarlo: Samoa. 

So it went to the South Pacific for, I think I’d have to look into it, but there was something like training and where they became like directors or a little more senior because Peace Corps is usually, you know, you do your two year gig. You know, you help with agriculture, education, or whatever the, the, the subject matter expertise is that you bring to the table, whatever the country is that needs it.

And the last, the last assignment was, was in Samoa. And as I remember, my dad woke up one day and he looked at my brother and he looked at me. And he looked at my mom, and we’re all like, I had mosquito bites, I used to look like, shitting everywhere, there’s no like, [00:04:00] ru you know, running water, electricity, I mean it was this island in the middle, and he kind of decided you know, this is probably no place to raise a kid, and there’s no schools, and we were all kind of ill, and and then Yeah, before I knew it, I woke up in a little bedroom in Chicago, Illinois, in Rogers Park.

And I remember coming out of my room and, you know, blurry eyed and probably jet lagged, and there was this gentleman in the end of the hallway, this tall gentleman shaved in a three piece suit. And I called out to my mom and I’m like, mom, there’s somebody here. And it was my dad. And I didn’t recognize him because just before he was never wore a shirt.

He, you know, the wrap around him, a big beard, we’d used to walk and get, you know, water at the local well and then bring it back. And he started a gig in, in basically corporate America. He was always fascinated with [00:05:00] humanity and. organizational development. So he started a gig at a pharmaceutical company in a suburb of Chicago reporting, I believe, to the CEO or president at the time, a guy named Donald Rumsfeld.

Giancarlo: No. 

Simeon: Which, you know, there’s some history around that. But he just liked humanity and how do people communicate and talk to each other. And that kind of began my early life. And it was, it was in Chicago. But throughout that entire upbringing and it’s certainly in that neighborhood, Rogers Park, which I believe is still the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the world, I got to grow up with all these different ethnicities.

So it’s kind of like this mini Peace Corps. And after school, I’d be like, hmm, what am I hungry for? Like, oh, let me go to Rosalie’s house because I like Filipino food. Or, hmm, let me go to Mario’s house because I like Haitian food. Or let me go to Nick’s house because I like Greek food. And also during that time, there was not a single day [00:06:00] growing up, because I went to grammar school and part of high school, and then moved to Africa on my own to finish high school.

But there was never a day where there weren’t at least a, You know, several refugees staying with us. Predominantly African Ethiopian, a lot of Nigerians. So it was kind of like, from birth, to five, to even Chicago It was a very internationally informed, humanitarians who cared about helping people more than money.

Yeah, so that was kind of like the early life and somehow sculpted who I am and yeah. Yeah, I can see and why I got into psychedelics. I just, yeah, I 

Giancarlo: can see, I can see all these themes of. Helping other diversity, open mindedness, cultural conditioning, and also, you know, the corporate aspect, the three piece suit.

It makes sense that you are a psychedelic investor. But so, how did you get interested in consciousness? 

Simeon: What [00:07:00] happened when I was really like 14 or shortly after my Bar Mitzvah, I remember just being really not impressed with any of the, you know, these ra They were good guys. And it was like, well, where’s the spirituality?

I was reading about Merkaba mystics and Kabbalah and like, these guys were just like, study your thing and be a good, you know, be a good student and and then I discovered two books pretty early on. One was The Only Dance There Is by Richard Alpert or Ram Dass and The Dyadic Cyclone by John C.

Lilly. He was a great researcher from interspecies and the dolphins, right? And I just was like, what the hell is this? This is like, this is amazing. More interesting than the rabbi. Much more interesting. And not to say there aren’t great mystical traditions, but you know, north side of Chicago is kind of like, you know, [00:08:00] anyway, that was the last thing they cared about.

And That kind of opened up a lot of doorways and started to meet incredible people. I think it was like 15, maybe just about 16. It happened kind of simultaneously. I met my Tibetan Buddhist teachers and I met Robert Masters and Jean Houston. So part of my path from a very early, My time was, you know, spiritual technologies and I definitely gravitated towards Tibetan Buddhism and psychedelic technologies and with Robert and Gene it was their protocols and LSD.

So it all started in my early teen years. Do 

Giancarlo: you remember, you know, I’m interested in this, in those cathartic moments. Do you remember either meditation or with LSD? Do you remember where a moment where you felt, Oh my God, this is, there’s something else. And maybe not only there is something else, but maybe I can even connect with this sometimes and I can maybe interact with this something else.

Most 

Simeon: definitely. Most definitely. My, my [00:09:00] first ally were the OG psychedelics on that front. So LSD. LSD. OG. Just the original gangster. Not, not the, you know, sorry, right. It wasn’t, you know, the neuroplastogens that might be the future of quote unquote, psychedelic assisted therapies. Yeah. Now everything else happening in the venture, the venture world mushrooms were obviously a big one.

I started to explore that. But where are we now? Pretty early 14, 15. I You know, because I met In Ghana? No, no, this was in Chicago still. In Chicago still. Ghana wasn’t until 17 where I, you know, got introduced to iboga for the first time in a very different context and other African you know, psychedelic medicines.

But, you know, in Chicago, just in, you know, high school, living on the north side, it was, you know, the quote unquote OG psychedelics that you could find. And I met these great researchers. So that was one path, studying Buddhism and, you [00:10:00] know any world religion. I remember there was one day I went to, the morning was a Hindu temple, the afternoon was a Pentecostal church on the south side of Chicago.

In the evening, we’re visiting Tibetan lamas. I just wanted to know everything I could about Not the belief in God, per se, or the values, although that was all very fascinating, I wanted to, like, how do you get to these mystical states? How do you get to happiness? How do you get to, you know, profound sense of connection with humanity and, and, and yourself?

So I was exploring every religion, didn’t matter how ridiculous, or new, or old. And at the same time was exploring every psychedelic I, I could and had a whole trip journal. Like I should have brought it. I just rediscovered it. Do you remember 

Giancarlo: one experience where it was the most memorable? Yeah, I would say 

Simeon: the mushroom experience.

You know, these are early and I’ve done, you know, I, I stopped [00:11:00] counting in the thousands, right? And it’s usually the first time you try any substance cause there is a unique quality to each of them, right? But mushrooms was the first, I think it was around 15 and. It was a very cold, cold day in Chicago.

Giancarlo: Big dose, medium dose, do you remember? Huge dose. Like 5, 7. I don’t know. 

Simeon: It could have been a gram of like Jedi Mindfuck or 50 grams of Golden Teacher. It was, you know, you’re 15 in Chicago, it’s like, what a hair, it’s a bag of mushrooms. You don’t measure. You don’t measure. I didn’t have, you know, microscopy.

There was no mass spec I had at my disposal, you know. We’re studying the biacetane levels as it relates to the celatin, you know, uptake. But I took a lot and I remember going to Indian Boundary Park. This was a park I live nearby. And I remember just lying in the snow and it was a really cold day.

But because of, you know, the mushrooms, I was really hot. And a jacket and everything and it was just this, you know, one of those epiphanous [00:12:00] experiences where the entire universe came into me and I had recollections of why I was born or why we came back to Chicago which had very deep roots with the Pottawatomie Indians and other native tribes.

So whether real or imagined. That was the experience coupled with this kind of voice that happens with mushrooms. It’s almost like a third person voice you could talk to and console with which is very different than other modalities of of psychedelics that I’ve tried. But, but the, the psilocybin and the mushroom one Which is definitely that first when I was 14, 15 and just exploring that was like, Oh my God.

So you 

Giancarlo: think it was a, it was a mixture of past life regression or how do you explain rationally? I know it’s impossible, but what’s the best way you can explain this third voice? Is this [00:13:00] some sort of cosmic consciousness, mind at large like Jung would call it? Yeah. What’s your interpretation? 

Simeon: I think it’s that.

I think it’s that, but it’s also is very personalized, you know, and I hear that often, whether it’s with Mazatec or, you know, hanging out in Oaxaca or, you know, those who are really good. I’ve heard very different descriptions for me. That was very connected to me. It was universal, but it was like personalized, you know, right.

It was like, and I could talk to it and it would talk to me in a sense. It wasn’t like a imagined, it was, it was more of a, just this knowing and this great caring and this great. inquisitive support, almost a mentor. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Metzner call it your higher self. Yeah. Like what, you know, we have a friend, Anton, who’s also a big investor and a secondary investor and, you know, he’s really interested on this idea of entities and, and, and [00:14:00] I remember Metzner saying, you know, you can call them entities, but really it’s your higher self.

And so that’s interesting. Okay. So, 

Simeon: so, so how we, where are we now? Okay. So that is you know, leading up to Ghana, that was around 17, two years, very extensive. Both introduction to spiritual teachers, but also every psychedelic you can imagine. You 

Giancarlo: just wanted like a, a, a protocol to integrate this experience.

I 

Simeon: wanted, I wanted to learn them all. Yeah. And I wanted to try it. The 

Giancarlo: motivation came from the empirical experience. 

Simeon: It became from the empirical experience. It became, it came from, you know, to some extent, you know, I mentioned the bar mitzvah thing, just like guys, there’s gotta be something.

Disappointment. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was two years, like, where I was just tripping a lot. I had a very extensive trip journal. Another anecdote before I go to Ghana, just because it’s funny, was my sophomore year of high school. I remember it was the first [00:15:00] semester, and it was English literature, and one of the books that one was assigned to read was Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception.

So I kinda read it, but I remember being in class and being called up to give a verbal book report on it. So I get up in front of the class, and I start to talk about, The book and the people in the room little did anybody know that that morning I had done a ton of mescaline. So my verbal book report was simply talking about my trip in real time and it’s like the girl in the back row, I see the rainbows and look at how we’re all connected and there’s a bigger And it was this beautiful, what to me felt like a second, but it was, you know, multiple, multiple minutes.

I think it was like seven or eight minutes just talking about the book, which is me just talking about what I’m feeling and the experience. And you know, I sat down and I remember people kind of like applauded and the teachers like a plus plus. So there was no opportunity in those two [00:16:00] years where I didn’t, whether it was a spiritual tradition or a psychedelic drug because of my innate curiosity to learn what the underlying technology was.

I didn’t try. I remember thinking right before I moved to Ghana, I’m like, Oh, this is going to be interesting. I’m in Ghana alone. What plant medicines exist in their rainforests? And thinking I’m really good at drugs. I’m good. Like if I could do this, just be a professional psychonaut. That would be my, my lifelong My lifelong vocation, aspiration vocation, but so, but so you say high school in Africa where I had the opportunity to move to, it was either.

Kenya or Ghana. And I had visited there previously. It was boarding school? No. It was just I moved out there on my own and Aged 17, 16? 17, yeah. Oh, wow. You know, again, my folks were from the Peace Corps, so there was this, you know, I also have a brother who’s with different biological dads. Although he talks to my dad every [00:17:00] day and they’re as close as if I, you know, right?

But his dad was an Eritrean liberation fighter. Who my mom met in Ethiopia, didn’t meet my dad until later. So there was always kind of this African vibe weave either through. You know, my brother’s half sisters, you know, who at that time, like kind of owned all the Ethiopian restaurants in London, I remember and elsewhere where the refugees coming coming through and my mom kind of working with the state department and the Ethiopian community center of Chicago, which was the biggest hub for immigration and a lot of trips to Africa.

So I had to visit Ghana previously. With my dad, who had an assignment there, and I met my mom in Nairobi previously, I think it was like 14. Just to like scuba dive and have fun. She was doing a lot of work in Ethiopia at the time. So yeah, it was between [00:18:00] Ethiopia, I’m sorry, between Kenya or Ghana.

And I just liked the music a lot more in Ghana. I liked West African traditional percussion. 

Speaker 4: Wow. 

Simeon: So yeah, I had the opportunity and, you know, it was kind of like they wave goodbye to me and I had a one-way ticket and they’re like, good luck. 

Giancarlo: Amazing. 

Simeon: So I landed, I, I stayed in a hotel initially about a month in I remember I.

Wanted to smoke some cannabis, and I didn’t really know anybody So I was just walking down the street, and there was this guy playing the flute on the street. So I figure, hey, this guy, right? Come on, if anyone’s gonna have some weed, it’s this musician, right, on the street. And indeed he did, and I was invited to a rehearsal he had.

He’s like, oh, I have a small, like, percussion group. I’m like, oh, that’s my thing, I love drums, and he He invited me over. We smoked, I remember, a lot. And his little group was like 37 fellow percussion guys. So I learned a lot of drumming and was [00:19:00] hanging out with them. And then he invited me to take his bedroom and his compound.

And I basically lived with this Ghanaian family of 30 and multi generational. Didn’t really have great running water, electricity for a year and a half. And that was, that was amazing. You know, and this was all before email and the internet and there wasn’t a Starbucks on every corner and people weren’t stuck in their cell phones.

It was this vast openness. I mean, almost a psychedelic in the sense of how I was living my life there. And being introduced to You know, indigenous and several West African traditional religions, but I also got to go all over Africa because I had this, you know, other than playing a play or writing the advice column for the school newspaper and a lot of flexibility and the dollar, you know, went a long way.

Over there and I just hop on my motorcycle and drive across [00:20:00] Africa and when I got tired, I’d pull over and there’s usually some village and the villager chief would come out and he’d say the kids would come out and they’d never seen a white guy. So they would want to touch my skin and I’d be offered a hut for the evening and a meal and 

Giancarlo: What a great teenager years away.

It was great. 

Simeon: It was absolutely great. Yeah. College, university, college. I was you know, there, there wasn’t the type of education in Ghana at the time that I wanted. Also in Ghana, I met the head of all of Africa’s TM movement, transcendental meditation. And he taught me a lot. I should also add that in the school, I remember the headmistress’s assistant this wonderful lady who became, you know, kind of like a, it’s like, who’s this white kid who’s 17 living on his own?

Like, so I’d go over to her place once a week for dinner and, [00:21:00] She’s like, Hey, do you have any intention of going to Oxford? And I’m like, not really. Why do you ask? She’s like, well, you know, technically this is a British school system. So you’d be in form X and the equivalent of a senior in America is like you’ve already kind of completed it.

Speaker 4: Oh, wow. 

Simeon: So she’s like, you end up in Oxford. I didn’t end up in Oxford, but she said. She said, you’re kind of done with school unless you want to go to class here. And I’m like, not, not really, but the school was great because whenever I got homesick for Western trappings, it was, you know, students of diplomats and, you know, corporations that were there.

So I can go to school and say, Hey, can I crash at your place? And the parents would be like, where are your parents like stay in our guest house? Do your laundry but I also had the opportunity to write for the school newspaper and produce and direct and star in plays. So I’d go back to the school often, but [00:22:00] just for extracurricular stuff and then I met this guy Ni, who was the head of Transcendental Meditation there, and because I didn’t have to go to class, I’d just hang out with him all day, so I got a very rapid acceleration of that technology.

And was really into it. And then upon moving back, I, for one week, went to Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. Yeah, I know. Wasn’t my thing. Met with the you know, the head of you know, the equivalent to the, to the head of the school. And I’m like, hey, listen, these classes don’t work out for me.

And he’s like, 

Giancarlo: just, just to specify for people, you know, TMR is, is a, is a, is a meditation technique where you do 20 minutes a day with the mantra started by Maharishi. And it’s becoming very popular because it’s not very spiritual, right? And you don’t have to believe in anything. You just repeat this mantra and it’s working.

I’ve done it for a 

Simeon: while. It’s incredible technology. And it was kind of what wasn’t. My, the first technology I explored, but anyway, [00:23:00] I was in the school and I’m like, listen, I know all this stuff. And he’s like, well, first of all, you shouldn’t have been taught all this stuff. This is usually like four years of curricula, you know, the different stages and your mantra.

And then you learn the levitation stuff and all the Ayurvedic medicine. So he’s like, well, listen, I can’t let you do these super advanced classes. I’m like, well, that’s the only reason I’m here. 

Giancarlo: What’s the structure for your free spirited approach? 

Simeon: No, not even that. I mean, yes, but it was more of like, Hey, I came here to study these technologies.

And they wanted you 

Giancarlo: to do more pre work. They’re like, 

Simeon: you already did them all. This is stuff we, we can’t teach you until your fourth year in this program. I’m like, well then, you know, 

Giancarlo: sorry. And what did you go after? 

Simeon: Columbia College, Chicago. It’s a film and theater school. Films and theater. Yeah. And that’s a four year, it’s a BA?

Yeah, it was a I designed my own major through this loophole I discovered. So 

Giancarlo: you were not thinking about doing something with spirituality or or, Not as a 

Simeon: vocation. Not, not as a, [00:24:00] not as a career goal. That was kind of always in the background. But even Columbia was, you know, the creative side of it.

Yeah. In talking about how these molecules or spiritual technologies can You know, really increase one’s creativity and storytelling and narrative, and I’d also been very involved in the Second City Theater in Chicago, an aspiring improviser and ended up teaching there for seven years and very immersed in the entertainment world.

What do 

Giancarlo: you think is the link between your psychedelic exploration? 

Simeon: Oh, it’s, it’s the play of life. 

Giancarlo: Like 

Simeon: it’s no, the improvisation. It’s when you’re on a psychedelic journey or when you’re improvising with an ensemble, it’s the exact same thing. You don’t know where it’s going to go. And the more you plan, the less you discover.

Because you’re 

Giancarlo: out of your 

Simeon: mind. Like Michael Pollan. You’re in the moment. You’re a yes ending. You’re The full network 

Giancarlo: is [00:25:00] subdued. Exactly. Interesting. 

Simeon: So I’ve had equal experiences with a group of actors. Is 

Giancarlo: there a tradition? Is there a theater tradition of psychedelic usage, you think? I don’t know if there’s a 

Simeon: tradition.

I do know that It works. It works. It works. It works. And there you know, certainly there because I also, you know I washed dishes there and then I began to teach there. And so many of the actors from that school became, you know, very big celebrities and they were 

Giancarlo: experimenting also. 

Simeon: Yeah. There was quite a bit.

And this is true of just the during the improv also, it, there was a few anecdotes that are public. Chris Farley talked about one. John Belushi talked about one. There’s this great great progenitor in the improv community named Del Close. It was very very supportive of people. But when they talk about it, And there’s some baseball stories like, yeah, I did LSD, but I, my timing was off, or it was, it was [00:26:00] hard to actually improvise and be in the moment when you’re maybe that in the moment, I’m not sure.

But there was always that use, and I think in just artistic communities, like. pushing the envelope and exploring your consciousness and connecting with people. So it was always there in the underbelly. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But so I’m sure, you know David Luke and you know, Imperial College, they, they did a study with LSD and creativity and it’s incredible what they found out, you know, they both have.

They recruited a bunch of scientists and you know, they asked very specific problem they wanted to solve that we’re not able to solve. And with LSD, you know, they, most all of them, they had incredible insight. There was a guy expert on tectonic plates that he couldn’t explain. And on the LSD, he saw it, he physically saw it, how it happens.

And then there’s the famous case of the, you know, the DNA and the, and the, even Steve’s jobs and the baseball guy. There’s so many, but so how do you explain. How do you explain that this [00:27:00] medicine increased creativity? What’s your explanation? 

Simeon: Fortunately, there’s a new non profit called Minds Foundation.

I’m forgetting the acronym. But Bruce Dahmer, Ford, some other guys, that’s the entire mission. And we were on a call a few days ago, and I’m still like You know, it’s not the same, you know, for a clinical trial, it’s fair, you could test the blood, you could have the surveys, but, but how do you measure, how do you measure from a clinical trial perspective creativity?

And this is the aspiration there that, you know, so much of psychedelics or as it’s graduating or maturing, or one might say evolving or devolving. towards neuroplastogens, psychoplastogens, you know, all this other stuff. It’s usually about the curing of sickness. But there’s this whole other side which is the the optimization of wellness and creativity and the human experience.

Psychotherapy 

Giancarlo: is not for sick people. 

Simeon: Exactly. Well, yes, there is that component. So, I’m [00:28:00] very curious how that non profit will evolve. Because that’s exactly their mission, where it’s really hard to quantify for 

Giancarlo: you personally. What’s your interpretation? What do you think it’s happening? Do you think you know, like there’s this writer called Elizabeth Gilbert, and she says that creativity is really A divine energy that actually Steiner had this idea also of the muse, this idea that basically ideas comes from spirit and, and not only that, but you know, when, if you’re blessed by an idea or or, or, or a creative insight, then you also have to honor it.

Otherwise, if you neglect it, then spirit takes it away. So. She has this idea that creativity is something otherworldly. And so you can make the case that this this medicine, they reduce the default network. They reduce your egoic armor. And once your cultural conditioning subdued, you’re open to the heavens.

Simeon: I absolutely [00:29:00] agree with that. I also agree with the exact opposite of that. Tell me, tell me. You know, that’s the beauty. There’s something What is 

Giancarlo: the opposite of 

Simeon: that? Well, the opposite of that would be coined in this really great quote of the psychologist I just became friends with. I used to say I’m one woo.

You know, like woo woo. I’m like, I’m just one woo. But she This was only a few weeks ago. It was at a psychedelic event in the Bay Area. You know, is dancing on her dock in Sausalito is a headphone disco party post conference. Everyone’s getting to know each other and she’s like, I’m actually woo and true.

That’s so interesting. She’s like, well, the Wu is a thing, but you gotta have the data. You gotta have the truth. Like there’s gotta be a way to prove this or disprove it. So totally agree, and I’ve gone down every rabbit hole of the most arcane and crazy mediumship, the universal, the Steiner references, et [00:30:00] cetera.

But then as science comes into it and all these amazing technologies that are able to, to prove how it works, whether it’s a biochemistry, whether it’s a neuroplasticity, whether it’s connecting with other human beings, and you could measure that regulation. Yeah, I’m like, No, there’s got to be a way. I mean, in the same way we thought that.

Right. Like germs, and like, well you can’t see them, how could they be real? And now it’s like we look back on all these things, and I think we’ll look back and say, yeah, this is how to run a clinical trial of God, or the Spirit, or so the opposite blank, 

Giancarlo: the opposite of, of, of my theory, if you want, was that it doesn’t come from outside, but it’s come from inside.

That’s the opposite 

Simeon: inside. And you could tie it to either biomarkers or blood work or whatever those things are. Biological [00:31:00] symptoms. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. 

Giancarlo: Interesting. But so let’s get into how, what, what had, what happened after theater? How’d you got into investing? There’s probably many years in between.

Simeon: Actually, there wasn’t. There wasn’t at all. I finished my undergrad, which was a self designed major, which fused academic computing and the theater department. Mostly because there was a scholarship program, and I remember going to the admissions office, and knowing that college was more about the social side of it, and I could learn any of these things on the via books, there wasn’t quite the internet then, it was just starting.

So I created a self designed major called Computer Controlled Multimedia for the stage, because I knew I’d win the scholarship, because like, who’s going to apply for that? But I also really like technology, and I really like the arts. So, upon graduating I started to go to graduate school. But I had [00:32:00] already in Chicago, but I already started my first business.

And I remember a call came in. Netscape hadn’t hit, the World Wide Web hadn’t hit. 

Giancarlo: I remember Netscape, Jim Clark. 

Simeon: Yeah, exactly. And I had an early beta of it, and I was doing Gopher work, which is a database technology that was the beginning 

Giancarlo: of the internet. 

Simeon: Beginning of it. And I remember people coming into the academic computing lab with a version of Spyglass, this really early, early browser, which was the basis of Netscape, which was like, I think, the first commercially available browser.

And There was this feeling when I looked at Hypertext Transport Protocol, because Gopher was a different protocol of delivering, you know, zeros and ones across a network, and I was like, holy cow. HTTP, Hypertext Transport, you know, it’s the beginning of every URL. You type in HTTP colon slash slash, right, www.

And I’m like, this is going to be huge. And that was my senior year and I’m like, [00:33:00] this is going to be huge. I don’t know. So I started a company and it was primarily consulting. And I remember getting a call from a hospital network and major corporations saying, Hey, have you heard about. They didn’t call it the World Wide Web then, but this way to share information and we were doing a lot of creative stuff, video production.

And I remember getting a call saying, Hey, so the 

Giancarlo: novelty was that, that for the first time you were sharing information where Information were in a place and you would only share access to the place where the information was rather than share the all information. 

Simeon: Yes, both that and just the mobility of it.

And again, when I was playing it, it was just text. There was no video. There were no images. It was very wireframe, but I knew there was something there. And I think I was the first or maybe it happened within the same hour figuring out how to get a. like 160 by 120 QuickTime clip to play in a browser.[00:34:00] 

integration language. So I was in grad school, but I was starting to get all these calls from my little startup of like, Hey, we want to take all our corporate records and put them in this universal browser thing that’s going to hit. And that was kind of the beginning of like my first startup and my first kind of entree into entrepreneurship.

But even before that, that was, you know, 21, you know, kind of the beginning of it. But, but even like going back to the playground. You know, in grammar school, I was like, Hey, if I buy a Snickers for a nickel and I sell it for a penny. Yeah. I just, I’ve always liked that early stage entrepreneurship. And then later it was capital markets, but yeah, it was kind of always psychedelic 

Giancarlo: investing.

What did it start? 

Simeon: Well, that started wherever one could. psychedelic investing until, at least for me and the way I view it. Legally about seven [00:35:00] years ago, so up until then it was research, doing philanthropy, supporting wherever I could, obviously exploring, you know, the underground and every, you know, fill in the blank of the medicine, tourism so living and learning, continuing that same, same path, but always in the back of my head, I’m like, I like money, like I’ve always liked, Two things since I could remember drugs and money, but the money not by itself as a mean for what it means and the energy of it, the energy agency of it, how to use it for good, how that even the most empowering anarchist still use money or the concept of that money or transaction.

I’m not neocolonial extraction, right? But just like that’s a, that’s a language you can agree to. And I’m saying money, you know, before there was money, it was trading or bartering, but there was, [00:36:00] it connects humanity, it’s a value framework. So I’ve always kind of liked that. And I’ve also liked the creativity.

of an entrepreneur who has an idea and then makes it a reality. 

Giancarlo: Totally. 

Simeon: And I’ve had a couple of very nice, you know, quote unquote exits, but I’ve easily had a dozen really successful failures where I was just totally wrong and I lost everybody’s money and the product market fit and the timing and all that.

So leading into, you know, seeing these signals about seven years ago, I was like, great. Here’s the drug side and here’s the money side and on the money side, it was two things probably more heavily weighted in the early stage entrepreneurship and where we, from the fund perspective, tend to invest is in early, early.

We’re like the first check in. I like being in the trenches those first two or three years with the startup. So 

Giancarlo: I want to talk about the fund in details, but just. Just to clarify how you [00:37:00] got there. So you had from, you know, I don’t know, 10, 20 years of different startup, different exit, a couple of success, a lot of failure.

I know that, I know that, I know that pattern. And and and then so you saw that the psychedelic renaissance was happening and you saw this opportunity to, you know, integrate your two passion, which is the psychedelic medicine. And and and then entrepreneurship, the money making. And so how did you go about it?

I mean, there was already some funds. There was already maps. There was already Amanda. 

Simeon: Yeah. I mean, to, to some extent, I mean, again, like whether it was maps or And everything under the Beckley umbrella was more research, right? There weren’t venture deals. But wherever there was something close to venture, which, although it’s a completely different domain I’d participate in it from a business perspective.

So. I sold the company in Shanghai in 2007. I was living doing a lot of philanthropy in Tibet, building money. Which [00:38:00] company was that? It was a company you’d never know the name of. And it was really just making consumer product goods. It was, you know, razor thin margins, but we were shipping 40 foot containers every second to major retailers.

And, you know, I was the American business guy in Asia. Yeah. And I had the opportunity to sell that. And in 2007, I’m like, Hey, I’ve liked these two things. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Simeon: What can I do? So I moved to Venice Beach, California, and I opened the world’s first psychedelic art gallery, medical marijuana dispensary. 

Giancarlo: Oh, wow.

Yeah, I remember it was, it was, yeah, 2007. 

Simeon: Sold it in 2012 and that was a opportunity to make some money. Yeah. There’s, it was still on the, on the beach front walk. 

Giancarlo: No, 

Simeon: no, no. We were on Abbott Kinney, Abbot Kinney. Kind of like upscale art. But yeah, I mean. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, I remember that boardwalk. 

Simeon: It’s still like it’s Venice is the third most touristed place in the 

Giancarlo: world.

Yeah Yeah, yeah, but let’s let’s let’s I want to get into the [00:39:00] investing and what you’re doing because you mentioned something that I’m super interested so you open your psychedelic cannabis and then And then how did you, and then when was the GLS founded? 

Simeon: JLS really about six years ago. Six years ago.

First, the first deals, like the first opportunities where people, you know, the nomenclature back then, it was Shroomboom or Cannabis 2. 0 or a lot of the same. Rigamarole of, you know, happening in Canada, RTO, bringing Uplist to Nasdaq, which happened for some, but for the great majority was, you know, very ill fated, which happens in any markets.

And The bubble aspect. Exactly. But then I think about five years ago in earnest, you know, with, Hey, let’s do this in a fun structure, mostly because we had great success in these one off deals. We were just investing in my partners and On the cannabis front. The beginning of psychedelics. The beginning.

Giancarlo: But also mushroom. Yeah, yeah, 

Simeon: yeah, that that’s kind of where you you started to see five or so years ago the [00:40:00] first Like hey, I can invest money and get a return What 

Giancarlo: was the return coming from back then there was not really exit 

Simeon: not five years ago But then the exit started about three years three years with the first, you know, Nasdaq Exactly and at that point it’s not that we were necessarily opportunistic And I still use this mechanism around other plant medicines or areas that I’m, I’m really passionate about where we just kind of invested everywhere, spray and pray per se.

I mean, there was definitely ones we said no to, but we’re like, this is going to be to put on my venture hat. I remember saying, this is going to be our, you know, asymmetric upside opportunity to invest in an alternative asset class. Yeah. Right. 

Giancarlo: But so, so it says on your biography that you were co founded.

So you find a co founder that was a friend or 

Simeon: My. My founders were people I was collaborating with. Several, 

Giancarlo: more than [00:41:00] one. 

Simeon: Yeah, there were two original co founders in the first syndicates and first funds who are still very active in the fund. One was a lady who I had met in Shanghai 16 years ago.

And she was passing through doing some banking deal in Hong Kong and we just hit it off. And we were like, we should work together. And there was never the right project. About six or so years ago, I was like, Hey, I think I finally have this. thing we can collaborate in. She was, you know, recovering investment banker.

And then another guy was an analyst who was covering cannabis, who I was reading a lot of his, his analysis is, and that was kind of the beginning of it. And since then it’s the, the team has expanded and others later when they saw, Oh, this is now a quote unquote, an industry. This is something I could participate in.

Giancarlo: But so your idea was that this compound would be you know, there will be increasing interest, but were you more focused [00:42:00] on the medicalization of it or the, you know, non medicalization, more the, the American aspect, more the world aspect, where you, what was your feeling back then, like six, seven years when, when, when you started?

Simeon: It was always both, it was medical, but it was also uplifting those technologies that will be. Yeah. Hard to medicalize or prove out based on the needs today. The well being, the creativity. Oh, yeah, all of that. You’re not seeing a lot of research or funding. There’s nobody who is, there’s no big pharma that’s going to say, we’re going to create the limitless pill.

Although, now we’re getting into the Nordisk world and all the GLP 1 agonies. What is, what is the, what is the 

Giancarlo: limitless pill? 

Simeon: Limitless was this funny movie starring Bradley Cooper and it was like he took it and the narrative, he just became incredibly brilliant and disrupted the stock market, was on the track to be president of the [00:43:00] world, blah, blah, blah.

Without limits. Right. Without limits. And there are a lot of cognition molecules we look at as well that aren’t necessarily the main thesis, which is mental health and neurodegenerative disease of the fund. So, to answer your question, it was both. I think it is still both. We hosted the first ever, you know, psychedelic investor summit, five or so years ago.

And, you know, we had the founder of Decriminalize Nature. And we had the, which was, you know, the state level or the grow gather gift and everything that’s important to acknowledge in indigenous communities and reciprocity and the origins. But we also had, you know, the polar opposite, the first person first entrepreneur to get a psychedelic company on, you know, the, Arguably the most important exchange from a capital markets perspective, the NASDAQ.[00:44:00] 

So it was always both. From an investor perspective it’s definitely a lot more of the medicalized, you know, when we can invest at a penny and a pharma. You could say, hey, this is because, you know, we have a certain health care system and insurance and other things. It, it has to be the medicalized way.

It doesn’t have to be a hundred percent, but for us that was a decision. So we don’t invest from the fund in anything or companies that don’t have a DEA license that aren’t on an FDA medicalized track if it’s drug discovery and development. But personally, we all do a lot of philanthropy and advocacy and criminal justice reform.

So the fund is very much medicalized until there’s a, you know, a global shift where we don’t need this infrastructure that we’ve built, which is our modern health care system. But for the meantime, it’s, we’re, we’re following within a framework of [00:45:00] what exists. But 

Giancarlo: so do you really believe that this Western health care model which is based on this very reductionist, symptom driven therapy diagnosis prognosis model.

Do you see having this compound which are, in a way, much more holistic? And In a way they really belong to a different ontology. You know, they really believe they really belong to a, a much more san you know, pansy, histo animist ontology where, you know, you speak with this indigenous tribe and the cogi and you know, they say that, you know, the river is my brother or the mountain is, but they don’t mean it metaphorically.

They, they feel it. Like literally they, they feel that we are subatomically, molecularly connected with the water, with the mountains and, and so how. How the FDA is going to be able to approve, [00:46:00] for example, You know, this idea of like entities and other other worldly being that will be and are reported to the trial.

So can you comment on that and maybe also comment on the recent rejection of phase three for MDMA, which I don’t really consider the classic psychedelic, but it also include an effect, which is Open my heart and Western medicine cannot measure heart openness. So how, how do you think is going this medicalization?

You know, there’s a New York time quoted the psychedelic bubble burst or the psychedelic wave crashed or something. So where are we with that process?

Simeon: From firsthand experience in the real world and using that word holistic, I’m seeing more and more of that. On the other hand, more and more of more of that. Hey, we, we need to recognize [00:47:00] it’s not reductionist prognosis. Yeah. That there’s, there’s more to the complexity of the human species. We’re taking into account preparation, integration connection to.

nature to all the technologies that the compound opens up and gives you a glimpse of, right? 

Giancarlo: Self healing that they call it placebo. 

Simeon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m seeing that on the other hand there is a certainly a trend in the more capitalized companies to follow the equivalent of an SSRI model where adverse.

side effects, like reading a report where I say, Oh, it was an adverse effect. I’m like, well, what was it? It’s like I, the, the, the volunteer, the patient in the clinical trial felt bliss. I’m like, Oh, come on. Right. You know, in mainstreaming and scaling it helps to 

Giancarlo: categorize 

Simeon: them that way. Exactly, exactly.

So I’m not as, I mean, this stuff takes time. And maybe to answer the second part of [00:48:00] the question, like I was not as despondent and disgruntled and upset about the FDA’s response to the phase three trial as I think others who are newer to the space. It also felt quite nostalgic. As it felt nostalgic in, in other areas under MAPS MAPS umbrella, like cannabis.

That’s always been a part of, you know, their kind of goals. And just recently, yeah, just yesterday, I think there was like, now we could study cannabis medically. Yeah. You know? And so, so to me, it’s, it’s. This takes time and you have to be patient. Yeah. You also have to move fast and have creative urgency and be smart.

Yeah. But this is a long, long road of changing global perspectives on, on how medicine works, on how health works, on how curing works. So it’s kind of going to be both. It’s going to be medical and it’s going to be more of You know everything you talked [00:49:00] about when we said Holistic. Yeah, this tribe believes you are the mountain you are the river.

Yeah And from the fun perspective, it’s it’s my duty fiduciary duty to see these signals and have some prescriptive Thinking as relates to how will this unfold and then personally just a supporter of any human beings, whether it’s through a technology like meditation or through a psychedelic integration or therapy session to help uplift humanity.

Giancarlo: Yeah, but why you say you were not disappointed by the FDA rejection of phase three as others? I don’t think 

Simeon: I was as disappointed because it was familiar. It was familiar over 30 years of watching schedule. Schedule 1 Substances, right? Not See the Light of Day, and you know, clicking back to the beginning of this podcast, where I had mentioned Robert Masters and Gene Houston, you know, who did write, still [00:50:00] to this day, one of the best books out there, Variety of Psychedelic Experiences.

They were part of A lot of clinical trials that had great efficacy before Nixon and the Controlled Substances Act happened. So, there was kind of a nostalgia to, hey, this is not new. There’s these government bodies, and it takes time, and you need to be patient, but you need to show The woo and true, 

Giancarlo: the woo and true and also some people I heard that were actually maybe not pleased, but you know, a positive interpretation of that is that they wanted more research to avoid what happened with ketamine, which already has been abused.

So in a way it’s, it’s true that you hear a lot of abuse because you can buy it online and it’s not supervised and so this idea that they want to like just pause a second to find a way to do a better job than, than with ketamine. 

Simeon: This is true of So many approved drugs [00:51:00] though. Exactly. You know? I don’t know if that was a huge contributing factor.

Because anything else is abuse, like oxytocin. Everything, you know? I mean, Diversion is the FDA term. It’s like, wait, can these, you know, we’re using it for this thing, but can they be diverted to the underground? Diverted to the street. For 

Giancarlo: recreational. 

Simeon: For recreational use, or non medicalized use, or use that leads to addiction.

And I’ve certainly witnessed to friends who started with a medicalized 

Giancarlo: ketamine process 

Simeon: and ended up like abusing it and finding it on the street or elsewhere. And, you know, then doing another plant medicine potentially resolve them from that addiction. But the FDA I’m not going to make the same statement about the DEA, but, you know, I get to talk to a lot of these entities.

The FDA is not like, in my opinion, It’s a very noble organization. Like if you study the history, it was [00:52:00] like. We want to make sure your food and your drugs are safe. And it’s very rigorous. And you need a lot of the, on the woo and true, you need a lot of the true. You need a lot of the data and you need a lot of the data sets.

And just researching, you know, when and how it was created. Was it because drugs were put on the market? Thalidomide babies, right? Like if you ever have looked or talked to someone who’s been part of that, and this is true of other drugs that get into the market, they were following a framework of show us more, show us all this.

But I don’t think it was as much necessarily the diversion that just show us. More and more. And it’s not there were more data. Exactly. 

Giancarlo: Because they also thought that some of the data might have been what’s the term? Maybe, you know, influenced by the enthusiasm of the facilitator, right? 

Simeon: And that’s that gets into how do you truly do a double blind with You know, there’s that meme going around where everyone’s dancing and then the [00:53:00] other side of the room is like, I wonder who had the placebo.

Right. I mean, it’s so obvious with psychedelic molecules. Yeah, it’s nice. 

Giancarlo: It’s nice to hear some positive words about the FDA because, you know, people seems to what I, what I read is that a lot of drugs approved are actually withdrawn from the market 

Simeon: because it does, it does happen. But, but there’s, there’s nobody I know.

At the FDA or even over their history definitely some bad actors, you know, that oxytocin was right, you know, on the market, which led to the fentanyl epidemic, yada, yada, yada. But most people and I know people who are applying for a job there because they, they see it and they’re like. Wow. I could really help to make sure that yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have lots of respect for these is protected and nobody’s making, you know, if you look and you go to FDA and look under their job resources, their public servants, you know, obviously we’re having this podcast within, you know, a couple of weeks of an entirely new administration, [00:54:00] which I’m not even going to comment on that, but government agencies and those who go to work for government 11 times out of 10 are doing it because they’re noble.

Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Simeon: This is the system. I want to make sure that I can be a part of an organization that makes sure mothers are not taking this and having thalidomide babies, right? Yeah. So I’m a big fan. Even if there’s corruption, even if there’s lobbying, that’s not the core. That’s not the base. Even the DEA, right?

Which, again, you could go back to all the scheduling, but talking to friends who’ve been there or are there. Like it’s noble on the surface, you know, it’s like we don’t want people to OD. 

Speaker 4: We don’t 

Simeon: want the cartel to control. A great, a great percentage of, again, this is very U. S. centric, but there’s equivalent organizations.

And then how do you work with them? How do you bring everybody under the tent? And that’s where the [00:55:00] data maybe not the WU, but as I started my fund, I remember, like, the first call was a little over five years ago, and it was with a triple acronymed agency. And the first call, I’m like, hey, I’m doing this.

And they’re like, okay, well, there will be guidelines around this. It’ll be medicalized, it’ll need a lot of data and a lot of tests, and there’s a stigma of the Controlled Substances Act, and the War on Drugs, and all of that. But there had not been a single call where within a minute into it, there was like, hey, off the record.

Speaker 4: Yeah, 

Simeon: and when you’re hearing it from those people and they’re saying, Hey, I have a spouse who’s really in rough shape She’s drinking all the time, or I have a kid who has a suicide ideation Or I have again and again So even within that framework the people who are the levers of control who came there initially with noble Intentions are aware are saying how do we move this forward?

Because their goal was the same goal when they started at the [00:56:00] agency, which was to protect the citizens, at least in the U. S., under, under the FDA, whether it’s food or whether it’s drugs. 

Giancarlo: It’s nice, it’s nice to hear. You, I know it’s a difficult question, but what would be your guess now for MDMA approval and then psilocybin approval approvals timing?

Simeon: Well, you can already see evidence of the latter happening. You know, we had a, another blow with Massachusetts, which would have been the first East coast state to approve a regulated framework at the state level for psilocybin assisted therapy. But, you know, as I see the progress, which, Doesn’t happen without a bunch of hiccups and two steps forward and one step back in Oregon and Colorado and again I’m just talking from a u.

1. Centric lens here. You see forward you see forward, of course there on MDMA Which you can’t sorry what 

Giancarlo: happened with my sister said why you could why there was a blow there there 

Simeon: was a [00:57:00] There was, you know a setback so now we’re gonna have to wait another year or two or longer. To do what happened in Colorado and Oregon, which was the 

Giancarlo: decriminalization, 

Simeon: not just the decriminalization because that’s separate from regulation.

Yes. So they were going to regulate it where right now and regardless of equitable access, regardless of cost, regardless of all these issues that need to be corrected, right? You can go right now to Oregon, for example, which was the first state under 109 and then they had the 110, but under 109, you could say, hey.

I want to try mushrooms, and you can do that legally under state 

Giancarlo: law, and But not on your own, with the licensed therapist 

Simeon: This is where the protocols are getting a little like, hey, what is that level of facilitation? How much therapy? Where It could be very minimal, like, Hey, I’m a practitioner. [00:58:00] I need, I need that support.

We need to log it. We need to regulate it, but it’s not like the double dyad MDMA protocol which I think is brilliant. Which again, to answer your question or not again, but to answer your MDMA question, it wasn’t the drug. That was not accepted. It was the drug paired with assisted therapy to an organization that does not have Food, Drug, and Therapy Administration.

It’s not the FDTA, it’s the FDA. So I think a lot of the dismay and a lot of the why wasn’t this approved is because it’s by an organization that’s never approved. Therapy as an adjunct is a core part of how this delivery, how this medicine will be delivered. 

Giancarlo: I see, that’s very clear.

Okay, so Massachusetts didn’t [00:59:00] accept the same state law that Oregon and Colorado has. And so it was going to, it might have been pushed back one, two years. And the reasoning is the same that you just described. 

Simeon: I think the reasoning would be, I mean, this is just my opinion. There was a lot happening in Massachusetts, like.

Because again, it always comes back to one’s beliefs and humans, you know, especially when a bill gets passed, right? It’s, it’s, it’s people on a podcast or in a room saying, Hey, maybe we should do this. It would be better. And there was so much happening around Massachusetts where it wasn’t de risked. It was like, well, if we don’t do this, then this person’s not happy.

And if we don’t do this, then this person’s not happy. So they were trying to appeal to a lot of different factions and yeah, totally totally politics and the politics of, of human egos, pain bodies. Exactly, exactly. And again, [01:00:00] there we hear, we hear cannabis as a, as an analog to it. Like, I mean, here we’re sitting in a podcast studio in New York, the recreational cannabis market is it’s here.

It’s a mess, right? There’s 1800 plus bodegas, just little corner store selling. Yeah. The old cities, 

Giancarlo: man’s of wheat, right? 

Simeon: And I experienced that in LA where there were more dispensaries than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. And now it’s a little, you know, it takes a while when a new law gets passed for the regulation to come to the forefront.

Why 

Giancarlo: do you think it’s a mess? It’s too much to be so widely available? 

Simeon: It’s just the regulated bodies. Around cannabis have bigger fish to fry. So closing down the quote unquote illegal or illicit. Ah, they’re illegal. They’re illegal. That’s right. Yeah. There’s 1800 shops that don’t have the license, you know, and then it gets into compliance and testing and some of the weed with fentanyl, blah, blah, blah.

And it’s too 

Giancarlo: strong, 

Simeon: [01:01:00] right? But that will be corrected because you’re seeing it in other states and in America, in the United States, you can kind of get. Either medical or recreational was in like every state now, not all of them, but the vast majority and it’s still federally illegal, just like psychedelics are federally illegal.

Yeah, this administration, 

Giancarlo: they already said they want to legalize it. 

Simeon: Listen, with this administration I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next 10 minutes, let alone like the policy of, oh my God, drug policy. And that’s a huge part of this whole movement, too, which I think is so often overlooked, which is why I’m such a, I mean, even today, there’s a Drug Policy Alliance open house.

There is a screening which touches upon the work of criminal justice reform. It’s all intermixed. And you can’t have just one thing without total clarity on how the policy side works or economies of third world nations. It’s almost, there’s not a word for it. But the word [01:02:00] there probably is a word interdisciplinary.

I was going to say holistic, but that doesn’t seem like the right word, but it’s all connected, you know? Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so I know you have to go in 10 minutes. What? So for you personally, why do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? Do you see you this year? Stuff like managing Funds for a long time or 

Simeon: go back to Africa.

Well, I spend a considerable amount of time in Africa. We had a exquisite conference in Zanzibar. I am in my first Gabonese Iboga initiation earlier this year. Investing and supporting, this isn’t fund related but provides great signals that benefit the fund in ayahuasca farms, iboga farms, extractors, any type of plant medicine.

So spending quite a, quite a significant amount of time in Africa, I did this year and plan to, to next year as well, and that includes trauma frameworks because, you know, the, you know, [01:03:00] Africa is, people go, Africa. There’s 54 countries and there might be 55. I’m helping with a secession movement in central Nigeria, which could be a 55th country, but it’s so diverse and so many of the countries are in constant trauma because of coup d’etats and civil war, ethnic and everything that’s happened with the fact that Africa and or certain countries in Africa should be the richest, the most resource rich countries in the world because how, you know, exploitative and everything you hear about the evil white guy, which, you know, and China and you name it, right?

Where this powers extract and they keep people under it. That has led us to develop a lot of fun trauma, not fun to say trauma framework is fun. It’s fun for me seeing humanity. Transform. I mean, but what is trauma framework? Not [01:04:00] dissimilar from any framework where it’s like you have trauma.

Here’s the therapy. Here’s the medicine and you’ll get better. There isn’t in a lot of countries I’m spending time in. There isn’t post traumatic stress disorder. It’s just stress. There’s no post because there’s always that next is ongoing. There’s always that next fear. There’s always that. And in some places, you know, spending time in war zones, it’s just, it’s.

It’s there. It’s, it’s not going away. So finding a unique way through international development funds, a major philanthropy or governments themselves to introduce, whether it’s plant medicine or a synthetic, or it’s a trauma framework with MDMA or an indigenous plant that, hey, there’s this other opportunity to heal is, another part of, you know, the work I’m doing on the dark continent.

Giancarlo: I see. So you indirectly answer my question. I ask how do you see yourself in the future? Are you still investing money? And you said, listen, I’m already not just investing [01:05:00] money I’m doing with the philanthropy and this framework. But so Again, 10, 20 years, you see doing more of that or be open to another, maybe another startup.

Simeon: Yeah, I, I really stopped a while ago and this is more of the improv back to the improv or that peak psychedelic experience planning beyond the immediate near future. Of course, I say I want to fund eight and 20 years ago, of course, I want a B and C like I’m, I’m still human, but I’m really not sure. I mean, definitely a podcast one day.

Giancarlo: Nice. It’s very easy to, you know, the barrier of entry are like, right. Disappeared. Right. Like we are here. It’s like, I don’t know, 50 an hour. 

Simeon: Right. But, but we’ll see. I mean, as long as I am, you know, personally, like Ethan, Ethan, 

Giancarlo: do you remember Ethan podcast? Yeah. That was fun. 

Simeon: Absolutely. 

Giancarlo: And, you know, I can see you, you know, be with, [01:06:00] with such a, the psychedelic, people involved in psychedelic, usually I have like, you know, there’s so many interests because the psychedelic itself is a multidisciplinary topic, right?

There is like so much. There is the. The policy and the politics and the anthropology and the psychotherapy and the you know, ontology and you know, it’s 

Simeon: so dense, 

Giancarlo: so dense, and I’m 

Simeon: barely scratching the surface of some things. Like I’m still, it took me a decade to figure out harm reduction. 

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Simeon: Like, and I was in subcommittees and supporting this cause and this cause. Right. And sometimes for me, it just takes a really long time to get it. And there’s so many stars. Yeah. Yeah. In the psychedelic universe many of the ones you mentioned where I kind of feel that as long as I’m happy, as long as I wake up excited about attacking the day or integrating the day, that would be more apropos to this podcast.

Yes. I’m probably going to be in it until until I pass [01:07:00] and yeah, passing and mortality and movements, shh. Like don’t die and AI and technology and just think maybe I will be immortal So 

Speaker 4: yeah, 

Simeon: I would I would if I had a podcast just based on some of the deals We’re seeing I was I might couldn’t I might ask a question to a participant like where do you see yourself in 200 400?

But 

Giancarlo: so if the if the gods laugh when you make long term plan When you make like, you know, multi centuries plan, what do the gods do? They’re like, you know, roll their eyes. 

Simeon: They do. And that gets into a whole other dimensionality of the spiritual technology. Like spending, the reason I like the Tibetan technology so much is because there is this ascension and continuity from one life to the other.

Right, and when you spend time with great masters in that tradition, although it exists in others, you realize, oh, this is just a temporary ride, [01:08:00] where why not experience the joy of being human? By joy, that could be the fear, and the trauma, and the despair, but this pantheon of an unlimited amount of emotions, and, and ideas that our species is gonna continually have.

Unless we modify our species and, you know, bow down to the AI overlords, which is right around the corner. That, for me, it’ll probably be back to that same, same thing that started early. And again, I joke drugs and money, but molecules and maybe it’s not even, and the spiritual technologies. And how do those dance together?

That keeps me pretty pretty motivated, and it’s always great to have fun in what you’re doing. Curiosity being quenched. Exploration being amplified. So yeah, whether [01:09:00] it’s 20 years from now or 200 years from now. Don’t necessarily see because it has been a lifelong journey, and I’m still barely scratching the surface Yeah, all this stuff where there is the money side or the drug side 

Giancarlo: interesting But so let me ask you the last question which is something very close to me You know when most people when they hear the term psychedelic assisted psychotherapy they focus on the word psychedelic But that’s a mistake because the important word is psychotherapy, but so to what extent do you think that you know recent discovery?

In in, in the autonomous nervous system and, you know, Van der Koos and Stephen Borges and Peter Levine, they talk about this trauma is not just an idea in the mind, it’s actually a neurobiological wounds. Like physical, real in the, in the nervous system and you know, what has been a wound that has been caused, caused emotionally, needs to be healed emotionally and so sometimes this, you know, psychotherapy, even with [01:10:00] psychedelic, might not be somatic enough.

You know, what I’ve seen with my own experience and my wife, she’s a Gabor Mate psychotherapist, is that you really see people. You know, healing their emotional wounds with the somatic, with the help of the body, you know, where do you feel it in the body? And do you see around psychedelic therapy, more, more somatic therapy of this kind?

Simeon: I’m seeing two different paths, right? You’re definitely seeing a trend towards

Yeah. And I can have a pill a day and somehow at a microdose or sub threshold dose I’ll 

Giancarlo: And that’s not really sustainable, 

Simeon: right? The jury is out. The jury is out. The jury is really out. I mean, so many of our investments on the drug discovery side have been, I’m going to create that miracle pill. That somehow solves all the symptomology, introduces neuroplasticity, [01:11:00] and gives you a critical period and a window to get over your trauma.

With nothing related to somatic, with nothing related to embodying it. Personally, eh, we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see. And even at a, at a greater level, like when we look at certain indications, like, and I see, I see new technologies coming into play, like non invasive neuromodulation, which could have the same outcomes as psychedelics.

But I also go like, why would you deprive a vet who’s got PTSD and TBI? Why would you deprive them of that cathartic moment of healing where you’re totally in it and you’re reassociating that trauma in a way? Why would you not want to include that as a, as a part of the healing journey? And there’s multiple answers, right?

On the other hand, I don’t know if everything, neurodegenerative diseases, [01:12:00] Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, you name it, I don’t know if that’s necessarily all trauma based. There are a lot of different theories. I’ve yet to see that it’s all trauma based. I think the great majority are, but if you’re in your 90s and you have early onset Or even accelerated dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s.

Do you need the trip? Do you need the somatic experience? And I’m seeing data where, no you don’t. It’s this, this compound that creates that neuroplasticity and helps heal those neurons that were otherwise, otherwise damaged. So it’s, it’s not one or the other, it’s both and at different degrees.

Speaker 4: Interesting. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Simon, thank you so much. Is there I mean, usually I ask, you know, usually I interview author and expert who has website and say where they can find you. But, you know, in this case would be, you know, where investors can find you. 

Simeon: Always, always, always open to [01:13:00] talking to prospective investors or those who just want to see a lens of how to invest in the space and where money could be a positive factor.

So I’m wildly accessible. Yeah. I’m the only Simeon sch snapper in the world. Amazing. Googling me, you can find my contact information and all that. 

Giancarlo: What is the fund website? 

Simeon: Jls dot FUND jls.fund. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. We’ll put it on the, on the show notes and also. If anybody with a little bit of agency that wants to help any of your philanthropic effort, where should they research this, you know, the, the, the arm reduction, the trauma framework.

Is there any way to donate to any of your non profit? 

Simeon: Yeah, that, that was just in the hundreds and you know, I have my favorites, right? One that I recently joined was Lucid News. I know, you know, You know, we shifted [01:14:00] that into a non profit for a multitude of reasons, but I think journalism and You know, if narrative moves culture and data moves science, it’s as important to have journalism and as close to unbiased reporting as one could have.

Lucid News. Lucid News Community Media is the newly established 501c3, where one could donate. But even within that context, we’re looking for donations that are, be a part of the community. So now as I meet people, and I’ll ask this of you, when can I get the 1500 word expert opinion piece that you will write for Lucid News as a contributor?

That will be edited and fact checked but provide agency to the individual who cares about how narratives unfold as well as giving you a community to talk about your unique perspective in the psychedelic renaissance which It kind of happens every 10 years, there’s another psychedelic renaissance, [01:15:00] if 

Giancarlo: you will.

So if I understand correctly, you’re inviting people to contribute. 

Simeon: Contribute in any ways they can. Even 

Giancarlo: with, with article that will be fact checked and edited. 

Simeon: Yeah. Yeah, nice. There’s that, I mean, there’s so many great non profits. I mean, you had mentioned Maps. I’ve been a supporter of Maps over the decades.

Of course, they’re great. You had mentioned Amanda earlier in the podcast. Anything in her universe. There’s a host of great smaller ones that, It’s what what drives you and then just, you know, email me and I’ll be like, here are my favorite 10 that support a, B or C. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Do you still have three minutes for me?

Because I’m just curious because you know, the medicalization with the insurance and the SSRI model. Okay, I respect that. And of course, it’s important, but I’m really waiting for a time where people can say, listen, This weekend or these four days, this like, you know, bank holiday, instead of going back to the Bahamas or to Miami to party, I’m going to do [01:16:00] like a, you know, personal growth weekend where I’m not sick, but I just want to check in and do like a regenerative program where I go four days.

I do a dose of mushroom. I do some meditation. I do some stretching. I do some yoga. When is that kind of clinic? Open . 

Simeon: There’s hundreds right now already. I mean, we’re here, we’re in Colorado. 

Giancarlo: And Oregon. 

Simeon: Colorado. Oregon. I mean, the underground is still 

Giancarlo: the underground Yeah. But, 

Simeon: but not legally yet. And then other jurisdictions, but yeah, Colorado and Oregon, right.

Or the two places they’re, they’re legal. You can do that under. you know, a state regulated model and have that experience. 

Giancarlo: Recommend one for our audience. And if you don’t remember, we can tell me later. It’s 

Simeon: just which, which one do I recommend that doesn’t piss off the other 20 that said, Hey dude, come on, you’re an advisor.

But I would say look at either, cause each one is also very unique, you know, so 

Giancarlo: I don’t want to put in trouble. Why don’t, after this, You send me five names or 10 [01:17:00] names and we’ll put it on the show notes. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, Simon, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming and looking forward to being invited to your podcast,

Okay. Take care.

Speaker: Coca zonada, it’s zonada and tea. Coca zonada, it’s zonada 

and tea.