Hamilton’s Pharma Cope, Part 3: Paid Protestor Paranoia Transcript

Transcript created using Descript and may be subject to misspellings.

Russell: This is part three of a four part series discussing the claims made by Hamilton Morris on Andrew Callahan’s five cast. In this episode, we’ll be discussing further claims about our funding, as well as a number of claims from Hamilton

Pace: about the company Usona.

Russell: So the next couple of clips are focused specifically on that ANA funding, which.

Normie emphasized was something like maybe $500 or

Normie: it wasn’t Usona funding. It was, like I said, it was Bob, Jesse, I think six plus years ago to 2020. It personal donations. It was a personal donation for $500. Yeah, I he, he did it maybe once or twice

Russell: when we had the initial conversation for these recordings.

We were fairly sure that Jesse had been responsible for two donations in the past that were somewhere below a thousand dollars in total. After we had the conversation, we went back and checked the details and the specifics are that we received two donations at the recommendation of Bob Jesse from the San Francisco Foundation for a total of $700.

Normie: And then that combined with the silo, meth and defense to which you, Sona, provided for everyone. This has been spun up into this conspiracy narrative that we’re, this is a, a, a source of funding for us, so let’s continue.

Andrew Callaghan: So there’s what, what are some of the other reasons that could possibly be in the, in the shadows here?

Hamilton Morris: I, I think also ANA funding. Symposia played a role as well. A SA funded lawyer was representing Symposia during the time of the FDA advisory committee hearing, but I don’t know that they directly wanted that outcome. They were very happy when MDMA was rejected. The founder of SA was, um, absolutely delighted by the rejection.

Andrew Callaghan: What’s Ana’s Deeper agenda?

Hamilton Morris: Vengeance

Andrew Callaghan: against Compass.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah. Compass Vengeance was a big one. I think one of the weird things about journalism and storytelling is when his story gets complicated enough, it just starts to sound like the gibberish of a conspiracy theorist.

Normie: Yeah. Because he, he’s basing this narrative on like a, an initial piece, a kernel that is false, and so it doesn’t make sense to him because as that little.

Colonel fractals out. It creates confusion in his mind. And he doesn’t, he doesn’t know what’s real anymore.

Andrew Callaghan: Anymore. No, no, no. I’m following

Hamilton Morris: you. Okay. Okay. It’s like, but you know, when you talk to someone, they’re like, oh, Alan Dulles and, uh, Sidney Gottlieb, and they were working with the Operation Paperclip and, and, and you just.

Andrew Callaghan: We’re gonna have visual aid for this

Hamilton Morris: interview, okay? Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay, so I’ll, I’ll go into it.

Andrew Callaghan: So at the juncture we’re at right now is that you have this pharmaceutical company making it seem like the rival pharmaceutical company is trying to block the legalization of psychedelics, but it’s actually them that are trying to block legal of psychedelics.

They’re using vice to disseminate negative press about this company while simultaneously encouraging terroristic action. So this is all like pretty fascinating because this idea of like pay.

Normie: W while simultaneously en encouraging terroristic actions, what is going on? I just wanna pause this for a second and I’ll be, the first to admit is that there is competition and there is bad blood that exists between the Usona camp and the Compass Camp.

This is a long s. Standing issue that goes back to something like 20 17, 20 18, compass moved in rapidly. They were very well capitalized. The SNA camp felt that Compass people were encroaching on their turf. And in Hamilton’s mind, he thinks that we’re, that we are just slotted into the SNA camp and that we have no critiques against some of the big UNA plays.

This is a long, ongoing thing that Hamilton’s had. The one point of agreement is that I do think that there is standard business competition and there is bad blood between executives to some degree, uh, from Compass and Usona. But he spun this into a, like a very complex conspiracy narrative where we are seen as the vanguard of Bill Linton with Usona that’s going out to slay, uh, their enemies, which is nonsense

Andrew Callaghan: aid, protest, and controlled opposition oftentimes gets like thrown around, especially in the conservative media sphere to like.

Delegitimize anger and outrage when it comes to things that are happening.

Andrew Callaghan Interviewee (clip): The Tesla rally, some of these guys are paid agitators and paid protesters.

Hamilton Morris: It’s typically not true,

Andrew Callaghan: but I find it really interesting here that the company Usona is using this sort of like anti-capitalist, anti-fascist language to do their bidding and kind of mobilize, like gullible people against the people that are actually doing the, uh, the good, the good thing.

Hamilton Morris: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Andrew Callaghan: yeah. This is, as

Hamilton Morris: far as I know, this is the only example of this that I knew about.

Pace: The slop on display here. I challenge any five cast viewer to find any Usona personnel talking about how they are, you know, using or amplifying symposia or engaging in anti-fascist, anti-capitalist narratives at all.

The, the idea that both of these so-called journalists just go, yeah, that’s what they’re doing is. Bananas to me,

Normie: it gives me Candace Owens, like French Legion trying to assassinate her vibes. It’s the only thing that I can like, that I can I, that I can only draw

Pace: from. Well, I actually,

Normie: that’s,

Pace: so I wanna say something because, you know, the conspiracy theorizing, there’s, there’s the one side of it that’s like, and ignorant.

Ignorant and or desperate plea to, uh, you know, IM impose order on a, on a chaotic and scary world, right? But then there’s this sort of actor. That is out there on, on purpose, kicking up dust and complexifying. A rather simple story that they don’t like, they don’t want to be told. You know, symposia is a group of principled actors that have relevance and, and incisive critiques on on many front.

Of the psychedelic industry, and I don’t want them to listen to be listened to because you know, I mean, as, as Hamilton has said multiple times in his public, uh, appearances, he was a, a former employee of Compass. And we have, you know, speaking of transparency, no. Understanding of what Hamilton’s, you know, personal stock portfolio is in the, the psychedelic space.

Russell: And for what it’s worth, one of the founders of the Church of Psilomethoxin Ian, Ben Weis did publish that. Hamilton had shares in Compass Pathways. We did some digging and it does appear that according to SEC filings from the year that Hamilton was employed by Compass as a full-time consultant, that consultants of Compass Pathways.

We’re approved to receive compensation in shares. We’ve requested confirmation from Morris on whether he received share-based compensation from Compass for his time with them, but we have not received comment back,

Pace: but he has got a lot of potential motives for wanting people to not understand our position in an accurate way, and every time he does it, he displays contempt for his audience.

The audience

Normie: a hundred

Pace: of the podcast, you know, or, or show that he is, you know, a guest on. And he abuses his status as a sort of quasi celebrity psychedelic expert. Um, however, you know, dull and, uh, in the distance that, uh, you know, reputation may be today.

Russell: So this clip that’s coming up now is something that was debuted on this five cast interview.

Which is Hamilton confronting Bob Jesse at a conference. This is was previously unreleased footage that he kind of like seeded to five cast.

Bob Jesse: Hi.

Hamilton Morris: Hey, I dunno if we’ve met, maybe we met a long time ago.

Bob Jesse: I think we might’ve been on stage once a long time ago, but didn’t actually say hi.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah,

Bob Jesse: but your reputation procedure,

Hamilton Morris: you could be good to see you.

So I feel like this is sort of an aggressive question. I feel bad asking, but a couple of X symposia. Members have contacted me and they told me that you had been providing them with money and intel in what they felt was a effort to destroy compass.

Russell: I just wanna pause it here to address what he’s saying.

A couple of ex symposia employees approached him in an interview prior to this. He discussed that he was approached by someone named Travis Kitchens, who once wrote an article for us and we edited.

Andrew Callaghan: In fact, Travis just went on the Danny Jones podcast explaining the

Russell: extent of his relationship with us.

Danny Jones: So this symposia group is specifically doing like, uh, counter operations against all this stuff, like they’re reporting on all the negative aspects of it.

And trying to debunk it.

Travis Kitchens: Uh, they, yeah, I would say they were providing a critical perspective. Some of which was much of which was legitimate. Mm-hmm. I mean, these were just, it’s just reporting into the psychedelic field. It’s a group of people. Yeah. Pull it up. Like if you put Yeah, there you go. There you go.

It’s a website. Yeah. Basically

Danny Jones: about psychedelic.

Travis Kitchens: Yes, that publishes like, um, Hey Steve, would you put in, put in, uh, in the search bar, put in Travis Kitchens and you’ll see an article they published to mine.

Danny Jones: Oh, you work for ’em?

Travis Kitchens: No, um, no, in 2019, um, I, I wrote a very long article there. It is a channel for magic.

This is an 8,000 word article. Oh, okay. It’s very long. Uh, you know, they have a, if you go to a bout or something, you’ll see, you can submit an article. We could write an article on psychedelics right now. We could submit it to them and if they like it, they’ll publish it. So I submitted to them, I didn’t know ’em.

Mm-hmm. And they said, this is great. We will publish it. So they published it. They don’t pay, but they published it. And, you know, subsequently it was featured in the New York Times, it was featured in some books that, uh, you know, right. Ivy League University press books. And so it’s go, it’s been widely read and I’m, I’m, I’m as proud of it as anything I’ve ever written.

Russell: If that’s what he’s talking about, that is not an ex symposia employee. And that is not someone who has extensive knowledge of our. Funding and anything about the internal organization of our nonprofit.

Normie: This, this gives me like Project Veritas big

Russell: time.

Normie: Yeah.

Hamilton Morris: You had been providing them with money and intel in what they felt was a effort to destroy Compass.

Bob Jesse: No.

Hamilton Morris: No.

Bob Jesse: Um, let’s see.

Amanda Pratt: Yeah.

Bob Jesse: Not directly my money, but I’m responsible for having sent to symposia before things really blew up and got nasty. Two separate donations. Mm-hmm. Small amounts of money.

Hamilton Morris: Mm-hmm.

Bob Jesse: And not for the purpose of getting to do anything.

Hamilton Morris: Mm-hmm.

Normie: That’s a hundred percent correct. Yeah, that’s actually more correct.

I do have the check in my stash. Um, it was through, uh, an account that, that he has, yeah.

Neşe: That money came in during that period of time where we weren’t paying ourselves at all. We weren’t getting money for doing the work that we were doing. So donations that came in, like small donations would go towards, like, as I said, the website or whatever else we were using to, in order to do our work.

Normie: Yeah.

Hamilton Morris: So why do you think they said that? Yeah. And why were you giving them money?

Bob Jesse: Well, because for a little while they were saying things no one else would say.

Hamilton Morris: Mm-hmm.

Bob Jesse: You know, the same reason you would give.

Normie: By the way, Bob, we are still saying things that nobody else would say just to

Bob Jesse: lucid news, money I, inappropriate

Hamilton Morris: action.

And then because they know that you were involved with this Harlow Family Foundation and they’ve, you know, paid an enormous amount of money to Nasha and to symposia to are so. Run this campaign against Maps. $185,000 reported. Oh, I didn’t

Andrew Callaghan: know

Bob Jesse: that.

Russell: See, this is, this is what he has been doing this whole time.

That’s what I’m talking about. This narrative around the Sarlow donation to us, which was a completely unrestricted donation. He continually, in interviews, frames it as this money that was like slipped to us to run a campaign against maps, which is. Fully incorrect.

Neşe: And anyone who’s been in the field knows that everything we did and said during that period was completely in line with what we’d been doing and saying for years.

Right? So we were not hired guns and people who know anything about nonprofits and all that goes into it, looking at that amount of money that is not a large amount of money for a nonprofit and certainly not in, in comparison to the amount of pharma funding that was on the other side of the clinical trials

Bob Jesse: remains on the other side.

Yeah, but that was long after I left that foundation.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah,

Bob Jesse: long after.

Hamilton Morris: And they’re suing me now or attempting to.

Bob Jesse: Why?

Hamilton Morris: Because I said that they had done this.

Neşe: Like that’s not the dean thing.

Pace: I’d love to see the lawsuit. Was that,

Neşe: could I, I’d like to say something else about the funding. ’cause it’s like we had the choice of how to apply those fines based on our nonprofit’s mission, and he’s acting like we just paid ourselves out with this huge amount of money.

But there were a lot of other things that we needed to use funds for. Getting, uh, legal protections for our ability to publish the psychedelic syndicate, which especially at this moment in time when, you know, there’s all of this attacking journalism. In order to be able to publish, you know, to speak against powerful interests, it’s important to have protections there.

And so it’s just a complete misunderstanding of everything that we’ve been been doing in order to get information out to the public that the public deserves to know.

Normie: Yeah, I think, I think saying that it’s a misunderstanding is you’re being charitable there. I don’t think this is a misunderstanding fair.

I think this is a lie and I think this is just propaganda that he’s more than happy to spew

Bob Jesse: suing you for something like defamation or dashing damage

Hamilton Morris: defamation.

Bob Jesse: Well, guess what? My understanding not a lawyer is the truth is an absolute defense against defamation.

Hamilton Morris: Well, they’re actually, unfortunately.

They got me on a technicality. I said it was the Sarlow Family Foundation, whereas it was Su sarrow

Normie: who is, they got me on a technicality. The is the, this is the Conspiracy Mind Bay.

Russell: And I wanna say too, I thought about including both clips, but I didn’t, this the timeline of this interview, when it came out, it was released like three separate times.

First it came out in August. Yeah, this interview between Hamilton and Andrew. And about 48 hours later, it was taken off the internet. Between that time it came out that Hamilton had been, uh, Andrew had forwarded Hamilton the entire video file to review and re-release. They re-released it in September and this clip, that entire point where Hamilton admits they got beyond a technicality is cut.

That’s no longer in the interview. That is public.

Hamilton Morris: I did an interview with Andrew Callahan. His team reached out to me. They were filming at the Maps conference and wanted to collaborate on something, so we recorded a podcast together. I’d made it very clear to everyone that the podcast discussed, billionaires, multimillionaires, lots and lots of people who’d conceivably be angry, and that I needed to have it reviewed before anything went out.

Somehow that got lost in translation. They released it without me realizing, and then I asked for them to take it down. The reason it was taken down is because I wanted to see it before it went out publicly.

Russell: This video that we have is from the original release.

Pace: I think one of the funniest things about this is that, you know, this particular phrase being removed, uh, sort of after an initial release is that it’d be very interesting to see if there actually was a lawsuit.

I don’t think there is a, a lawsuit to be had here, but had such a lawsuit gone forward. You know, admitting on camera that your, the opposing, uh, team has got you on a, on a technicality might not. Be very great for your lawsuit.

Neşe: I, I do wanna speak to the lawsuit claim because the only things that I have heard of being circulated are cease and desist that are requesting that people, you know, be careful about how they’re representing the facts because misrepresentations are actually dangerous under the current conditions of where the field is at.

There are a lot of threats, death threats, circulating a lot of very. Dangerous rhetoric and legally I think a lot of people don’t understand that. Like if something happens, if someone is, is whipped up and inflamed by this demonizing rhetoric and comes and. Tries to get vengeance at your house, you know, for whatever reason connected to this kind of in, in inciting rhetoric, having a cease and desist is a form of protection for you because you can then show that you tried to set the records straight so that if anything happens, god forbid.

You’re able to then show that and say, look, I, I tried my best to stop this. And then it makes it easier if you need to get a decision about something to, to make things whole after something horrible happens. And so I find it very interesting that everyone’s representing this, you know, these cease and desist letters.

When people are pumping, misin, disinformation out into the, uh, media landscape, because it’s another form of vo, it’s a abusive tactic where the, you know, people who are being abusive act like their victims are the abusers. And this is representative of that. ’cause when you say someone asking me to please be careful because things are dangerous right now is an act of aggression that deserves further retaliation.

You are admitting to the attentive viewer that you are actually the one who is causing the harassment.

Pace: Yeah, I, I think that. Those distinctions are, you know, important to make, make all, all great points. And I think that the thing though is, is that, yeah, it’s still not a lawsuit that, um, Hamilton is representing.

Oh, they’re, they’re suing me. No, no, they aren’t.

Neşe: Well, that, that, that’s why I mentioned that is that there have been no lawsuits. Right. And a lot of people have talked about like these. Lawsuits and legal threats as evidence of our or the, that foundation’s, uh, you know, evilness and I, I just wanted to set the record straight that actually no.

The fact that they’re representing at most, uh, requests to stop lying in dangerous ways as further evidence that these groups or people need to be put in their place and, and demonized is itself a red flag.

Russell: This actually comes up in Travis Kitchen’s recent interview with Danny Jones, where Danny’s under the impression that we tried to sue Hamilton over something and Travis Hamilton’s alleged source on a lot of this stuff has to actually go on and contradict him.

Travis Kitchens: I

Danny Jones: don’t know. Did he get the cease and desist from symposia or sarlow?

Travis Kitchens: Uh, no n neither a letter, uh, a law, a law firm, big time law firm in San Francisco that represents the Sarlow Foundation. Okay? So it was a Sarlow Uhhuh, and they said, actually, it wasn’t this Sarlow group, it was this other sarlow group that gave him the money, so technically you’re wrong.

And also they accused him of spending conspiracy theories and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, he has a rather complex, maybe even convoluted narrative around this.

Russell: The clip we’ve been watching is about to end here and then it’s gonna cut over into a later clip from Hamilton’s podcast of him discussing this confrontation, uh, that I just think is interesting.

Hamilton Morris: Harlow not the foundation. Yeah. So,

Bob Jesse: so three or some, I hope that’s not too much of a pain in the butt for you.

Hamilton Morris: People contacted me to say it’s very unfair of you to blame USA for everything and. I don’t believe that I did

Andrew Callaghan: just one crazy lady and one pharmaceutical company, Usona.

Hamilton Morris: I feel bad for what it’s worth about calling out Bob, Jesse.

It doesn’t bring me any pleasure. I’ve heard from many people that Bob, Jesse is a really nice guy. You know, I have no desire to go to war with these people and. I think that all of this fear and fighting,

Normie: I have no desire to go to war with these people, but I’m gonna call, call them terrorists and spend all of my time obsessing over unfounded claims.

Russell: Yeah, wait for it. You’re gonna love how he, he, he finishes this clip

Hamilton Morris: in the psychedelic world. It just been a a miserable experience that I really wish to avoid. For the people that are new subscribers who don’t know about this, I have several podcasts dedicated to it, and I could honestly probably talk about it for 10 more hours.

Russell: It’s just so disingenuous to hear him. Say he doesn’t wanna get involved and then immediately cut to, by the way, I have several podcasts on this issue and could talk about it for 10 more hours.

Pace: He is going out of his way. He tries, you know, the, the reason, the other reason why we’re responding to Andrew is that, um, the, the sheer level of irresponsibility at a journalistic level on display with, with Callahan’s five cast here is.

Something that we can compare to other, uh, commentators and podcasters who have hosted Hamilton. Hamilton has on these other platforms. People are like, you know, Hamilton, like you’re here to talk about, like, you know, the good old days when you used to be on Vice, like doing things in other countries and taking drugs.

Like, what do you think today? That’s what we want you to hear. And then he’s shoehorning in these conspiracy theories about. Symposia and, and then they drag him back into, you know, his lane, but not Callahan.

Russell: The next post that we review is a comment that Hamilton made on his subreddit walking back his assertions about Bob, Jesse providing

Andrew Callaghan: us funding.

This post was made less than a month after the interview with Andrew that was framed around this funding came out.

Russell: If you look in the second paragraph there, he says. I think the amount that Bob Jesse paid them is relatively small, and I’ve heard it to be less than a thousand dollars and was likely paid around 2018.

Like we’ve been saying, we didn’t receive some crazy amount of money from you, Usonaor Bob. Jesse and Hamilton knows that this whole time. Yet he framed the entire interview with Andrew around the fact that we were funded by some malevolent pharmaceutical company.

Neşe: This post came out like not long after the video, so it’s not like he.

You know, looked into it months later and found this like correction, like he was aware.

Russell: The post that was just on screen from Hamilton was from October 5th, 2025, which was less, like you said, less than a month after this interview was publicly rereleased on YouTube.

Normie: Can you even imagine like. Focusing on, I mean, he didn’t know this because he doesn’t do his homework, but can you even imagine on focusing on like a thousand dollars donation versus the fire hose of billionaire money and rich like corrupt money that is.

Coming into this space that is silencing Any, any criticism that is like totally twisting this sort of, what was a grassroots movement into this corporate monster? Like, and this is what he focuses his time on. It, it, it’s really delusional. Yeah.

Russell: The last clip I have of this section around like the claims on our funding is I just think an illustrative clip of Hamilton discussing another psychedelic media outlet where he is wildly speculating on their funding, uh, almost in the exact same way the

Hamilton Morris: who funded Psilocybin Alpha at the beginning.

I actually don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were Bill Linton or Carrie Turnbull or maybe the Sarlow family. Those seem to be I, if I had to guess, I’d probably say Linton or Turnbull. ’cause it has that kind of nonsense air that you get from people associated with that group.

Normie: Why would you go on your why?

I just don’t understand what the speculation is all about. Oh, I understand what it’s about, but I, I just don’t understand the, I don’t understand having contempt for your audience to the extent that you’re willing to just spew the conspiracy bullshit. I, I don’t get it. It’s, it’s, it’s, it,

Russell: people seem to kind of eat it up, and he’s allowed to go on stages where he’s platformed as the voice of psychedelic journalistic ethics, and the community itself promotes him.

As an ethical voice while he goes around speculating to his audience in this way.

Normie: I mean, it fits perfectly in like the post-truth world of Grifting on your audience.

Pace: The pattern with Hamilton is a consistent attack, you know, an anti-intellectual way of any journalism or scholarship. That, you know, questions, the, the, the most positive light that psychedelics and uh, and sort of psychedelic industry could be painted in.

Russell: That was a dissection of Hamilton’s claims in Andrew’s interview with him about our funding in particular, uh, you heard come up I think at least once in those last couple clips, Hamilton, claiming that we encourage terrorism or terrorist actions. The next couple clips I have lined up are more on that subject because I think it’s worth discussing and kind of dissecting what he’s actually talking about there because it’s something that’s been bandied about and used against us.

In our last video, we discussed the environment that this interview was released into, which was post Charlie Kirk killing, when leftist groups were being labeled terrorists worthy of attack or prosecution by uh, the right wing. And I think. We need to dispel some of the claims that they’re discussing here.

So the next clip we’re gonna see is a super cut of every time Hamilton in this interview discusses us as terrorists, uh, encouraging terrorist action or doing or terrorizing the field.

Andrew Callaghan: So at the juncture we’re at right now is that you have this pharmaceutical company encouraging terroristic action,

Hamilton Morris: paying activists to terrorize their competitors.

So this group were terrorizing everyone in the psychedelic world. They were called symposia.

Andrew Callaghan: So symposia is a useless group of paid activists trying to throw a wrench in the game for no reason.

Hamilton Morris: Yes. And began to advocate terrorist action, advise people to start. Terrorizing and engaging in terrorist tactics.

Bob Jesse: Actual terrorist action.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah. The problem was that these people were uncontrollable. They were seriously insane. Dangerously insane. This is why funding terrorist organizations to do your bidding is usually a bad idea. Historically, yeah.

Every

Andrew Callaghan: time we do it, it always backfires.

Hamilton Morris: It just hasn’t ended well.

Russell: And so that’s actual footage from the interview that was not. I didn’t cut in the Wikipedia article about Israeli funding of Hamas. That was Channel Five’s team that put that in at that point of the interview.

Normie: This sounds like, like, this sounds like Stephen Miller, like it actually sounds like Stephen Miller shit that he, that he’s saying,

Russell: and so that’s just a preface on how often he was describing us as terrorizing terrorists.

A terrorist group terrorizing the industry.

Normie: At what point have you lost the argument so much that you have to label like the people you disagree with as terrorists? Like that’s where we have. That’s where he’s gone in his own mind. It’s kind of wild.

Pace: He’s just hysteria and I mean, I don’t know, maybe, you know, at what point, um, well there, there are other patterns in the media sphere.

You know, if you become discredited enough, you can always, uh, find yourself a, a spot on a, you know, right wing conspiracy podcast. Or maybe, you know, convert to a,

Normie: that’s where he is going,

Pace: a religion or something, you know,

Normie: that’s certainly the trajectory he is on. As he, as he gets like more irrelevant, he has to go further into like the rage baiting into the grifting, into the lies, into the conspiracies.

Russell: The next part of the clip that I have lined up is Hamilton actually discussing the terrorist actions. He’s saying we encouraged and I want viewers to hear how he describes it, and then we’re gonna come in afterward and contextualize what he’s actually talking about.

Andrew Callaghan: When you said terroristic, do you mean like car bombs and stuff?

Hamilton Morris: I can read you exactly what they, they wrote

Andrew Callaghan: actually, they, they call for violent action against a rival pharmaceutical company.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah.

Andrew Callaghan: Yeah. I definitely wanna see it.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah. Yeah. I can pull it up right now.

Andrew Callaghan: Yeah, for sure.

Hamilton Morris: Okay. This is, and there’s actually a lawsuit right now. This is pretty funny.

Andrew Callaghan: You can’t just tell people to go terrorize others, right?

That’s not free speech.

Hamilton Morris: Oh, yeah, you’re right. Well, well, so now the guy that wrote this, the. The shitty David Nichols is, uh, having his mother, who’s a lawyer, Sue the New York Times journalist who mentioned that this had occurred.

Andrew Callaghan: Oh man, they’re gonna sue the fuck out of us. You gonna get

a

Hamilton Morris: lawsuit from David?

Andrew Callaghan: Mom? I NI’s. I’m already getting sued. I’m ready to declare bankruptcy

Hamilton Morris: here. Okay. Least if I can pull this up. This is the. This screen grab support Usona Absolutely. Exclamation point is the first line. But no, I mean shutting down Compass independently fucking with their business operations in ways designed to raise the cost of operating.

Hey. They want to exist according to the logic of capitalism. Let’s leverage that logic to make it too expensive to operate. Here’s a post I made over on Kat’s earlier Compass Post Kat being another person who is, uh, paid by the CEO of Usona. Reportedly, although I have not been able to, I’ve heard that from two people, but I haven’t been able to verify it, but I.

Suspect that it’s the case. Um, what do we do? Shut it down. There are plenty of strategies that could be developed to make that happen. Ranging from milk toast to militant. Facebook isn’t really the best place to discuss some of those tactics. A Facebook post was public. Yeah. Uh, but some spur of the moment ideas I could imagine right now might be.

Organizing call-ins to Compass and or associated research institutions such as maps to express disgust, and result in tying up the lines, thereby making some aspects of general operations untenable or at least frustrating. The same could be applied to the individuals involved. Two, continued writing slash coverage of how the for-profit commodified approach puts us all in jeopardy and threatens more.

Open access models of medical treatment. Three, check out the strategies some folks use to oppose Huntington life science. This is where this is like threatening people with weapons. I’m not necessarily advocating any of those strategies. I’m not necessarily advocating any of those strategies, but there’s a good precedent for relatively small groups of people tanking major corporations through utilization of militant tactics, and it just goes on.

It’s multiple paragraphs.

Russell: Okay, so. A couple of contextual points up top here. Dave was a former member of Symposia who left well prior to any of the FDA stuff that Hamilton’s been talking about this whole time. He was an early critic of Compass Pathways. The Facebook post that they’re discussing there, that they do like a little, um, they do their own recreation of the typing.

I have the still of the actual post, which we can look at in a minute to show how different it actually is than the way they rewrote it there. And Huntington Life Sciences was, I believe, a pharmaceutical company that was accused of all of this animal abuse. Right? And what Dave’s talking about there is citizen push.

On pharmaceutical companies that they’ve deemed abusive. He’s encouraging people to go look into the history of civilian action and resistance to abuse. Essentially,

Neşe: it’s like telling people to learn the history of like the history of labor and labor organizing.

Russell: Exactly. It

Pace: specifically describes a, like a broad swath from what?

Milk toast to militant. Yeah.

Russell: Yes. Milk toast to militant, and that is the reality of the pushback to Huntington Life sciences. There was calling campaigns up to. That someone called in like a fake bomb threat on them. That is true, but I don’t think that’s what Dave’s talking about. And Dave, in his post specifically says, I don’t endorse any of these tactics.

Hamilton Morris: I’m not necessarily advocating any of those strategies.

Russell: So at the point that Hamilton is going around saying that Symposia was encouraging their viewers to engage in terrorist tactics, the Post he’s literally referring to says, I do not endorse these tactics.

Pace: Nor were any of us actually even aware of this post that happened on Facebook in a comment thread until it was dug up by, you know, uh, the likes of Hamilton and his, his ilk.

And, you know, the thing that I think is really the towel here is the sort of juvenile way that Hamilton giggles his way through this, um, that Hamilton doesn’t actually take this as seriously as usually when he references it. That he, you know, wants his audience to believe, like last time I checked terrorists, cause mass violence events, they kill innocent, you know, civilians and such.

None of that has been evidenced in this, in this post as something that anybody has specifically advocated for. And then for it to be one, you know, former member who’s years gone, who made this years ago to, as he introduces it. Conflates it with they symposia. There’s a difference between an individual and what they say and do, and a difference between what an organization says and does.

Symposia has, has had many organizational statements and jointly authored pieces. This is none of that. It’s, it’s absolutely flimsy and to himself. Well, laughable. I think it’s ridiculous.

Russell: And I think the other point I wanna make about the way that Hamilton Bandies about with this post of Dave’s, I’m just gonna bring it up here.

I want it to be clear. This is a Facebook response to someone in the conversation saying, okay, you are, again, you, you have these critiques of Compass pathways, right? Should we be supporting Usona who has similar ambitions but is a nonprofit organization that is putting its manufacturing stuff out into the open science kind of database for people to see their manufacturing practices and stuff like that.

And Dave says, support you, Sona. Absolutely. But no, that’s what he’s responding to. He’s, he’s responding to someone saying, should we re, should we support you, Sona? And Dave’s saying, sure. Support you. Usonanot pledging his absolute support to sna. The way that Hamilton frames it

Andrew Callaghan: support sna ab, absolutely exclamation point is the first line.

Hamilton Morris: This group started out very vocally. Pledging their absolute support for a pharmaceutical company called Usona. He, he had announced his absolute support for the U Pharmaceutical company, Usona at the time that he announced his absolute support for Usona

Pace: utterly dishonest.

Normie: And just for some additional context here, at the time, compass Pathways was accused and likely engaged in anti-competitive tactics.

They had secured a psilocybin manufacturer for GMP psilocybin that was required. It was a new requirement from the FDA going into the clinical trials and that that was a cause for concern of a lot of researchers now that they would have to rely. On Compasses supply and some of the Una people and, you know, US based researchers, were, were concerned about what this new dynamic looked like in the space.

Uh, a space that had not had these sort of anti-competitive practices before.

Russell: Yeah, and regarding companies like Compass and Usona, getting back into the kind of schism between the two of them. This next video starts with a super cut of Hamilton discussing his own relationship with Compass Pathways, just for some context, and then gets into descriptions throughout the Andrew Hamilton interview of him saying he was harassed by Usona funded employees.

Hamilton Morris: I was doing work at a university that was being funded by one of these pharmaceutical companies. Working in a lab that’s receiving money from Compass.

Andrew Callaghan: I do. I work in this lab that receives funding from Compass. It’s, you know, it’s really, it’s really cool, you know, we’re making all these new psychedelic drugs.

It’s really good. Um, I was part of a group creating new psychedelics for Compass.

Hamilton Morris: If somebody says, Hey, Hamilton, you know, uh, you’re, you’re, you’re going kind of easy on Compass. All the time. Right. Wouldn’t it be useful to know that they used to pay me, that I used to make drugs for them for years? Right.

It would be useful to know. You should know that it’s a legitimate conflict of interest on my part.

Russell: And so I just wanted to show that upfront because Hamilton, as he goes on here, is going to talk a lot about claims of Usona funding people who they didn’t fund, just like he does about us. And he kind of gets away with saying he worked for Compass Pathways, and people take that as like a, oh, he’s so honest and puts his conflicts of interest on the table.

He gets away with this and then just doesn’t take it into account in the rest of the way. He reports anything and people don’t take it into account when he discusses, encompasses rivals and competitors and things like that in his own, quote unquote journalistic coverage of these things.

Hamilton Morris: Um, and I started seeing this more and more with SNA employees harassing me at talks that I gave, um.

It’s like a couple stories, but you know, just weird stuff. There’s one where a ana employee who never identified herself as such was like, I want you to explain what you’re giving back to the indigenous people of the world, or something like that. Right. In the audience wraps into applause

Andrew Callaghan: and to applause.

Hamilton Morris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh,

Andrew Callaghan: that must have been a bad feeling.

Hamilton Morris: Oh, it was a horrible feeling.

Andrew Callaghan: Yeah. Yeah. You, you can feel the weight of the indigenous ancestors on you at that moment.

Hamilton Morris: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They were.

Andrew Callaghan: What? What do they want you to do exactly? And why do they think you owe something to the natives in that moment?

Hamilton Morris: I mean, it was nonsense.

Andrew Callaghan: So someone’s tripping on you at a conference about not giving back to indigenous people. They’re a paid plant from a pharmaceutical corporation. Yes. How does that make you feel?

Hamilton Morris: It makes me, it makes me feel sad. It makes me feel hurt. It makes me feel, uh, vaguely disgusted by all of this.

Russell: So again, you just have Andrew here giving him these like layups as if everything he’s saying is true, saying you have a paid plant from a pharmaceutical company in the audience lobbying, like lobbying these questions at you. We know for a fact this person who asked the question was not a S Usonaemployee.

Pace: Well, also the context was, you know, he says it like it’s out of nowhere. But this was a panel discussion that was highlighting many. Representatives and and voices from indigenous communities to speak on psychedelics.

Russell: And the next clip we have is the actual question that was posed to him. So as this next clip plays, I think viewers should just think to themselves about the way he characterized this question and the tone with which he said this question was posed to him.

And ask for yourselves if that really seems the case. And also when you watch this take into account. The text that Channel five included on this video when they reposted it to their Instagram.

Amanda Pratt: Thank you. I have a two part question about the psilocybin Polymorph, a compound that Compass has recently patented.

And so from your perspective as an obviously very accomplished chemist Hamilton, um, who has, as I understand recently made a career transition to work with that company, I wonder what your thoughts on the legitimacy of that patent as a new innovation. First, and if you’re able to speak to that and two, how you think that patent impacts the supply chain, and particularly in the context of the issues of indigenous reciprocity that we’ve been talking about this afternoon.

Neşe: So just to return to our pace was saying many of the other speakers on that stage had been talking about. Indigenous reciprocity and connections between indigenous groups and the psychedelic pharmaceutical industry. So that question was not some random dart that was just put in there. It was actually completely connected to the conversations that had been happening outside of that frame and that that a question was asked by Amanda Pratt, who was a graduate student.

At the University of Wisconsin and was, was working on a dis dissertation project about rhetoric and psychedelics. This was directly connected to, and this exchange is also, uh, written about in Amanda’s dissertation. So it, you know, it was completely misrepresented and how it was discussed, um, on five cast.

Russell: Yeah. And for anyone who is, um. Consuming this through audio, the what they put on the screen while that question was being played was that this Usona employee was secretly recording herself asking this question, exploiting indigenous people to the benefit of her billionaire employer, Usona.

Normie: Indus,

Russell: I just

Normie: industrial sabotage

Pace: a prepared statement too, and it really seems be to be difficult to have predicted how, you know, a panel discussion between a bunch of speakers at the end of a conference.

Like, uh, how that might go to then show up with that particular question prepared by what Una like, uh, it’s, it’s quite stretch.

Russell: It’s just another representation of Hamilton completely speculating on. What s has the power to do or not do We know, again, like I said, Amanda was not a Usona employee.

Pace: We do also know that he felt very bad, sad, horrible about it.

And so, you know, this is his sort of retrospective, uh, conspiracy theorizing and why bad things happened to Hamilton Morris, you know?

Neşe: Well, and he, he even acknowledges that at some point, I, I, maybe we can try to find that clip. He, he straight up says something along the lines of, well. You know, she attacked me, so I wanted to Oh, to get her back or whatever.

So it’s like it’s the next,

Russell: uh

Neşe: oh, you have that? Okay, perfect.

Hamilton Morris: When the Usona employee called me out at the conference for not giving back to indigenous people, the point of what she was doing was to publicly humiliate me. It had nothing to do with helping indigenous people, and that was clear to me before I realized that she was employed by Usona and friends with symposia.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that she really did care about indigenous people. How would you communicate that? If she’d simply come up to me and said, Hey, I’m working with Ana. I heard that you’re working with Compass. Both of these companies are developing psilocybin as a treatment for depression, and I was thinking it would be interesting to speak with Mazda Tech people to see how they feel about it, and maybe we could work together and figure out a way to help them if they feel like they want some kind of help.

Maybe the two companies could collaborate on an initiative to provide some kind of nice gesture to the people in Wela. So that their history of work with psilocybin containing mushrooms is acknowledged in some way. Right? Imagine if she had said that to me, how different the results might have been.

Completely different, completely different

Normie: history would have been changed.

Pace: I, I mean, like, I didn’t know that there was so much protocol for approaching, uh, could you

Normie: imagine how the butterfly effects would’ve changed the course of the universe?

Neşe: Well, it’s, I mean, it, this is how abusers talk, you know? It’s like if you had.

Done this in this other way. I wouldn’t have needed to do that to you.

Normie: Can

Neşe: you know, like this is, imagine if she

Normie: had said, please sir,

Neşe: this is, this is like a normal academic conference type of question that he could have responded thoughtfully and normally to, but instead he had this big emotional reaction and then needed to.

Pace: Right, and it’s not an exaggeration. He described it as a big emotional reaction that he had to this. And, and now he’s, uh, sort of thinking back and reflecting on this moment on other podcasts with other people. It’s, um, quite a lot of thinking about this moment for, for Hamilton,

Hamilton Morris: like something good could have come out of that if it had been well-intentioned.

But the point was not to help indigenous people. The point was to attempt to publicly humiliate me. And so what did this do? By attacking me for the interest of her pharmaceutical company, she led to me attacking her. There was a mutual polarizing effect that made everyone miserable, and this is how these things tend to play out, right?

It’s a, you know, sort of cliche Nietzsche quote, but it’s the reality. You can become the monster that you’re fighting. Look what you

Pace: maybe do

Neşe: Truly.

Normie: Can you imagine like broadcasting this publicly? Like broadcasting your like emotional instability like this, it’s wild

Neşe: that that is ultimately so much of what is going on all throughout this retaliation against us is that it’s there’s, you know, as much as the psychedelic field loves to talk a big game about how everyone is healed and psychedelics are gonna fix the world, there’s a lot of people who are at a very juvenile level around.

Taking responsibility for their own emotions and like people wanting to lash out and blame people for how they feel. And oftentimes that’s because a true thing is raised that makes someone uncomfy. And rather than face that people would rather lash out.

Russell: Uh, and then the last clip I have here is just the last instance he relays in the.

In, in the interview with Andrew about, uh, him being quote, unquote confronted by a Usona employee.

Hamilton Morris: And, you know, it was, it was not even just this woman. There was another Usona employee who, uh, hit me with one of my least favorite, actually. It’s like, this is like my true achilles heel. I made multiple pieces about psychedelic toad, venom.

Andrew Callaghan: Mm-hmm.

Hamilton Morris: But like. One of the most pedantic, irritating criticisms is people will say, oh, it’s not really a venom. Technically it’s a poison.

Andrew Callaghan: Like many

Hamilton Morris: amphibians, Buffo Alvar possesses a powerful defense against predators when bitten. The toad secretes a milky white fluid from its oid glands that can poison its attacker, making them extremely ill, and sometimes causing cardiac arrest

Andrew Callaghan: That makes your blood boil.

Hamilton Morris: Yeah, it makes my blood boil.

Andrew Callaghan: Do you start yelling.

Hamilton Morris: Ah,

Andrew Callaghan: I can’t picture you yelling.

Hamilton Morris: No,

Andrew Callaghan: I’m sure you’ve done it before.

Hamilton Morris: There’s a video recording of this. I actually was able, I was able to contain Nice. My volcanic rage.

Andrew Callaghan: So you weren’t like, shut the fuck up. So what did you say?

Hamilton Morris: I, I said, you know, I don’t, something like, oh, that’s a teleological distinction, and it’s really not a recognized one by anyone in the toxicology community.

Russell: I am like not familiar enough with the toxicology community to know if he’s being truthful here, but based on his statements. In other regards, I have to assume that there’s a distinction for a reason, right?

Pace: The, the test would be like to ask Hamilton how he feels about these powerful narcotics psychedelic drugs, you know?

He would react similarly as specialists do when you misspeak outside of your area of expertise. It’s just, it’s ridiculous that this is,

Russell: so, we’ll wrap this one real quick. It’s just a couple more

Hamilton Morris: stuff. The like, there’s a hyper restrictive definition of the word venom, that it has to be injected by a fang.

This is not the dictionary definition of venom. I think a better one is to think about venoms as something that are actively delivered defensively as opposed to like a passive uh, substance, which would be a poison anyway. It is a venom all. I am

Russell: sorry. He’s just like created his own thing there. But all

Hamilton Morris: scholars who have ever studied this have called it a venom.

Anyway, so the Usona employee, after I gave a talk about this, corrected me saying that it’s not a venom

Andrew Callaghan: and they’re coming and tripping the they’re be.

Normie: That’s what this was about. I was wondering what this whole clip was about

Russell: and wait for why he says, why, why? He says This person came up and died. And said that to him

Andrew Callaghan: and interrupting your talks because of your association with Compass, or just because they feel like you’re a leading figure in the pro psychedelic legalization movement Because of the compass stuff.

Okay. Specifically ’cause of your chemistry work with Compass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the reason. Yeah,

Pace: because I work with Compass. Somebody corrected me when I was incorrect once.

Russell: It’s so paranoid.

Pace: Very thin skinned. It might be thinner skinned than the bfu VARs, uh, uh, glands containing the five Oxy dimethyl.

Normie: Oh, this is so painful watching these. It’s truly painful for me. It hurts my soul. What do we got next, Russ?

Russell: So, yeah, that I just think is illustrative of the level of conspiracy he’s acting on. Is, is he’s. He’s making up these people who are coming at him because he was a Compass employee acting on behalf of Usona to to trip him up and make him look silly in public.

And it’s like you watch the actual thing he’s talking about. It was. Completely, but

Pace: he thinks about quite a bit. He thinks about it a lot.

Russell: He thinks people are out to assassinate his character. He’s very paranoid about that, clearly. And these next couple of clips are how he describes people, specifically us, our work.

And his own sort of attempts at character assassination.

Pace: That’s where we’ll pick back up for the final part of our conversation.