2_9 Charlie Smith: Unmasking Identity Through Story, Buddhism, and Film

Charlie Smith is a producer, writer, director, editor, and founder of Feenom Films;  a full-range media company on a mission to create content inspired by exploring consciousness. His documentary, "The Art of Healing"  (featuring New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk) premiered to a sold-out audience at Psychedelic Science 2023.  As an unscripted Development Executive, Charlie created true crime series, Cold Valley (Investigation Discovery, 2017), the weather disaster format, Rogue Earth (Discovery Channel, 2016), the true crime podcast, Taken Abroad (iHeartRadio, 2021), and co-developed popular science formats: Invent This (Discovery Science, 2021) and The Mightiest (Discovery+, 2021).

Episode Description:

Join us for a captivating episode where we delve into the life and philosophy of Charlie Smith, a storyteller, and filmmaker, as he unravels his experiences growing up as a gay man, navigating complex identities, and embracing the responsibilities of a filmmaker. Charlie's unique perspective is deeply influenced by Buddhism, which emphasizes the importance of multiple voices and the masks we wear in life.

Show Notes:

• Charlie's Philosophy: Charlie Smith discusses the responsibilities and challenges of being a storyteller. He emphasizes the importance of embracing multiple perspectives and wearing various masks in life, drawing inspiration from Buddhism's idea that "Sangha is the next Buddha."
• Navigating Complex Identities: From a young age, Charlie had a deep sense of curiosity and self-awareness. He shares his early experiences of self-discovery as a gay man and how these experiences shaped his identity.
• The Power of Masks: Charlie's journey in the entertainment industry led him to realize the multitude of masks he wears. He talks about the evolution from being defined by these masks to defining them, leading to a newfound sense of autonomy.
• Becoming Authentic: As Charlie entered his 40s, he reached a point where he could experiment with different aspects of his identity. He discusses the profound experience of being unapologetically authentic and the freedom it brings.
• Audience Capture and Autonomy: The conversation touches upon the idea of audience capture and the loss of autonomy, drawing parallels between public personas and real-life masks.
• Responsibilities of Filmmakers: Charlie highlights the real responsibilities that filmmakers have in today's world, where storytelling influences perceptions and shapes culture.
• Balancing Bliss and Reality: Drawing from Buddhism, Charlie discusses the danger of becoming a "bliss junkie" and emphasizes the importance of facing life's challenges head-on, both in psychedelic experiences and daily life.
• Journey Towards Enlightenment: The episode explores how Charlie's philosophy aligns with the journey of the Buddha towards enlightenment, emphasizing the importance of facing one's inner demons and achieving balance.

You can find more about Charlie at:
https://www.instagram.com/armchaircharlie

Transcript

[00:00:22] Raad Seraj: Today, my guest is Charlie Smith, who is a producer, writer, director, editor, and founder of Phenom Films, a full range media company on a mission to create content inspired by exploring consciousness. His documentary, The Art of Healing, featuring New York Times bestselling author Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Premiered to a sold out audience at Psychedelic Science Conference in 2023.

[00:00:41] Raad Seraj: As an unscripted development executive, Charlie created the true crime series Cold Valley for Investigation Discovery in 2017, the weather disaster format Rogue Earth for Discovery Channel in 2016, the true crime podcast Taken Abroad for iHeartRadio, and co developed popular science formats including Invent This for Discovery Science and The Mightiest for Discovery+. Charlie, welcome.

[00:01:01] Charlie Smith: Thanks so much, man. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:01:03] Raad Seraj: You're a creator and I love talking to filmmakers and creators.

[00:01:06] Raad Seraj: I like to think of myself as some sort of artist. I've always identified as an artist, although it's taken me years to fully own that label. And perhaps there's a greater philosophical conversation about what is art versus performance and so on. In our preparatory call for this you, made a really interesting comment, which I think touches on the core of this conversation.

[00:01:28] Raad Seraj: You talked about how you always found yourself juggling several identities and how that informs you as a creator. I thought that's a great place to start. Because ultimately for me, MTR is about identity. It's, and it's, and identity to me goes beyond... Color and gender and so on, but All these little aspects of us do end up defining us because I found from my experience, at leAst that even if you don't grow up identifying a particular way, the world makes sure you know it for good and bad. So why don't we start there. 

[00:02:02] Raad Seraj: Where does that sentiment come from? 

[00:02:04] Charlie Smith: That's a good question, man. That was such a good conversation we were having and I was so in the moment that I can't like triangulate the exact moment that came up. 

[00:02:12] Raad Seraj: Which is good. You can start all over again. 

[00:02:13] Charlie Smith: That's good. Exactly. Exactly. So let me just go into that same space and kind of...

[00:02:18] Charlie Smith: One of the most fun parts of being a storyteller is is pulling from your own self your own experiences and those around you. But that's just kind of one aspect of being a producer of story. I think maybe that's where we began that chat, which was like, There is this responsibility as a storyteller that you're juggling more than one perspective.

[00:02:38] Charlie Smith: A favorite old quote of mine is Sangha is the next Buddha, right? Which kind of means there isn't just one voice for something now, there's many voices. And if you're being a creator in this time and space, I think you owe it to yourself to expand and be be responsible for that larger voice.

[00:02:55] Charlie Smith: So in doing so, you have to try different hats on. You have to get out of this idea that you're one persona all the time. Some people are lucky enough that maybe they like maybe they have two personas, right? They're like the mom persona at home, and then they're the awesome rock star exec persona during the day.

[00:03:10] Charlie Smith: That's a nice easy way to start with it. As you grow older or you get more involved in something like the entertainment business, you start noticing in all different worlds, you're carrying different hats, you're wearing different masks. And then on top of that, if you dare crossing that bridge and going in front of the camera, that world really starts to get different because then you're wearing masks not just for yourself and for the world you're trying to represent, but also for the world that sees you and the world you're trying to represent to all those different people that are seeing you.

[00:03:39] Charlie Smith: And so I think in entertainment, Even without thinking about it, we often develop, 20 personas, 20 masks that we're constantly putting on and not just taking one off and putting one on, but putting one on and putting another one on top of that and another one on top of that. Long story short, some of us, if you're lucky enough, get to realize that's happening.

[00:04:00] Charlie Smith: And if you realize that's happening, that you're putting on all these different masks, Then you get to start playing with putting them on and taking them off and having having a autonomy, having some kind of leadership of yourself with these masks, right? And so for me, that's where it's become really fun.

[00:04:16] Charlie Smith: Now that I've entered my 40s, I've had enough time in my life where these masks aren't defining me. I'm defining those masks. And beyond that, you get to a point where sometimes you get so bold in life that you don't need any masks and you could just go out to the world completely naked. So my profession has informed my personal life and my personal life has informed my professional life. And now I'm in a place where it's a lot of fun experimenting with all those spaces. 

[00:04:41] Raad Seraj: So well put and I can already tell this is gonna be an amazing podcast episode there's this term that I heard recently because there's traditional media and there's this sort of 24 7 broadcast media that is from our cell phones algorithmically powered and Funded by ad dollars .

[00:04:55] Raad Seraj: this idea of audience capture, right? We all know how to capture an audience because that's what you're doing. You're pushing content out, you're hashtagging and so on.

[00:05:04] Raad Seraj: You're optimizing. But then there's a thing that happens where the audience ends up owning you. They end up capturing you. Because now you're performing for them and now everything depends on what they think. And. I can imagine there's, it's similar to life if you are in the public eye and you are juggling masks, you can lose a sense of autonomy.

[00:05:24] Raad Seraj: And that's a really good segue to what I want to talk about first, which is what are these masks initially? Tell me, give me a sense of where and how you grew up and how did you start developing a sense of yourself? Or was it being defined by others? You identify now as a gay man, how early did that sense begin or develop?

[00:05:48] Charlie Smith: Early, dude. I don't know. I was like, I was a horny kid. I don't even know. Okay. As a little kid, I was really curious and exploratory. Is that even a word? I don't know. But I kept on getting busted. I remember that as a kid, like my mom having to come and get me from situations that I put myself in where parents have been like, I don't know if this is right. I don't remember, doctor, or just stuff that I remember being so coded into the youngest part of me. Not being scared or being sexual. It was just like this super curiosity directed in one way. And I even think I knew way back then.

[00:06:20] Charlie Smith: What that meant, right? Now, that being said and though my parents had that in the back of their minds, and I got really fortunate with that. I come from an old school nuclear family. My dad came from Wales, super, super under working class family to Edmonton. He joined the army right away.

[00:06:37] Charlie Smith: I came from that kind of old school nuclear family. My dad was in the army, my oldest brother went into the army. I have two older brothers, by the way. Both of them considerably older. So I had three kind of dad, rough house kind of guys in my life teaching me that kind of very old school heteronormative way of being.

[00:06:54] Charlie Smith: And not in a negative way. What's that? This was an Edmonton. No, I'm sorry. I skipped a step. My dad was from Edmonton. When when they settled with my mom, it was in London, Ontario. So grew up in London, Ontario, which. It is a bit of a conservative town. I have some stories about that too.

[00:07:10] Charlie Smith: But I had a really fun classical 80s upbringing, my brothers brought me out into the, on the dirt bikes with them and I was allowed to go play in forests. And I just lived a typical kind of boy life, I think. But that also came with. With something for me, which was the direct identity of a man, right?

[00:07:29] Charlie Smith: And even though I felt I never had a problem with being gay. It never like, it wasn't something I rubbed up against in the way that a lot of people do. I just, my own kind of experience was a little bit different there. But I never felt like I fit in the gay box, because I felt like I fit, visually, like if I was drawing characters, I fit into this other box.

[00:07:47] Charlie Smith: In the real world, not in my world, not the way my heart felt, but in that world we're talking about, this participatory world of time and space, I felt like the identity, the mask I'd been given to wear didn't really have a lot of room for this other character note, which was me being gay. So it was just this thing that I casually wrestled with in the background of my life while still all the way up until my teens, just living the life of kind of a kid growing up in London.

[00:08:10] Raad Seraj: How did your parents or family process that? Because I'm not going to assume anything, but I imagine the heteronormative sort of upbringing, military family, nuclear family. Did that cause any sort of tension or stress? Did your parents or brothers even struggle to understand or was it just, it was very much, I don't want to say easy, but it wasn't, at least the stress didn't emanate from the family. 

[00:08:34] Charlie Smith: Yeah, man. What's so funny is there is, We're fortunate to be like a family where I felt a lot of love and I felt a lot of witnessing growing up, like I was witnessed by the people around me all the time. So there was a confidence in that too of being witnessed all my life that just gave me a confidence that even when I talked about it, I don't, I feel like it's, it was still me.

[00:08:54] Charlie Smith: There wasn't I wasn't presenting a new mask. I was wrestling with that for sure. I think there was enough space with everyone in my life to see that I was still me. That it actually like, and I don't even, I'm not even pointing fingers, I feel like people almost felt like there may have been a different way that they should be reacting based on what pop culture and norms were saying react.

[00:09:12] Charlie Smith: Maybe there was like this like almost shadow echo that happened a little later with my parents where after a while and things settled, they were like, wait, am I not supposed to feel? Confused or whatever, like maybe there was a bit of that going on, but no, I was really lucky in, in that being said, there were some moments, there was like I, it got out at high in high school.

[00:09:32] Charlie Smith: So there was like this, this flux of of a gossip kind of moment that happened and that kind of got into my home life, my mom picked up a phone call once and somebody else's parent said something or, old memories, but I do remember that kind of stuff, but I don't know.

[00:09:47] Charlie Smith: I was lucky enough that I had a circle of friends that was awesome enough that that I was able to get through it and really get through it without the traditional traumatic scars that I think people are left with. When dealing with that, especially as a teenager in the 90s. 

[00:10:00] Raad Seraj: That's interesting. For me being an immigrant coming from what could be considered a poor country or now, it's like the better term to use is that developing economy abolish and then coming here as a student speaking English as a second language.

[00:10:14] Raad Seraj: Sometimes I think about the fact that I feel chill about all this, but the moments that I did not feel chill about it were moments where I was actually forcefully put in a box, right? And it was assumed that I had these experiences, which inevitably became the experience the self fulfilling prophecy.

[00:10:30] Raad Seraj: But that was imposed on me. It wasn't what I felt, so I often think about, is it... You could be whatever you are, you're born as or whatever you identify as, whatever feels right to you. But often, fear or societies or communities that need a mold for you to fit in, and that gets imposed on you is what causes this confusion, this reaction, this stressful response.

[00:10:53] Charlie Smith: Dude, I think that's so smart. When Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Scored, talks about imprints like these imprints that happen in our lives and how we accept those imprints into us like into the code of who we are, into like our organism, even into our body and those I think can happen culturally as well, they can happen on all sorts of different levels, imprints aren't just things that happen directly to us just in our timeline, they're bestowed upon us once in a while as well and they're big things that we really have to work through and if some of us are lucky enough to somehow have that kind of support system, I feel like we're lucky enough to later in life, shed those a lot quicker than those that had to take them in and really personify those to get past certain struggles.

[00:11:34] Raad Seraj: Yeah, that's really well said. I find that imprints. And identity is all relational, right? It's relative to your surroundings, relative to the relationships you have, relative to what others see you as, and that could be a good thing, a powerful thing, or it could really debilitate anything.

[00:11:51] Raad Seraj: Depends on the context. And that's I think, if you do enough, Work on yourself or have this sort of almost like a view of yourself split from yourself, you know Which is something that I think psychedelics give you that view or even meditation give you that views that sort of like that vantage point That's like the God's eye view of you and the story you're playing out and all the people and everything around You can start to see oh, wow I only feel this way because of this or this imprint and so on Which I love the way you put it.

[00:12:19] Raad Seraj: Tell me a little bit of about you mentioned that moment in high school where there were some sort of frictions, and there were some sort of tensions. Did you feel that it's something, I feel like some folks may have to announce themselves as this is me, take it as leave it.

[00:12:34] Raad Seraj: Or some people don't feel it. Why should I have to say, hey, I'm a brown immigrant? Why does that fucking matter? But some people have to say it. I sometimes have to say it out loud. Because I'm like, don't just think that life was easy for me. Or don't just think that I'm like, speaking for all brown people.

[00:12:48] Raad Seraj: I'm not doing any of those things. I'm just being me. Did you feel that friction point came because you didn't have a need to say I'm gay?

[00:12:57] Charlie Smith: Really good question. And it goes back to the mask thing, actually. So I wasn't wearing the mask of or, part of my mask wasn't being gay then. But I had developed a really unique mask in the last couple of years of high school that served me in a really unique kind of way of getting over who I was before, if that makes sense.

[00:13:15] Charlie Smith: In the first part of my high school years like grade 9, 10, 11, Really not even like academically focused because I wasn't like that. I'm not that smart. So I'm like a B student at best, but but engaged with student stuff. I got involved in student council and was doing things that, other kids would make fun of me for.

[00:13:32] Charlie Smith: I remember one guy in my yearbook once wrote I never forgot it. I'm glad that you're, I am glad you're doing this stuff because no one else cares. That kind of thing, right? So that was that was my path for a little bit. And and through that, I somehow decided to run still for student council president.

[00:13:48] Charlie Smith: So in grade 11, I run for student council president, and I put my heart and soul, everything of a being that I was at that moment, without any masking really just who I really was I was putting out there. And it failed miserably. And I remember the long walk home. I used to have to take a bus, but I walked that day, the long walk home after that, trying to figure out how am I going to tell my parents and people that I lost, whatever.

[00:14:10] Charlie Smith: But it was like during that time, I was without even realizing it. I was also saying, Hey, you know what? Fuck who I've been. Who is that anyways? Who is? I was known as Chuck instead of Charlie. My, my real name is Charles, but who is Chuck anyways? And I remember like breaking myself down, not in a bad way like analyzing myself on this walk home, end of grade 11 year and realizing, fuck this isn't who I want to be anymore.

[00:14:34] Charlie Smith: You know what? I'm going to try some new things. And I set this agenda of like crazy, like I'm going to start smoking pot. That was one of the first things I've been so tied up, right? Like I just, I'm going to start acting. I just laid out some things that I was going to do. And and funny enough, just as a total side note, we're talking late 90s.

[00:14:51] Charlie Smith: So one of my biggest TV inspirations at the time was this guy named Tom Green. And at the time, Tom Green was just this disruptive guy on a cable news channel that would paint his parents house plaid or. He once painted his mom's car, the slut mobile, and then recorded her. Freddie got 

[00:15:06] Raad Seraj: fingered.

[00:15:07] Charlie Smith: Dude, that's him. That's eventually who he was. But back in the day, he was like this guy on cable 13 and I just loved him. And I was like, you know what else I'm going to I'm going to use, we had a TV station at my high school. I'm going to like. I'm going to start doing that stuff myself.

[00:15:19] Charlie Smith: I'm going to just start like fucking with people. I don't care about like my, my, like being embarrassed or shame anymore. Instead, I'm going to throw all that out and let everybody see it all the time. And it was like almost as dare to myself. And by the end of the summer, I found a few other friends who believe in that stuff.

[00:15:34] Charlie Smith: We called ourselves the green team and we actually started to record that stuff. And I started smoking some pot and I started just. Listening to different music and started listening to hip hop and dance music and stopped listening to just Tom Petty, Like I started being a bit of a more expanded human being but through that I developed this unique character by the end by the beginning of the next year that was like Wild and crazy and unpredictable And people loved that people loved and loved it to the point that all of a sudden I over the next year was asked to run for president and won and it became this full cycle thing where then everything was super fun and high school is not like I ever expected it.

[00:16:12] Charlie Smith: And we're talking like. People from all different, parts of high school were connecting, right? But there was an outlying group and you could see them once in a while. And there were the people that still didn't like what I had to offer. That kind of going against the system of traditional cool wasn't good for them.

[00:16:26] Charlie Smith: And so that might arguably be the beginning of this kind of like animosity towards me. It might have not even just been the gay issue. But this kind of thumbing the nose at the old way of doing things. Those guys didn't like it for sure. 

[00:16:40] Raad Seraj: What's and so somewhere, what's traditional cool, 

[00:16:43] Charlie Smith: Like the hockey players, right?

[00:16:45] Charlie Smith: Like the, that's the easiest way you can say, right? Yeah. The, the kids that are having sex, that are getting invited to the party. It's just all those things that I was not for sure. But over that year, half those people became my friends and half kind of the older guys, maybe like the shop kind of guys, the guys that kind of just had more old school leanings, didn't like it.

[00:17:04] Charlie Smith: And somewhere in there, then after that, there was a moment where it also came out that I might be gay. Something just happened at a party. It ignited. Everybody found out. And right around the corner was prom. So here's this guy, who over the last year, student council president, but really just almost annoyingly disruptive with everything I was doing.

[00:17:22] Charlie Smith: I skipped school one day so that I could win do a radio contest and, win a limo to bring all my friends to Toronto for the day. It was just a really fun time. But in that time, it had also gotten out that I was gay. So as prom's approaching end of the night, it's London, Ontario.

[00:17:37] Charlie Smith: What'd you do after a prom? You go to a, like a bush party, right? With a big fire. Long story short, everybody's all over the place. And the guys finally, we're talking, they waited, they picked their punch, man. They waited months of me kind of stoking the fire. Stoking the fire, pushing what it means to be a guy, just a lot of different things.

[00:17:54] Charlie Smith: And then it just erupted that night in a moment where the drunkest of them picked up a baseball bat. Walked over to me like it was an episode of Dawson's Creek. Wow. Just started like picking a fight. Nobody was around. All my friends were dispersed. And just, I had one moment and it's the only moment in my life where I was threatened with a baseball bat.

[00:18:11] Charlie Smith: He called me a faggot. It was the only time I've ever been called a faggot too. And I looked into it, and I saw what it was, and I saw it was nothing compared to what I've learned about myself in that amount of time. I still remember, I was drunk, it was like 2 o'clock in the morning, but I had such a clear memory of knowing who I really was, and that this was just like, it didn't matter anymore.

[00:18:31] Charlie Smith: So there was no violence that happened there. I don't even remember how I de escalated it, but I completely de escalated it. And that was like, that was it. That was the most negative experience I had with having to deal with coming out. 

[00:18:42] Raad Seraj: What do you think that was that person's experience? And...

[00:18:45] Raad Seraj: I'm only asking, not for you to necessarily revisit that moment but I think these are moments that a lot of minorities face. And regardless of how strong you are in yourself, these things will happen, they do happen. And I struggle with this because on one hand, I do feel like it's important to see the world from others eyes, even people who don't like you, or people who you don't like.

[00:19:07] Raad Seraj: On the other hand, I also feel empathy does not come from a bottomless well. And I only want to empathize with people that deserve it. Maybe call me, call me still living in my shadow or whatever. Whatever woo term you want to use. But I think what do you think that person's reality was at that time?

[00:19:23] Raad Seraj: What did they feel? And for all we know, that person, same person could be feeling very differently now. It was, high school is a very hormonal time, right? What do you think was they were they found so threatening about you? I

[00:19:34] Charlie Smith: think it just had to do with I mean if I were to look back now I think you just said it to you high school is an interesting, cross section, right?

[00:19:41] Charlie Smith: And if you don't have your shit figured out and you're being pushed into the real world I don't think that guy necessarily had plans after high school either

[00:19:49] Charlie Smith: I think that's really scary and if I think, and sorry, I think that's really scary and if you're someone who has no kind of foundation for yourself and you're only living off of that framework that society has given you that every man must be this way, every woman must be this way, whatever Standardized framework is when anything throws you off of that, this is what happens.

[00:20:12] Charlie Smith: We grew up on how many movies about things happening in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s that are always about the same. The premise is always the same. Someone new is interjected into a group that tests what the group thinks is norm, right? And what happens? The group goes tribal and has to face that tribalism, right?

[00:20:29] Charlie Smith: I don't know if you talked about this before, and this is going a bit in the left, left hand turn, but I've always been like, dude for guys in particular I always wonder, and I don't think this has to do with me being gay, but what if men could learn to love men? 

[00:20:42] Charlie Smith: Not the kind of, not romantic love, real... Real love. I wonder, and this was after an ayahuasca ceremony this year, that I came back wondering what was that first time after we were all together, wherever we come from, I don't know too much about human history, a little bit about North Africa, wherever we all like, wherever that moment was, right?

[00:21:00] Charlie Smith: There was a reason why we split into two, and then into many, but what was that the first time we came back around and two tribes decided they had to kill each other? Sure, we've seen it in nature, but that first time that man had to inflict violence on man and then all the violence we carry after that as men just coated into us that's a lot to fucking carry.

[00:21:19] Charlie Smith: That, that is a big burden to carry so I try to always remember that a little bit that there is things that aren't even just generational. They're like, eons worth of stuff in us, that sometimes is just in there and we have to give space for that to allow for there to be changed, right?

[00:21:35] Charlie Smith: If we allow ourselves to be too cued and get too connected, it's like the Samsara cycle. You just fall right into it, right? With that person. And then nobody's winning, but I feel like there is great power to stand back and allow that stuff, like wind, to just pass through. That's as an adult who's had the fortune of dealing with lots of shit.

[00:21:53] Charlie Smith: I also remember, to counter that argument Spending lots of nights because I am a bigger dude being the first to walk out of the London gay bar and joyously fighting some of the frat guys from UWO that would line up to try to intimidate gay people. Like I used to love being like, there was a different mask at a different time, but like love getting that feeling of being righteous about it, and into the point of violence myself.

[00:22:16] Charlie Smith: So I felt both sides of it. But in this side, I know one side it's healing and one side isn't and the side that's healing is the side that allows you to be able to see it for what it is and stay in your position. 

[00:22:27] Raad Seraj: So well said. Yeah, I think you captured some of these tensions.

[00:22:30] Raad Seraj: I sometimes feel in myself. I don't want to perhaps this is me being stubborn. I don't want to position as like healing versus not healing. I'm just like, look, I think as men, and I'm not talking about gendered, I'm just talking about whatever the energy means, the masculine energy, is about protecting.

[00:22:47] Raad Seraj: And I'm okay with having that protective nature, that protective part of myself, who will defend and protect people I love. And the things I care about. I don't give a fuck what that leads to, of course I don't want to resort to violence or hurting others because ultimately that diminishes my own view of myself.

[00:23:03] Raad Seraj: But being able to protect and stand up. I have spent a lot of time in my life fighting anger and rage. And I think perhaps one of the reasons that men cannot be men with others and cannot show love is because we have no productive way of channeling anger and rage, so that's maybe one of the ways men are sick, in, in that way. A friend of mine. A woman friend of mine once made this comment that terrorism is not a political issue, it's a gender problem. It's like most of them are men. Why do our more people, most violent people, why do they tend to be men?

[00:23:37] Raad Seraj: Why? What's going on here? Why are men more easily corruptible and channeled towards violence? I'm not saying, I'm not glorifying women as being incapable of violence. I'm just saying the numbers speak for themselves. So what's actually going on here? I think that's a fascinating space to talk about and I think we'll touch on this later on in your work with Basel in the art of healing and I'm curious to hear what, where some of this sort of...

[00:24:01] Raad Seraj: Conversation are going in within the frame of the documentary. But I quickly want to come to the next stage in your evolution, which is adulthood. You mentioned that you had this failed MTV audit MTV audition, which was also perhaps another moment where the masks fell away. Tell us a little more about that.

[00:24:19] Charlie Smith: Yeah, for sure. I'd love to. So yeah, this kind of almost this character of myself that I'd created in high school really continued onwards, even though I wasn't shooting things for a high school TV show anymore. The idea of being outlandish, of being disruptive, of doing things in the middle of a public space to get attention and to get shock and awe I was into all of it, and it was really like paying me back in lots of great ways, to be honest.

[00:24:43] Charlie Smith: I had found a character that I got to be that didn't have to deal with my sexuality either, which I liked, because I was just being beyond everything, beyond sexuality, if we were, I didn't mind, I was very much like a Tom Green kind of...

[00:24:55] Charlie Smith: and operating off of that and felt like for the first time I was getting attention. That was positive, even though later I would realize it was at my own expense. But this character made it all the way to a couple of different, it made it to Toronto. First of all, I moved to Toronto.

[00:25:11] Charlie Smith: I got work on camera for a few different shows. And one of my bigger dreams was to become a host for MTV. So this was just as MTV was getting going. I remember, like it was the very first day. So it was like when Dan Levy, he was like a one day audition because he was so good.

[00:25:27] Charlie Smith: So he came, he got in some other folks doing really well. And there was like a core of us that kind of stuck around for six months. So during that whole time, I'm just feeding this persona even more. Like in real life, like now I'm also almost an MTV host. So I'm like using that in daily life.

[00:25:43] Charlie Smith: I've built quite a little world for myself to live in. And so I'll never forget, it was like an October day. And I remember listening to that Eminem, the song from his soundtrack. Just pumping myself up, right? Even that, just feeding a personality. Not like feeding my truth.

[00:25:57] Charlie Smith: Feeding this... person I was trying to be. And so we get there and whenever you do these auditions, you don't really know what they're going to ask you to do. So this last day was just like, it was just like a check in day. It was like, do the basics. Cause we've seen you do everything else. We like that you have a personality that fits in a certain box.

[00:26:14] Charlie Smith: So they just have you stand on stage and there's 30 executives behind a camera. The president is there of CTV, not of the United States. And And the guy, the producer, just okay Charlie, now I'm going by Charlie, which is funny, different name, all these switches happen, right? Now I'm going by Charlie and he says just throw to the camera, which in TV is throw to the commercial break.

[00:26:34] Charlie Smith: Say coming up next, is Destiny's Child or something like that. Why 

[00:26:38] Raad Seraj: is that? I'm just curious. Why is that sort of segment or that throw to the camera meaningful 

[00:26:44] Charlie Smith: dude. Let me tell you why it is actually like a pretty interesting way to capture whether or not in that moment you're being authentic and for me, I didn't notice it, but I got called on it because here I am.

[00:26:56] Charlie Smith: I'm like, okay, here we go. And I still remember it was like, coming up next, Destiny's Child. And the guy would be like no, don't do it like in a fake voice. Just say it like you're talking to someone. I'm like, oh yeah, no worries. Coming up next, Destiny's Child. Like I just, and now I'm like, oh fuck. I could feel like sweat starting to bead, right?

[00:27:16] Charlie Smith: And I could, through everyone, I meet the eyes of the president of the network, who's been very nice to me. And I feel it. I'm like. I'm failing. Immediately in that moment, I know something isn't right, and I'm driving this plane into the ground in front of all these people. Like, all of my radars are going off in my head I know this isn't ending well.

[00:27:34] Charlie Smith: But then he's no, say it again. And I did it honestly, three or four more times. To the point where it's like, Oh my God, this is the worst. Like I'm toast. And and I remember funny enough, very much just like when I when I lost that election in high school, I chose to walk home that day and on the walk home, didn't listen to any music, but I almost found myself doing the same thing.

[00:27:56] Charlie Smith: I was reassessing from that moment. What was happening there? What, like. Why am I not the person that I've been like there was almost two of me there. I was watching myself. I was, I could hear myself and it was like two different voices working at the same time. And it was the first time that I had realized that these masks weren't things that were like inside of me, but that were actually outside of me, the being.

[00:28:22] Charlie Smith: And I could feel that without knowing it at the time I could feel that I was like, this isn't right. Something's wrong with this. I recognized it, but it spent another four and a half years kicking that can, man. Going in other auditioning for Flashpoint like little gigs here or there, getting some great gigs, like that were on camera.

[00:28:39] Charlie Smith: But all the time, none of it. None of it connecting deeply, none of it, me just finding other very fast versions of the people that I was trying to be, to quickly put together now, so these aren't like longer masks, I was like quickly mashing together masks whenever I could, just to deal with wherever I was trying to be at the time.

[00:28:57] Charlie Smith: So MTV was like the beginning of the end. Of this era of masking that I was in. 

[00:29:03] Raad Seraj: Interesting. I was going to ask you about what was the process like going from the one that is the center of attention, the one is that getting the attention, the incoming, the sort of eyes on you. To now putting the eyes on someone else or another object or another story.

[00:29:17] Raad Seraj: That must have been a very interesting transition in itself. But I want to come back to this question again. In showbiz or in that point in time, why did that just talking about pre, going before commercials or announcing commercials or what happens after. Why is, why was that a test? MTV?

[00:29:33] Charlie Smith: I don't even know if they knew first it's just make sure they do the basics, put together a little like a rip reel, a little reel of each person so the other executives could watch us all doing everything. Maybe somewhere in there they identified that those simple things of staring like I am a youth through a lens right now.

[00:29:49] Charlie Smith: That if you're not sitting in like a grounded position, you can develop this and rod, we grew up, most of the people we watched on TV had those fake voices, right? Most of the people on radio, they all developed these almost like pseudo personalities, but I think that era had already been done in the mid two thousands and you could feel it and you could see it and there's something about someone who is like ever watched somebody on entertainment tonight.

[00:30:14] Charlie Smith: Like they do it. It's like they put on this sheen and they're like, it's me, but it's not really me. It's somebody else. And everything is way more cleaner. I now 

[00:30:21] Raad Seraj: have an authentic mask on. I am now being authentic.

[00:30:24] Charlie Smith: So it's funny. It's a test. I think people should try it, even at home, right? If you turn on your QuickTime camera and press record, try to have a conversation with yourself, with your own voice, without doing some kind of weird thing. It's really tough. Oh, 

[00:30:37] Raad Seraj: dude. Even in my own way, I had spent six months, planning this podcast out and I couldn't get to do it I couldn't run get around to starting because I hate the way I sound and then you know Even the point where I'm like, you know when I talk about the I do the intros for the podcast I say hello friends and it's hello friends.

[00:30:54] Raad Seraj: It's like how should I say this? How does this sound? I don't want to sound like fucking super fake and Uber enthusiastic or even just like fake happy or anything like that. I just wanted to sound chill Open and relaxed and that, so I can resonate with that process where it's actually not as easy as it sounds at all.

[00:31:11] Raad Seraj: It's such a weird thing going from even if I was just me in a room, videoing myself, it's just like, why am I acting different all of a sudden? Why is this so bizarre? It's such a bizarre experience. 

[00:31:21] Charlie Smith: And have you dug into it more? Like it's a weird thing, right? I don't even know what the explanation is.

[00:31:26] Raad Seraj: I'm not sure. I think it's I almost look at it as in terms of journaling for years, I could not journal because I thought the journal. I started to feel that if I write it, it's meant to be read. But no, that's not the point at all, right? The real pivot was, after my first psychedelic experience, the meaningful one, I started to write, and it was just a flow of consciousness, and I might not even read it again.

[00:31:49] Raad Seraj: But the idea of getting it from these abstract, dusty tetras that is playing in my head, to now channeling that through my fingers onto the piece of paper, bringing the... abstract to concrete. And even if the words don't make sense, it makes sense to me and just trusting that process. And so like now I still don't like the way I sound, but I'm not gonna judge myself for it.

[00:32:10] Raad Seraj: And people have said you don't sound as bad as you think you do. And I'm just choosing to trust them and not the voice I hear in my 

[00:32:17] Charlie Smith: head. Oh, man, I totally get that. And it goes back to something you're talking about before, too, about as an artist the difference between making something for yourself and making something for others.

[00:32:27] Charlie Smith: Like in this idea that it becomes a trap when you start making something for others, when you start making your voice for others, when you start making your words for others, your content for others. And through my big journey, because while even I was going through these on camera stuff, I was still also working away at being like a writer and producer at the same time behind camera.

[00:32:45] Charlie Smith: And you realize that Oh, dude, you know what? I totally forgot what I was going to say. Oh good, I'll come back to you. 

[00:32:50] Raad Seraj: There's a lot to say. You'll come back to me. We'll come back to you. I want to switch gears a bit. Now to tell me a little bit about your most meaningful psychedelic experience and why that was meaningful.

[00:33:01] Raad Seraj: What, in the process of constant shedding of masks and perhaps creating new masks, what did that mean? In terms of who you are now to walk us a little bit through that set and setting. Whatever you're able to share, whatever you want to share. I'm just curious. Yeah. 

[00:33:16] Charlie Smith: I'm going to split it between 2 because 1 that doesn't get enough attention.

[00:33:20] Charlie Smith: And I just think sometimes these psychedelic experiences. experiences can catch you when you least expect it with the least thing. Some people say even like a good breath exercise, right? But when I was 19, I remember we smoked up my parents for the first time, me and my brother. And it was amazing.

[00:33:34] Charlie Smith: It was a great bonding experience. My mom and dad had a really fun time. And somewhere in there, my mom must have said, Oh, Jeff, if you don't mind, leave a joint behind for us so we could have it one night kind of thing. And I heard that and I remembered that and I knew where that joint was.

[00:33:48] Charlie Smith: So I call this the space joint story because it was just a joint, but me and my buddy Chris, who I'd known since I was like seven years old I'm like, Oh dude, come over. I know where, I got a joint here. Let's smoke it. And we go into the basement. I light it up and we, we hop it really fast.

[00:34:01] Charlie Smith: But it's still just a joint or is it I, till this day, I don't know what that really was in there. But as, as I'm sitting there with Chris and having a conversation and I've had drugs, for years at this point, especially smoking pot and some mushrooms. But as I'm talking to him, this is the first time I start to have any kind of visual in my life.

[00:34:19] Charlie Smith: And as he's moving, all the different versions of him I've known since he was seven, are starting to flash behind him. Whoa, what is this? This is not weed, like I've never experienced, what is this trip, right? And then as he's laughing the world behind this world starts to show itself, and this is 1999, man, the matrix just came out, so binary code isn't like being thrown around every day, but like, all I start to see behind everything, it's like transparent layer of reality, and then ones and zeros, like math behind everything else, and I instantly, like Chris, I think I've gone insane, man, you have to go home right now.

[00:34:55] Charlie Smith: Like I thought I had lost it forever. And as that happens, my mom starts yelling 'cause she could smell the weed. I don't know why we thought we would get away with smoking weeded in the basement. So I, now I have my mom yelling and I could hear the versions of her through her life and everything was disconnected and I had to go into the bathroom.

[00:35:12] Charlie Smith: Chris has gone by this point and look at myself and look deep into my eyes and tell myself, Hey, look this. Experience is much bigger than this one reality you're experiencing through this vessel, but you have to get into this vessel right now, or you're going to be dislodged forever.

[00:35:27] Charlie Smith: And I talked myself back into it, and the reason why I'm telling that story is because I had no previous knowledge of any of this stuff. I had no kind of trip sitter, but something fundamentally in me, even though I was shook out of existence. Something in me was right and knew how to get me back in and I listened so I got really lucky again in having an experience that taught me that if I could quiet myself and listen, sometimes that truth of how to be with me is always inside.

[00:35:53] Charlie Smith: No matter how wild or crazy this exterior reality might be. And that experience set me up for many, Psychedelic experiences that I feel would have been scary or just like way too joyously intense But because I had that experience it Leveled me out. It gave me you know, a philosophy to use in psychedelics moving forward Which is a philosophy from the Tibetan book of the dead, which is be not terrified be not odd give yourself enough space to see both that duality because especially with psychedelics If you got caught up by any of that, you could find yourself in all sorts of out of control troubles, and that's not the point.

[00:36:31] Charlie Smith: The point is to be able to see and maintain it all, right? It was a huge awesome lesson to learn so early on. 

[00:36:36] Raad Seraj: I love that. And I also actually, I'm glad you brought that quote up. I have not heard of that before, and you had mentioned before, and I wanted to flag it. I find the part, be not terrified, we know.

[00:36:47] Raad Seraj: Enough about it because of the war on drugs and this criminalization stigmatization and stuff like that, but be not odd Now this part I find is a little sticky Given how there's a confirmation bias in the world of psychedelics and I think because it most of the stories you hear anecdotal evidence clinical trials they all focus on a particular class and type and demographic Tell me a little bit about why be not odd is necessary and why being constantly in awe and I call them like bliss junkies.

[00:37:21] Raad Seraj: Why is that a problem? 

[00:37:22] Charlie Smith: I'll use another anecdote because I think it explains it really well. But and I'm really summarizing this. So it's worth a Google or have someone that knows Buddhism way more to explain it. But when the Buddha was getting enlightened, I think it was for 40 days, like Jesus, something in there, right?

[00:37:36] Charlie Smith: Like he goes out, he sits under the Bodhi tree. And he's chillin right? And he starts to realize I'm gonna sit here till I get enlightened. And the first thing that happens is all the scariest shit that we could all think of comes to visit him. First the normal stuff, and then maybe a zombie and a dragon, who knows what.

[00:37:53] Charlie Smith: But lots of crazy stuff, right? All stuff that's supposed to scare him enough. To fall into something, to fall into a story, to fall out of this presence that he was trying to create. The same kind of presence we need to have when we're walking through a psychedelic journey. And so he gets through that, right?

[00:38:09] Charlie Smith: Eventually they all give up. But then there's a whole other world that comes. It's the world of gods. And magistrates and everything from heavens and every heaven you could think of and they all want to tantalize him as well because just falling into a negative story will pull you into something and maybe another cycle stories of joy and and bliss do the same thing, right?

[00:38:30] Charlie Smith: Neither are a path to enlightenment and realistically, when we're talking about the state of being, we want to be in for a psychedelic journey. It's the same idea is the state you're in when you're trying to attain enlightenment. You're trying to open that aperture big enough to accept all the light and dark that might pass your way.

[00:38:49] Charlie Smith: And if you choose to jump onto any of that, if the Buddha would have chose to jump onto any of that, he would have fallen into another life cycle and wouldn't have attained enlightenment. So you can use that same idea of Buddha's journey for ourselves and for our experiences with drugs.

[00:39:04] Charlie Smith: But also in everyday life when we're playing with psychedelics because it's not even just go to the medical for like envision, right? There's there's a certain, lots of people are cool, but they don't even need to be on drugs to carry that kind of blissful mentality in their day.

[00:39:17] Charlie Smith: And I don't think that's authentic, right? You can't. You can't deal with protecting when protecting needs to happen and have that bliss energy at the same time. You have to be big enough to be able to have all of that in you and balanced and faced, cause if you haven't faced that shit, it's going to come out and it's going to trigger in all sorts of bad ways.

[00:39:36] Charlie Smith: So that's the other side of it. It's like face that terror now. Another way of saying is like die now, instead of dying when you die, right? Do all of that before so that when that stuff happens, You've got some experience at it. You could see it and you could be much more chill about it. If

[00:39:52] Raad Seraj: you die when you die, you don't die when you die, right?

[00:39:55] Raad Seraj: That whole idea. That's it. There's also another story that I've heard. I don't know how true this is or if it is from, if it is actually about the Buddha or not. But I read in a passage somewhere at some time where, you know, when Buddha found, did find enlightenment, the choice for Buddha was like, okay, now I can exist in this state.

[00:40:12] Raad Seraj: In my own universe, forever, because I found it. Or, do I go back and bring others with me? And they may not come with me. I don't know if you've watched The Watchmen. I love that comic book and the show. Dr. Manhattan goes to whatever planet he's on He just builds and spends time with himself completely indulging in his own, I guess Masturbatory sort of world building just indulging in himself and how enlightened he is or just nothing can fulfill the void that he feels like Superman right or do you come back and just Go through the motions of light and dark knowing that this is exactly the point perhaps... to take all of it to see all of it to witness all of it and to Accept your own mortality in it right that you are powerful, but you're also gonna be dead and you're ultimately worm food 

[00:41:04] Charlie Smith: Yeah, man.

[00:41:05] Charlie Smith: It's called the Bodhisattva vow. And in Buddha, to become a Bodhisattva that's the vow you take. It's like the second you're standing in that precipice between here and the hereafter and all of that terror and all that awe is flashing before you and all of it clears out of the way and there's a door.

[00:41:23] Charlie Smith: Instead of walking through that door you choose to turn around and go back until every single being has been enlightened. And so through lifetime after lifetime, more and more beings get more and more enlightened. Another way you can look at that is consciousness, right? There's lots of different ways of looking at it, but it's like, how do we globally together expand our collective consciousness?

[00:41:44] Charlie Smith: And so it's not a new idea. We use those ideas now and talk about Carl Jung and all sorts of shit, but it's man, these are like two, three, four thousand years old, this is, look at the Kybalion, the Egyptian Gnostics, right? The same stuff is in there. This stuff that guides us through psychedelic journeys can actually it's the same stuff that's guided us from almost the very beginning.

[00:42:03] Charlie Smith: And there isn't many rules, but if you stick by a few of those, life gets a lot more interesting and a lot less heavy.

[00:42:09] Raad Seraj: Dude, totally. Everything old is new again. I feel like... At some point, we have to smoke a joint and this conversation will probably annoy everybody we know, but I think you and I will have a fucking good time talking. I love it. I love it. Okay. So the last part of this podcast, I want to come back to what you're doing now, I think, being a creator at this time, particularly in the ecosystem that we're trying to build, the stories we're trying to capture, the breadth of stories we're trying to capture is really important, right?

[00:42:36] Raad Seraj: And your whole idea of camera is a two way mirror. The artist transforming by the act of creation, but also people who have felt that they don't have a voice, all of a sudden having a voice. What does it do to them? What does it feel like to be seen? And to be witnessed to your point. You're working on Two documentaries simultaneously.

[00:42:55] Raad Seraj: Everybody is doing drugs, which I was very lucky enough to do an interview in. I'm super excited for it to come out for others to see it. Art of healing, which was already, premiered at psychedelic science. Tell me a little bit about your role in All the sort of constant thread in your life from, at least what I've heard is the masking and the unmasking.

[00:43:15] Raad Seraj: Where are you now? How does that inform the being a leader, a creator in this time, in this space? What are you trying to do with these films? 

[00:43:25] Charlie Smith: Awesome question, man. And thank you. This is it's become like the most unexpected, most amazing thing in my life. It's been all these separate pieces that I've loved through time coming together over these last couple of years.

[00:43:36] Charlie Smith: But really it starts back again when I was a kid, when I was 19, 18, 19. There was a show on TV called Queer as Folk. And remember when I was saying there wasn't a lot of, when I was growing up, a lot of gay people that I felt like fit in my box. So I just didn't know how I fit in that box. But Queer As Spoke was a show that showed many different kinds of gay people.

[00:43:54] Charlie Smith: And they brought them into this club called I mean in real life it's called Fly. I can't remember what it's called on the TV show anymore. It's been too long. This big dance club they'd all congregate at. And you see everybody from every walk of life and everybody is represented in some form as also a gay person.

[00:44:08] Charlie Smith: And they danced together and they partied together and it just felt like I was there. And it was the first time, and I grew up on TV, but this time I felt like there was a show that was witnessing me, looking back at me as I was watching it. And it created almost a pathway. To somewhere else for myself and it was a powerful enough that I actually like it was one of the reasons that brought me to Toronto, like I felt like for the first time I wasn't just heard, but like the being inside was being seen.

[00:44:42] Charlie Smith: It wasn't just a mask. It was like the being inside was being acknowledged. So it had a powerful effect on me so much so that the first thing on my list was. Hey, as soon as I get to Toronto, I'm doing a few things. I'm finding a great dealer for MDMA. I'm gonna MDMA, dancing I'm going full gay now.

[00:45:00] Charlie Smith: I'm just gonna go into this. It's still Charlie, but it's a new Charlie, so I'll never forget that kind of first time of fulfilling that kind of idea of what that would feel like actually felt like it, which was MDMA. Taking it obviously creates a sense of commune with everyone and a sense of love if you're open for that and that's your experience.

[00:45:19] Charlie Smith: Some people obviously have things that block that but for me it was like this beautiful homecoming of realizing there was a part of myself that I was missing and it was physical too. And I had stored stuff. I didn't know you could do that back then but I know that I had stored that trauma that I thought back there that when a baseball bat was held to my face and psychologically I wasn't being affected by it I had stored that shit in my body, man.

[00:45:42] Charlie Smith: Like I had put it places and since I wasn't like the kind of gay person that was really like sexually being gay at that point, I still was very much, I was overweight. I just wasn't feeling very connected to my body. That moment where there was drugs and music and culture and dance. Changed my life forever.

[00:45:59] Charlie Smith: It was the most beautifully somatic connective point for me of realizing that content can bring you somewhere, it could bring you to a new reality. And that's what it had done for me. And on top of that, it provided a whole other psychedelic experience that fueled the next 10 years of my life exploring my gayness, in all sorts of ways.

[00:46:18] Charlie Smith: And soon after I met my partner, we've been together for almost 18 years now. So it has been like it really M D M A provided a bridge for me that I never even knew I needed, but it was with connection to an idea that I got from content together that really created something that lasted in the back of my mind for like almost 20 years.

[00:46:37] Charlie Smith: For most of my career, I was just like a TV development executive, a producer before that. But then when we started doing this work, when the opportunity came up to start shooting Everybody's Doing Drugs, and then to work with Bessel who's Bessel's partner, who's like a somatic expert genius this is when I started realizing, oh shit.

[00:46:56] Charlie Smith: Remember back then, like there is a way here where this camera where this relationship between watching something and the people being the other side. It's not dead. It's not a dead communication. There can be a two way like I felt. And what if we start playing with that more? What if we acknowledge that two way?

[00:47:12] Charlie Smith: What if we work? With people from the world of consciousness and science and medicine and people on the technical side to figure out how we open that up more and create a style of shooting that actually conveys what we're talking about, but can also get you to feel more embodied while you're watching it to feel your body while you watch it to maybe have things come up for yourself while you watch it and record so that maybe you could start participating more in your own healing if you're someone who hasn't been exposed to that before.

[00:47:40] Charlie Smith: So it's exciting. It's brand new for us. But but I hope that these two projects will be the first to start to reflect what that can mean. And then lastly, hopefully inspiring other people and other creators to start experimenting with this too, because it's a new idea. But I feel like it's a new way of where content's going.

[00:47:56] Charlie Smith: If you look at TikTok and you look at those things it's almost there in some ways. And then, because it's under the veil of influencers and masking, you're not getting to that heartbeat of what we're doing. But there is an acknowledgement happening with social media content.

[00:48:09] Charlie Smith: So it's still at an experimental phase, but I think like what we have over the next two years is an opportunity to really use some of the world's top experts to help us create content that can actually expand people's consciousness. 

[00:48:20] Raad Seraj: That's amazing. And I think the timing couldn't be better, right? I think there is finally an acknowledgement that something is not right.

[00:48:28] Raad Seraj: We don't know what the answer is, but at least we're starting to feel, at least I feel, we're starting to ask the right questions. So this is unveiling. I find the pandemic was a big unveiling in terms of Oh, you're telling me the real people who keep the economy running are the ones who bag your groceries, keep the power plant going and the water plant going.

[00:48:47] Raad Seraj: And who deliver your food. It's not all the bullshit. It's not like I was one comment on LinkedIn right after the the pandemic had started. It was official at that point that we're shutting down. Somebody on LinkedIn was like, Oh yeah bankers are frontline workers, essential workers. I'm like, are you fucking joking, man?

[00:49:03] Raad Seraj: Bankers. 

[00:49:05] Raad Seraj: And I'm not, I'd like to diminish any profession, but come on, let's be real here. Banking is important, but not next to nurses who are putting their lives at stake. So anyway, I, the point I'm trying to make is this unveiling happening and we're trying to understand what is the fundamental.

[00:49:21] Raad Seraj: Thing that is wrong or the fundamental thing that is the opportunity the transition point and in my mind There's three ways to change the world. There's the first two are probably the most conventional one One is like changes from the inside the belly of the beast. Some will say that's not enough.

[00:49:35] Raad Seraj: That is never gonna happen Some will say second way is to blow it all up My father was a guerrilla fighter in the war of independence in 71 in Bangladesh violence And revolutions do happen, and they are necessary. But there's a third way, which is build the bridge to an alternative. Stop complaining.

[00:49:54] Raad Seraj: Fucking help out. Do it yourself, or amplify others, and so on. And so to your point, I think content, art, performance, being creative, expressing yourself creatively, is really key. And I think in this, to your point, I don't know how this all fits in, but I do feel like there's something.

[00:50:14] Raad Seraj: Greater at play here. So to bring it to a close, Charlie, tell us a little bit about where people can find the work you're doing and how they can help usher this transition. 

[00:50:24] Charlie Smith: Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. The first thing is help how they could help with the transition. I missed this point in my last comment.

[00:50:30] Charlie Smith: So I just want to tie it up here. It's. Play with your own masks, whether it's and if you don't realize you're wearing masks, start with playing with some drugs, start playing with some ideas that help you, whether it's breathing, psychedelics, there's all sorts of different ways to help play with that idea of seeing those masks we wear, going to therapy, there's all sorts read the body keeps the score.

[00:50:51] Charlie Smith: There's lots of ways of doing that. But once you start, Then it becomes like a really fun discipline, right? And once we start playing with those masks, that's where all of a sudden we realize what we're really doing is what I was talking about those TV shows and I were doing. But instead of witnessing a TV show, we're witnessing ourselves.

[00:51:09] Charlie Smith: And once we start seeing that we're not the masks, we're the witnesser of those masks, then life gets a lot more fun too. Because we could put them on, we could take them off, and sometimes we could be ballsy enough to go into the world completely naked. And my hope is that this content can help forge a community of people that aren't afraid of going into the world naked.

[00:51:30] Charlie Smith: Because once we get there, Naked means your heart is so open. You're bleeding. You're crying about everything. Everything is beautiful. Everything is all the light and dark is the same because you can see how precious all of this is. And I think that's where we have to get people. We have to get people in a state of realizing they could take their masks off.

[00:51:47] Charlie Smith: I hope we can do that through content. Other people are doing that through art in different ways. You're doing that through conversations and all the amazing stuff you're doing too. I feel like that's the new motion. That's the next movement, is taking our masks off. So for us, we invite people to join us our company name is Phenom Films, so you could check us out on Instagram, at Phenom Films, Twitter, at Phenom Films.

[00:52:08] Charlie Smith: Our film The Art of Healing. Which I quickly forgot to hype to you, which was the first of its kind of experiment where we took Bessel van der Kolk and all of his amazing knowledge about modalities, specifically psychodrama, and for the first time ever for a week, we took people and experimented with them, mixing psychodrama with ketamine assisted psychotherapy.

[00:52:28] Charlie Smith: It's one of the most wild things you'll see. We had such a great time at at Psychedelic Science this year in Denver. We had a sold out room for it. We're looking for a way to make that public over the next month and a half, so I would love to be able to get that out there for folks. The next one we'll be doing is with another kind of famous author.

[00:52:45] Charlie Smith: This will be a line up of Art of Healing, so we're gonna do one on On with a famous dance person one with a famous author from this world. I can't say names yet, but really big fun names. And then our other feature project is Everybody's Doing Drugs, and we hope that comes to theatres slash streaming in late fall 2023.

[00:53:03] Charlie Smith: This is a big film for us. Rick Doblin is in it. Dr. Carl Hart is in it. Jamie Wheal is in it. And at the same time, we collect. Some amazing folks from all over North America, and we follow them on their journeys through psychedelics. So for the first time ever, you'll see a psilocybin ceremony. You'll see this really interesting mix of schema therapy with psilocybin done in a clinic in Amsterdam.

[00:53:26] Charlie Smith: And you'll see the most amazing journey of 5MEO. I think that has ever been recorded. So we're excited, man. We're excited to take this into the future. And we would love for people to join the cause. So if people have stories they want to tell, if people have ideas... Find me at Phenom Films, and we'll we'll hook them up.

[00:53:43] Charlie Smith: Amazing. 

[00:53:44] Raad Seraj: I hope I get to experience one of these things, and hope it comes to Toronto. I'm super excited. Charlie, thank you so much. Good luck with everything, and thanks again. 

[00:53:53] Charlie Smith: Thanks so much, Raad 

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