The Castaneda Con with Ru Marshall

Is it anthropology or a high-stakes hoax?

In this episode of the Varn Vlog, we dive deep into the enigmatic life of Carlos Castaneda with author and visual artist Ru Marshall. Marshall’s expansive new biography, American Trickster (OR Books), unearths the startling reality behind the man who convinced the world he was apprenticed to a Yaqui sorcerer named Don Juan.

We explore how Castaneda transitioned from a UCLA PhD candidate to a global counterculture icon, selling tens of millions of books while living a life of elaborate reinvention—including claiming to be Brazilian despite being Peruvian. Marshall details the darker side of Castaneda's "Nagual" legacy: his transformation into a cult leader, his manipulation of academic elites like Harold Garfinkel, and the tragic disappearances of the women in his inner circle following his death.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Academic Scam: How Castaneda used "ethnomethodology" to seduce brilliant sociologists and anthropologists at UCLA.
• The Arana Family Secret: The "Mark of the Arana" and the dark Peruvian history Castaneda spent his life running from.
• Tensegrity and Cultism: The transition from bestselling author to a high-control leader who promised his followers they would never die.
• The Death Valley Mystery: The discovery of Nuri Alexander’s remains and the final "flight into infinity" that turned fatal for his followers.

Ru Marshall is an acclaimed writer and visual artist whose work explores the intersections of faith, identity, and cultural mythology. Their debut novel, Separate Reality, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Debut Fiction. Marshall's insightful non-fiction and essays have been featured in prominent outlets including Salon, n+1, Evergreen Review, and Kenyon Review. Their most recent work, American Trickster: A Biography of Carlos Castaneda, is the culmination of nearly two decades of research into one of the 20th century’s most complex and controversial literary figures.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

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C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello, welcome to Varn Vlog. And today I'm with Rue Marshall, and we're talking about their upcoming fairly massive biography of Carlos Castanata, American Trister, available from Aura Books. Rue Marshall is a writer and visual artist. Their novel, Separate Reality, was released in 2006 and received a Lando Award nomination for The View Fiction. Marshall's writing can be found all over the internet, but particularly Salon, M plus One Online, Evergreen Review, Kenyon Review, those kinds of places. This I became familiar with Rue's work actually all the way back, I think in like 2007, when you started writing Carlos Castanata. When your when your publishist approached me, I was like, huh. I believe I've I've already read Rue on on Carlos Castanata, but I've reminded myself it was an article, and now you have a fairly extensive biography coming out that you can get you people can pre-order it. Pre-orders really help authors, and you could order it from OR or books as well. But I'm just gonna start off with the most obvious of questions. What got you into Carlos Castanadas?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Oh Lord the fuck knows. Well, I you know, I had read the books when I was much, much younger, and I wrote a novel, like the novel that won the award, didn't win the award, it's nominated. Um, and it's um a queer uh queer crisis of faith novel. That was my little elevator pitch, which of course sold millions of copies. Um but you know, I the thing that I found was that Costaneda just kind of kept somehow coming up, you know, in the background of it. You know, I didn't know anything at all about him as a person or who he was, and you know, almost nobody did. When that book came out, my agent said you should just do a little short nonfiction thing to help promote the book. And the immediate thought that I had was well, whatever happened to Carlos Castaneda. I went online, it was February 2006, and I came across a little article in the Perump Valley Times. I hope I'm saying that correctly, about the discovery of the skeleton of his adopted daughter and turns out girlfriend Nuri Alexander. And I was like, what? What the fuck? Um, you know, and then I realized, you know, nobody seemed to have really written about this. I soon got in touch with a woman named Amy Wallace, who was um the daughter of a very big best-selling 70s writer, um, Irving Wallace, who had been one of Castaneda's girlfriends. And I talked to her for three hours. And after that, I was kind of like, How can you not write about this? The story was so strange. I had the very, very diluted idea that this was gonna take two or three years to write. And it was one of those things where you, you know, you've spent so much time on it, you're like, well, I can, you know, have to do another year or two, because I've got to finish this. And it just kept getting weirder and weirder. And, you know, a rabbit hole opened up into a wormhole, which you know opened up into a lizard hole. And yeah, that's that is how long it took to get this out.

C. Derick Varn 4:30

It's it it's interesting to me when we talk about Casaneda because I have to remind myself that he's not just a weird occult figure, that he actually was pretty adroit anthropological, to put it bruntly, scammer. Yeah. Um was a well-known name in my in my in my parents' generation. Uh so I'm a Gen Xer, so my mother knew who he was. But he also, I I agree with you, kind of disappeared from popular consciousness for a long time, seems to come up periodically now and then today, but very periodically. Why do you think it is that that he was such an important figure and one time period and then like by the aughts had been kind of almost memory holed?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Well, I would I would push back a little bit on that because I think it depends on who's memory. Because if you you know spend a bunch of time, you know, in uh you know, new age stuff, he he's he's there, you know, just and this is you know no shade on any of these people, but say, you know, you listen to somebody like Tara Brock, she she like quotes them all the time. I'm like, Tara, really, must you, you know, so there are certain places where where he's you know he's quite it's quite alive. And I would say though most alive, you know, in back in people's memories. And uh even when, and I found this also, because I really had not thought about him for quite a long time, but I keep finding that there were things that was like, oh my god, that is where that came from. That is where that you know that idea that has been sitting in my head all of this time originated. Uh, you know, there are a bunch of ways to you know go into this. One is that there's something that, you know, his his first great debunker was a guy named Richard DeMille, who was the the son of um Cecil B. DeMille. And he has a phrase, he talks about the invisibility of scientific scorn. I think he says scientific scorn. And so although, you know, people in academia much more slowly than is remembered now, you know, began to back away from Carlos. And this, you know, it really took five years, five years before there was really any kind of public takedown of him. And that takedown took took a while. But but there's a kind of quality of embarrassment, I think, about it that people don't want to just kind of own up to what a big deal he actually was. And even, you know, I I would argue the influence that he had on the direction that anthropology has taken. That's what I'd say.

C. Derick Varn 7:20

Yeah, I mean I think it is interesting because uh Castanatus is still known in if you ever hang out in occult circles and new a new age circles are like with the Lemites, he gets brought up. But remind my you know, to remind people, he was influential at Berkeley and had you know some pretty prominent sociological defenders.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Berkeley for can I can I can I jump in there a minute? I think at UCLA is really where that's where he that's where he was. He was published in Berkeley, but yeah. He he could do you mind my jumping in here or no, go ahead. You know, be a good guest and listen to the question. Costaneda's champion, UCLA, and this was something I learned very quickly when I started to talk uh to people at UCLA, was a guy named Harold Garfinkel, who you know most people have never heard of, but in sociology people have heard of him. Um, and also, this is a whole other thing in transgender studies, people have heard of him. Uh, he was the founder of a movement, or um, I guess you call it a movement or a school called ethnomethodology, which had, I wouldn't say a stranglehold, but a huge presence, say, you know, from at least, you know, say from San Diego up to Santa Barbara in California in academia in the first half of the 70s, you know, and perhaps after that. And Costaneda was his favorite student because what Costaneda was doing was he was, you know, at least Garfinkel thought, you know, proving his theories. And uh, you know, we the book is called American Trickster, because he was, you know, he was a trickster. It's a kind of a complicated, complicated question, but one of the primary tricks was to reflect back to these academic mentors in exactly what it was to hear and to show how you know how vulnerable everybody is to that. And Garfink if there's one, you know, because the character we should just say that if people don't know, you know, Castaneda's books are about his supposed encounters with a shaman. He didn't call him a shaman, he called him a bruho named Don Juan, who was supposedly a Yaqui Mahu, you know, they they took mushrooms and peyote and datura, and but more importantly, really, was that the whole kind of philosophy of how to view the world was being revealed to him. And when these, you know, you know, very brilliant academics at UCLA and and elsewhere, not just at UCLA, found in this um indigenous shaman their own teachings, they were you know, they were they were quite into it.

C. Derick Varn 10:21

It is interesting the amount of different things that you find in Castanata's use of Don One. Like you point out that you might find stuff from the National Enquirer in an account in one of his accounts by Don Juan, but you also might find stuff from C.S. Luca Lewis and Wittgenstein. And like, was it do you think the sheer range of what he was you know magpieing about gave it some validity and gave it some validity for different academics who could see kind of whatever they wanted? Because you were getting all sorts of little nuggets of things that you already believed in this like shaman package are uh you know, was it a flood the zone tactic to use modern unfortunate parlance? We what was going on with that?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Well, one thing is that you know, plagiarism, plagiarism is an art, or it can be an art. You know, most people are pretty you know sloppy about I don't know, but you know, he Carlos was not rarely was he sloppy, you know. And I Castaneda, you know, he studied, he studied art. He studied, you know, visual art back back when he was in Peru. And one, I mean, I don't know if I really even get too explicit about this in the book, but one of the ways that I think of these books is as a kind of collage project. And he had this kind of intelligence where he could see, you know, well, you know, that there's this Buddhist text that says this, and there's this, and you know, in Husserl. And he had a, you know, he he was not, he was, he was very talented. He knew how to fuse this into something that was quite compelling. And he was often also taking, you know, other people's ideas, but reframing them in a way that made them very popularly accessible. There's also, you know, he he wrote 10 books, although most people, usually, you know, at least I did, stopped at book four. And there's a trajectory, you know, he he's not pulling on everything at the same time. You know, at the beginning, it's much more kind of limited and kind of more highbrow, you know, the national enquirer stuff kind of comes in. You know, he he got he got he yeah, after he was no longer really in academia, he drew from other sources. So you know, the earlier books are much more, you know, much more coherent and and cogent in that way.

C. Derick Varn 12:55

It reminds me of you know, at the end of the first book, dude, there's a structural analysis, and I've even tried to read it. It it reads so incredibly dryly that it's almost like he's making fun of academia. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

You cut out there for a second, Jarek. Were you saying this the structural the structural analysis?

C. Derick Varn 13:19

Structural analysis at the end of the first book, which it which almost feels like it's so it's almost a parody of academic writing. Um well, that's my take on it.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

But it's you know, that's I got different, you know, people had really different views on it, and there's some kind of you know mystery, you know, deep in that. Joyce Carol Oates, who was you know the first person to publicly say in a letter to the editor of the New York Times, is am I the only person who thinks these are actually novels? She thought that the structural analysis, which it comes at the end of the first book, which is which is a compelling novel, you know, in my thing. And then at the end of it, there's all of this, you know, what reads to me is basically academic gobbledygook, you know, stuck on at the end. I think she's right. I think it was I think it was a parody. Whether or not Harold Garfinkel understood it that way, I don't, I I I wouldn't, I I don't know. I don't know.

C. Derick Varn 14:29

One of the things that your book exposes to about Casaneda is stuff that I actually believe that I discovered that was wrong. So for example, I believe he was Brazilian. Um oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

There's a reason for that. There's a reason you believed that. He would you he would be very happy to hear that, Derek. It's crazy. Can we talk about the Brazil thing?

C. Derick Varn 14:52

Yeah, let's talk about it. Because I because I was like, wait, why do I believe he's Brazilian? I don't think I've I've ever even I don't even know where I got that from, but I definitely thought it.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

You got it from Carlos. He went through UCLA, got a PhD, claiming he was from Brazil, spoke not a word of Portuguese. And that's you know, there's this side, there's a very, very dark side of Castaneda, which I I think we'll we'll get to later. But there's also a part where you just kind of you kind of gotta hand it to him because what he's doing is he keeps, you know, he arrives in the United States in 1951. And my sense of it is he just kind of keeps pushing to see what he can get away with, you know, in the project of you know, reinvention, which, you know, it's up to a point that's not that unusual. But, you know, he kept pushing the envelope, and the envelope just kept getting crazy, you know, crazy fucking big to the point where he becomes one of the best-selling authors in the in the 1970s. And uh it's so revelatory that these, you know, some brilliant theorists and so forth at UCLA really knew jack shit about what was going on, you know, anywhere the other side of the Rio Grande. You know, they they you know, there's you know stuff that I have in the book that just you know reveals it's it's kind of you know, from today's point of view, I hope, or from my point of view today, it's kind of you're kind of flabbergasting how little they knew. But yeah, and he enrolls in like the first year he's at UCLA, he enrolled in in you know beginning Spanish, which he's fluent in, you know, and he gets all these credits there from from taking Spanish class. So, you know, that that takes a certain level of performance to be able to perform not knowing Spanish when you that's your native tongue. But yeah, the Brazil thing, he he the most important thing though, here is he's from Peru. And he spent his career being from Brazil, being from Mexico, he could be from Italy if you wanted to kind of pretty much anywhere but Peru. And uh I was like, hmm, what's what's that about? Should I go into what it's about?

C. Derick Varn 17:27

Yeah, what is it about? Because I what is it about? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

I don't know how far how far did you get in the book, Derek? You I know you haven't had it for for for that part. I read uh you know the end of this or not.

C. Derick Varn 17:38

So I mean I I got to the part where you talked about, I don't know if this is the answer, but you talked about his father's relationship to the to the the third way slash social democratic party, the uhist and the priestess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

No, there's a much darker thing. And I heard this rumor. Well, I'll I'll I'll tell you who told me. Um Maria Rana, the writer, told me that, and she was like, I I believe I am uh Casined's birth name is Cesar Arana. He's from Cajamarca, Peru, which is in the north. It's the town where uh the first encounter between the the Spanish and the and the Incas happened. Pizarro, you know, garretted Atahualpa in the town square, yeah, like a block and a half from the house in which Castaneda grew up. And the Arana family is very interesting because they're an infamous uh character in Peruvian history named um Julio Cesar Arana, who at the beginning of the 20th century. Well, I I I I think most people hearing this probably have maybe at least have know about Fitzcaraldo, which is based on a guy named Carlos Fitzcarald, um, who you know had a little empire in the Peruvian Amazon. He was superseded by Julio Cesar Arana, who basically established a private slave state in the Peruvian Amazon that was, you know, uh created fabulous, fabulous wealth. Um and uh, you know, he was one of the richest, richest folk in the world from the rubber trade. And the rubber trade was based on, you know, calling it slavery is almost, you know, kind of too too gentle because it was just a system of terror and torture. Because what would they do is they would get in, you know, there's no kind of organized structure. So they, you know, kidnap indigenous people and will, you know, torture them until their family brings in the rubber. In 1912, I'm I'm in a I'm in a kind of nerdy space, so I can talk about this stuff. I think Roger Caseman, who is the figure who revealed what was going on in King Leopold's Congo, was sent rumors started to reach reach the United Kingdom. And the United Kingdom, the British had an interest in Irana's company. And these, you know, horrific rumors or stories began to get to London. And Casement was sent over to investigate, you know, and they tried to, you know, pull a number on him, but he he found out the story. And in 1912, this was exposed, and it was it was an enormous kind of worldwide scandal. Um, and the fortunes of the Arana family collapsed. They they would later come back, but that's a whole other thing. We don't we don't need to get into. Um and yeah, I spent many, many years trying to figure out what the connection is. I make the case and am convinced, although I could never find out exactly what the connection was, that the Arana family that Carlos grew up in in Cajamarca seems to have been clearly financially dependent on Julio Cesar. Because the same month that that collapses, you can see in the records in the municipal archives in Cajamarca that Castaneda's or the Arana family in Cajamarca, they're suddenly without money. And it was it was very interesting to read Maria Arana's memoir because it's this thing that was completely buried, completely buried in Peru. And there's something called the mark of the Arana, which meant both the marks that were left on the backs of the indigenous slaves who were being whipped in the Amazon, but it also meant the shame of the Aranas. And my belief, I think there were multiple things that Castaneda was, you know, running away from. There were other things as well, including, you know, a girl who got pregnant. But the determination to not be Peruvian, you know, and to erase that entire history is very strong. And I also think you it's coded into the later books that he tells the story. The later books, you know, some people may disagree with me, they're really weird. You know, the first four books read, you know, they you know, they're they read well. You know, some I think the first one is by far the best, but there's stuff that is so entangled and strange later on that I I I think you have to learn how to encode them. So yeah. But hence Brazil.

C. Derick Varn 22:56

So why did he take his his uh his maternal grandfather's name uh when he when he came to America?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

That's a that's a really good question and one that I cannot, you know, can I I I I don't know. There's almost nothing known about that, that the the original Carlos Castaneda. He was Carlos, you know, took away the the tilde, the the mark, so it became Castaneda for the you know for the North Americ North American audience. You know, he when he gets to the United States, he he keeps kind of playing with it, you know, and shifting the name and stuff. And that just it's I think it's in 1958, that's what he lands on and sticks with that. And and also he publishes his first poem, you know, under that name. So yeah.

C. Derick Varn 23:45

Yeah. You do note one of the ironies of his name, and I mean because Arana can mean I mean, with the tilde, it means spalda spider, but without the tilde, it's it means like trick, I think.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

I mean, it's one of the meanings. It's it's in the big fake dictionary, it's one of the meanings. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 24:07

It's not a term that when I lived in Mexico, I ever heard, but um, but what do you mean? I mean, what kind of irony do you see in that?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I don't know. You know, his it's also his, he's born on he was born on Christmas Day. And that's something I was like, oh, that can't be true, but it is true. It's in the birth certificate. And so his name is Cesar Salva Salvador Arana. So Savior, at least can be glossed as Savior Trickster. Because Carlos, you know, made a lot, he had a you know, tremendous imagination, made a lot of stuff up, but he was also, I guess the word would be superstitious. You know, he could he and he believed very much in the power of naming. You know, he would give people names, you know, in order to place them in a kind of symbolic world, you know, that he was controlling. So he had to know this. He had to know this. And he also, of course, had to know the, you know, because he did study anthropology, the anthropological literature on, you know, on tricksters. So to what extent that kind of reinforced, you know, his own narrative of self-magical narrative of self? I suspect it did.

C. Derick Varn 25:32

Uh you know, who knows what really goes on in his head, but your book got me thinking a lot about Harold Garfingel, a lot about Harold Garfingel.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Did you know of his work before?

C. Derick Varn 25:45

Or uh uh I did, but mostly we've never met before, just saying. Yeah, no, I did, but mostly through but mostly through mentions around Castaneda and as a footnote in things I studied when I was studying anthropology in college, which I did as an undergrad, which is actually simultaneously in the late 90s counterculture, and as a cautionary tale in anthropology, I learned to call this Castaneda.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

But you did it was talked about in that way.

C. Derick Varn 26:18

Yeah, it was, but barely where were you? Can I ask? I was I was Georgia State at the time. So and it was I got the feeling even as an undergrad that it was embarrassing. It was like, oh, it was the dumb 60s and 70s, and people were fools back then, was kind of the way it was taught to me. But I was thinking about, you know, uh Garfinkel's use of the breaching experiments, which you bring up in your book. And what is weird about this is this like if you think about what what the Don Juan book is, it kind of feels like like almost like a meta breaching experiment. But I so I wondered, like, how much did the Castanated know about Garfinkel's work before you know, before it was a student?

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Did maybe not meet pretty early on. I I think I'm off the top of my head, I think it's in 1962 that they meet. There were multiple people told me, and this is it's just there's stuff about him that you're just like, this is it's kind of great. You know, everyone was like, Oh, I introduced him to Garfinkel. I introduced, and he would let everybody think they were the one, you know, who who had done it. And so yeah, he was completely immersed in it. You know, this was this was the you know, Garfinkel's office was on the third floor, anthropology is on the fourth floor, or or or the other way around. Everybody, you know, who knows who knew him at UCLA talked about that relationship. And it that's the same period when Garfinkel is working on his, you know, his really one book that you know did make a, you know, it still has an impact on studies and ethnomethodology at the same time Costanade is writing the teachings of Don Juan, you know, and spending, you know, all this time at you know at Garfinkel's feet. You know, so it's and and it's in the books. It's in the books, and it's so bald, it's just it's crazy because you know, Garfinkel, if you were to sum him up, he says reality, reality is an agreed-upon description, which, you know, in some ways is, I think, clearly true, and maybe seemed more radical, you know, in 1962 and 1965, 1967 than it does now. And, you know, that's that those words come out of Don Juan's mouth. And, you know, Garfinkel. I mean, DeMille, who was, you know, the first big debunker, you know, I think he kind of ended up thinking that Garfenckel knew all along that it was a hoax or figured it out. I I part ways with him on that. I don't think he did. But, you know, uh, from what I've read in the archives and from talking to people who knew him, I think he felt genuinely, you know, horrified and betrayed when he figured it out. But it took him a long time to figure it out, probably by you know, until at least 1976. Did I did I go off? I don't know if I even stayed on your question there.

C. Derick Varn 29:30

No, I was like, bah. No, no, I mean, it makes a lot of sense because uh because I was I was going back and forth reading this, thinking about it. I I've read DeMille's work about how much did Garfinkel actually know? I mean, you know, when we think about what the the first time magazine expedition is in 73, but we don't really get the full debunking until 76 to 78. Um it is wild, but it's very it's very post facto in that when when people it's wild when it's wild that that like when people start debunking Costa Castaneda and his story starts uh sh unraveling people act like it was obvious, but it clearly wasn't obvious.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

It clearly was not obvious. No, but I think that's almost that's like maybe the most important thing in the book is that when you have you know a group of people or a little community, which is you know the world of anthropologists in Southern California, and people have like invested their reputations in something and uh have been personally, you know, person. I mean, he Carlos didn't as much fool people, he seduced people, you know, he was that incredibly, you know, charming and fun guy. Um and uh you get all these people to you know ride on that wagon, it becomes it's very, very difficult for somebody to be the first person to say, uh no, no. You know, and I would say if I have any kind of you know, uh whatever message, I don't know if I believe in messages, but this what he does, because later on, we we should at least mention that he becomes a full-on cult leader later. And he gets people to you know believe that they are going to, you know, travel with him into infinity. But the methods that he employs to do that, I don't think they're any different. Maybe they're a little bit more you know developed than what he was doing at UCLA. And uh, you know, it's very easy to point, oh, let's just say, I don't know, people in MAGA or something, you know, to be like, how the how can you believe this? How can you believe this? This is so totally disconnected to reality. But if you're the people who you are, who are your community and whose you know social goodwill you depend on uh all believe something, what Carlos knows, and what I think every cult leader knows, is that emotions and the need, the need to belong, are going to override reason. And that's that's why it took so long. You know, he had, I mean, not as important as Garth Michael, but you know, the foreword to the teachings is written by Walter Goldschmidt, who went on to become the head of the American Anthropological Association. So, you know, you have to, you know, think of it in terms of who wants to say that the head of the American Anthropological Association, you know, was a dupe. And who wants to say that they themselves are a dupe? You know, it's very hard for me to say, you know, well, I was wrong about something. I mean, I'm trying to work on it. I'm trying to be like, if I see if I realize I was wrong about something to say it. Most people don't, most people don't. And that's not because people are crazy or weird or stupid. It's what because they're human, I think.

C. Derick Varn 33:29

Right. And no, I mean it's deeply embarrassing to individuals, but I mean, if we think about Sonora Gate, it's deeply embarrassing embarrassing to the institutions. Like, you know, when when you're asking Ralph Bills who was the person who uh sponsored Casaneda for UCLA, at first at very, very first at the very beginning, to apologize for a mistake. And I'm just like, that also seems a bit much to be completely fair.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

I mean, like, like I'm gonna say something for you know, I mean, the late, I think it died quite a while ago, but Beals was one of the very few people who acknowledged a mistake. But I had, and again, I don't want to, you know, throw shade on people who accomplished, you know, important work in other fields, but Robert Edgerton was in, he had a joint appointment in psychology and anthropology at UCLA. Um and he was on the dissertation committee, you know, his signature is there. And I never got to spoke to him in person, but I corresponded with him and he he completely, you know, he denied, it's like, no, I didn't know him at all. It's like he's like, I oh he came up to me once in the hallway, and I, you know, I told him to go away, something like that. It's not true, but I don't think he was lying. I think that he rewrote his memory because it was, yeah, I guess like you're saying, too embarrassing to acknowledge. And most people, and that's still, I mean, let's just let's just go there. I mean, my book was um under contract for three years with University of California. And honey, I got a lot of I got I got some pushback. Like, who who are you? Who are you, this weird artist, you know, novelist person, you know, to be questioning us anthropologists. I can't tell you who wrote those reports because they're anonymous. Um, but uh that was one of you know reasons I had to part way with them. And I'm like, really, guys? It's 50 years later. 50 years later, but you're still not that that kind of institutional loyalty. That that did surprise me. That did surprise me.

C. Derick Varn 35:49

Yeah, actually, it kind of surprises me. I guess so. I mean this your book begins with the hints of some of the darker stuff, you know. I it is it is interesting to put the timeline together. I guess to get to the timelines, we have to talk about the the chalk mules or the winds who eventually get known as the witches or the brujas. When does that start? Like when did when do these female characters start showing up and in Castana as orbit?

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Well, they actually start showing up very early, but it's very small at first. I would and the basically simultaneous with when he starts writing the teachings of Don Juan in 1960, he kind of recruits his first. It's a long, I don't need to go into the whole convoluted story, but there are two young women who you know enter his orbit and will eventually you know dedicate most of their lives to him. Sometime in you know, by the early 70s, he starts referring to them as the winds, and it becomes a very elaborate kooky, say it's kooky. Sorry, it is kooky, Carlos Lovers mythology about the winds. And you know, I was mentioning before about the importance of naming in Costaneda. He also I I found there to be this thing which I call the sounds-like principle, well, hit where he'll take a word and kind of morph over to the next word. And the winds in the 1970s, by the late 70s, they become the witches. Um up until the mid-80s, it's a pretty small enclosed group. Mid to late 80s, it starts expanding, and there are all these other kind of mythical entities, you know. And they're basically it's everybody who's in his world gets to also, on some level or another, be a mythical character, you know, which, you know, it's kind of like cosplay. And it's a there's there certainly seems to be quite a fun aspect to it. Um, but then the fun, you know, starts starts getting darker and darker. Should we go to the dark darkness?

C. Derick Varn 38:10

Yeah, let's go to the dark darkness because several people disappear.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

So yeah. Well, at the in the the space between book four and book five, what happens is that you know, the character Carlos, you know, basically jumps off a cliff and flies and you know, goes into the abyss and whatever. And then you're surprised later on that, oh, he's still there for more books because you know, Castaneda had to keep writing books. What else is he gonna do? Um, but there becomes this you know mythology that they are going, Carlos is not gonna die, he is going to turn into a ball of light and ascend into the heavens, as Don Juan did. And in the 90s, there begins to be more and more kind of explicit talk. There's kind of this way that explicit about suicide and talk about how we're all gonna leave together and we're gonna navigate infinity and so forth and so on, are woven in. Um, and you know, I go to some length to show that in the book. Carlos dies in April 1998, and immediately thereafter, five women disappear, including two of the witches and a woman named Amalia Marquez, and then a woman named Kylie Lundal, who, I mean, I don't know how much you want to go into the magic stuff. She was one of the Chakmuls, you know, which are these in in Mesoamerica, they're these statuary uh that that you'll see. And Carlos gave it this whole other, you know, meaning. And as I you know mentioned a while ago, the thing that brought me that made me think, how can you not write this book? I know it's gonna take 20 years, but meh, was that the skeleton of one of them was found in Death Valley. And I all all indications are that whether or not they all committed suicide together or not, you know, they're they they left because there was a group consensus that that was what they were going to do. And I would say the deep reason for that is because, you know, these, you know, these cult leader guys, you know, they do not want to be alone even, you know, in death. They can't just, he couldn't just have an an ordinary banal death. It had to be something create this mythical thing. And I believe that you know, five women died because of that.

C. Derick Varn 40:58

Yeah. I mean that's that is not not dark. Um I love I love me a double negative, Jared. Just give me a triple or it I I I do I find the the cult aspect of of Castan Castanada is actually a little bit. I'm not gonna say under discussed because people clearly discuss it, but uh I I'm I'm you're cutting out a little bit because you oh I I'm not gonna say it was under-discussed because people clearly discuss it, but like it kind of loses it its narrative impulse despite how interesting it is compared to the stuff at UCLA and this uh and the publications of Barkley. Do you think it's because it doesn't involve you know implicating elite people, or most people don't know about it?

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Like why no one knows about it in my experience. I mean uh I don't want to toot my horn, but I'm one of the major reasons that you know I it's not I wasn't the first person to know about this story or to write about the story, but I've I'm I'm one of the major reasons that some people do know about it, because of I think the article that you read, you know, many years ago in in Ceylon. And uh this group, you know, the it's called Clear Green, which was the corporation Carlos set up, not his most imaginative naming thing. You know, they're still out there. They're you know teaching workshops, you know, and I did did we talk about we haven't talked about ten segrety. No, we haven't. That's a that's a something. They were really into the martial arts from the from the from the get-go. You know, Castanedo was, you know, had them studying karate. What they start doing, you know, late 80s, early 90s is teaching their own martial arts practice, which they call tensegrity, which is a term they grab from Buckminster Fuller, because as you were saying, let's think from everywhere. I mean, I don't know why Buckminster Fuller, but it didn't anyway. And they claimed absurdly, absurdly, that it would been passed down by um 25 generations of Toltec shamans. And if you did it, if you did it, you know, really, really assiduously and perfectly, if there's a huge emphasis, you have to do everything perfectly, impeccably is the word they use, you can uh you know rearrange reality and you don't have to die. I think it's just a lot. I think it's a lot to like for people to hold into their heads. So, but you know, nobody, you know, when Nuries, when Nuri's skeleton was fine, no other newspaper picked up that story. Nobody, no, it went nowhere, you know. I think it's part of it, it's like it's just too fucking weird.

C. Derick Varn 44:01

You know what I found interesting? I used to live up the street from well literally but uh about 45 minutes of the street from the Nawabian compound. I don't know if you know about the Nawabians, they were an Afrocentric, yeah. They were an Afrocentric cult that came to fame because they had some involvement from Wesley Snipes in the late 90s. They denied that slavery happened. They sound a lot, they had a similar theory about white people to the to the nation of Islam. But one of the things they did as outreach was teach an esoteric former karate. Interesting, interesting, and I encountered them locally a lot, and when I when when You mentioned that and and Casaneda. I was like, that's interesting that that it actually was several groups in the 80s and 90s doing this, and you have never really seen it talked about anywhere about the weird overlap between a cult culture and 80s and 90s martial arts culture. And because I think it's there.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

And clearly if if I think it's also just kind of in the air in the in the 70s, you know, I mean, I don't know about this this group, but it's you know, it's when Bruce Lee is uh you know becoming you know a big phenomena, and there's it doesn't matter too much, but you know, Costaneda had kind of a tangential you know exposure to that. I you know, my take on it is you gotta give people something to do in a cult. There has to be something. And you know, my what I my guess with Carlos is he was you know riffing on on Gurjeff a bit. Because I I mean I he went and you know watched the you know the Gurj, you know, the Gurjeff movement and the dances, and he, you know, he made fun of it and was like, oh, that's you know, that's totally stupid, you know, and then you know, 10, 15 years later, you know, people start doing these movements and they're like, oh yeah, this kind of reminds me. I mean, I I don't know much about you know the Gurgy stuff, but um people you have to keep in cults, people need to be kept really busy, you know. And you know, some of them do that by, you know, hanging out, you know, recruiting people. And I I think this was just their what they came up with.

C. Derick Varn 46:37

I was also thinking about the the gender dynamics of Castaneda and and what's going on there because there's a lot of you know associating with women, but also a lot of particularly it seems to me by the 80s, but maybe you would say it was always there, there's there's kind of a machista thing going through what what do you think what were Castaneda's ideas about gender that were explicit? What what do you think we can draw implicitly? You know, there's a lot to think about there.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Wow, a deep, you know, vortex and or abyss. Um I think really deeply uh conflicted stuff. You know, people, you know, what his his best friend in the 1950s, you know, back to the 1950s, this guy named, you know, Alan Morrison was like, you know, I I always thought, you know, Carlos was some suppressed gay. And he didn't think, you know, that he'd ever kind of done anything with it, but he found him, you know, to just have a certain kind of you know mannerisms or presentation that you know did not seem like you know, straight guy, California 1950s. You know, maybe that's maybe that's all wrong. But Castaneda was a compulsive seducer, you know, uh, in who knows, thousands of women. My sense of it is that it is a compulsion, you know, that there is this deep need to, you know, seduce in order to control. You know, he obviously had a very you know kind of messed up internal relationship, you know, to to his to his mother. Um so so it's it's weird because the books, especially the early books, you know, there's all this stuff about the warrior, you know, there is this definite kind of you know a certain kind of spiritual, spiritual macho thing. You know, when you when you get to the 90s, though, they're doing all of this kind of you know, gender play, you know, in because they have this thing called the source theater and they put on these little plays for, you know, for for each other. And uh there's a lot of curious kind of gender bending stuff, you know, going on there. So I don't, I'm sorry if that answer is nebulous because I don't really have a clear thing about that. But I I would not say that he was somebody who was like, you know, all confident in being, you know, a man. And we have to say, because it's the thing that most people know Garfinkel for, in my experience now, is it's not called Agnes, but it's known as Agnes. We we know about Agnes, we know about Agnes, which is the first sociological study of a, you know, of a transgender person that Garfinkel publishes in 1967, which is at the height of his involvement, you know, with Carlos, you know, and he uses that as an example of how you know reality is constructed and how we construct the world through, you know, through talking about it and through creating stories and bringing people into our stories. And all of that is very parallel what Don Juan is, I mean he's not talking about gender, he doesn't talk about gender, but he is saying, you know, you can, you know, you can recreate the world through how you through your yeah, through talk.

C. Derick Varn 50:39

Yeah, there's I mean from from the standpoint of someone trying to understand like these cultural phenomena in kind of a modern left-wingish context. He's he's a he's kind of a baffling figure, but like whether or not he's progressive or regressive in any meaningful sense, it's it's very hard to like map even he's not progressive. No. I was gonna ask you a little bit too, because you know, his his playful in quotations child nickname was was El Negro, which just means the black, but it's it's yeah, that's a deep, tricky thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Right. Because I, you know, being you know, I'm a gringo, I went to Peru, you know, and was like, well, did that carry uh you know kind of negative connotations? Then no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But, you know, you look at pictures of him with it's it's it's it's there's some mystery in here. It's he's darker skinned than anybody in his family. Whether he is, and I this is not something I go into in the book because I can't prove it, but whether he's really his father's son, you know, I think there is reason to to question that. He fiercely, you know, at the same time that he's you know thought of as this person who is, you know, bringing indigenous knowledge to Western people, he fiercely identifies himself in the books as a Westerner, repeatedly as a Westerner. And then, you know, there's so many kind of layers to this. The supposed indigenous knowledge that he is making into these books that sell you know tens of millions of copies is you know, it's husserl, husseral, how do you say that? You know, um, and Nietzsche and Sart. It's it's it's phenomenology. Uh so I I think his relationship to you know to race is it's it's very conflicted. I mean, he you know, he's he said, you know, in private, you know, pretty appalling, you know, things. You know, not that he was, you know, I wouldn't say that it's racist, but you know, there's this conversation you know that I have in the book where somebody is, you know, like this early 70s talking about, you know, you know, the whatever the conditions of you know black people, black people in the ghetto. And he says, well, you know, the ghetto is just in their own in your mind. If you don't, you know, you you create your own ghetto. And I'm like, you know, really? To the extent, I mean, basically he did not believe in politics, but to the extent that he had them, they were right wing. You know, he he gung with you know people who were, you know, right wingers, you know, better he, you know, certainly was opposed to any kind of thing, you know, like welfare would have been abhorrent, you know, to him. If he saw you giving money to, you know, somebody on the street, you were you you would have been exiled for that, you know, because he you know, there's a you know, it's a weird kind of like almost Ayn Rand streak there of you know self-reliance. And you know the the irony is that I think that maybe 90 plus percent of the people who read his books, I don't know, had very, very different politics than that.

C. Derick Varn 54:01

How were his politics different than his immediate family? I mean, this is what you know, this is a very important thing. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Well, that's his, yeah, because you were mentioning that earlier. His father was a member of the, a leading member of the Aprista Party, which was a movement in Peru um in I don't know when it starts, but you know, in the 1930s and 1940s, um, that was, you know, you know, not Marxist, but you know, a radical revolution movement led by a guy named Victor Raulay de la Torre. Um, you know, his dad was one of the top lieutenants in in Cajamarca. Castaneda despised his father. He considered him to be a you know kind of a weak, a weak failure. And this is probably in part because the family has to go into hiding. Um and I think Costa, and because of their going into hiding and the mother having, we're really getting into it. The mother having uh, you know, health conditions, you know, I suspect that in Carlos's mind that that he held his the father responsible for the mother's death. Um and uh so the whole kind of ideology of you know uh community coming together and you know raising the people up, you know, his whole thing is no. The revolution is not a thing of you know the masses, it's the thing of the lone soul, you know, person all on their own. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 55:34

Yeah, I mean, there are people who I think of like Alejandro Yodorowski actually has a a lot of left-wingers like him, but I'm like, yeah, but he has actually a very right-wing, almost aristocratic view of like how you uh transcend society and and this, that, and the other. And I find I find I find that element to Castaneda somewhat interesting because a lot of his fans in the 60s and maybe even in the 80s and 90s would have been relative progressives in the American context.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Totally.

C. Derick Varn 56:10

And and yet I also think you know, you have the pink diaper baby problem. Uh many a socialist academic produces a neoliberal child. So it's it's it's an interesting thing for me to think about with him because it seems like he is fundamentally out of step with the people he's seducing in academia. And uh even when it comes to like American new agers and occultists, they're not gonna think of the until relatively recently, a lot of them would not have thought of themselves as openly right wing. I think a lot of them would now, but like it it's it's just uh it's an interesting like cultural problem, and it's what I think a lot about.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

So it's interesting to trace these kind of subcurrents that I think, you know, and the the thing I have been thinking about that I think maybe parallels what you're talking about is the whole you know, Maha movement. Um because there's this thing that's you know certainly not you know unique to Costernada that you know disease, disease is in your mind. You know, he you know he didn't he didn't seem to have believed in germ theory, you know. It's like we we create we create look, you know, we do create certain things through consciousness, we create the nation state through an agreed upon consciousness, we create you know money and so forth. I think we create gender, you know, whatever. But we don't create you know disease, you know, that way. But there's this kind of irrationality. I don't think irrationality is always bad. And I can't say I've teased all this out or have a whole theory about this, but the costonate is certainly a significant figure, you know, in bringing bringing that in. It's like this, you know, fuck you to the man, fuck you to uh fuck you to authority, you know, we can, you know, we can change the world by you know, by changing consciousness, but you know, in there, you know, there's also this anti-authoritarianism toward, you know, now it's you know the CDC or you know them doctors who want you to get you know vaccinated or whatever. Anyway, I it's sketchy, sketchy on my end.

C. Derick Varn 58:39

But well, it's interesting. I you know, to think about Robert Kennedy and Castaneda together is not an obvious thing, but I I think about this today. You point out in your book how much Castaneda was pretending to be quasi-indigenous or a peasant, particularly early on in the in the 60s, while you know he would probably recoil for that in any native Spanish context. And I think about this too, with this need for this kind of id. I was gonna say identity, I should actually just call it what it is, magical thinking, to to appear as populist, but often these people are also are often from very, very elite backgrounds, like you know, Robert Kennedy's a kennedy. Trump is in the grand scheme of the American hot bourgeoisie like Nouveau Reach, but by by no means does he comes from nothing. I find this interesting in that you know, in some ways, and maybe I'm over concluding here, but there is a way in which like a kind of cultural progressiveness can fall for that.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Can fall for you mean for the aristocratic thing?

C. Derick Varn 1:00:01

Yeah, the aristocrat that's pretending to be a peasant for you. You know, like the the I think about this with you know, Maha is very is very interesting because there's a lot of people in Maha that if you'd have talked to them 10-15 years ago, they would have told you they were cultural liberals. Um and that is just not true now. And when I think about who I associated with the like the anti-vaccine movement in America, the figureheads were mostly culturally progressive. I don't know if they're politically actually progressive, but they were culturally progressive. Now, in the background, you know, I live in Utah. Mormons and various other like conservative religious groups have been behind this the entire time, but the spokespeople for it would have thought that they were progressive. And I just I find this interesting. Like, Castaneda seems to hit on all these kind of cultural contradictions about the way you can kind of play the American upper middle class if you speak to them the right way, even when it's like even when it's kind of obvious. But I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

I mean, Castaneda was definitely playing people. I mean, it's you know, in terms of like his audience, you know, I don't, you know, he wanted he did want the approval of people like Garfickel. He he valued the approval of you know the high academic intelligentsia. Um, I don't think he gave a shit about his readers. You know, I think that's kind of, you know, you know, made it because it at first, you know, he writes the first book, you know, really for, you know, for the academics, you know. I think that later, you know, he he's very into you know, kind of game playing, you know, on this very kind of high level. And you know, I think he clearly knew, you know, who, you know, over time, you know, who his audience was, you know, and he had to kind of play to that too. But any kind of sense that he actually really had, you know, respect for that, other than as a source of, you know, you know, girls, girls and money. Um, you know, and I'm gonna say in his defense, he didn't he didn't really care about money. He just needed the money to keep, you know, basically for the women. Well, it it's just there's a chronology because at the beginning, you know, he's much more, you know, he's aiming high. You know, the later books are just so I I read them as, you know, kind of coded, in some ways, as coded confessions, coded, even coded autobiography. Very convoluted. And they're also condemned for his in-group. You know, it's like which woman within the, you know, in these, it becomes very much about the women and who's up and who's down, and you know, Lagorda is a you know, a powerful witch, and you know, and then she's out of the picture, you know, later. That's because there's an actual woman in the group who is, you know, who we call Lagorda, you know, who gets thrown out, you know. How how exactly that is supposed to work in terms of you know, novelistic? It's a very curious way to write novels, you know. Um, but because he was so, you know, it's it's you have to remember how huge he was. You know, he he's on the bestseller list throughout, you know, throughout the 70s. And, you know, what was true, you know, with his professors about people investing in him, you know, and you know, I'm I'm I'm gonna be getting, I think, more of this, you know, people people don't like what I'm saying, you know, because there's an emotional investment in these books. And that's, you know, they are, I think, I don't know if they're unique, but they are unusual in the intensity of that, because the books are manipulative, because you start identifying with, you know, there's always this kind of hapless character named Carlos, you know, and he is a good enough writer to construct that kind of you know, subjective entity in a way that, you know, I certainly could identify with it. You know, if you're any kind of person who is, you know, who is a seeker and who, you know, feels, you know, misunderstood, he's really good at like hooking you, you know, hooking you into that. Um, and it became, you know, it's people really had a hard time, you know, separating from that. And of course, if you knew him in person, way worse, way worse.

C. Derick Varn 1:04:51

Well, I mean, even in your book, it's clear he uses charisma. Like that, the like the he's unexplainable without that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Um charisma is really important to be talking about now, you know, to really, I think I'm a little bit going off book here, but I think to take to really understand that is not just some kind of you know, epiphenomena, you know, in politics, but uh you know, to to to center that of like what's you know what what is charisma, what's going on with it.

C. Derick Varn 1:05:23

Yeah, you know, one thing I kind of noticed from your book, uh I don't know how much you draw this out, but that once he's more or less rejected by academic elites, and it does seem like it's not it's not about money with the academic elites, it's about you know approval. Um the the the sorcery becomes a new source of elitism. You know, I mean the way he talks about non-sorcerers, which is basically everybody else, is muggled, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:55

Except the Darren Potter, you bunch of worthless muggles.

C. Derick Varn 1:05:59

Yeah, yeah. Basically calls them apes.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

Um apes apes, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:04

Do you see that as compensating for the fact he couldn't get elite approval?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:08

Do you like like what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

I I am gonna try to sketch out something here, which is uh there's a a book, uh, what is it called? It's by a guy named Len Oakes, who's from Australia. You know, he writes about charismatic um religious leaders, or maybe just you know, charismatic figures. And he talks about um the myth of calling that they have, which is it's because they're people who they cannot, you know, because of whatever deep primary kind of ego wound, you know, they have. Have, they cannot reconcile themselves, you know, to just being, you know, a regular person in the world who's going to die. Like, you know, it's hard, it's hard to reconcile with, but they have a really hard time with it. And at a certain point, you know, they they play with the idea that they are a special person. You know, that occurs to them. And then something happens which shows them that, oh, wow, I actually am a special person. And I would say with Carlos, it's, you know, how could he have known that this book he was, you know, he's driving a taxi in Los Angeles. He's basically been dropped out of the grad program, that it's going to become an international fucking bestseller, you know, and that he's going to get away with the whole thing. I believe that that reinforces that, you know, I am special thing. And then the I am special becomes, you know, everything becomes about that, you know, and it's just us, you know, us select people and not you, you know, you muggles or you Democrats or, you know, you non-sorcerers or or or you apes. So I think there's kind of a psychological internal, you know, internal logic to it. And the more that the world starts pressing, you know, this just might take, I don't can't prove it, you know, pressing back on you that, oh, maybe you're actually not special, the more extreme that needs to become. And I would I would sort of look at what's going on nationally now with that too.

C. Derick Varn 1:08:26

Yeah. I guess it's kind of a last reflection. It's a little bit larger than question, but it's tied into that. Reflect. Reflect. How much do we see in someone like Castaneda that is very much of its time, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and maybe it's dying out in the 90s? And how much is this a precursor to larger cultural phenomenon we're gonna see after 9-11 and this you know uh internet media turn and increased cultural atomization, etc.? Like, is there a way in which it do are would we read Castaneda as primarily of his time, or does he like prefigure problems that we have now, or maybe both?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

The the the sexy answer both. It depends how you look at it. I think in terms of the specific content, that's you know, probably a lot of that is is of its time. I think you know, the kind of underlying dynamic though, of you know, reflect reflection and seduction, I think, you know, I hate to say, I think that's kind of you know, kind of it eternal. Um and yeah, you know, and I think there are specific things like what we're talking about about, you know, Maha that you can, you know, that that you can trace back. Um but I think the most important thing is, you know, and especially I think it is much worse in the age of the of the internet that, you know, people are isolated, people are lonely, people actually do need meaning, you know, and you know, a very gifted, you know, charismatic trickster, you know, there's gonna be more. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:10:30

I I feel like we don't even have a good grasp on how many more they may be. I mean, particularly, I mean, thinking about, you know, I I I I work in podcasting and I work in education, and I've done that for a long time. But you know, in the age of the streamer, you know, there there are people who have cults of personality for having cults of personality, even. Like, it's like they haven't even pulled the kind of stunt that Carlos Costaneda did like. Um which almost feels respectable that you'd bother pulling a stunt like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:04

It's a lot of work.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:05

Yeah. You know, I was commenting someone, uh, that like I feel like I live in the age of cults, but the cults are led by people with names like cat turd and desk.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:18

No, I you're touching on I I I don't know, but I I think you're touching on something really important. It's it's it's very easy to set that up now. And I don't think we've really understand it that well.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:37

I I don't either, but I think your your point about charisma, I think we need to start really looking at it more intensely than we have because you know, and I in left world, it's almost anathema to talk about. Like we don't actually believe it exists yet. We all experience it. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:52

I didn't owe because nobody told me so.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:54

Well, I mean I'm I move in Marxist left world a lot, and yeah, like we things that confuse us are like dignity and charisma and anything that we can't immediately tie class to. But you know, non-economic forms of interpersonal power baffle us.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:15

But I'm gonna quote you on that, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:12:22

Um, but it it does seem like we really need to think about it. I don't just mean about like uh like obvious figures like all these you know populist left and right movements that are emerging, etc. etc. But also like just the way general society works when you have people who are often like I think about the kind of person who would have been attracted to late Costaneda. Early Costaneda is a different thing, but late culty Costaneda. And you know, when I look at general society now, I'm like, well, that's almost everybody. Like, like like who isn't alienated at this point in a search for identity and doesn't have like a clear set of immediate lived communities at their back.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

Oh my god. Oh my god, yeah. No, I mean it's just and I guess you know what I trying to think through, you know, and other things I'm trying to work on is you know, just the way how basically I just don't think you can talk about politics without talking about psychology. Um that that kind of siloing is you know, it's it it it obviously, you know, left and right are still real things, but I they're not what they meant. You know, obviously they're not what they meant 30 years ago or certainly 50 years ago. I'll just end with I don't know.

C. Derick Varn 1:13:50

Yeah, I I think that's uh that's uh that's an important thing to end on. I am going to to finish your book, but uh what I'm what I'm reading right now I really enjoy. I think it's I hope it I hope other people think it's an important book. I think it's an important book.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

And trickster or books.com or the other, you know, the other entities that sell books.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:13

Yeah. You can make your pack with whatever Doc Lord you need to, but pre but go buy it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:18

Yeah. Okay.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:21

Where what where can people find any other work? And is there any like now that you've finished a 20-year project, is there anything you're working on now?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:29

I am working on, I have a collection of short stories if there's uh and essays if there's an agent out there listening to this or you know, a publisher.

unknown 1:14:37

Just call me.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

Um I I got a bunch of a bunch of irons in the fire. All right. Well, that's good to hear.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:44

Thank you so much for your thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

This was great. I'm really great to talk to you and and to meet you.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:51

Okay. Bye. Bye, Derek. Bye.