Third Wave
Host Paul F. Austin presses Matt past his shorthand of being just a business guy, into how a first psilocybin experience reordered what he valued, what healthy entrepreneurship looks like in this space, and why access has so long been limited to elites.
LISTEN
Apple Podcasts ↗ Watch on YouTube ↗
Episode summary
On The Psychedelic Podcast from Third Wave, host Paul F. Austin presses Matt past his usual shorthand of being "just a business guy." Matt had built and sold software and marketing companies, driven, as he describes it, by a fear of dying young, worry about money, and a quiet grief over his mother, who died at 49. His first guided psilocybin experience gave him a sense of being loved and enough exactly as he was, which reordered what he valued. Looking back, he calls his earlier success real but incomplete, noting the nights spent away from his kids while building a company.
The two return often to the book's title. Matt repeats that it is about these medicines being good for society and giving people enough information to decide for themselves, including how they vote, not a suggestion that everyone should take one. He and Paul trace how access has historically been limited to elites and secret traditions, from the Eleusinian mysteries onward, and why this moment is different. Matt frames it as a phase shift, with a younger generation that cannot afford the old rules rewriting them, and a culture slowly moving from scarcity toward abundance.
Because this is a conversation between two people who build things, they spend time on what healthy entrepreneurship looks like here. Matt names the risk of psychedelic narcissism, the messiah complex that can follow a powerful experience, and his belief that community and accountability are what keep it in check. He keeps returning to a simple frame, that the real purpose of any business is to help the people who run it, work in it, and are touched by it learn, heal, and grow. Paul adds that companies whose values mirror what a psychedelic experience asks for, especially trust, tend to last.
Matt also describes the ceremonies he helps organize, drawing a clear line that he never delivers medicine himself. His role is the container: experienced facilitators with a balance of male and female energy, medical intakes reviewed for contraindications, a plan in case something goes wrong, food made with care, live music, and structured preparation and integration. He encourages anyone considering this kind of work to ask plainly what the setting will be, who is running it, and how many people will be there, since the answers vary widely. The conversation closes on his sense that there is no destination, only the ongoing work of learning, healing, and growing.