🧠🌌 Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick | Sci-Fi Analysis & Corporate Dystopia Explained ⚡

0:00Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we are. Well, we're strapping in for a journey that is equal parts, corporate espionage thriller, sci-fi mystery, and just an absolute psychological nightmare. That's a pretty good summary, yeah. We're digging into a stack of materials that revolves around a story that asks a very simple but also, you know, a terrifying question. If you could teleport to Paradise, but you had to trust the corporate monopoly that owned the machine, would you actually go? And the follow up question is even more important. Right. If you got there and it wasn't Paradise, would you even be able to tell? Exactly. It is a classic setup that just spirals into something so much stranger. It really does. I mean, we are looking at a world where reality itself is basically up for sale. And the receipt is printed on your own sanity. That's it. The material we have today, it all centers on the conflict between these two massive entities, Apple Bomb Enterprise and Trails of Hoffman. What? And the man named Rochmale, Ben Applebaum, who is just. He's caught in the gears of a universe that is quite literally breaking down.

1:05Yes. And to get us all into the right headspace for this, I want to start with a very specific, very bizarre image from the intro of our source material. Okay. I want you to picture a man. He's standing in his bathroom shaving. It's early morning. He's tired. He's hungry. He's actually thinking about maybe getting a cheeseburger for breakfast. A very relatable start to the day. Super relatable. But while he's shaving, this man, our main character, Ratchmale Ben Applebaum, he's haunted by a dream he just woke up from. And it's not a vague, I forgot my homework, kind of dream. No, not at all. It is vivid. Yeah. In this stream, Rackmale isn't a man. He is a rat. And not a metaphorical rat, like a corporate rat, a literal four-legged rodent. Yes, exactly. He dreams he is a rat and he's living in a garbage dump in Oakland, California. Okay. He remembers specific details. He remembers fighting another rat named Fred. Fred the rat. Fred the rat. Yeah. Over a piece of dog kibble. He remembers biting Fred on the shoulder. And most importantly, he remembers hoarding this little pile of brown string. The string is such a crucial

2:11detail. It's not just a thing. It's the emotional attachment he has to it in the dream is so powerful. Tell us about that. Well, in the dream, that string is his most precious possession. It's his treasure. It comforts him. He sleeps in it. And he even dreams while he's dreaming. A dream within a dream. Right. He dreams of a giant fish trying to crunch him while he's sleeping in his precious string. It's this whole layered reality, even for the rat. So he wakes up. He's standing there in the mirror. And Rackmale is just confused because the dream felt so real. You can still feel the anger. Right. Totally. He's actually angry at Fred for hiding the good kibble. He's genuinely worried someone is going to find his stash of string and steal it. Which is that's a weird feeling to have about a dream. It is. And so his first thought is, okay, maybe I need a psychiatrist. Maybe this is some kind of memory from a past life where I was, you know, lower on the evolutionary scale. Perfectly reasonable if slightly unusual thought to have. But and this is where we get our first real taste of the world. This story inhabits his second thought is much more paranoid and much

3:16more accurate, much more accurate. He thinks maybe the police are beaming psychotronic signals into my brain, which is just wow for that to be your second guest. It sounds completely crazy. If you are, I thought that we would, you know, we check ourselves into a clinic or something. But in Rackmales world, this is a legitimate concern. It is the context we get from the source text is just fascinating. It turns out this dream. It isn't a dream at all. So what is it? It is a symptom, a symptom of what's called sublonal information leakage leakage from where there is this massive computer system. And it's run by a private police agency called lies incorporated, which has to be the best name for a police agency ever. I mean, talk about truth and advertising. It's incredibly on the nose, isn't it? So lies incorporated. They own these sub info computers and one of them sub info computer five, it malfunctioned. What do these computers normally do? They're programmed to lie to fabricate data to create disinformation. That's their entire purpose. Okay. But this one broke

4:20and when it broke, it accidentally transmitted correct information directly into Rackmales brain while he was sleeping. So the rat dream, it was true. In a sense, yes, the computer data was about a real rat and a real dump in Oakland. But because Rackmale received it subliminally, his brain just processed it as a personal memory as a dream. But the key takeaway here, the theme it sets up right from page one is that we're in a future where information is a weapon where lies incorporated is a literal institution. And where a man can't even trust the inside of his own head because a corporation might have just lead some data into it. And that paranoia, that sense of cognitive dissonance, it's the foundation for everything that follows because Rackmale isn't just some random guy dreaming about rats. He is a man with a giant target on his back. So let's look at the mission of this deep dive. We are unpacking the central conflict between Rackmale's failing company, which is Applebaum Enterprise, and this massive corporate monopoly called Trails of Hoffman,

5:21or THL. And this is the core economic conflict of the story. It's really a battle of technologies. On one side, you have Rackmale. He represents the old school, the past, he owned spaceships, specifically these huge interstellar liners, which sounds incredibly impressive until you realize they're completely and utterly obsolete, totally obsolete. Because on the other side, you have Trails of Hoffman, THL, and they're led by a man named Theodric Ferry. They own a technology called Teleport. And Teleport. It's a teleportation device invented by a doctor, and the difference in efficiency between a spaceship and a teleporter is just, it's laughable. It really is. I mean, the numbers are stark. Rackmale has one ship left. It's called the Onflos, which is Greek for a naval, right? Like the center of the world. Exactly. A bit of irony there. It's a massive vessel capable of carrying hundreds of people in cryogenic sleep. But to get to the formal hot system, which is where everyone wants to go, it takes the Onflos 18 years. 18 years. That's basically a generation. You would have to be put in deep sleep

6:24just to survive the trip without going completely mad from boredom. Right. Versus the Teleport device. How long does that take? 15 minutes. 15 minutes versus 18 years. To travel 24 light years. So Rackmale's business is just, it's a museum piece. It's like trying to run a pony express service when everyone else has instant email. He's done. He's finished. You'd think so. But he refuses to give up. And the reason why he won't give up is the real hook of our entire story. It's all about where everyone is going. Formal hot night. Right. A planet that's being marketed as whale's mouth. Whales mouth. It sounds kind of inviting, I guess. Well, that's the idea. It's being sold as the promised land. The advertisements, the brochures, they describe it as this lush, unspoiled paradise. What are the selling points? Giant oranges for one. Friendly, docile animals. Uncrouted open spaces. It's officially called new colonized land. And millions of people are emigrating there to escape an overpopulated polluted earth. Sounds great. But there's a catch. And it's a pretty significant catch that Rackmale just

7:30cannot get out of his head. It's the fine print. It is the teleport device. It is strictly a one-way trip. That's the official line from the company. Yes. The inventor, Dr. Von Einem, he claims it's due to the fundamental physics of the universe. His explanation is what? No. The recession of extra galactic nebulae. Of course. Basically, the universe is expanding. The fabric of space time is stretching. So you can zap matter out to Formal Hawk with the flow. But you can't zap it back against the cosmic current. Which is just incredibly convenient for the company selling the tickets. Welcome to Paradise. Oh, sorry, you can never leave. And more importantly, you can never come back to tell anyone if it actually sucks. Exactly. It's a perfect business model. No refunds, no returns, no bad reviews. And Rackmale Ben Applebaum, he is a theory. He doesn't buy the physics explanation for a second. No. He thinks it's an economic lie, not a scientific fact. He believes that out of the millions of people who have gone to Wales mouth statistically, there must be malcontents. Right. Not everyone is going to love the giant oranges.

8:30Somebody is going to hate the giant oranges. Somebody is going to miss smog and traffic in Earth. He believes the one way nature of the trip isn't physics. He thinks it's a control mechanism. So his plan, his desperate, financially ruinous, insane plan is to take his last ship, the Omphalos, and fly it the hard way to Wales mouth. The 18 year journey. The 18 year journey. And when he gets there, he's just going to open the doors. That's the whole plan. He wants to offer a return trip. He wants to prove that people want to come back. Because if he can bring even a handful of colonists back to Earth, he proves the entire paradise is a prison. He shatters the monopoly of trails of Hoffman. It's a suicide mission to save people who might not even exist or might not even want saving. It's a crusade based on a statistical probability. But before he can even think about launching, he has to deal with his own personal nightmare, right there on Earth. And this is a detail from the notes that I just absolutely loved, the creditor balloons. Oh, this is a fantastic piece of world building.

9:35It tells you so much about this society. Rackmail is broke. His company is failing. Right. In our world, you get annoying phone calls from debt collectors, maybe some threatening letters. In Rackmail's world, debt collection is automated and well, weaponized. He is literally followed around by robotic balloon. Creditor balloons. Yeah, they hover over him. They follow him down the street into shops everywhere. What do they do? They scream at him. In public, they have these loud, synthesized voices and they just shout about his debts. Mr. Applebaum, your account is past due, you owe 5,000 credits. You are a deadbeat. It's public shaming combined with physical harassment. It's horrifying and also kind of hilarious. Can you imagine trying to have a date or a business meeting and this balloon just floats down screams, your credit score is garbage. It's a nightmare. It really emphasizes the pressure he is under. He is being hunted by the economy itself. He is and that's what drives him to his last resort. He goes to lies, incorporated. Which brings us into segment two.

10:37Rackmail knows he needs help. He needs capital. He needs protection. He needs to get a ship ready before the creditors can legally seize it. Right. The clock is ticking. So he goes to the one group that even the big bad monopoly trails of Hoffman seems to be afraid of. He goes to lies, incorporated. And despite the name lies ink. Kind of plays role of the good guys here or at least the anti establishment guys. Exactly. They are a private police and intelligence agency. They operate outside the law. And I love the description of their office. He walks in and the receptionist is this woman named Freya home and she's not just a receptionist. She's breathtakingly competent. She sizes him up in a second. Freya is a key player. She's the top agent in the organization. And we find out she's also the mistress of the owner, Madsen Glazer holiday. And Madsen is a really interesting character. He doesn't even live on Earth. No, he runs this entire global espionage for higher agency from a private satellite that's in orbit. He stays up there to avoid the UN police who would love to get their hands on him.

11:41So you have this perfect setup. Rackmail, this broke, idealistic shipping air, teams up with a cynical satellite dwelling spy lord and his brilliant deadly mistress. It's a classic trio. But why does Madsen agree to help? Rackmail is broke. He can't pay him. Madsen is suspicious. He's a professional cynic. He looks at this whole whale's mouth's colony. His perfect paradise. And he smells a rat. A very big one. He doesn't trust it. He doesn't trust anything that looks that good. And he compares the political situation on Earth to some some very dark historical precedents. Right. The UN Secretary General. Yes. The UN Secretary General is a man named Horst Bertold and he's from a political block called Newhold Germany. And the sources mentioned that Bertold's background and ideology are concerning. To say the very least, there are explicit references in the text to the final solution. Madsen fears that whale's mouth isn't a colony. He fears it's a disposal site. A very clean, very efficient way to get rid of excess population, dissidents, anyone the UN doesn't like.

12:45So helping Rackmail isn't about money. No, it's about finding out the truth. He wants to know what's really at the other end of that teleporter. And together they find a smoking den, don't they? They find concrete evidence that the colony is lying. They find two major pieces of evidence. The first one is Rackmail's own work. He analyzes a video that was broadcast back to Earth. It's supposed to be of a time capsule launch ceremony on whale's mouth. To show everyone how happy and normal life is there. Exactly. Happy colonists cheering waving flags. Yeah. But Rackmail being the obsessive guy that he is, he doesn't just watch it. He analyzes the crowd noise. Yeah. It was a loop. A stock sound effect. It was completely fake. There were no cheering crowds. The audio was manufactured propaganda. So that proves the broadcast relies. But that's not the big one. No. The second piece of evidence is even more damning. It involves an old forgotten satellite. It's called the Prince Albert BY. Terrible name, by the way. A truly awful name, but a very important satellite.

13:46It's an old unmanned monitor satellite that's been orbiting in the Fomahot system, your whale's mouth for 15 years. And for all 15 of those years, it's been turned off. Dormant. Completely dormant. Madsen and Rackmail figure out a way to remotely send an activation code to turn it back on. They just want one picture, one candid photo, one single glimpse of the planet that isn't filtered through the THL corporation's cameras. That's the whole plan. It's a brilliant move. Yeah. They send the activation code across 24 light years. The satellite wakes up. Does it work? It does. It transmits one burst of data, one single packet of information. And then silence. What happened to it? A ground-to-air missile launched from the surface of the peaceful paradise of whale's mouth. Shot it down instantly. The second it turned on, they destroyed it. That is, that is a massive red flag. It's the ultimate confirmation, isn't it? You do not have sophisticated automated surface-to-air missile defense systems protecting a peaceful agricultural colony. No. And you certainly don't shoot down an old

14:50weather satellite. The second it blinks on unless you have something absolutely massive to hide. Something worth killing to protect. So now they know. They know it's a trap, but knowing it's a trap and actually stopping it are two very different things. This brings us right into segment three. The failed escape. Racknamale tries to get his ship, the omphalose, off the ground before THL's lawyers and creditor balloons can seize it for good. And this section plays out like a high stakes action movie. Racknamale needs to get to the moon where his ship is docked in orbit. He's with a pilot from Liseank, right? I'm getting my old dosker. That's right. Dosker is their master pilot. They're in this small craft, trying to make a run for it, but they get intercepted. A big one. And it grabs their tiny craft with what's described as a tractor field. So a tractor beam to caught? They are completely caught. And then in a very bold move, the CEO of the bad guys himself, Theodart Ferry, boards their little ship. That seems incredibly risky for a CEO of a multi-planetary

15:51corporation to just board a hostile vessel. That's exactly what Dosker, the pilot, is thinking. It's a very tense confrontation. Ferry is all smiles. And he's offering Racknamale a deal. What's the deal? Keep your ship. He says, we'll even help you clear your debts. You can run cargo between Earth and Mars. Make a good living. Just promise you will never, ever leave the solstice. He's trying to buy him off. Just keep him from going to Walesmouth. Exactly. But then the pilot, Aldosker, does something completely insane. What does he do? He walks right up to Theodart Ferry and rips his arm off. He does, what now? He grabs Ferry's arm and just yanks it right out of the socket. Just casually, as one does. And it reveals a shower of sparks, wires, and complex circuitry. Ferry wasn't really there. It was a sim, a simulacrum, a hyper-realistic robot avatar. That is an incredible power move. I'm not negotiating with your puppet, Rip. It is. But the offer itself is the real giveaway. It proves how terrified the corporation is. They're willing to let Racknamale keep his incredibly valuable starship, settle all his debts,

16:57let him do whatever he wants, as long as he does go to Walesmouth the hard way. Because they absolutely cannot afford to have someone arrive there who is capable of coming back. Precisely. If he can come back, he can bring the truth back with him. But the escape fails, ultimately. It does. They get away from the sim, but THL blocks all of his supply chains. He can't get the parts he needs for the 18-year journey, specifically the deep sleep components. You can't stay awake for 18 years in a spaceship, especially not alone. You'd go mad. So without those parts, the umphilis plant is dead in the water. We're dead in the vacuum, yes. And the vacuum. Which is when Mats and Glazer Holiday, the head of Lai's Inc, decides to escalate things dramatically. How so? He sees the satellite get shot down. He sees Racknamale getting blocked at every turn. And he decides that subtle intelligence gathering is over. He decides to stage a coup d'état. A coup on another planet. 24 light years away. Yes. His plan is nothing if not audacious. He has a private army of about 2,000 hardened

17:59ex-soldiers who work for Lai's Inc. Okay. He plans to send them all through the public tell-poor stations all at the same time from locations all over Earth. They'll be disguised as regular immigrants. And when they arrive? The plan is they'll materialize, pull out hidden weapons and seize control of the entire planet from the local government. That sounds astronomically dangerous. Freya home, his mistress and top agent, she thinks it's suicidal. She warns him. She tells him's hubris. Why? What's the flaw? She points out a fatal flaw in the tell-poor technology itself. A detail the brochure is conveniently leave out. It takes 15 minutes to fully materialize on the other side. 15 minutes, what does that mean? It means for 15 minutes you are a ghost. You're visible, you're appearing, but you can't move. You can't shoot. You can't defend yourself in any way. So if there's an army waiting for you? It's a duck shoot. They can just stand there and shoot every single one of your soldiers. The instant they become solid. It's a massacre waiting to happen. That's exactly what Freya warned him. We will be massacred. But Matt's an ignores her.

19:01He's arrogant. He's convinced the home army at Real's mouth is small, maybe just a few hundred local police. He actually believes the propaganda brochures. He believes the lies because he wants to believe he can win this. It's his fatal flaw. So Freya, loyal but pragmatic. She goes first. She teleported ahead to try and set up a safe house just in case. And Rack Mill. Rack Mill realizes he has no other choice. The unfiluous plan is gone. So he decides to follow her. He can't take his ship. So he's going to take the teleport. He's walking right into the belly of the beast. And this is the point in the story where everything just shifts gears. We leave the kind of the spy thriller corporate espionage territory. And we enter. Well, I don't know what you'd call it. Psychological horror. Serialism. It goes to a whole nother level. Let's get into it. Segment four. The teleport syndrome and the parallel worlds. This is pure, uncut Philip K. Dick territory. It gets very, very strange. So paint the picture for us. Rack Mill steps into the teleport machine on earth. He stands between these two poles. He gets

20:05demolecularized. The field hits him. He feels a strange tingling. And then he just vanishes. He expects to wake up in a clean sterile processing center on a lush green planet. He's expecting the giant oranges, the friendly animal. The brochure. Instead, he materializes into an absolute nightmare. What does he see? He steps out of the station and he sees ruined buildings that are literally dissolving into clouds of dust. The air is thick with this acrid smoke. And what the text describes as a warhead contaminated ash. So it's not a paradise. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's much worse than that. There are people, but they're not colonists. They're scurrying around like ants, frantically assembling strange-looking weapons. There's a sense of panic everywhere. And then he gets spotted. He does. A soldier spots him. A soldier with allies? Allies. What does that mean? Glowing huge, unwinking eyes. And this soldier doesn't say welcome to Wales mouth. Here's your complimentary orange juice. He raises a weapon and shoots rackmail with a dart. And this isn't a tranquilizer dart? No. It is an LSD tip dart.

21:10Whoa. Okay. Let's just let's unpack that for a second. Weaponize LSD. It's a terrifying concept, isn't it? The analysis in the source material suggests the dart isn't designed to kill the body. It's designed to kill the world. To instantly and violently shatter the victim's perception of reality. So rackmail is standing in this radioactive ruin. He's just been shot with a massive dose of acid. And then what happens? His reality just melts. It dissolves. He tries to fight the soldier, but the soldier's face begins to transform into what? First it becomes this hellscape of snow and rock. Then it morphs into a cyclops, which is described as an aquatic cephalopod with one single giant eye. A cyclops squid. A cyclops squid. Yes. And rackmail is completely trapped in this hallucination. He tries to anchor himself. He tries speaking old Latin freezes from his childhood, liberating domity, free me lord, but it doesn't work. Time itself stretches and distorts. He feels like he's trapped in this state for centuries. It's his own private hellscape. Is this the teleport syndrome that the outline mentioned? We're getting to the definition of that

22:13in just a moment. But yes, this experience, the violent transition from a physical threat, the soldier to this overwhelming psychological threat of the hallucination is seamless. He has no idea what's real anymore. But eventually he wakes up, right? He comes out of it. He does. And this might be the single creepiest part of the entire story. He wakes up in a pleasant, perfectly normal living room. From a squid monster to a living room, that's quite a jump. It's jarring. There's a sofa, a coffee table, a group of people just sitting around calmly watching TV. That sounds okay. A lot better than the alternative. On the surface, absolutely. On the TV, there's this jolly, friendly looking man named President Omar Jones. And he's giving a speech about how great the colony is. Welcome to new colonized Hitzelund folks. It's a great day. But it's not a real broadcast. No. Reckmeal realizes pretty quickly it's a loop. It's a drone. The same speech over and over again. And the people in the room with him. Who are they? They are the resistance. Or what's left of it?

23:15They call themselves the weevils. The weevils. Like the bugs that infest grain. Exactly. They see themselves as pests in the system. The glitch in the machine. There's Sheila Kwame, who seems to be the leader. And she's the one who comforts Reckmeal as he's coming to. There's Hank Santo, a stout, cynical guy. And then there's woman named Gretchen, who is absolutely terrified of something she calls computer day. Why are they terrified? I mean, they're just sitting in a living room watching a boring video loop because of their core philosophy. The weevils believe that none of what they are seeing is real. They believe they are all suffering from something called the telepor syndrome. So they think the living room is a hallucination too? Precisely. Their theory is that the teleportation process, or maybe it's some kind of time-warping technology the UN is using, it damages people's minds. It causes their consciousness to split and drift into different parallel worlds, parallel worlds, alternate realities created by their own fractured psyches. They even have names for them. Like what? Well, one of them is Paraguaro Blue, and that's

24:15the aquatic horror world, Rockmill just saw. The Squid Monster. Another common one is called the Clock. And the living room with the boring president on TV. They think that's just another delusion. But it's a shared delusion. It's a consensus reality that they all cling to. So they don't have to look at the monsters. Wait, hold on. So if they all agree on the living room, why is that bad? Isn't that just reality then? If everyone sees it. But that's the terrifying twist in their logic. They believe that if two or more people fully acknowledge and share a different parallel world like, if two people look at each other and admit they both see the Squid Monster, then that parallel world becomes objective. It overrides the living room. It becomes the new, solid reality for everyone in the group. So they are all sitting there pretending this bland boring room is normal because they're terrified that if they slip up and admit what they really see, the walls will melt and the room will turn into a squid-filled hellscape for all of them. You've got it. It's a collective, desperate act of denial. They're holding up the walls of this

25:16fragile living room reality with their minds at a pure, abject fear. That is psychologically, so it's like a metaphor for society, isn't it? We all agree to ignore the scary monster stuff, so we can just sit on the couch and watch TV. It's an extremely poignant and disturbing idea and it leads directly to the climax in segment 6. Rackmail doesn't want to play along. You confront one of them, Gretchen. The woman who is afraid of computer day. Yes. He pushes her and he realizes she also sees the monsters. She sees the aquatic horror shape, as she calls it, but she's just too scared to admit it. He makes her say it. And because they both admit it, because they've shared the parallel world. The living room melt away, the shared delusion collapses instantly, the flimsy consensus reality is gone and Rackmail is right back where he started, but the monster. Describe the monster again. I want the details. It's a cephalopod, a huge, squid-like creature, but the detail that just sticks in your brain is the eyes. It has clusters of new, fresh eyes growing all over its body and it is actively physically

26:19eating its own old eyes. Eating its own eyes. That is one of the most grotesque images I've ever heard. It's a perfect symbol of willful blindness, isn't it? Literally consuming your own ability to perceive. And then the monster to something even stranger, it hands Rackmail a book. A book. A physical book. The title is the true and complete economic and political history of New Colonized Land. A history book from a monster. Yes. And then the monster speaks to him. And this is the final gut-punch reveal of the story. Who is it? The monster is Matson Glazer Holiday. What the head of lies, Inc. the guy who organized the coup. The very same. Matson admits through the monster's mouth that the coup failed catastrophically. His entire army was wiped out the moment they materialized, just as Freya predicted. And he, he has become this. So is he trapped in a delusion or was parallel world blue? The real whale's mouth all along? That is the brilliant ambiguity the story leaves us with. Matson's words are, I am this creature in this reality. It implies that at the colony humanity devolves.

27:24Or perhaps the colony is this dimension of monsters. And the human form we have is just a temporary mask. And then just when you think it cannot possibly get any weirder, a creditor balloon shows up. Yes. It's the most surreal and darkly funny moment. In the middle of this eldritch horror scene, this horrible dimension, a little robotic creditor balloon from Earth just floats into view. You cannot escape your student loans, folks. Not even in the dimension of IEating Squids. It's incredible. It hovers in front of Matson the monster and starts chirping about his debts. Mr. Glazer holiday, your account is past due. And Matson, the giant squid monster just reaches out with a tentacle and crushes it. That's just dark absurdity at its finest. But it's also profound. It suggests that these abstract human concepts like economic debt are so powerful that they can transcend light years and alternate dimensions. It implies that maybe the parallel worlds are the true reality of the colony. A place where humans are either trapped in their own psychological hells or devolved into monsters while a fake pleasant signal, the living room signal, is being backed to Earth to keep the emigration business

28:28going. So the paradise is a lie. The rebels are trapped in a shared delusion of a boring living room. And the truth is an IEating monster that still owes money. And the government on Earth, the UN, they know. The source material briefly mentions this scientist named Gregory Glock, who works in an anti-prolepsis chamber, basically, a device where he hears random future and past garbage data. It's a hint that the UN and THL aren't just lying. They're actively messing with the structure of time and reality itself to maintain this horrific system. That is just it's unbelievably bleak, but also completely fascinating. It really forces you to ask, what even is reality if everyone just agrees to believe in the lie? Exactly. If the living room feels real and safe, does it even matter that it's just a delusion covering up a monster? I think it matters if the monster is eating its own eyes. Yeah, I'm going to go with yes on that one. I would tend to agree. So let's wrap this entire nightmare up with a final thought for you and for everyone listening. We started with a man dreaming he was a rat and we ended with a man who became a squid monster.

29:32It's been quite a journey. It has. So here is my question. Imagine you were offered that one way ticket. You can teleport to a guaranteed paradise. No more rent, no more stress, no more creditor balloons. You get giant oranges and friendly animals. But there is a 1% chance, just a tiny 1% chance that when you step out of that machine, you won't be in paradise. You'll be an eye-eating squid trapped in a gray ash and hellscape that feels like it lasts for an eternity. A 1% chance of eternal conscious psychological damnation. Would you take the ticket? And I'll add a follow up to that. If you did take the ticket and you woke up and you saw the squid, would you have the courage to acknowledge it, to face that reality, or would you retreat into the living room with the fake president on the TV and just pretend that everything is fine forever? I think I'd stay in the living room. I like TV. I think most of us would and that's the truly terrifying part. It is. Well, thanks for diving up with us into this one. A reminder to everyone,

30:32don't trust the balloons. And always keep an eye on your strengths. See you next time.