Approche production.
Welcome to Secrets of the Underworld. I am Neil the Muscle comments and in this episode I speak with celebrity chef Pete Evans.
I took a lot of recreational drugs. Why didn't you go on sixty minutes and sit across from somebody that you know is going to do a headshet job on you and share and the Nazi sign, which I did, the diet Trump's physical activity one hundred times. That's we're here to create, the here to dream, We're here to do that. It was a coordinated attack, mate, Like it wasn't just fucking out.
Of the blue.
We'll start off with you telling me about you know, growing up, and then how you got into being a chef and all like that, and yeah, we'll get into the nitty gritty of it all.
Yeah, for sure, I'll try not to bore too many people with.
The story of me.
But see you asked, I will answer as concisely as possible. So I grew up in Victoria until I was seven. Then parents separated, moved up to the Gold Coast with my mum. She remarried, and I got to experience what life was like living near the beach, which I resisted for so long because I had a fear of the
ocean from an early early childhood, I guess experience. And my brother was a surf He was nine years older than me, and he came up and visited and try to get me to the beach, and I was so resistant to it because I was just so fearful.
So I faced the.
Fear, and everything basically changed for me once I discovered surfing. I think I was about thirteen fourteen when I first caught my first wave, and up until that point, I was what you would consider, I guess a nerd at school. You know, I enjoyed mathematics, science, numbers, all of these things have made sense. And then when I discovered surfing, it just opened up a whole new reality for me.
You know, I learned to have fun, and I learned to have fun by myself and with others, because up until that point I was quite insular and very very shy. And the ocean taught me so much about facing fear and that life is always changing, very much like the ocean is. You know, no two days are identical in the ocean, no two waves are identical. And it's been a great metaphor for my life to be able to
ride the waves of life. So the young Pete Evans is fourteen, discovers a passion, you know, finding the things that you like to do, and that led on to skateboarding and then skiing, snowboarding, skydiving, all of those sort of I guess adrenaline street, yeah, adrenaline sports, and I thrive on. I used to drive in that environment of pushing myself to the limits, you know, catch bigger waves, ride bigger skate parks, ride bigger half pipes, jump.
Out of plades, go down the mound, to learn different have.
Different funds and different ways of having fun and pushing ourselves into that position of that, oh fuck, I could die in this experience, which then led me into different experience with psychedelic journeys and going through the death process. We could talk about that a bit more, but I've always quite enjoyed seeing where my boundaries are. And as you know, I became a chef and I was seventeen when I started my apprenticeshi because I didn't want to
go to school. The nerd Pete sort of fell away to the adventurous Pete and learning to cook was again a huge challenge for me because back thirty five years ago when I started the cooking industry and the chefing industry and the restaurant industry is quite militant, quite tough.
I won't say quite tough, it's fucking tough. Like anybody that has worked in the hospitality industry and especially in the back of house in the kitchen, knows the mental strength, emotional strength, and physical strength that it takes to be able to work in that environment and not crash and burn or to move up the ranks. So that was a great opportunity for me to learn new skills about myself again facing fear, learning what my boundaries are. And
during that process I've been for ten twenty years. My average working week was eighty to one hundred hours a week, and so that taught me a lot about resilience, how we can create a mental state to be able to push through in a boundary that we might have felt was impossible for us, very challenging for us. So that sort of gives you a great overview.
Who started you cooking? How did you start cooking?
From like being all this adrenaline kid and then all of a sudden you just want to cook.
Well, I wanted to. As I said, I didn't want to go to university, and I looked at all the different trades that were available to do an apprenticeship, so mechanic, builder, plumber, electrician, hairdresser, butcher, and cooking seemed to make the most sensees because I had no passion for any of them, and I wanted to get a job. So first and foremost, get me at seventeen, move out a home, be independent, live that
life of a young young man on his own. And the cooking ticked a lot of boxes for me because when I knew it would give me the most important life skill that I could ever have, which is learning to cook for myself. And if ever ever I had a family or a partner, I'd be able to use that tool as a great gift to others and also to myself. To me, I want to learn how to feed myself. Number two, I knew that I'd be able
to travel with it. So if I wanted to travel the world, I knew I'd be able to set up camp in pretty much any country that would take me. Because the cooking industry is an international industry where people travel around the world and take up residencies and it's one of those jobs where you can go anywhere. And number three, Naively, I thought I'd be able to surf in the day and work at night, until I realized that when you become an apprentice, you basically work all
day all night. So that led us into open restaurants, learning to have a love creating a love for food, and then subsequently the journey up the ladder was owning great restaurants with my brother and our business partner's winning awards and there the spotlight was on us at the time with our Bondai restaurant, and then that led at the same time as the celebrity chef phenomenon led by Jamie Oliver and people like that into Australia, and then I was cast into a TV series and for twenty
plus years I was on Australian TV screens of international TV screens, which then led me to face another fear, which was being seen and heard. They say the two greatest fears is death and then public speaking. So it allowed me to conquer that fear of that shy kid that had the adventure side of him, but still was very shy in relation to I don't feel worthy to
be seen, to be heard. So that was another adventure that I faced head on until I got to the point of where I like to get to all of my endeavors of facing my fears and insecurities is get to a place of not only enjoyment, neutrality. So I'm happy to do it and I'm happy not to do it, if that makes sense. So whereas a lot of people can fall into the trap of, you know, if we talk about fame or celebrity, I want to be famous because I want to be famous, you know, whereas it
was a different path for me. It was like, I'll go on this journey to confront my fears and I will get to the place of neutrality or contentment in that so that if it ever gets taken away, which it has, it's dissolved, I won't need I won't be upset that that is not my identity anymore, because it can be our careers, our aspirations, our dreams in life that we strive for, which is fantastic because that's that's sort of our blueprint, is to evolve and to grow.
Sometimes the trap can be once you get there and if that no longer exists for whatever reason, you know that we lose ourselves to our situation.
Did you like the limelight? Did you? Or did you rather not be in the lime later?
It's such an interesting it's such a paradox, you know, you do when you don't. Yeah, And I don't want to be that black and white with it as well, because, as I said, the adventure for me, or the journey for me, was getting to be comfortable without any fear anti or trepidation about speaking in front of a thousand people, or being on a show that's going to be seen by a million people, without having self doubt or self
consciousness of what will people think of me? You know when you because that's a big one for a lot of people is they're fearful of being judged by.
Their peers or from strangers.
So a lot of people choose not to do something because if they think that they are going to look stupid or be judged harshly. Now there's me, they'll hide away away from it, you know, for.
The fear of failure, the fear of not being loved and not being liked.
So so for me, that wasn't really the journey of because to this day, I've never really give a fuck what people think of me.
You know.
It's what I think of myself that matters. And everybody else is projection onto me or judgment of me, is their own fears, in securities, themselves playing out, you know. As you know, we're all mirrors for everybody else. What triggers us when we judge somebody else is the part of us that needs the work or the evolution or the growth for us to be able to get to the point where we just accept everybody for who they
are without judgment, you know. And that's that's that's something I have been very conscious and aware of for quite a long time.
So when you when you went into cook In and you became the chef, what was it like for you to open your first restaurant?
Like, what was that feeling?
It was my brother and his business Farta and my father had opened a restaurant and at the time, I was in my third year apprenticeship at another restaurant down in Melbourne, and they asked me to come along and help them out in the kitchen, and they already had a head chef and I was I think eighteen and a half nineteen years old at the time, and I jumped in.
And after a couple of months, I actually said to.
My bosses, which was my brother my dad, and I said, I said, I reckon, I can do a better job than the head chef that you've got on board, even though he was probably in his thirties and he wasn't doing a great job. He had some personal issues. At the time, I liked him, but I said, you know, if you give me the role, I will put in one hundred and fifty percent and let me show you
what a well run kitchen be. Because I've always liked systems, I've liked organization, and in the kitchen and in the restaurant industry, you really need those strong foundations of systems and organizational techniques. And so I dove into that and eventually they gave me the green light, which I'm eternally grateful for to them to.
Give me that opportunity.
And then subsequently I became an equal shareholder in that first business, and we went on to open another five businesses together and we're in partnership for twenty years. But the feeling for that was again there was a sort of like, oh, fuck, this.
Is now real, you know, because it's yours or it's ours, you know, because I had business partners and we're all striving to number one, create wonderful products, which is the food and the service of a cafe slash restaurant.
Consistently, and our motto was always let's exceed the customers expectations if we can. And I've always held on too that that simple phrase, let's let's do our best to exceed our customers expectations. And I've carried that on to the documentaries the books that I've written. My wife and I run a wellness retreat up here over the last four years, and before every retreat, I'm always like, can I exceed expectations, even though I don't know what their
expectations are, you know. So it always is this inner feeling of can I deliver more than is expected of me? And that's that's as simple as I can put it.
So when you when you were the head chef, what what kind of chef would you be? That the jackal or the hide?
Well, it's so interesting because one of the greatest challenges I had to overcome was I was one of the youngest in the kitchen and I was the boss, and so I would often be hiring more experienced chefs to
me that were quite older. So I had to go through again one of those processes of growing and not succumbing to my insecurities and fears and doubts about you know, I'm a phony, I'm a fake, I shouldn't be here that, you know, You've got to work up the ladder to be able to garner respect, so which gave me more incentive and more drive to be as professional and as
mature as I could at that age. So when I adopted that, when I got offered the opportunity into the business for the years prior when I was working for somebody else, you know, I was. I took a lot of recreational drugs in my seventeen eighteen nineteen years of age endeavor because it was rife in the hospitality industry, cannabis, LSD.
Acid, it was just what the food was like. It was an interesting time.
Very grateful to experience that as well, because obviously psychedelics I helped to open up our our ability to see more, you know, on many, many different levels. So I'm always grateful for those experience in my early days, even though I didn't really know what I was doing with certain psychedelics at the time, you know, I saw them as recreational, whereas nowadays I see them as very medicinal and very
very powerful tools to elicit change if we choose to. So, when I was offered the opportunity to become a businessman, I came across a book called Awaken the Giant Within, written by Anthony Robbins. And I was nineteen at the time, and I read that and it was the first book about self empowerment, understanding our insecurities, our fears, how our belief systems created from a very young age, how we adopt our belief systems from either our parents or our
culture or our education. And that was a huge turning.
Point for me.
So I devoured that book very quickly. I gave up alcohol, I gave up meat at the time, I gave up all drugs. I started meditation. I started to read as much as I could on entrepreneurial business books, as many books as I could on human development, on motivational speaking, on all of this stuff. So for a good three or four year period, I immersed myself into the works
of Deepak choprah Wane. Day conversations with God, I was enrolling into spirituality courses when I could meditation courses, I was really on the I was like, if I'm going to work this hard eighty to one hundred hour weeks and I want this business to succeed with my business partners, I want to change the way that I was living, because that wouldn't I wouldn't be able to do both.
I wouldn't be able to take the recreational drugs, getting drunk on the weekend, burning both the candles at both ends. I knew that one of them had to give. And this was a huge opportunity to go into business. So I focused on personal development, personal health, as much information as I could about the human body and mind and spirit. And so that has been a lifelong journey with its ebbs and flows and roundabouts and up some downs.
And it's been such a beautiful journey.
But yeah, grateful for all the experiences that have arisen from all the choices that either I've created or have been off to me.
Whose idea was it to move like or push the brand of Hugos to King's Cross.
So my brother and myself, after running our Melbourne restaurant for a few years, my brother wanted to open something up in Sydney and he found a site first in bomb Dai and we opened our first Hugos in Bomdai, which was a modern Australian restaurant and quite fancy food for the time, was model Australia.
At the Hugo's days, we used.
To like to throw a party at the end of the night all the time in bomb Dai people. We sort of became quite famous. It's sort of like in an underground way that not only did Hugos in Bombdai, I was a little fifty sixty seat restaurant have great food, but we used to like to party after hours too in.
Our little bond season.
So the natural evolution for that was can we open a bigger bar with great food, which became Hugo's Lounge in King's Cross. And you know, we used to be able to hold three four hundred people I think, I don't remember the exact numbers. That we had that for over a decade, I believe, and that became quite an institution for people. And then we opened up downstairs we have in a modern pizza borough as well, and then my brother and us opened Hugo's Manly, which is still
going today. And I stepped away from the business after nineteen years about thirteen fourteen years ago, and all the
businesses is very successful. Hugo's Manly is great. We still have the boys, still have the church sreet pantry down in Victoria, and we also used to do a lot of catering as well, Hugo's catering, which I love the most because if you're talking about adrenaline, setting up like a pop up kitchen for an event, for someone's wedding or anniversary or product law sure, whatever it may be, you know, talking about stress setting something up off site
to cater for anywhere from fifty people to a thousand people, and people and it's a memorable occasion for people. You've got to be on your game, you know. And I loved the catering aspect to it because I got to you can play around with a lot more food than you can with your normal menu in a normal restaurant, because a lot of people when they go to a restaurant,
they go there for certain dishes. So you can sort of be constrained a little bit by the amount of things that you change on the menu because you don't want to upset your customers because they go there for certain things, whereas with catering every event, you know, they'd have a different price point, they'd have a different theme. And so I got to play a lot in that world and I loved it. I loved it all, but the catering was always my favorite.
When when you're going back to Hugo's Lounge and when you opened up, you were in a in a kind of era when you know, King's Cross was was booming. Was it difficult to open up a venue when no one really knew who used where.
Well, we had a really beautiful I guess a loyal following from our Bondai restaurant. We're only small, but we created a name for ourselves, which yeah, people would come from interstate, Like before Bondai Iceberg's opened up, which is Morris's beautiful restaurant down there. There are only a couple of places ourselves and Sean's Panorama, which is which is
still there at North Bondai. We're sort of the two places to go to in in Bondai at the time and then and there's some other good quality places too, But we for some reason, and I think it was out it was the package. We had a great location so you could see the beach, We had wonderful service or front of house, we had a wonderful kitchen team, and we're doing really good food. So we sort of
had that package in a relaxed and casual environment. Because a lot of places that were often really good food, it felt quite sterile and it can feel a little bit sort of, you know, a little boring, whereas ours was. You know, our intention was always to have a fun, fun vibe and fun environment and my brother and the team were great at putting the right music, on setting the lighting just right, offering people the right type of
service that would not alienate them. And the thing that happened to us is we started to attract the celebrity crowd, and not just you know, the Sydney social scene. We attracted the international celebrities. So when Matrix was getting filmed in Sydney, you know, Keanu Reeves would eat there very often a lot. When Star Wars was being filmed, Natalie Portman would be in there. When Royalty came through the country,
they would go there. We had led Zeppelin, We had a cook for as many of the big names in the world than I can even remember. I don't even remember many of them any more. So when that people would be able to sit in a restaurant and have you know, Richard Branson city next them or whoever, it was quite.
A unique.
Casual vibe where people were rubbing shoulders with sort of you know, I don't like to judge people on their status or their celebrity, but a.
Lot of people do.
So that created a I guess a little bit of fascination for the Hugo's brand.
So when we opened at Hugo's.
Lounge and we had wonderful DJs like Sneaky Sound System and others, they used to play there, and so the vibe there was always like, oh, you're going to have a good night if you come to Hugo's Lounge and
there's some good food on off it too. So again offering the package and in a quite a safe environment because the Cross sort of was renowned for being a little you know, it's had its checker past, it's had its colorful area, it's had its sort of dive area era, it's had its you know, explosion of sort of when we were there as well, and then it sort of fizzled off, and I think, from what I understand these days, it's it's starting, it's it's it's momentum back up again.
You goes to me when I remember Hugoes, you goes have it was this. It was the sexy vibe. You had a sexy crowd all the time. It was it was you had the best crowd. You can't take that away. You had the best ground.
It was fun.
I mean I was working between the two venues, Bondai and King's Cross, and my focus was always on the food, and you know, I'd go out and party a little bit. But it definitely had a good vibe to it. You could just feel it in.
The field.
They're going to have a fun, safe time.
And that's what we tried to what's what we provided.
I'll tell you a story that before I started working in King's Cross, I used to go up there a lot and I could never get into Hugo's Hugos Launcher, could never get in. Every time I walked up the stairs, they just said private, private party, not on the guest list. And this time I just thought, you know what I'm going to get in this week. I'm going to get in, so I rang ahead, and this is a true story.
I rang ahead and I had about maybe nine of my mates, and I rang and said, listen, this is such and such from Liverpool Football Club in the UK. We're all out on tour at the moment and we want to come to your venue to bring the players after a training session and they're on tour over here. This is how many of yous are there? And I says, there's nine of us. I said who are you and I said Robbie Fowler and they said Robbie Fowler. I said, yes, I'm a well known soccer player. I'm just trying to
organize this for all the players. Yes, no worries, we will see you later. Uh mister Fowler. I turned up, I know where to a lie. I walked up the stairs. I said, I've called up forward. My name is Robbie Fowler. They said, oh, yes, we know you do. We've got a table ready for you where all the players are coming in this. I named all these players who played in the in the in the Premier League, but they went then players and that's the only way I got in.
That's the first time I ever felt I stepped foot into Hugo land.
Where there's will, there's away, you know, and again talking about.
I'm going to bring that into reality.
But five years later, when I started working in the Cross, I came across the door host and I.
Just went, I hope he doesn't remember what I did. He needs to know now that I'm Neil Cummings. I'm not Robbie Fowler. So but he never never recognized me. But yeah, that's a true story.
Though I heard a few people used to have trouble getting in there, and I don't even in my mates. I just say, if you book a table for the restaurant and have a meal and just stay, stay on, you know.
But yeah, it was.
It was a beautiful fun time and yeah, I hate cred some great memories there.
That's sure.
You've now got out the industry. And then twenty ten you stay, you get the chance to become a TV chef.
Hmm, yeah, how was that?
How was how did that come about?
Yeah, we're just recapping what I said before. So when Hugos gained popularity, the celebrity chef phenomenon kicked off in the UK with Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson and Ainsley Harriet and some of these old school names Gordon Ramsey and so when when there's a wave of something that ripples through, you know, other other territory in Australia, the TV landscape was like, we need to capitalize and create our own version of the celebrity chef format teaching people
these types of recipes. So I was asked to audition and I turned it down first because that was my greatest fear, was being seen. I loved being in the kitchen because I was sort of hidden behind there and my brother and business partners they were front of house, so they liked the game of showmanship, whereas I didn't.
Like the game of showmanship at that time.
So I turned them down, and then a week or two later they called me back and said, look, we
really would like you to audition. And generally i'd known enough through my earlier work of some of these sort of spiritual self help, motivational empowerment sort of books that I read and workshops that i'd done that when something knocks on your door twice for the same thing, that's usually a pretty fucking good sign that there's a path here for you to you know, at least open the door and have a look in and experience and if you don't like it, then at least you've experienced it.
Whereas I was at that point was I don't even want to experience and I'm too scared to experience that. So when they called me back the second time, I was, fuck, okay, I'll go do the audition just to show up for myself so I can at least say that I've done it. And then lo and behold, I did the audition, and then then I got the job, and then I was like, oh, fuck, but this.
Is going to become real very very soon.
And I was, without a word of allied, the worst TV presenter that.
I have ever seen.
So that was that was very humbling to watch yourself back and know how terrible.
You are at something.
But what gave me the strength to persevere with that that was going back to when I started cooking and starting surfing and starting other projects for the very first time, and knowing how bad I was. But then you get these huge growth spurts when we try something new. So I knew that all I needed to do was persevere at this and give it my all and just go in there and focus and my goal, as I said, earlier.
My goal was to get to the point where I wouldn't be self conscious or fearful or scared or insecure in any environment where I had to be seen public speaking. And I remember I've been on doing TV. It was only very I was doing like seven or ten episodes a year at the start, so I wasn't it wasn't full time.
It was just very part time, very casual. I ended up doing full time sort of.
About seven or eight or ten years into my TV.
Timeline.
But I remember I did an event in La, just a cooking event called get a La, and I was the celebrity chef doing food for a thousand ossies that were celebrating Australian celebrities and businesses.
It was part of Quanscious back then, and.
Richard Wilkins was the MC and I was behind backstage. They were about to bring me out to talk about the menu in front of a thousand people or six hundred by down even know how many people. There was a lot of fucking people and toity toity type people, you know, and I was shit scared. I asked Richard. Only met Richard that day, I think it was, And I said, do you get scared, mate, like going out on stage. You've been doing this for twenty thirty years.
He goes, yeah, I still get nervous. And when he said that, I was like, fuck, I do want I do not want to be nervous when I've been doing this for thirty years. So that that changed that that one thing that he said that he gets nervous. I was like, no, I am not going to be nervous when I'm your age and if I'm still asked to do this, I will conquer this as quickly as I can.
And I got to that point where I conquered that fear and put myself into situations where I had to get to that point of complete comfort no matter what. And you know, I continue to put myself in those situations. I remember when when COVID happened, I had a call from sixty Minutes because they were talking about they wanted to do an episode about COVID conspiracies right at the start,
even before the vaccines were brought out. And you know, I was like, okay, well, if you think you have conquered this fear of being judged and seen, you know, and you go on sixty Minutes and sit across from somebody that you know is going to do a hatchet job on you and make you out to be a crazy person in the face of the Australian public. And I'm willing to do that to test myself because and
I loved it. You know, I enjoyed that experience because in my perception, I was the comfortable one in that. It's not so much thriving, it's it's the experience of
can I be comfortable in this experience? And I have to say I was very comfortable in that experience, which again prove to me that I am at that point and I'd be very comfortable in front of anybody interviewing me on any topic at any time with no preparation, even if it was to do a hatchet job on me and paint me in a in a poor light for their agenda, you know, because none of that can hurt me, None of the lines that they've spin out there and in the media world can can hurt me
in any way, shape or form, you know, because all it does is show the game for what it is.
You know, people that.
Lie, do you think because I have my opinion, you have your opinion. Everyone's free of speech. Do you think that's why everyone hounded you at a certain time when you did come forward and you just wanted to talk it up or how you felt, like back in twenty seventeen and you've done that documentary on Netflix for that magic pill, you know, and everyone just went on your case for it, and it's like, what the fuck, like,
just leave them alone, you know what I mean? Like, it's just do you think you just got hounded?
The simplest way to paint the picture for the hounding, as you call it, and this is this is factual soronic illness in the Western world is diet and lifestyle related eighty percent, right, And a lot of people would have you believe that it's you have to work out and run marathons and be fit to change that, right, like shows like The Biggest Loser and all of this type of brainwashing that's out there about it. And I'm not saying physical activity isn't important, but diet trumps physical
activity one hundred times. So if we can if we change our diet, what into a species specific diet one that or an anti inflammatory diet, right, because most people are inflamed. That's where the eighty percent of chronic illness comes from from inflammation, So how do we get rid of the inflammation in the body. The inflammation is generally caused ninety nine percent in my opinion, through the diet choices and the drinks that we consume into our bodies.
Right.
The great thing about when you change your diet, you will have more energy and vitality to play the things that you want to pla and do the movements or the exercises that bring you joy instead of killing yourself stressing your body in the gym doing a workout, that is going to create more inflammation in the body. Right, And that's not a blanket statement. It's just some people put a lot of stress on their body and that
causes inflammation on it too. So the easiest, the lowest hanging fruit part in the palm is understand what fuels your body the best and then adopt that if you want to improve your health. So if eighty percent of chronic illness can be eliminated, reversed, stopped by diet choices, could you imagine what would happen if the hospital system had eighty percent less patients in it starting next year?
What would happen to the doctor's GPS specialist if eight out of ten people no longer needed to see them as often as they see them because they're not getting fucking sick. Now, think about this on a bigger scale. What would happen to the pharmaceutical industry if they lost eighty percent of their clients within the space of a year. Now we expand that out into the mainstream media around
the world. What would happen if eighty percent of their revenue disappeared because multinational food companies are no longer have the money to advertise because nobody's buying their ship, or the pharmaceutical companies in different parts of the world are advertising their products into online or print or digital formats. Then we expand that out a little bit more into the mainstream media, will be that it's already fucking dying anyway.
We're seeing, you know, the TV networks all around the world, they're losing viewers because they're not reporting the news. That's why Joe Rogan, Tucker Kulsen, They're actually talking about.
Important stuff and not just fucking propaganda.
So then expand that out next to the agricultural companies that poison the soils and poison the animals and poison the foods that we eat. Because people would demand and shift to organic, seasonal, regenerally, farm holistically, I can create raised to all this sort of stuff that no longer requires their toxic inputs. Now, what would happen then, Because that's going to heal the planet as well, heal the soils.
People are going to get healthier. What would happen then.
To the lobbyists that lobby the government. The government system would fucking change. The lobbyists would no longer be around the whole landscape of the system that most of us are blind to or ignorant of. It would all collapse within the space a year or two. If people just change their diet, en mass, everything would fucking change everything that this system. You have to understand, like the medical
system fantastic for trauma, are fantastic. And I've always said modern medicine ancient wisdom, natural wisdom, or natural therapies hand in hand, you know, so the point where if you're eating well, you probably don't even need natural therapies or modern medicine except if you get hit by a car or bitten by a shark or something life threatening. You know, they're great fucking doctors are great at that.
Sort of shit.
Sometimes I surge you, they're great at that sort of stuff. And the technical advances in medicine fantastic. Bring it on. Let's create using it, you know, our minds to create things.
That are better for us.
But if you look around at the Western world at the moment, you cannot say that we're a healthy fucking species with all the technological advancements in science that we have.
So the hounding is because I had two million followers, which were mainly in Australia, which is nearly ten percent of the population, that were sharing my information about improving health through dietary principles, and then COVID came wrong and I was just like, hey, you know, there's corruption already in the dietary bodies around the Western nations of food science. We outlined that with our movie. We showed how science can be bought. COVID came around, and hey, this is
just another version of another corruption of science. Be very very careful about the information that has been pushed out. My advice is to wait to research. You know, where is the information about masking come from? You know, every doctor that I spoke to said it doesn't work, so
mask somebody. Social distancing. Everybody was told to stand six feet away from each other, you know, and subsequently, what do we know now four years later, even though most good doctors knew four years ago it was a made up fucking concept that has no merit in whatsoever in science whatsoever. Yet people would see a fucking line six fucking feet away saying get away from me. We found out that the safe and effective vaccines were not safe,
not effective for everybody. They weren't safe for everybody, but they definitely weren't effective for anybody. All that bad information has come out now, you know, and nobody can debate it anymore because there's been peer review.
Studies that have all fucking come out. You know.
It's and the next thing that's going to happen, Bobby Kennedy juniors in there.
Doctor uh.
They just appointed a new doctor jo At, a charitie for the National Institutes of Health in the United States. Donald Trump just appointed him, you know who. These two were outspoken about the whole COVID nonsense. We are going to see over the next four years the absolute truth starting to filter out. And what is that going to do?
Then?
It's going to potentially snap people out of that state to be more curious instead of just trusting the talking heads that said you must do this to be safe, because there are a lot of us that didn't do that. And I don't judge anybody for taking it or not taking it, or standing six feet away from anyone else putting a mask.
On like you do.
You right, but understand that it was all a fucking lie. It was all a lot and it still is. So that the next time this comes around or something of this nature where you have these experts coming in to tell you to do something, and it could be something to do with climate change, it could have something to do with another virus, it could have something to do
with a cyber attack or this that who knows. You know, you know they're probably thinking of something because they thought of this to start with, that you might be more curious next time and go, you know what, maybe maybe I'll investigate this a bit further, and maybe I'll turn on the Joe Rogan or the Tucker or the Neil or the Pete or the whoever's out there that is sharing some information that is the opposite from what these other people are sharing because they've I think they've shot
themselves in the foot, to be honest with you, and I celebrate them for it.
Because I only only because, like I remember when it all came out, and I like, it wasn't just that you.
Were to me. I felt like you were just targeted.
They terminated your contract with the TV, and I thought, this is harsh, you know what I mean?
Like it.
You know they all you did was say your view and what you believed in, and then it was like that everyone just went onto you.
It was just like fucking hell, just leave alone.
Oh well, well, they created this story that I was in the Nazi that I shared a the a Nazi sign, which I did, but I was what was that It was a black black son on a caterpillar and I just saw the Donald Trump hat and I thought it was a funny fucking thing. I had no idea as a fucking neo Nazi sign. I didn't even know what Nasi was at the time. But you know, that was the one thing that they it was like got him. Yeah,
fucking we've been waiting for this moment. You know, now we can bring out the whole the Nazi, white supremacist, fucking we've got him now, you know, we're going to use this and pressure all of his business partners and pressure anyone that that you cannot be associated with this man anymore because and just for the record, I'm not a neo Nazi. I never have been, never now it will be. I love all cultures, I love all cuisines. I respect everybody, every race and like and anybody that
knows the work that I do. Every cookbook that I've ever released celebrates food from all different cultures, including the Jewish culture, and my documentary is celebrate indigenous cultures from all around the world. So on one part, it's so ridiculous that people fell for that. Yeah, like, so ridiculous that that could have that anybody could ever considered that I would be a neo Nazi. Like, it's just it's beyond ridiculous.
Well, even even from that though, retailers and your even your publishers abandoned you.
You know what I mean, Oh yeah, because they got.
Shouldn't they believed in you and know what you are as a person because they be with you for so long.
Well, I think fear comes up for a lot of people, right, and and I I respect the decision to do what they did because they running a business, want to protect their brand and their their integrity right and to have that. It was a coordinated attack, mate. It wasn't just fucking out of the blue. This was a coordinated attack because within the space of twenty four hours, the fifteen business partners I was involved with all pretty much publicly denounced me.
For that to happen, it has to be a coordinated effort from some part party, and I don't know who or what. But it wasn't like Pete fucked up, right, It was like Pete fucked up, and let's go, let's let's let's put the attack dogs onto this to to dissuade anybody else that may want to stand up against the vaccine, All this, that and the other that. This is what we can do to somebody. So be good boys and girls and just fucking go along with the engender. Don't stick your head up even if you want to
speak out, because we will destroy financially destroy you. And for me, it was just like fucking. I was like sweet, like cool. Can I adapt to losing all that income? Can I adapt to being known as a neo nazi by the media? Can I adapt and be content and neutral to this experience that's happening now. Like again, drawing on those sort of difficult challenges that I've had in the past, Can I walk with integrity while there's this public persona out there of your your fucking the racist.
My next question would be to you, do you regret that now or you don't?
Never?
No, I hold no regrets at all, never will, never have, never will never have, never will That's that's that's my that's my belief.
But you know, from all you know, from all this, as all your friends, from all like.
I don't know how close you were to people that you worked with on the TV shows, not like that, but you know close friends. Have they stuck by you for all this or some of them gone? You know, Oh my god, Pete, what are you doing? And then they've just distanced themselves from you.
Well, I think you know.
All through life, we we go through different transitional periods of who we hang out with and who we associate with. And you know, from child to you from very young through the kindergarten, the primary school and high school. And like my daughters, I'm just finished high school two years ago and once finished a year ago. And the one from two years ago, you're still hanging out with any of your high school mates, Like, because I don't hang
out with any of my high school mates. And my daughters has just finished school, she was just up at school, is at for Byron up until yesterday or the day before. She's right in that mix of hanging with the high school mates because they were a tribe, right. And it's interesting.
I'm sure you can look back on your life and see these different transitional periods of I didn't think I'd have any other mates than I did right now, and then five ten years later you're like, I don't really hang out with too many of those people that I was hanging out with because they're married, they've moved overseas or into state or this that, or they've got a job here and they're busy. So things are always in flux.
And to answer your question back to speaking out, I've always been in flux and in in transition, going through life changing relationships and this, that and the other as you can, as we will do so I never hold on. One thing I've learned which may resonate with you, is learning to have and it's a big one. Learning to
have a detachment from things. As one of the earliest learnings and that I took on board is can we get to a place of emotional and physical detachment from things, places, possessions, relationships, desires once where sometimes when we attach ourselves to either a business or a property where we live, or a geographical location, or a partner or a lover or our children, we don't want to let that go because that keeps us safe.
Right.
One of the most freeing things I've learned is it doesn't mean you don't love those people and conditionally, because it actually creates a much more loving relationship where you love people unconditionally, but you are one hundred percent free at all times because you're not tied down or fearful of losing something.
And so.
The way that I navigate through life is I'm open to all as it comes and as it goes. So to answer your question, I never really have these these sort of friendships that I'm needy with.
You know and support me.
I'm going through something really difficult.
Are you there for me?
Because I'm not going through something difficult because it's my journey. So people come in and out of my life and I'm grateful for all the friendships that I've ever had and all the friendships that I will create and into the future too. And I'm quite quite I'm quite a you ask any of my mates. I'm very happy by being by myself. You know, I live quite a hermit life, me and my wife. And even if I wasn't with my wife, I probably live a very hermetic life or
solitary life. Like I enjoy the company of myself, I enjoy the company of others as well equally, but I don't. I'm not fearful of being by myself. So that's along with an answer to your question about Yeah, I've made with many of many of the people that I used to work with and associated with. But at the same time, I have very dear friends that I'll see once every few years. And that's that's the type of person I am and they are as well.
It's like we just pick up where we left off.
Watch describe describe you one word.
Curious, curious, It would be one word and.
Open. I reckon open and curious. Life is.
I've sat with the most powerful psychedelic on the planet is known as.
The molech.
The molecule is called five meo d MT. It's not d MT. It's a stronger molecule called five meo DMT, and it's found in the Sonoran Desert toad. And it's the stronger psychedelic because most psychedelics are nearly all of the psychedelics that are out there or intheagens as are also known in theagens meant to awaken the divine within. And I'm not religious in any way, shape or form, nor am I spiritual if there's a definition for that.
But so five meo DMT comes from Buffo avarius, which is a type of toad that's found in the Sonoran Desert from I think Arizona through California into Mexico. And what this psychedelic offers and teachers is, I'll go back, So all the other psychedelics, when you ingest them, yours know that Pete just took a psychedelic and is going on a psychedelic ceremonial journey. Whereas this one psychedelic it offers us when we take it, is it over like
the science of it. It overwhelms our identity of who we are, who we think we are, which is its gift, and it's terrifying for people because you go through a death process, because the whole notion of who you think you are.
Dies, it dissolves, it goes.
They call it egoic death or ego death, and it's highly rewarding and highly challenging, and I'm not recommending it for anybody. I'm not recommending the use of psychedelics. There's a lot of research out there, and there's more research that's going on clinical trials all around the world to
show the potential benefits of psychedelics. Ancient cultures and indigenous cultures have used psychedelics for tens of thousands, if not millennia of years, so for a freaking long time as part of a lot of different cultures around the world.
But so the pharmer A DMT, what it offers us.
Is an opportunity to go through our own death before we have our death, and to experience what that's like and what it taught me. Anyway, and there's a beautiful book called Being Human by Martin Ball if anyone's interested in learning more about this, and I've interviewed him on my podcast many times, and other psychoouts out there, and what it teaches us is that This is very much
like the dream state. This human experience that where you and I are in at the moment and everybody is in at the moment, is like.
A dream state.
And the actually absolute truth is that there is no eye. It's where we are all and we're eternal and we're infinite. There's no death, there's no birth, no death, no beginning, no ending. It's just pure consciousness that's forever and ever and ever and ever. And that's pretty woo woo. But once you experience it, you'll never forget it, right, And that's the true nature of who we are, true nature of reality, not the individual eye, but the all the everything.
And in that experience you get to it. You have the experience of you get to experience everything that ever has been and everything that will be, in every possible permutation of possibility. And when we are back into this stream state of Pete and Neil going about our day to day lives, we can tap into that infinite possibility realm, which is what I was talking about at the start of the program, about the creation of our thoughts or dreams or into manifestation. This is this is our superpower.
As I said at the start, this is what we're here to do is to create a.
More beautiful world for ourselves.
That's what we're here to do. Whatever it is that you want to do, if you can think that, you can probably create it. You might not have all the pieces just yet, but you know that's we're here to create, We're here to dream, We're.
Here to do that. And so.
The five D M T Journey teaches us that that there is nothing to be fearful of, and that's that's what it taught me. And to live without fear is such a Living without fear doesn't mean I'm going to crawl up onto my roof and jump off and think I can survive, you know.
Like fly. You know, that's not what that is about.
What it has given me is is the most beautiful appreciation of this blink of an eye lifetime that we're experiencing now that feels like a long time, which has given me a.
Greater appreciation and.
Respect that I want to be here for as long as possible if I can. But if I have an accident tomorrow I get eaten by shark. Wow, what a fucking trip it's been anyway, And I know what's on the other side. Of that, which is everything anyway. So I guess so to live without fear is a beautiful place to be. If well, that's that's what I like to do. And if I if I still have fears that arise, then I like to challenge myself and face them and go through them.
It's been a very interesting talk with you, Pete.
Thank you, brother.
I'd love to I've enjoyed it and I'm glad.
I'm glad that was very persistent in trying to get you on.
I'm grateful for your persistence and thank you to everybody for persevering today. However, you want to get back on and talk about food, be happy to come back right and talk about some recipes and the real life stuff you taste and smell. But I really appreciate you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to have this this chat.
And I just want to tell.
Everybody that I love you all and we were all loved, and thank you so much.
M