Comedian Shane Mauss brings his multimedia comedy show to Walter Studios on Thursday night. The show is called “A Better Trip,” and as the title suggests, much of it is built around psychedelics.
Mauss has built a reputation as a kind of goofball philosopher, blending personal storytelling, brain science and acid-infused insights in his stand-up specials and podcast episodes. But a Shane Mauss show is more than just the comedic equivalent of a Jerry Garcia solo.
He’s not just aimlessly noodling on big ideas — he has a larger point to make about the intersection of comedy, science and psychedelics. Mauss sees powerful connections between them and believes that integrating our understanding of all three can help us make sense of ourselves.
Mauss joined The Show to talk about how he knows that, because that’s what they’ve done for him.
Full conversation
SHANE MAUSS: I felt very alienated in my entire life, I didn't really feel like the narrative of what life was about agreed with me very well. I was from like a cartoonishly wholesome midwestern upbringing where like questioning anything was exceptionally taboo, and I always felt like I had a very absurd sense of humor that only my close friends could get and, and I always had wanted to have these philosophical conversations about life.
And I remember doing mushrooms for the first time and just looking around and it just feeling like I felt heard by my mushroom, I was like, I knew life was weird and mushrooms has just confirmed it for me. I knew that our perceptions and our beliefs were very like malleable and not so set in stone and not to be taken so seriously.
SAM DINGMAN: I have to say Shane, this is, this is really fascinating to talk to you about because I, I think we're about the same age. I'm, I'm 42 you know,
MAUSS: I’m 44.
DINGMAN: OK, you know, like the thing I remember thinking about back, you know, when folks our age were starting to experiment with drugs, particularly psychedelics, is that there was such a difference, like people from our parents' generation, they thought of these as like holy sacraments that were gonna like save the world, you know. That we're gonna like completely unlock this new level of global consciousness. And for folks our age it, it was more what you're talking about. It was, it was almost more of like a way of finding personal affirmation.
MAUSS: You know, that generation was more Beatles and, and Pink Floyd and like loving one another to rally against the war machine or, or whatever. And my generation was more like Nirvana like, like, you know, just, just rebelling just generally and, and there was something just about those effects that you would have on marijuana that would, that would make some of those things you know, that much more tangible.
DINGMAN: Wait, did you, did you just hear that echo that just happened? That was amazing.
MAUSS: I did, I did it myself.
DINGMAN: Fantastic. I was like, did I…
MAUSS: I was just adding a little something to the interview. I have a voice processor here that I thought would be funny to make. So to me …
DINGMAN: I was like, did Shane somehow send LSD to the studio and put it in my coffee?
MAUSS: I know I just wanted to mess with you a little bit. I hope you don't mind.
DINGMAN: Oh not at all. Not at all. Well, so, so this is fascinating to me because I often think of stand-up, and tell me if you disagree, as a way of kind of arguing for your own point of view when it seems like nobody else agrees with you. So was there any similarity between those impulses?
MAUSS: So, the material of this show, I kind of say it's a blend of comedy and science about psychedelics. And so often when people are like, well, why, how, how do those things go together? I think that they are all in their own way doing this thought experiment of this alien anthropologist, which is they look at behaviors most of us take for granted and they think about what if an alien came down and was observing our behavior?
You know, this is like the classic Seinfeld setup like, hey, have you ever noticed this? Why are escalators this way? And these, like, otherwise mundane things that no one else cares to even notice or think too much about and you see them through this different lens that brings out kind of the absurdity in the, in the everyday. And I would say that psychedelics force that kind of alien anthropologist perspective on you.
DINGMAN: Yeah, I'm thinking of the, the classic Ram Dass story about doing LSD for one of the first times and having this thought, who's minding the store? And realizing that there is this kind of double consciousness that is happening that he is still himself and he is still alive and a human being. But he's also noticing all these elements of being a human being that he never thinks about otherwise.
MAUSS: And, and this is like, what I'm absolutely obsessed with. And I, I think that as I got into comedy and started, you know, writing jokes about human behavior, I just got deeply interested in that subject and started reading a lot of science books just about, you know, psychology and neuroscience and behavioral economics. Kind of like why we spend money or save money in peculiar ways that doesn't necessarily match what some robot would, would spit out as the most sensible choice.
And, like, I'm such a sucker for any time I go into a convenience store and there's a new candy. I'm like, I have to try it. I, in my mind, I think it's gonna be like some great technological advancement that has just taken place in the candy world and it never does. Candy is fine. It's been, they figured candy out a long time ago. It's rare to find a good new one and I fall for that every damn time. And so like, why?
And, and then you kind of look at it and like why the brain might be a sucker for kind of novelty. I might think about some of the evolutionary underpinnings of why we have a preference for high sugar things that might be mismatched with our modern environment where we are now. Sometimes the victim of our own abundance.
DINGMAN: I've had that experience that you're describing with candy too and we even have a name for it, right? Sugar high. It's like a fake rush. But like the thing that maybe science and psychedelics and stand-up comedy all have in common, at least, you know, when done well is that it's not a sugar high.
I mean, like if you go to see a really great stand-up comedian, you are gonna have your perspective challenged sometimes in a really confronting and profound way. If you go to hear a really great scientist speak there, you're gonna walk out of the auditorium not seeing the world the same way. And if, and if you take a really powerful psychedelic under safe circumstances, it's gonna be the same thing.
MAUSS: Yeah. I mean, as I get older too, I, I think that my, my take has become more and more balanced, which is like when you have a psychedelic experience, when you see this hilarious comedian, when you hear some new science talk on a new subject, like, you know, be there in the moment and appreciate all that.
And then also, like, even if you learn something new or had some new perception, you don't need to replace all of your existing framework of reality with whatever the, the new take that just entered your brain is, you'll hear a lot of people will have a psychedelic experience be like, “oh my God, I just saw the truth” and I doubt it.
You, you, you probably got a different perspective and I think that's incredibly valuable, but you don't wanna replace an old dogmatic belief with a new dogmatic belief. You'll hear a lot of people be like comedians. They're, they're the real truth tellers. Like, well, they're honest. There, there's a, there's like, there's a difference between honesty and truth.
DINGMAN: All right. Well, Shane Mauss will be bringing his show a better trip to Walter Studios on Thursday, Oct. 10.
