What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Borsten hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, a couple of trips coming your way. We're taking off with United CEO Scott Kirby. He responds to President Trump, who said right on CNBC that he would not support a merger between United and American Airlines. We have not at United commented on all the, I know there's lots of rumors, lots of stories about consolidation. we've not commented and I'm not going to start that today. And when surging jet fuel prices could hit your ticket fares. We are passing through right now about 40 to 50 percent of the increase in fuel. It's faster than I can ever remember in my career. And we expect to get to 100 percent by the end of the year. It does have some impact this year. Then flying high in a metaphysical kind of way. An executive order from the president pushed psychedelic stocks a little higher. Investor Christian Angermeyer explains the opportunity. Psychedelics are amazing and wonderful therapeutics, but they are very strong, positively strong. That's why they actually have a responder rate in the clinical trials for the worst cases of treatment-resistant depression, addiction, anxiety disorders, whatever, of up to 80%. It's a trip. I grew up in the 70s. I'm not going to say anything more than that. Plus, the confirmation hearing for the next Fed chair and following President Trump's comments to us. You can have some extra time if you want. You can even put Andrew on the phone. Yes, all of us. That was you. Yeah, some guy, some CNBC host. It is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back to bye in three, two, one. Cue, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Mr. Warsh, any comment on Powell and the ongoing investigation? This committee will come to order. Mr. Warsh, you are now recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your consideration today. I've known you for quite a Trump's big pick to be the next Fed chair facing some tough questions at his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday. Senators from both sides of the aisle questioned Kevin Warsh's finances. He also questioned his relationship to the president. Warsh emphasized the importance of Fed independence and said independence is not threatened when elected officials state their views on rates. He said he has reached an agreement with the Office of Government Ethics to sell nearly all of his investments before taking office if he's confirmed. And Warsh signaled a strong focus on the fight against inflation. Take a look. This inflation risk is still something that's being talked about around kitchen tables and boardrooms. My preferred definition of stable prices is a little different than most academics. I believe that price stability should be a change in prices such that no one's talking about it. That's an old fashioned definition, but I think it's still valid. And of course, questions still remain about what Senator Tom Tillis will ultimately do. And if There's some kind of back channel efforts to either try to end that investigation, move it into hearings, as David McCormick tried to suggest. The president seemed yesterday with us saying that was not on the table. I have my disagreements with Chairman Powell, and I think this project, this new Fed building, looks to me like something that really did get wildly out of control. But I don't think there's any reason to believe there's criminal activity, criminal misconduct on his part. So what I hope is going to happen, and I'm optimistic it will, is that we can find a way through this path. There's definitely things going on around the edges of this hearing trying to make this happen sooner rather than later. A CNBC host, it says here in the journal, in a call interview on CNBC, before the hearing, the president rebuffed the television host's repeated suggestion to end the probe by letting the banking committee. That was you. Yeah, some guy, some CNBC host, who also, we're going to talk to Dan Murphy, who also, I tried to keep telling him, you'll delay this. If there's any chance that the negotiations could bear fruit, you'd probably delay the ceasefire, right? And he goes, no, I'm ready to bomb. Remember? Yes. I said that. I think because sort of posturing with Iran. Before expending the ceasefire for two weeks. That's part of his art of the deal, though. He's always trying to anchor it to the... But instead of me thinking, oh, he chickened out at Saco Tuesday, I was like, thank God he, you know, if you need to tread very lightly. Yeah, you need to tread lightly. You don't, you know, because I don't know if you do that with with Democrats are great. You know, it's going to be war crimes if you bomb bridges or power plants. But then when he doesn't do it, he's a chicken. So it's it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. But let's get to President Trump extending the U.S. ceasefire with Iran. He says the extension was warranted because nobody knows who's in charge. Half of them are dead because Tehran's government is seriously fractured. Let's get to Dan Murphy in Abu Dhabi. Dan, it could be the guy in parliament. It could be this this scary guy who heads up the IRGC. It could be the guy that we don't even know if he's woken up from a coma yet. The Ayatollah. And there's three or four other factions that weigh in as well. So who are we negotiating with and how do you at some point get to an agreement that actually the people in charge are on the other end of it? How do you get there? Well, Joe, this seems to be part of the problem. And I think one of the questions being asked in Washington right now is who in Tehran is actually in a position to say yes. and clearly that was part of the reason we saw the ceasefire talks planned for Islamabad essentially ending before they even began. Meanwhile, the ceasefire is in effect, it's fair to say, but in the Strait of Hormuz, it seems like the war is far from over. Iran actually fired on two ships in the strait this morning, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre confirming two separate incidents involving a container ship and a cargo ship. Tehran saying those vessels ignored warnings, but the British military says an Iranian gunboat opened fire without warning. Iran is likely responding here after we saw U.S. forces boarding a tanker linked to Tehran's oil trade this week and seized an Iranian ship last weekend. Of course, the strait remains functionally closed right now, and that is keeping oil prices well-beared. And then on the diplomatic front as well, President Trump moving to extend the ceasefire just hours after his interview right here on Squawk Box. The president saying he expected to be bombing if Iran didn't meet his conditions, but ultimately he chose diplomacy. So as it stands right now, we still don't know how long this ceasefire is going to last or if there is still a chance for a diplomatic off-ramp. We are almost two months into this conflict. The messaging that I'm hearing from the Gulf this morning is that given the fact we have no deal on Iran's nuclear program, no deal on its missiles, its drones or its proxies, and a ceasefire with no off-ramp, there's a lot of concern about which way this goes from here. And in fact, one former U.S. ambassador actually told me today, the longer this drags on, the harder it is to put to an end. Let's back over to you. Right. Well, sooner or later, there's going to be no place for the oil to go on Kargan, and they're going to have to shut it down, and then it takes a long time to open it up again. So the blockade is in effect, and that's going to continue. But we can hear any time Vance is headed back there, or I don't know, we'll watch for True Social. This morning I saw Babylon Bee thing said, Trump jails man for not paying attention to this matter. It's a joke, you know. He always says, thank you for your attention to this matter. Dan, thanks. One other thing about the hearing. I mean, Elizabeth Warren comes on here. she can be very tough. And I think she was. She can be very. But do you guys remember? And you probably won't cop to it. But her letters to Jay Powell for years all wanted him to do the same thing. Cut rates. So now she and this is pointed out in the journal. Now she's absolutely grilling Kevin Warsh that he might do what she's been arguing for Jay Powell to do for years. Because now it's something Trump wants. So if Trump wants it, now she doesn't. Well, her point was independence. I know. I saw. I was watching. And he made clear that you are his sock puppet saying last week that interest rates will drop quote when Kevin gets in Yeah I think they do Not when economic conditions change we get lower rates Not when the economy needs it. Nope. He said, when my guy, Kevin Warsh, is in there, we'll get the interest rates that I, Donald Trump, want. Name one aspect of President Trump's economic agenda with which you disagree. Well, Senator, the Federal Reserve in recent years has wandered outside of its remit, wandered into other areas. I'm asking for something you disagree with Donald Trump on. If I'm confirmed, the Federal Reserve should stay in its lane. She was, I thought. I don't think it mattered who was going to be the nominee. Is he a horrible person? Do you have to assume he's a horrible person? No, but I don't think it mattered. Did you watch? I did. I don't think it mattered. Were you not just going, oh, my God. Well, yeah, because the assumption that he's a guilty guy and he's a bad guy because he's wealthy and because he's, you know, she kind of berated him for bringing up Stan Druckenmiller as somebody he was thanking in his opening comments. She used a nasty word for Druckenmiller, too. Yeah, well, she called him a billionaire. No, she, there was a, it was like a Trump name for Druckenmiller. But look, I think it doesn't matter because Elizabeth Warren's concern is that whoever is nominated under this Trump administration is going to be a sock puppet, in her words. That's basically it didn't matter who was sitting there. She would have asked the same questions on some of these things. And it's not a surprise that he got a tough grilling. We kind of knew that was coming because of his personal will. No, yes, because because anybody who would accept the appointment from Trump supposedly has an agreement with him. to do what he wants. And that's the way the president has kind of seen this. So it wouldn't have matter which of the four leading names was up there. She would have asked the same questions of this. Now, that doesn't mean that these aren't valid questions to ask about independence, but she did ask it in a particularly. Scott Kirby's going to be on. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. We'll talk airlines. Talk him into that. You're going to talk. We're going to talk him into the merger. We'll see about that. I mean, you heard what the president said. I don't think talking him into the mergers. I'm going to talk him into it, too. I can talk him into a lot of things, even letting you... Oh, yeah. Oh, you're going to talk the president into it. I had to. I had to. And then he said... That was classic. I do one-on-ones with him all the time. That's what I do. And I could have done that yesterday, but went to great lengths to make it an all-play. And then, you know, which is classic. It's just really funny how clueless. What are they? The nattering nabobs of media? What do we call them? Anyway, it was great that all of us got... It was. It was. All right. Speaking of United Airlines reporting better than expected earnings and revenue, but the company did slash its 2026 forecast in part because of high jet fuel prices for the second quarter. It expects earnings in the range of one to two dollars a share, and that is below what the Wall Street consensus of two dollars and eight cents is. United CEO Scott Kirby will be joining us. This is a first on CNBC interview. Phil Lebeau is going to be leading that up. The stock this morning is up by better than 2.4%. United CEO Scott Kirby is up next. Demand has remained strong. We do anticipate that will turn into some kind of elasticity effect if there's a 15 to 20% increase in fares that is going to, at some point, drive less demand. We frankly haven't seen it in our booking yet. Squawk Pod will be right back. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Joe Kernan. As promised, let's get to Phil LeBeau now with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby. Hey, Phil. Hey, Joe. Thank you very much. Scott, thank you for joining us today from United Airlines headquarters in Chicago. I want to start with Q1 results. You beat on the top and the bottom line, but it's more the guidance I want to talk about. You've cut your full year guidance in large part because of the uncertainty about jet fuel prices. We pretty much know what's expected for the industry in the second quarter. What should we expect for the rest of the year? Are we looking at higher for longer jet fuel prices? Yeah, so, you know, first, I'm incredibly proud of the United team. And I think our first quarter results and, frankly, our full year guidance is indicative of it's another proof point of what we've done at United to build a great brand loyal airline that has the resiliency to get through the inevitable crises and shocks that hit the industry. We've had a doubling of fuel prices as we got through the end of the quarter and still be solidly profitable. Grow earnings year over year is a pretty remarkable achievement. But I think the bigger point is really about, as you look forward, that we are passing through right now about 40 to 50 percent of the increase in fuel. That's faster than I can ever remember in my career. And we expect to get to 100 percent by the end of the year. It does have some impact this year. It's not realistic to get it all passed through this year, but we think we'll be at it by 100 percent by the end of the year. So feel really good about the strategy and the setup that United had to get into this, that we can be delivering still, but we're delivering solid results, even with the rapid increase in fuel prices. And you're passing those through in the terms of airfare increases. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit, but I want to get to the elephant in the room, Scott, which is what the comments were yesterday from the president of the United States when he was talking on Squawk Box and this idea of you potentially buying American Airlines, which you discussed with a White House official in February. We asked him about this. Joe asked him about it. And here's what he had to say. And then I'd like to get your reaction afterwards. I don't like it now. I don't mind mergers. I think I'd love somebody to buy Spirit as an example. you know, Spirit's in trouble. And I'd love somebody to buy Spirit. It's 14,000 jobs. And maybe the federal government should help that one out. You know, I tell my people, but with American, it's doing fine. And United is doing very well. I know the United people, they're doing very well. I don't like having them merge. It's just like all of these aerospace companies, defense companies and aerospace. All right, Scott, what's your reaction to what the president says? He doesn't like the idea of you potentially buying American. Well, I love the fact that the president knows that United is doing very well, which he's right. We are doing very well. And I'm really proud of the team for doing that. We have not at United commented on all the, I know there's lots of rumors, lots of stories about consolidation. We've not commented and I'm not going to start that today. But what I will do is repeat some of the things that I've said in the past. We've been on a mission here at United to build a great airline for customers that creates value to customers and we win customers because we provide a great product a great value for those customers and we've been talking about the fact that we want to create a truly globally competitive airline for the united states and today we have a big trade deficit with international carriers many of them are you know effectively state-owned and state-subsidized and they fly 65 of the long haul seats into the u.s and only about 40 of the customers are for are from those those countries And that's bad for United Airlines. That's bad for U.S. aviation. That's bad for U.S. workers. We create some of the best jobs and careers at United Airlines of anywhere in the country. And that's bad for the country. And so, yeah, I've been thinking about ways for the last couple of years. How can we solve that and create a great U.S. airline that all U.S. citizens can be proud of, that competes on every facet around the globe? Well, Scott, wait, I have to go back at you on this. You say you don't want to comment on rumors. If this is not true, if you never brought the idea of buying American up to somebody at the White House, why don't you just come out and say, wait a second, that's a bunch of malarkey. What you're saying here is here's the case for us to be a bigger, more global airline. But you're not commenting on whether or not you actually have proposed this idea to somebody at the White House. And I think people are entitled to know, did you actually bring up this idea to somebody at the White House and said, look, it would make sense for United to buy American? What I'm describing is our aspiration to create a great airline for customers, or customers choose us because of quality. We have decommoditized air travel here in the United States, and we've proved that that's a winning strategy. Our first quarter guidance, our ability to actually be still solidly profitable, even with the doubling of fuel prices, has proven that's the right strategy. And so the aspiration we have is to actually take that to the next level and be a great globally competitive airline. I'm not saying what is required to make that happen today. I don't actually have all the answers today. But that's the aspiration that we have is to build a great globally competitive airline. Scott, we were talking about this in that you were running American, basically. And it was a shock when I think Oscar poached you. And it was a coup, obviously, for United. So you know what goes on in America. There was congestion. Why would you leave if you were going to be running American? So you must have had a good reason you probably know where all the bodies are buried where all the problems are and the union issues and everything else If anyone could fix it maybe it you would would it definitely be a bad idea And my idea is you get another great operator like Bastion and you guys split up everything And then no one raises fares and all the operations get better the public benefits. Newark becomes an even better hub for the Kernan family. And it just makes a lot of sense. Scott? Well, Joe, thanks for some of the kind comments about me. And by the way, Newark is now, thank you to DOT, for finally doing what we've asked them to do about managing Newark. We're just almost a year past what happened at Newark last year, and Newark is now the best, the most reliable of the three New York airports. It's still the New York airspace. It's still the toughest place in the world to fly, but Newark has become the best, and we just want to keep making it better. And so, look, certainly for the last 15 years of my career, my vision and my goal has been to really build a decommoditized brand loyal airline, And I thought that was right for our customers and that if we could give customers a great airline, that they would reward us by choosing to fly on us. And that would lead to better financial results. So everything that we've done has been about that. Everything we've done, you know, in the years leading up to today, we've proven here in the first quarter that that strategy has been the winning strategy for a U.S. airline. And we're going to continue to invest and we're going to continue to do that. We're doing great here. Could you fix America? We're going to keep doing that. Could you fix it? I mean, you can look at the stock. Look at the stock. Go ahead. Well, look, I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on that right now. But I have described the vision that we have at United. Irrespective of anything that happens with consolidation or the rumors about consolidation, we want to be the best in the globe. And I think United is a unique position to aspire to do that. We have great people. We have great product. We've been making massive investments for years. I guess now I'm 100% convinced, become more and more convinced, like every quarter, that the strategy that we had has worked to really focus on how do you make travel better for customers. We've got some ideas coming that I think are not just going to evolutionize travel. We're going to revolutionize what it means when you travel, even out of tough airports like Newark, that we are transparent about communication, that we minimize the impact of delays. Not only minimize them, but we just communicate with you so well that, you know, there's some weather in Newark today. I don't need to go to the airport this earlier. Here's what's happening with my flight. We want to revolutionize what it means to fly for customers. Hey, Scott, let me ask you about what's happening around the globe. Yesterday, the head of the IEA said that Europe has about six weeks of jet fuel left because of what's happening in the Gulf. Lufthansa today, we're hearing Lufthansa is canceling 20,000 short haul flights in the continent to try and preserve some of that jet fuel. Are you looking at your operations headed to Europe at this point? And at what point would the situation with the jet fill cause you to change your schedules and the flights that you are taking there? We are watching it closely. And there is some risk around the globe. Asia and Europe are probably the two first places that are likely to be hotspots. At the moment, everything that we can see still feels manageable to us. High prices, of course, but not an actual supply shortage. And my guess is that if it does become a supply shortage, you'll see things like what have happened in Europe, that short-haul flights are the ones that get canceled as opposed to the global long-haul flights. There are more options for a short-haul flight, take a train or take a car, than there are for flying across the Atlantic or flying across the Pacific. And so I don't know for sure, but we're watching it closely, at least as far out as we can see. think things are okay. But we know it's an elevated risk, a risk that normally doesn't exist. But it's certainly an elevated risk as the longer this goes on. Scott, I want to ask you again about consolidation within the industry. You heard the president in those comments to us yesterday on Squawk Box talking about, look, I want to see somebody buy Spirit. And there's a fair amount of chatter. And we've talked with people who have said, look, the federal government may take warrants in Spirit to bail them out if there's nobody out there who can buy them as they move closer and closer to liquidation. Do you think the government should step in and take a stake in spirit and essentially be the owner until they can find a future partner for them? Well, I think the U.S. airline industry is on the most solid footing coming into this fuel price spike that we've been probably in my career. And you can see well-run airlines like United are even profitable even when this is going on. So I think this would have to get a whole lot worse before there was need to start bailing out airlines here in the country. And look, I don't like seeing jobs go away at Spirit. By the way, a lot of those people have left and come to United, so we'll rehire many of them. But I don't like to see that happen to the individuals and what it means to them. But this is not a problem of fuel prices. This is a problem at Spirit. There was the business model that long predates the increase in oil prices. All the way back into the past administration, I at least have been pretty public saying it's a failed. It's a fundamentally flawed business model that I thought ultimately would fail. And so this is the fuel prices are just a modest acceleration of what seemed inevitable to be anyway. Scott, spring and summer bookings. Yesterday when you guys announced your results, you're fairly optimistic about what you're seeing in the near term. What do you expect for airfares as we look further out into the year? So you just kind of do the math. Fuel prices do what they do. We need 15 to 20% increase in airfares to pass that through. By the way, airfares in 2025 were about 27% lower in real terms than they were in 2019. So to some degree, we wouldn't even have caught up with inflation if that happens. But that really is what's happening. Our bookings are running now up. Our book yields are running 15 to 20%. I think that's where we're going to settle out. I think this is probably the new normal for airfares. Demand has remained strong. We do anticipate that will turn into some kind of elasticity effect if there's a 15 to 20 percent increase in fares that is going to at some point drive less demand we frankly haven't seen it in our bookings yet bookings are really strong uh people are flying around the country and around the globe international is actually even stronger than domestic but we do expect that that's partly why we're going to pull some capacity by the time we get to the fourth quarter high fuel prices combined with we expect an elasticity effect just means there's going to be less demand to fly in the third and fourth quarter but we feel really good about the booking environment i personally think we're a really good real-time indicator of the economy. The economy remains much stronger than I think a lot of people think, than I read in some of the financial press. The economy is good, and we see it in bookings every day. Scott Kirby. Scott, thank you very much for joining us today from United's headquarters. Thanks, Phil. Guys, I will send it back to you. Interesting comments. He's laid out the case for a bigger, more important airline globally, whether that's United or somebody else, but he is not going near the question of whether or not there's interest in American Airlines. LFG. Tell him that for me. LFG. Kidding. Cheese will be next. Still to come on Squawk Pod. I'm very curious about this. Psychedelics for mental health. President Trump's latest executive order on treating mental illness, the 70s, and the opportunity with investor and founder Christian Engermeyer. It's not your Woodstocks LSD. Oh my God, I had a bad trip. That mostly people then said when we followed up with them, contacted them, what happened? Oh, I took psychedelics and a little bit of cocaine and this and this. And I was at a rave. I was like, hell no. Let's take a trip right after this break. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Squawk Pod. Now, let's go on a trip. Stand, Andrew, by in five seconds. Four, three, two, one. Up in Andrew. Q, this is Mike. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. President Trump signing an executive order this week directing government agencies to accelerate medical treatments for serious mental illness. The order specifically, though, calls out psychedelic treatments, directing an increase in federal funding to research their use psychedelic stocks. Jumping a bit on this news, you can see it right there. And joining us right now, psychedelics investor Christian Angemeyer is the founder of Purian Investment Group, founder of Outer Life Sciences, and a seed investor in Compass Pathways. And it sounds like you've taken all of these drugs, too, so you can help us understand. Not today. Not today. Not today. But I did. I did. but but help us understand what's happening here and how the investor class should even think about this so psychedelics and i'm very proud that we're pioneering it with my company at tybeckley since 2017 are on a very good way to become medically used again that super important because people were like texting me oh does it mean now it going to be legalized or what does it mean No like psychedelics are coming back what they were in the 70s and 60s and before like medical treatments for mental health issues Means in the future, you can go to your physician, do a psychedelic session with them and then go home. So it's under supervision in a clinical setting. And do you think it's, by the way, going to be limited to that? Or do you think that this is the beginning of something that ultimately turns into something else? And I say that because there was a period of time where people talked about marijuana being about medical marijuana. And then, of course, now you can't walk down the street without, you know, I don't like the word limited in the context because it sounds negative. But I think it's the right thing that it's only medically used and only medically used with a therapists together because psychedelics are amazing and wonderful therapeutics. But they are very strong, positively strong. That's why they actually have a responder rate in the clinical trials for the worst cases of treatment-resistant depression, addiction, anxiety disorders, whatever, of up to 80%. So that's a great thing. But it's also a very strong experience, which you should do with a professional together. It's very important. how some of this works. And, you know, I think people have two views. You hear about people going on a trip, a trip with a doctor, and then you hear about people going to a rave on a trip. That's not the right thing to do. Because what they do in a very simplified form in the short time we have, we all have an ego, which is great. You wake up in the morning, that's what drives you. I mean, some have a bigger ego than others. Some have a bigger ego, but we all have it. I don't mean it in these colloquial terms of, oh, somebody has a big ego, but it's what drives us, whatever. But this ego part... The Freudian ego. Yeah, exactly. This ego part actually prevents you sometimes from working through issues you have, especially when people have had trauma or other severe problems. Every therapist will tell you that, that therapy is such a non-effective solution at the moment because, figuratively speaking, the therapist cannot bypass that ego. So under a psychedelic trip, that's a very simplified version to put it, this part of your brain, we really see it in brain scans when we do it in parallel, this ego part of your brain is reduced. So some people would then say, oh my God, who am I without my sense of self? But then you will realize, oh, there is much more. People would call it your subconsciousness. I've always wanted to try this, by the way. I'm very curious about this. I'm happy, like soon it's going to be available. I don't recommend it for you. In the US. I don't. The ego's too big. I grew up in the 70s. I'm not going to say anything more than that, but what I like. As soon as you can. No, exactly. Take your pick. You know it's too much. Take your pick. But my question is, okay, this all sounds good in a psychological, psychiatric setting. I still want to know what chemicals mediate the problems you were just talking about and how these psychedelics, their mode of action, their point of action, the neurotransmitter that we're talking about. I assume, is it serotonin? Yes, so they work with the serotonin mechanism. They dock at the 5-H2A receptor. In what part of the brain? All parts of it? Wherever serotonin is. Yes, but we can localize an MRI scan that part where the ego resides. What's that, the hippocampus? It's the default mode network is the term for that part of the brain. Cerebral cortex? It is a part of the brain. It's not like in the higher brain. Yeah. Obviously. So and that default mode network, which is an area in your brain, you see a reduced activity while you have a psychedelic session. Because I can I can see how you would look at the the after effects of doing this. And it could be therapeutic. But I don't think you have any idea. Right. How do you the mode of action and whether it's good, whether it's bad, whether it's asking, whether it's woodstock. Right. I would disagree. First of all, we know the mechanism of action. we know we've treated thousands of people if question if it's good or bad like we know that the side effect profile is is is very moderate uh mild to moderate like kind of the worst things is nausea what does the doctor do to to to watch what you're doing do they guide you through in some way or they're just watching to make sure you don't have a bad reaction so first of all because the side effect profile is is mild to moderate it's more like a psychological assistance than a physical assistant. And some people are really mostly dealing with themselves. Like you go into these, I could colloquially say dream state. Sometimes I would say it's a very religious, spiritual experience. Sometimes people don't want to talk if they have an experience they work with. So it's really the physician is mostly there for guidance. To keep you from hurting yourself or going off in some crazy. These are these sort of, I would say, urban legends. like literally 99% of the people are going in a dream state. They wouldn't hurt themselves. But sometimes, by the way, you float and you come out and like you want to talk. Like you think about it like, I don't know how much time we have, but it can give you actually one patient profile, which I think is always very strong. Like if, okay, the strength. Okay, have you heard of something called windowpane from the 70s? If you took a four way, if you took a lot of L, it's like surgical, it's LSD. If you took a strong dose of that, I can't imagine that that's what you're doing here. And that you would say 99% don't have a problem because there's major things that have happened. People have jumped off. They try to cut off their fat on their... Whoa, whoa, whoa. So what I can tell you, like my company... You said that was a myth, that bad trips is a myth. No, no. We're throwing everything together, every buzzword. So what I can tell you, clinically, hear me out, hear me out. Clinically, my company and some others, we've treated thousands of people. None of what you just described happened. Not with LSD, though. Hear me out. Another company, not mine, is doing LSD. Great work. Hear me out. We followed up a lot of these urban legends. So when we can reach people who post their chat forums online, oh, my God, I had a bad trip, that mostly people then said when we followed up with them, contacted them, what happened? Oh, I took psychedelics and a little bit of cocaine and this and this. And I was at a rave. I was like, hell no. Like, I can't tell you what happens in your brain if you mix things, whatever. This is a total. It's very important. That's why I'm saying it needs to be a clinical setting. We're going to run out of time. Let me ask you one very important financial question, which is these drugs, unlike drugs that Pfizer may work on and ultimately get a patent on and all of the things that can then protect pricing. Yep. What kind of pricing protection do you have on any of this? We have, on all the psychedelics, we develop full intellectual property that goes from partially that we have really a new chemical entity patterns. We have data exclusivity. We have formulation patterns because obviously people don't take the natural mushrooms. It's a synthesized version of it. So this doesn't turn into... The point I'm raising is the possibility that because so much of this has been around for a long time, that there are going to be generic versions, compounded versions. People look at what him and hers is doing to the GLP-1 market or was doing. I mean, just the ability to undermine any kind of true IP in this space. What does that look like as a moat on your business? It's a very good question. So we have full patent protection intellectual property on all of our psychedelics. In this sense, it does help commercially that it's only for use with a therapist or with a physician. So meaning like the compounding won't happen because it's not allowed. It's not allowed to be take these drugs to home and use it yourself. So it's within the medical setting. I hope we get to have this conversation again. And maybe we'll all go on a trip before that and find out what it's really like so that we can have the experiential version. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. And that is Squawk Pod for today. That's it. Thanks for listening. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. To get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears, please follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
