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My favorite interviews with politicians happen when they’ve run their last race and can reflect candidly on their time in office and the complexities of politics and the world. Today you’re going to hear such an interview with former governor of Texas and former secretary of energy Rick Perry.
We begin by talking about the heated Senate primary in Texas. The former governor has thrown his support behind incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and doesn’t shy away from criticisms of Attorney General Ken Paxton or the Democratic side.
We then turn to a more personal topic: Perry’s experience with the psychoactive drug ibogaine and his advocacy for its use in treating things like addiction, PTSD, brain trauma, and cognitive decline. It may seem like a counterintuitive position for a social conservative, and we get into that.
We end by talking about the moment during the 2012 GOP primary debate when Perry forgot the name of one of the agencies he intended to shutter as president — the Department of Energy. It became something of a viral moment at the time, but in this interview we talk about what was going on in his personal life, which he describes as the most difficult six months of his life.
Below are some excerpts, edited for clarity, from our conversation, which took place on Wednesday, February 18.
Perry’s Opposition To Ken Paxton In Texas’s Senate Race
Gov. Rick Perry: I tell people the Bible’s kind of like a checklist that a pilot would use. I was a pilot in the United States Air Force. So they pounded into us: use the checklist, use the checklist. That will save your life, that will save the people’s lives who are in your airplane. The point is, the Bible is that checklist.
So if the Republican Party is gonna be the party of Judeo-Christian values, then having someone who basically has flaunted those rules and regulations, whether it’s standing up in front of God and saying, I will be faithful to you until death do us part, which he obviously failed at, whether it’s eight senior members of his staff, I’m talking about Paxton here, who stood up and said, this guy has broken the laws of the state of Texas and the federal government and we can’t work for you anymore. I mean, that is a damning indictment. Eight of the people, eight of the people who you hired at your senior level.
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Perry: I think this is about Texas and what is the Republican primary voter going to decide about the direction that they want the Republican party to be and a reflection of what they want the Republican party to be.
Galen Druke: And if Paxton does win in that case, what message does that send? Like, if this is about the future of the Texas Republican Party and Paxton wins, what does that tell you?
Perry: Well, from my perspective, I don’t think it’s a good message. I think the idea that the character doesn’t count, I mean, if you want that to be your bumper sticker, good luck.
Whether A Paxton Win Could Imperil Republicans’ Hold On Texas
Perry: This has been going on for 25 years, since my first run for a full term for governor in 2002. The media was all frothing at the mouth of, you know, ‘We’re going to get the state back into Democrat hands, because they had this little dalliance with this Bush guy. Now he’s gone. And, you know, Perry’s kind of an accidental governor anyway. He just kind of slipped in there as lieutenant governor and then Bush went on to be the president. And so we got Tony Sanchez who’s running, who’s a multi-billionaire or multi-millionaire business guy, oil and gas guy, and he’s going to self-fund, put 80 to a hundred million dollars in it. And we’ll get the state back. We’ve historically been a Democrat state and we’re going to get back to it.’
Every election cycle. We hear that every election cycle. That’s true for this one. I’d be very surprised, stunned, even a better word, if the Democrats were able to win a statewide elected position, unless we pick a massively flawed candidate, which potentially could happen here. But my instinct is that it’s not going to happen. John Cornyn will be our nominee and whether they pick a flawed individual as Jasmine Crockett or a flawed individual like Talarico, the Republicans will win.
On James Talarico’s Christian Faith
Druke: You talked about your Bible study and the importance of the Judeo-Christian faith guiding you in politics as well. Talarico has leaned pretty heavily into his Christian faith in his political appeals. He’s a pastor in training. Do you think there’s anything admirable about Talarico’s approach in that regard?
Perry: I would say that he needs to walk into that room where that mirror is and really ask whether or not he can profess a faith in Christianity and support abortions.
Druke: And is that really the main sort of sticking point for you?
Perry: You asked me, you asked me what my position would be. My advice to him would be, you know, is your mortal soul worth more than your political position, your political win, your will to be the United States Senator on the Democrat side. And if you do not pray at the altar of pro-choice, pro-abortion, you’re not gonna get the nod on the Democrat ticket.
So I can’t find it in my, I left the Democrat party in the eighties because I saw a party that was so beholden to the pro-abortion position. And as an individual who will stand up in front of a group of people and profess your Christianity and to be pro-abortion does not, to me, those two don’t mix. So, you gotta pick one or the other.
What Led Perry To Be Treated With The Psychoactive Drug Ibogaine
Perry: This compound, properly diagnosed, properly dosed, properly guided through and properly followed up with was showing some really interesting potential for what we refer to as CTE, multiple concussions, I think cerebral traumatic encephalopathy.
We see that in professional athletes: football players, hockey players, soccer players who have multiple concussions, and what we’ve learned is that those concussions are cumulative in their effect. So, if you’ve been concussed multiple times, those kind of build on themselves.
And that was what led me to go to Mexico to be treated. I didn’t have any trauma in my life. I mean, you know, people who had PTSD, however that PTSD may come, I never had any of that in my life, but I was concussed multiple times as a young person, twice in athletic events, once on loading horses. And I’m talking about knocked out for over one minute three different times. Those are severe concussions.
I had mild insomnia and anxiety from the time I was about 22 years old, when I first saw it in my life, from when I went to pilot training. First time I really had to start performing at a high level. Managed it.
I picked an odd profession to go into later in life, politics, to have a little insomnia and anxiety, which it would crop up from time to time. I mask it rather well. You never saw it, I don’t think. But the point is, I knew it was there. And if I was gonna be an advocate for this medicine to help these veterans who had post-traumatic stress, who had traumatic brain injury, who had addiction issues, I wanted to see, would it help me? And that’s what I did.
The Experience of Taking Ibogaine
Perry: Let me just give you my experience. And let me forward this by saying everyone’s experience is different, the best I can tell. If anybody comes in and says, let me tell you exactly how this is going to go down for you, you might want to just say, this person might not know what they’re talking about.
Almost everyone has a different experience. You may have some life experiences. You’re gonna have, in most cases, a substantial amount of throwing up. I don’t have any idea why that is the physiological event that occurs, but practically everyone. And it’s a long experience. It may last between eight and 14 hours. And again, different lengths of time for different people.
You take the compound orally, and it’s calculated on your body weight how much of the ibogaine alkaloid you take orally. It takes anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour and a half for it to have an effect. When you start feeling that this medicine is starting to have an effect on you, you lay back on a pallet or a bed, depending on which facility you’re at, and put an eye shade mask on.
And that stopping of the visuals coming in from outside, most people will have a visual, from the standpoint of, some people have a going back through their life. I’ve had people tell me it was not unlike a Rolodex that was kind of spinning around with different parts of your life and it’s a review of your life. Some people may find that to be a bit frightening.
I did not have a review of my life. I had a journey through space and I was basically traveling through space. I was very curious about this. My curiosity was what had driven me through deciding that I was gonna take this medicine. Will it affect my insomnia, my anxiety that I had? What else? And what I found was that there was a spiritual aspect to it, not an overtly spiritual aspect, but certainly an experience that I would suggest was very inwardly spiritual in its effect on me and that, you know, God’s real, he loves me.
Bridging The Gap Between Social Conservatism And Psychoactive Drugs
Druke: I was sitting here listening to you describe your experience and I’m curious how you bridge the divide or gap between this kind of advocacy and the more socially conservative parts of the Republican party.
There are people who believe that this stuff is evil, satanic, what have you. And even if it’s not evil, just think back to the GOP’s legacy, you know, imagine Nancy Reagan listening to the story you’re telling, or the war on drugs. How do you put this in the context of your political experience?
Perry: Well, that’s exactly what we ran up against with the Texas legislature. You have a very conservative body. I would argue that the Texas legislature is as conservative today as it’s ever been in its history. The way we made the progress that we made with the Texas legislature and the way that they went from being hard ‘no,’ to supporting this was we brought veterans in who had gone through this process, who had been treated.
And these are young men and women who literally had put their lives on the line for our country, literally. And our government had failed them from the standpoint of how we address the PTSD, the traumatic brain injury, the addictions issues that came from, as a matter of fact, our government was part of the problem, in that, in the mid-2000s, they were literally giving our warfighters sacks of opioids because they didn’t know how to deal with the PTSD and the traumatic brain injury. So they just gave them a sack of opioids and said, here, take these. Maybe it’ll make you feel better. And then we addicted this entire generation of warfighters, to a lot of degrees, with these compounds.
Those members of the legislature looked into the eyes of those veterans, those people who in too many cases were one step away from just kind of ending it all because they didn’t, they saw no relief, no help until this medicine came along and they were introduced to ibogaine.
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That changed minds. And in changing minds, they changed the course of where I think psychiatric medicine is going. Five years ago, if you’d said, we’re gonna be having these conversations about, you know, former governor of Texas and psychedelics and psychoactive drugs, II would have gone ‘get out of here.’ But we looked at the science, we looked at the outcomes. We trusted people who we literally had trusted our lives with, so to speak, and made the right decisions.
I want to think that Nancy Reagan and people like Mrs. Reagan would be open to this kind of conversation today, because I think when, you know, if you went up and you sat down with the current administration, and which we have done to some degree, they are open to this because you can’t argue with the results.
How the ‘Oops’ Moment Relates To Perry’s Experience With Ibogaine
Druke: I want to talk a little bit about your experience with politics before we wrap up today. I’m curious how you even feel about somebody asking you questions about the quote unquote “oops moment,” but you mentioned, you know, experiencing anxiety, insomnia, things like that. I know what it’s like to try to function in a public facing role when you haven’t slept or when you’re feeling anxious.
That moment in the 2012 debate when you were saying the three departments that you were going to eliminate and you forgot the Department of Energy. When you reflect back on that moment, what do you think about?
Perry: I mean, you bring up a really interesting scenario, and I wanna back it up even a little bit farther for you and tell you why I think that occurred. In the first week of July, I had major back surgery. I had a fusion between my, I think, L1 and S5. Is that right? Anyway, down in the lower part of my back and there were some complications with that surgery. Had a neurological hyperfusion and they treated it with opioids.
Six weeks later, I announced for the presidency, I think August the 13th, erroneously thinking I could have major back surgery, heal up and perform at the level you need to perform to run for the presidency of the United States. You know, I’m what, 60, I’m 61 years old. I’m thinking I’m, you know, 10 foot tall, bulletproof, and I can do this.
That debate rolled around. I was taking compounds to try to continue to cover up the pain from that surgery on that hyperfusion. I was taking compounds to go to sleep at night, Ambien, I was taking Provigil in the morning to be alert and be focused.
So, in hindsight, I think about how debilitated I was as an individual and it made a lot of sense to me. Now, as I look back on that, I’m surprised I had functioned as well as I did that I could even remember two of the three that I was going to get rid of and instead of, you know, and it’s humorous now, but it was, it was a brutal period of time and I was trying to perform at a very high level. I was not successful, obviously.
But it made the point to me that I understand the challenges that, that when people are given these, particularly opioids. I think opioids are an incredibly, you know, I’m sure they’ve got their place properly, but what we know about them is that, I’ll give you an example here quickly:
Opioids in particular, some people are very prone to be addicted to them and addicted to them very quickly. It’s one of the reasons that the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma are such an evil bunch of people in my opinion. They pushed this stuff onto our population out there.
But here’s what we have found. If you try to get off opioids through just an abstinence program, it’s like, okay, I’m gonna quit taking these things and get over it now. It takes 18 months for your brain to get back to a normal looking state in a functional MRI. Eighteen months.
With the treatment of ibogaine, that brain scan gets back to a normal looking brain between 48 and 72 hours. That’s what the Stanford, some of the Stanford studies showed us and some of the post-docs and the doctors working on that. I mean, that is a fascinating question. Again, gets right back to here’s why we need to be doing these clinical trials on this plant medicine ibogaine to find out is that really the, is that really the fact? And if it is, we need to be making that readily available to substantially a large number of people in this country.
Druke: It is interesting putting that moment in the context of how you were being treated medically… I am curious, from your perspective, that “oops” moment, was that defining in the 2012 presidential primary for you? I mean, might things have been different had that not happened? Like when you wrestle with what that means in your life and in even American history, what significance does that moment have to you?
Perry: Yeah, so here’s what I would say: I think I was a candidate who was probably not going to be successful because of my physical and my mental state due to the surgery that was done. And it was the most difficult six months of my life.
You know, it is what it is. Would I change anything? And, you know, probably not. It all turned out all right from my perspective.
I’m a lot more interested in where God has got me placed at the moment and what I’m doing than looking back on, you know, would I have been in a different place had it not rained 28 inches in 24 hours in 1978 and I not go to work for Southwest Airlines and stayed at the farm? I mean, I can go back through my life and there are these, you know, God puts up hurdles. He removes them.
I’m, you know, not for me to say that a particular point in time had a huge effect on me. There have been a lot of them that had an effect on me. But I’m pretty, not pretty, I’m very satisfied that I try to do God’s will and it’ll all turn out all right.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. Grab tickets here!
If you’ve been enjoying your long weekend, I apologize for the potentially panic-inducing content of today’s episode.
We seem to be in something of freakout moment over artificial intelligence. In particular, several viral posts have been making the rounds on social media from people who work in AI warning about what’s coming.
Mrinank Sharma, an AI safety researcher at Anthropic, quit last week and published a letter saying the “world is in peril” and that we need to wise up.
Zoe Hitzig, an economist at OpenAI, also quit and wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing how ChatGPT is implementing ads, suggesting the company could use people’s private motivations to manipulate them.
Matt Shumer, the CEO of an AI startup, wrote a viral post on Twitter called “Something Big Is Happening,” comparing this moment in AI to what February 2020 felt like for COVID.
As far as markets are concerned, software stocks have fallen 15 to 30 percent over the past month in reaction to new AI developments in coding.
On today’s episode, I talk to John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and chief data reporter at the Financial Times. He’s been using data to track AI’s effects on the world so far, particularly when it comes to work.
Also, in case AI panic isn’t enough for one episode, John’s been doing a lot of work tracking democratic backsliding in the U.S. and around the world. So, fittingly for Presidents’ Day, we get into his research on that, and ask whether these two sources of anxiety — AI and democratic backsliding — might be connected in some way.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.
Also, heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic presidential primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. You can get tickets here.
We’ve got a lot to talk about! In fact, I think this is our first-ever emergency edition of “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data.” Gallup announced this week that, after 88 years in the field, it will stop tracking Americans’ approval and disapproval of presidents. Its final approval rating for President Trump was just 36 percent.
Gallup may no longer be asking how Americans feel about the president, but plenty of pollsters still are and that will be useful for two topics we’re discussing today: the showdown over Department of Homeland Security funding and the political fallout from the Epstein files.
We’ve also got election news to check in on. The Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th District has become a microcosm of Democratic Party drama. A little-known progressive organizer won the primary after an AIPAC-backed group spent $2 million attacking a moderate, pro-Israel former congressman. Yes, you read that correctly.
Susan Collins also formalized her bid for a sixth term in the Senate this week, which means another chance for us to talk about the 2026 race for control of the chamber. Plus, friend of the pod Mary Radcliffe did a deep dive into whether support for Trump is crashing among young men. She’s with me to discuss it all, along with Washington Post senior data scientist Lenny Bronner.

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will share our reactions from the Texas primaries and much more. You can get tickets here.
Primary season is starting with a bang in just three weeks. Texans will decide which Democrat and Republican they’d like to see face off in a potentially competitive Senate election this fall.
Arkansas and North Carolina will also head to the polls on March 3, but few contests across the country compare to the matchups in Texas. On the Democratic side, the race is primarily between state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. On the Republican side, it’s incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Both primaries feature some similarities: a better-funded, more mild-mannered establishment favorite on one side — Talarico and Cornyn — and a more bombastic presence known for riling up the base on the other — Crockett and Paxton. Of course, there are plenty of differences, too, which we’ll get into. For one, the Republican primary appears likely to head to a runoff.
All of this comes shortly after a special state Senate election in historically Republican Tarrant County resulted in a 30-percentage-point swing to the left. Democrat Taylor Rehmet won by 14 points in a district Trump carried by 17. That gives Democrats some hope in their pursuit of winning a Senate race in Texas for the first time since 1988, though there’s plenty of disagreement within the party over what that path might look like.
Today, we take a look at both Senate primaries in Texas, as well as the broader political environment in the state at a time when one of Republicans’ biggest success stories — gains with Latino voters — looks seriously imperiled. With me to do that is Patrick Svitek, a political reporter who has long covered Texas at The Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle and most recently covered national politics at The Washington Post.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.
On Monday’s episode we began to set the table for the 2026 midterms. Today we acknowledge that there’s something of a bull threatening all the fine china we’ve just laid out. Pardon the strained metaphor.
Put bluntly, the 2026 midterms will be the first nationwide federal election with Trump as president since 2020, when he pushed to overturn the results. Some recent developments have already caused a tea cup or two to wobble. I promise I’m done with the metaphor now.
This week, on Dan Bongino’s podcast, Trump suggested that Republicans move to nationalize elections in 15 unnamed states and later reiterated his push from behind the Resolute Desk at a bill signing ceremony. Last week, in an unusual move, the FBI raided a Fulton County elections office, seizing 2020 ballots and other voting records.
In the background of all of this, starting last year, the Department of Justice began requesting full voter rolls with private voter information from states, in an apparent attempt to create a national voter file.
Trump has also issued executive orders attempting to change the elections process nationally, including that all ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day and that Americans show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote. For what it’s worth, he has also quipped about canceling the election, something he can’t do, and about ending mail voting.
Concerned about losses at the midterms, state Republicans, at Trump’s request, have already pursued mid-decade gerrymandering to try to buttress their majority. Trump’s latest comments about nationalizing elections came after a Democrat won a state Senate seat in Tarrant County, Texas, by over-performing Trump’s win in 2024 by 30 percentage points.
It doesn’t take a detective to put these pieces together. A president who has a record of only accepting election results when he wins is concerned about Republican losses at the midterms. He has told Republicans himself that he doesn’t want the ensuing consequences, which would be Democratic investigations into his administration. In an attempt to prevent that, Trump may sow doubt in the results in 2026 or try more serious interventions.
Today we dig into what that could look like and detail the ways American elections are designed to be resilient. After all, it’s not one bull in one china shop. There are more than 9,000 jurisdictions administering elections nationwide and no matter what Trump says, the constitution charges the states with running elections.
With me to discuss it all is Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at Votebeat, and Jessica Huseman, editorial director of Votebeat. Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and election administration.