Living Mirrors with Dr. James Cooke

Mike Jay is a writer who has written extensively on the history of science and medicine, with a particular focus on psychoactive drugs. His books on the subject include Emperors of Dreams: drugs in the nineteenth century, High Society: mind-altering drugs in history and culture, and Mescaline: A global history of the first psychedelic.

Bia Labate is an anthropologist who specialises in the study of psychoactive substances, drug policy, shamanism, ritual and religion. She has a Ph. D. in social anthropology from the State University of Campinas in her native Brazil and is author, co-author and co-editor of over 20 books as well as many peer-reviewed articles. She has organised many important conferences in the psychedelic space a...

Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness and is also the co-director of both the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research's program in Brain, Mind, and Consciousness...

Gay Hendricks is a psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth. After completing his PhD at Stanford he went on to become a professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Colorado. With his wife Kathlyn he founded The Hendricks Institute which offers seminars and workshops on the topics that we discuss today. Gay has authored dozens of books by himself and with Kath...

Karl Friston is a theoretical neurobiologist and Professor of Neuroscience at University College London. He is also an honorary consultant at UCL's Queen Square Institute of Neurology and is a fellow of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society. He is also the most cited neuroscientist in the world. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University he studied natural sciences, with a sp...

In this episode I explore mental health and its relationship to stress.

Jussi Jylkkä is a philosopher and psychologist based at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. In 2008 he completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of Turku on the relationship between language and reality. He then began studying the hard problem of consciousness and had a transformative mystical experience. After becoming frustrated that he couldn't express this insight in words, he moved to st...

Amanda Feilding is a drug policy reformer, lobbyist and research coordinator. She has been an advocate for psychedelics since the 60s and, in 1998, founded the Beckley Foundation. The foundation supports neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychedelics on the brain and mind and has been behind many of the scientific breakthroughs in the psychedelic renaissance, including firs...

Graham Pechenik is a lawyer who works in the psychedelic and cannabis space. After over a decade of working in patent law in multiple industries, he founded Calyx Law in 2016, a legal practice focused on cannabis and psychedelics. Graham is also the editor-at-large of Psilocybin Alpha, where he provides data for their patent tracker and writes about intellectual property in the psychedelic space....

In this episode I explore suffering and our intuitions around it by asking why enlightenment isn't something we can easily choose to achieve.

Ari Brouwer is a researcher in the field of psychedelics who is currently working towards his PhD. In 2020 he published a paper in the journal of psychopharmacology with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College's Centre for Psychedelic Research introducing the concept of the pivotal mental state. This paper offered a way of thinking about many types of transformative experience, including spir...

John Butler is a farmer and modern mystic. He has written many books on spirituality and you can join him for meditation retreats in the English town of Bakewell. Today we talk about the core mystical insight and John's framing on this insight within the Christian tradition.

Christopher Ryan is a bestselling author with a background in psychology. After completing his PhD at Saybrook University, he reached international acclaim with his first book, Sex at Dawn, co-authored with Cacilda Jethá. More recently he authored the book Civilised to Death, which levels a damning critique at modern civilization. He also contributes to Psychology Today and is the host of the podc...

Sara Reed is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and CEO of Mind's iHealth Solutions. She has trained in multiple forms of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. She was the first Black therapist to provide MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a clinical trial for MAPS' Phase 2 study on MDMA for PTSD. She then joined a research team at Yale as a therapist working on a study of Psilocybin-Assisted Ther...

This week I share my thoughts on a non-supernatural spirituality.

Michael Pollan is a journalist and author, and is currently the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He has written several books on the social and cultural impact of our relationship with the natural world including The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma. In 2018, he wrote How to Change Your Mind, a bestselling book on...

Richard Oerton is a lawyer and author. His legal career involved working in private practice, in legal publishing, at the Law Commission, in the Treasury, and as a consultant with Solicitors and Parliamentary Agents in Westminster, the political centre of the UK. He's been a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform for well over half a century and has agitated against capital punishment and fo...

James W. Jesso is an author and public educator whose work focuses on the topic of psychedelics. He has published two books on the healing power of psilocybin mushrooms, Decomposing the Shadow and the True Light of Darkness. He is also the host of the popular podcast, Adventures through the mind. Today we talk about the power of psilocybin mushrooms to heal depression by addressing the emotional m...

Sebene Selassie is a meditation teacher, author and speaker whose work focuses on belonging and identity. You can find her teaching meditation on the popular Ten Percent Happier meditation app, alongside previous guest Joseph Goldstein. Born in Ethiopia and raised in the US, Sebene began studying Buddhism 30 years ago as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religi...

This week I share my thoughts on the importance of spirituality for the flourishing of society.

Daniele Bolelli is a writer, university professor, martial artist, and podcaster. His books include On Warrior's Path and Create Your Own Religion: A How-to Book without Instructions. He hosts the History on Fire podcast and the Drunken Taoist podcast. He has also produced a series of lectures on taoism that are available on his website. Daniele has many interests, from history to martial arts, bu...

Rick Strassman a professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. After 20 years of intermission in psychedelic research, he was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with a psychedelic. He performed groundbreaking research on N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, which he wrote up in his hugely successful book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, which was later made into a doc...

Sasha Sisko is a non-binary author, a student of ethnopharmacology, integration coach, and an advocate for social justice. Sasha advocates for a focus on indigenous communities, environmental justice, marginalized populations and communities that focus on recovery from addiction. In recent years, Sasha has been working on a book called Graced By Nature, a work that focuses on the history of psyche...

W. Keith Campbell is a social psychologist and leading expert on narcissism. He is a professor at the University of Georgia and is the author of several books on narcissism, including the Narcissism Epidemic and, most recently, The New Science of Narcissism. Today we discuss the psychology of personality and the modern scientific understanding of narcissism both as a personality trait and as a dis...

Shinzen Young is a meditation teacher who has trained extensively in multiple Buddhist traditions, including the Japanese Vajrayana tradition of Shingon, Zen and vipassana, as well as in Native American traditions. He has also been involved with scientific research into meditation and is the co-director of the Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness or SEMA Lab at the University of Arizona. Today we...