Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What psychedelics are about is deconditioning all of these culturally induced, sensory biases and idealogical biases, basically it reshuffles the intellectual and sensory deck. And it's a wonderful, salutary thing to come along for Western culture at this moment because we're basically running out of inte...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Democracy is this innate belief in people. It's a psychedelic way of doing it. It's the closest we can get to anarchy. Anarchy to my mind is, of course, the ideal. But anarchy has to be mediated with policy, and the way you do that is through democracy.” “The Earth is in far worse shape than we think.” “T...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The thing about [ayahuasca] is that you always come out of it in great shape. Ken's right, you feel better the day after than if you hadn't done it. What [other] drug can you say that of?” “I think this ayahuasca thing is the last living remnant of this kind of way of relating to nature. Because in the he...

Guest speakers: Ellen Brown, Letitia Pepper, & Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features insights from Ellen Brown and Latitia Pepper in regards to California's upcoming ballot measure Proposition 64. As you will hear, this measure will eliminate the current medical marijuana laws in the state. And while anyone over the age of 21 will be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana, the d...

Guest speaker: Erik Davis PROGRAM NOTES: “The whole history of Buddhism in the West, the whole thing in the post war period as Buddhism starts to become really popular, is inextricable from psychedelics.” -Erik Davis Today's podcast features a talk that was given by Erik Davis in which he unravels the history of both the Tibetan Book of the Dead and its psychedelic sister, the Psychedelic Experien...

Guest speaker: Professor David Nutt PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2016 talk that Professor David Nutt gave at the annual Glastonbury Festival. His topic was “Do psychedelics matter?”. Although demonised, and attracting severe criminal penalties for users during the half century of the “war on drugs”, psychedelics are now undergoing a renaissance – both in terms of scientific research...

Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott PROGRAM NOTES: In today's podcast Jonathan Ott unfolds a parade of history setting out the use and prohibition of psychedelic medicines throughout the course of human history. Although this talk was originally given at a 1996 entheobotany conference, it remains as current as if it were given yesterday. After Jonathan describes human uses of psychoactive plants stretchin...

Guest speaker: Michael Garfield PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program features Michael Garfield who went to school for paleontology and then psychology before leaving academia to embark on a decade-long "trans-disciplinary" independent study of the intersections between art, science, and philosophy. As an experimental acoustic-electronic guitarist-singer-songwriter, as a scientific illustrator turned per...

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home and Sally PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and a cannabis grower in the State of Washington, where both medical and recreational cannabis are now legal. Among other things, we learn how cannabis can be grown without the use of any chemicals to keep the pests away, thus providing their customers with truly healthy medicine. We...

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Sasha Shulgin in 1996. In many ways this is a perfect Shulgin talk for a podcast because he didn't use any photos or the chalkboard to assist in his presentation. This talk is also one of Sasha's best presentations as for not just the chemistry but also for some of the personal stories he tells. Also, he clarifies...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today we pick up on the third section of a Terence McKenna workshop that was held in December of 1989. An interesting feature of this session is a report that Terence asked one of his friends to give about the state of ayahuasca use in Amazonian Peru. As one of the earliest accounts of what a Westerner will encounter when searching for an ayahuasca exp...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I tend to think that there is a kind of unconscious racism in the suppression of the idea that the origin of not high culture but of humanism itself is in Africa.” “[The psychedelic experience] is about what is real, not what is culturally sanctioned.” “The ego lives by constraint. It draws lines, and thi...

Guest speaker: Marian Goodell PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a Palenque Norte Lecture given at the 2015 Burning Man Festival by Marian Goodall who is Burning Man's Chief Engagement Officer (CEO). This was actually a focused Q&A session during which many of the community's most pressing issues were discussed. Even if you aren't interesting in attending Burning Man yourself, this discussion...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “History is, in fact, the quenching and the withdrawal of this relationship of symbiosis to the rest of nature.” “Hedonists are people who don't take hallucinogens, to my mind, because it largely is very hard work. I mean it isn't always hard work, but as a life, as a path, it's extremely hard work.” “The...

Guest speaker: Neşe Devenot Help Neşe complete her Psychedelic Humanities Research PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features three short talks by Neşe Devenot who is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Puget Sound, where she teaches classes on psychedelics and literature. Nese received her PhD in 2015 in comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing...

Guest speakers: Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Gary Fisher, Fraser Clark, Terence McKenna, & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a retrospective of some of the highlights of podcasts with several of the elders who are no longer with us. These clips include talks by Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Gary Fisher, Fraser Clark, Terence McKenna, and Sasha Shulgin. Interspersed with th...

Guest speaker: Neal Goldsmith PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Neal Goldsmith.] “Personality is a strategy devised by a two year old.” “Parenting is like that. You don't want to be directing your child. You want to be more like a forest ranger than a farmer, making sure that if lightening strikes and there's fires you go put it out. But other than than you let the bramble grow, beautifu...

Guest speakers: Nathan Ehrlich & Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today the first feature is a story by Nathan Ehrlich which first appeared on the Israel Story Podcast this past January. This is a story of healing, both physically and psychologically by two men from different countries who discovered the healing properties of psychedelic medicines. We then close with a short rap by Terence McKenna w...

Guest speaker: Bernardo Kastrup PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a lengthy reading by Bernardo Kastrup from his new book, More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief. This reading comes from Part 3 of the book, which is a fictional account of a young scientist who participated in a research program that is investigating the nature of reality through the use of psychedelic medici...

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a series of raps by Bruce Damer who is backed up by the Faye Steen House Band led by: Joe Oppenheimer on loops, FX, and acoustic, with Darcy Davis on keys, and Aengus Donald on percussion. The recording was made in Melbourne, Australia in 2015. This is followed by Lorenzo giving a few of his thoughts about the state of the world to...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Trust your perceptions. Trust your intuition. And then accept the consequences, because this is what existential validity must be.” “Must it not be that humanity is the yeast of of the Gaian alchemical rarefaction, and that human history is the process of catalyzing the alchemical condensation.” “Speciati...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What we would call manic depression, despair, and that chaotic, near psychotic state of unbounded hopelessness is the precondition then for the alchemical work.” “An angel chartered modern science. It's the alchemical angel, which will not die. It returns again and again to guide the destinies of nations...

Guest speakers: Rose Kiseato & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Rose Kiseato Shepherd Davis, who is a Navajo-Hopi water woman of the Native American Church of North America. She is from the tobacco clan and is a 5th generation grandmother in her maternal line. Rose is an accomplished artisan bead-worker who teaches classes on this ancient...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Modern philosophy is a desert for my money, and who cares about it? Nobody cares about it. Who's living their life according to the conceptions of modern philosophy, nobody as far as I can see.” “We live in a universe so alienated that we can barely conceive of the way back.” “We're like people who don't...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “A child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it.” “Buddhism would have gotten nowhere in America had not psychedelics created a context for Buddhist language to take root.” “Modernity has fixed our minds in the categories of Cartesian rationalism.” “The imagination is central...