Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] “Your brain has distinct pathways that outnumber the number of subatomic particles in the universe by a very large number. . . . Your brain is an information system that is bigger than the whole cosmos.” “Your brain is reverberating the whole cosmos.” “We are the great project of being.” “It's the informal experim...

Guest speaker: Shonagh Home & Neşe Devenot PROGRAM NOTES: We again join Shonagh Home and Neşe Devenot in a conversation centered on how plant and psychedelic medicines may used in ways that aid in healing and in improving self-awareness. Along the way we hear stories of some of the difficulties that they encountered not only as women in the psychedelic community, but also as young people coping wi...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What's happening is that the computer is allowing us to go beyond the mathematical objects of Greek philosophy.” “The unconscious of the species is actually being hard wired as an artifact. We're pouring glass, and gold, and silicon down the microtubials of the racial imagination. And as it were, making a...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: At the end of this talk Terence takes off on an interesting riff wherein he speculates that our life here on Earth may have something to do with us learning how to interact with matter as a preparation for some future existence in dimensions yet unknown. If, he postulates, we are the only intelligent species in the universe, then, he asks, don't we hav...

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home & Nese Devnot PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a perspective of the psychedelic community that sometimes gets ignored, a woman's point of view. Shonagh Home is joined by Nese Devenot in a wide-ranging conversation about not only womens' roles in the community, but also how they are often perceived as second-class members of our community in many ways. While I am...

Guest speaker: Friends of Ann & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On August 2, 2014, a memorial was held for Sasha Shulgin. In addition to several of the talks that were presented that afternoon, Bruce Damer captured a few sound bites from those in attendance. At the end of the podcast you will also hear a short segment from one of the famous “Ask the Shulgins” conversations. Download MP3 PCs – Right c...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Even a billion people is too much. There's no way back to the simplicity we once knew, but there may be a way forward to the simplicity that we once knew.” “The human imagination, which is our great glory, has grown so powerful that we can barely unleash it on the surface of the planet.” “Ideologies are c...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.” “It's our machines and our technologies that are now the major evolutionary forces acting upon us. It's not our political systems.” “Everything will com...

Guest speakers: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes PROGRAM NOTES: This program features a recording of a panel discussion and Q&A session that took place at the 2013 Burning Man Festival with three people who are currently on the front lines of psychedelic research: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes. This is an overview session c...

Guest speaker: Sarah Lovering PROGRAM NOTES: Today we travel back in time once again to the 2013 Burning Man Festival where Sarah Lovering gave a Palenque Norte Lecture detailing her work with the Marijuana Policy Project. It was MPP that led a coalition of cannabis activists over a several year period leading up to the legalization referendum in Colorado. Sarah not only explains how that campaign...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: During the 1980's, before the birth of the Web, Terence McKenna's workshops were just about the only source of information about psychedelics that reached the streets. While there was some information about psychoactive plants available in professional journals and university libraries, it took Terence to pull out this information and repackage it for...

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On June 2, 2014 Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin passed on to his next adventure. Although this podcast is a tribute to his life and work, I have decided to let it be told mainly in his own words. First you will hear the audio portion of a video tribute to Ann and Sasha Shulgin. Following that is a short interview of Sasha that was conducted by Terence McKenna....

Guest speaker: Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Rick Doblin.] “Once you've produced the scientific data that's necessary to make a drug into a medicine, you've gone a long way towards mainstreaming the acceptance of these drugs as having beneficial properties. And then the step to legalization is not that far behind that.” “The government has a monopoly on the supply of mari...

Guest speakers: Glenn Greenwald and Stefan Molyneux PROGRAM NOTES: “What the NSA has done is essentially converted the Internet from this unprecedented zone of freedom into the most powerful means of surveillance ever known in human history.” -Glenn Greenwald [NOTE: The following quotations are by Stefan Molyneux.] “If we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We can step out of the assumption of a universal history in which we're trapped, and realizing this is the beginning of a kind of liberation.” “Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.” “When we really understand time travel we may find out it's as common as dirt and has been going on all around us is...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The moment is where we spend most of our time.” “Reality is a term that if it's used at all it's used in philosophy, in ontology, in epistemology. It is not a concept that you hear very often on the lips of scientists.” “The 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is the belief that there is something, somewh...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Occam's Razor is fine in the formation of physical theory, but it doesn't take us far in understanding human motivation.” “What the psychedelics seem to me to argue for is that reality is not reality. There may be no reality, but certainly this is not it. This is some kind of highly provisional, culturall...

Guest speakers: Joh Isaac Mitchell & Michael Goldstein PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature two interesting talks: Art as Technology and Crypto-anarchy. The first talk is from the 2013 Palenque Norte Lectures that were held at the Burning Man Festival. And that story is followed by a concise explanation of how bitcoin technology evolved and that cryptocurrency is only the tip of its iceberg. And should...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “It is not that culture is evolving. The evolution of culture is an epiphenomena attendant upon the evolution of language. Language is the part of man that is evolving. Culture carries along.” "I think people have a greater sensitivity to the mysteries of human interaction simply because so much LSD was ta...

Guest speakers: Various PROGRAM NOTES: The Worldwide #WaveOfAction begins April 4, 2014 and runs through July 4, 2014. During this three-month cycle, people throughout the world will be protesting corruption, rallying around solutions and taking part in alternative systems. The new paradigm will be on full display. As our part in this WAVE, the salon will feature periodic reports from this global...

Guest speaker: Paul Daley PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2013 Palenque Norte Lecture by Dr. Paul Daley in which he talks about Sasha Shulgin, his life and his work. Paul is one of the key people who has stepped in to consolidate and continue the experimental research begun by Dr. Shulgin. In addition to telling about Sasha's chemical research, Dr. Daley also talks about some of the re...

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: “If you step back from it and really think about what the mass media does on a global scale, the most significant thing it does is coordinate behaviour.” -Daniel Pinchbeck Today we feature Daniel Pinchbeck's 2013 Palenque Norte Lecture. This talk/conversation took place late one night during the Burning Man Festival in the big tent at Camp Soft Landin...

Guest speakers: Alicia Danforth & Charlie Grob PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a 2013 Palenque Norte lecture given by Alicia Danforth in which she tells about her work with the autistic community and their use of MDMA. Following that is a recording of a conversation with Alicia and Dr. Charlie Grob, who have just begun a new study to investigate the potential of using MDMA to help ease the...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I have been underwhelmed by the accomplishments of Indian spirituality, personally; overwhelmed by the accomplishments of Amazonian spirituality.” “I'm also very suspicious of secrets. I mean, if you tell me one it's finished. I took a pledge long ago to tell all secrets as quickly as possible. . . . Secr...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “This nuclear family thing is, I think, part of the root of our problem, that it is an engine for the production of neurotic, dysfunctional people.” “If guys really got as much sex as they think they want they would probably hand over the machinery of civilization without a fight.” “I'm interested in the m...