Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So my guest
Speaker 1: today is Dr Dennis McKenna. He's the famed ethnobodanist, ethno pharmacologist,
Speaker 1: anthropologist who has been studying psychedelics and plant medicines for
Speaker 1: over fifty years. He's authored and co authored dozens, if
Speaker 1: not hundreds, of articles and a number of books, both
Speaker 1: on his own and with others, including his famed brother
Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna. The impetus for doing this interview now is
Speaker 1: that a book that he wrote some years ago is
Speaker 1: about to be reissued. It's called The Brotherhood of the
Speaker 1: Screaming Abyss, and it's a memoir by Dennis that also
Speaker 1: includes a long account of his relationship with his brother
Speaker 1: and the respective journeys together and apart. So, Dennis, thank
Speaker 1: you ever so much for joining me and my listeners
Speaker 1: on Psychoactive. Well, thank you Ethan for inviting me. It's
Speaker 1: a pleasure, so thanks, thank you. Well, just let me
Speaker 1: just start off. You know, in part want to be
Speaker 1: talking about, right, is your brother Terrence. And I realized
Speaker 1: on some level it's got to be awfully irritating to
Speaker 1: have a famous brother and a famous brother in the
Speaker 1: same field, more or less an intersecting field. Yet who also,
Speaker 1: you know because of the last names, obviously you've benefited
Speaker 1: from that familial connection, but obviously there was an intense
Speaker 1: personal relationship between that. But before we delve into the
Speaker 1: origins of that, which I really want to get into,
Speaker 1: because you really get into in the book. You know,
Speaker 1: when you first wrote this book, I mean, you're fairly
Speaker 1: modest about like you know, when when what you said,
Speaker 1: when all, when all comes down to, ultimately, people pay
Speaker 1: more attention to me because you know, my brother was Terrence.
Speaker 1: But I wonder over the last ten years, which is
Speaker 1: when I've only known you over the last ten years,
Speaker 1: when we crossed paths of various conferences. I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that your name has become much more
Speaker 1: prominent as the Psychelics renaissance has kind of blasted off.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if you were writing this memoir today,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you think it would be different
Speaker 1: in terms of your reflecting on your relationship with Terrence
Speaker 1: and its impact on your life? Well? Uh, not that different, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it will be different, and the
Speaker 1: difference will be reflected in this afterwards that I wrote
Speaker 1: it effectively, and their chapter another about fifty to sixty
Speaker 1: page chapter kind of looking back the last ten years
Speaker 1: from the date that it was that it was published,
Speaker 1: and even back the last twenty years or so since
Speaker 1: Terence passed on, because the original book basically ends more
Speaker 1: or less when Terence passed on in two thousands, you know,
Speaker 1: and you you mentioned that, you know, it must be
Speaker 1: it must be irritating to you know, be the brother
Speaker 1: of Terence mckinnick, because he gets all the attention, you know,
Speaker 1: And uh, in a way that's still true. I mean,
Speaker 1: Terence is probably got more Twitter followers than I do.
Speaker 1: Not bad for a guy who has been dead for
Speaker 1: twenty two years, you know, but I don't really resent
Speaker 1: it at all, because Terence and I were, you know,
Speaker 1: we were intensely interested in the same things, but different
Speaker 1: compliment nary aspects of the same thing. So we didn't
Speaker 1: really have any kind of rivalry. We were competing for attention,
Speaker 1: and I mean what fame we had was basically from
Speaker 1: our books. And and in Terence's case, he was very
Speaker 1: much on the lecture circuit and I was not so much.
Speaker 1: And that was really by choice, you know, I preferred
Speaker 1: to be in the background. I'm I'm inherently you know,
Speaker 1: by nature, I'm kind of an introvert, and I like
Speaker 1: to be in the background. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting is you really part of the thing
Speaker 1: about your book, The Brotherhood Book of the Screening Abyss,
Speaker 1: is your your skign of like reflecting and psychoanalyzing about
Speaker 1: your life and your family and your parents and and
Speaker 1: Terrence and you know, obviously you know, you're he's four
Speaker 1: years older. He's born in forty six, You're born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, but you describe at a young age about
Speaker 1: him basically being a fairly torturous older brother. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you know tickling you, scaring the hell out
Speaker 1: of you. What he says, What if that thing never
Speaker 1: oppose my will? He says to you, and he freaks
Speaker 1: you out about that. Nobody people. And look, I'm the
Speaker 1: oldest of four, so I'm probably guilty of some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that Terence was guilty of. But I don't
Speaker 1: think I was quite as mean as he was back then. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the way, you know, the dynamic was
Speaker 1: between us back then is not that atypical from little
Speaker 1: brother to older brother, you know, kind of interactions and dynamics,
Speaker 1: especially when the gap in ages four years. I mean
Speaker 1: that's a kind of a critical gap because that means,
Speaker 1: you know, as we moved into education, like when I
Speaker 1: was in junior high school, he was in high school.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, he'd already left. But
Speaker 1: I described those things. You know, you write a memoir
Speaker 1: and you about what you remember, and and in my
Speaker 1: early time growing up, that's what I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: when when Terrence and I were together, I also remember
Speaker 1: a lot of good times. You know, we had great times.
Speaker 1: He was you know, he was the big brother. He
Speaker 1: was you know, my parents favorite for years at least,
Speaker 1: I was convinced so, and they went out of their
Speaker 1: way to make sure he had anything he wanted in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, educational opportunities, support, you know, for
Speaker 1: his hobbies and so on. I mean that later I
Speaker 1: got those things, but I was happy to tag alog.
Speaker 1: But Dennis, look if I digg a little bit here
Speaker 1: is because obviously all of this you say in the book,
Speaker 1: and the love between the two of you and his
Speaker 1: profound influence both on you and more broadly, just comes
Speaker 1: through clearly. But I mean you say in the book,
Speaker 1: and other people point this out that it's not just Terrence,
Speaker 1: but it's the two of you whom I be described
Speaker 1: as the Johnny Apple seeds the psilocybin. I mean, you guys,
Speaker 1: when you come back from the Amazon in the seventies
Speaker 1: and you produced this book, The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide,
Speaker 1: I think inventies six, which is really kind of the
Speaker 1: first how to guide to how to, you know, use
Speaker 1: mushroom spores to grow you make your own marijuanat home
Speaker 1: in a very simple way and thereby essentially and I
Speaker 1: think I think it might be the most single most
Speaker 1: important thing that either of the two of you ever did. Um.
Speaker 1: But just tell us a little bit about that book,
Speaker 1: which the two of you and I guess with another
Speaker 1: fellow and Jeremy Bigwood played a role as well. But
Speaker 1: tell us how that book came about and why and
Speaker 1: its impact. Yeah, I can't do that. So some people
Speaker 1: even recently have said, you know, have been at pains
Speaker 1: to point out that we were at the first ones
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, And I never really claimed
Speaker 1: that we were. People were experimenting, they were trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. I think what was different was that, uh,
Speaker 1: we were the first to publish a book that was
Speaker 1: a simple method that got into many people's hands, and
Speaker 1: that was the social impact of it, not that other
Speaker 1: people were doing it at the time. Other people were
Speaker 1: not publishing books about it or even talking about it.
Speaker 1: And because it was illegal, it took a certain amount
Speaker 1: of either foolishness or courage or both to publish that book.
Speaker 1: And we did, and it had it had a an impact.
Speaker 1: But I was not taught how to do this. I
Speaker 1: puzzled it out. I was taking courses at Colorado State University.
Speaker 1: I had been out to Harvard to see Shalties. I
Speaker 1: wanted to work with Shalties. This was nine four and
Speaker 1: Shaltis told me after I did by pilgrimage, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, go back and take more chemistry and take
Speaker 1: more taxonomy, because I thought I was going to study
Speaker 1: higher plants. You know. Well, as it turned out, a
Speaker 1: friend of mine was the head of the botany greenhouse
Speaker 1: at at c s U. When I went back to
Speaker 1: c s U to take these additional courses, even though
Speaker 1: it already got my degree, I took these additional courses
Speaker 1: organic chemistry course, which turned out to be a revelation
Speaker 1: because the teacher of that course was incredible mentor. And anyway,
Speaker 1: I had access to this laboratory at Teaching Culture Laboratory,
Speaker 1: so I had all the tools to mess around, and
Speaker 1: I had the spores and then this paper and Michaelogia surface,
Speaker 1: which was called by James P. San Antonio. It was
Speaker 1: a USD researcher that was something like, you know a
Speaker 1: simple method to grow a Garicus by s boris on
Speaker 1: substrates of sterilized rye, you know, And basically I tried
Speaker 1: that with the mushrooms and it worked, you know, so
Speaker 1: that was the breakthrough. It just worked for this other species.
Speaker 1: So then once we had that technique, you know, figured
Speaker 1: out it reliably worked. I shared that with Terence. I
Speaker 1: shortly after that finished my work at c SU, and
Speaker 1: I moved to California and we actually set up growing
Speaker 1: operations there and then published the book. And at some
Speaker 1: point Terrence had already connected with Jeremy Bigwood, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how he made that connection, but I think
Speaker 1: it was from through Jonathan Ott, and Jeremy was a
Speaker 1: part of that whole coterie of psychedelic enthusiasts at Evergreen
Speaker 1: State College, out of which Paul Stabbits came, but then
Speaker 1: also Jeremy and Jeremy, so that was the connection. And
Speaker 1: Terence had had met Jeremy and Berkeley at some point
Speaker 1: and invited him to be the photographer on the book
Speaker 1: to photograph the methods. And then Terence's girlfriend and then
Speaker 1: later his wife, Kat Harrison, was the illustrator, producing these
Speaker 1: beautiful uh line drawings of the mushrooms, the life cycle
Speaker 1: and all that. So that those were the four people
Speaker 1: that generated the book, Terence and myself, Jeremy with the photographs,
Speaker 1: and Cat as the as the artist. But you published
Speaker 1: it under pseudonyms, right, well, yes, all pseudonyms, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was ironic that. You know, in some ways,
Speaker 1: Jeremy chose the pseudonym uh Eremaus the obscure. I used
Speaker 1: to kill him, I said, is that a reflection of
Speaker 1: the terrible photographs that you put in the book, because
Speaker 1: they weren't really that good. They did the job, but then, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't that great. They were they were
Speaker 1: little and sort of money and so on, but they
Speaker 1: did show how to do it. But he made up
Speaker 1: for it with the beautiful color photographs and the color
Speaker 1: insert for the first edition. You know, those were great.
Speaker 1: I was really disappointed when they re published it under
Speaker 1: a different company and they dropped those color photographs because well,
Speaker 1: de's ly, as you mentioned, you and Terrence starting to
Speaker 1: grow mushrooms as well. So were you making I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine the statue limitations has got expired by now. Were
Speaker 1: you making a lot of money selling mushrooms in those days? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: we were making money, you know. I wouldn't say a lot,
Speaker 1: but we were. We're probably making enough that we didn't
Speaker 1: have to, you know, have actual jobs a certain way.
Speaker 1: That's something that Terence continued for for many years. But
Speaker 1: he decided, you know, maybe that's maybe that's too edgy.
Speaker 1: Maybe he didn't really want to do that. As his
Speaker 1: fame grew he decided it was a good idea. It's
Speaker 1: a step back from that. I mean, you also talk
Speaker 1: about terrences. You know, time is you know sort of
Speaker 1: you know, sending hasheesh or cannabis around the world and
Speaker 1: having to be on the run as a fugitive for
Speaker 1: a few years. But going going back to the book
Speaker 1: book again and your and your and your youth and
Speaker 1: the influences you talk about, I mean, you also talk
Speaker 1: about growing up as Catholics. That's how you until certain
Speaker 1: age you're a good Catholic boy. But you also have
Speaker 1: an encounter with a Catholic priest who does what you know,
Speaker 1: many Catholic priests have become into the floor. Do just
Speaker 1: just just tell our list is a little bit about
Speaker 1: your your Catholic childhood and your encounter to which you
Speaker 1: seem to respond to feeling like it wasn't all that traumatic.
Speaker 1: And my encounter with the priest was not all that
Speaker 1: traumatic because I was so clueless. Basically, I was I
Speaker 1: think about eight years old, maybe a little older than that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize I was being abused, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I lived close to the rectory. I used
Speaker 1: to go over and hang out with the priests there.
Speaker 1: There were other priests there usually, and there were some
Speaker 1: some of them were pretty cool, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: they were like Jesuits and they had you know, they
Speaker 1: were intellectuals. Father I won't say his name. I think
Speaker 1: I call him father Dad in the book. But he
Speaker 1: was not like that. But he was also he was interesting.
Speaker 1: He had been an engineer before he'd been a priest,
Speaker 1: and you know, and he liked the altar boys. And
Speaker 1: now now I have a better idea just why he
Speaker 1: liked the altar boys. And I don't know how many
Speaker 1: of them he actually molested. But but you know, the
Speaker 1: way it happened with us is I confided in him that,
Speaker 1: you know, I was ticklish, and I was very ticklish,
Speaker 1: still am ticklish, you know, and I confided this, and
Speaker 1: then but he said, well, well I can help you
Speaker 1: get over that. So you know, we went into the
Speaker 1: basement and I disrobed at least mostly, and he kind
Speaker 1: of touched me all over. He didn't penetrate me, there
Speaker 1: was no nothing like that. It was just you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird massage, you know, And again,
Speaker 1: I'm working in the assumption that he's helping me get
Speaker 1: over being ticklish. So I was not alarmed, you know,
Speaker 1: at all, or didn't really think in terms of abuse
Speaker 1: and so on what was going on in his that
Speaker 1: I don't know. I suppose he was getting the charge
Speaker 1: out of it. But you know, it took me like
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about it for years, you know,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly one day it dawned on me. Man,
Speaker 1: I was being abused, you know, But at the time,
Speaker 1: I was not traumatized. And Dennis, in all of your
Speaker 1: thousands of psycholic experience, who is with different types of
Speaker 1: mushrooms in Ayahuaska and d MT and everything else. I mean,
Speaker 1: have there been times when processing either you know, terrences
Speaker 1: tormenting and torturing you or this experience of the priest
Speaker 1: or other traumatic things of Chilode kind of came up
Speaker 1: and got processed for you or was that never really
Speaker 1: because I don't I don't come across references that, I
Speaker 1: mean when I was reading the book to that sort
Speaker 1: of processing of these kind of early things. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't really, they haven't come up you know, in my
Speaker 1: in my psychedelic experience. It's probably because apart from that,
Speaker 1: you know, and apart from from Terence's abuse and torture,
Speaker 1: But I didn't really experience those things as trauma. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I may have been traumatized by other other factors, but
Speaker 1: I don't look back on it and think, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm screwed up because of childhood traumas. Actually, my childhood,
Speaker 1: I would say our childhood was was remarkably normal and
Speaker 1: free of that kind of thing. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there was always dysfunctionalities and in families, but in general,
Speaker 1: I mean, my father and mother were not abusive, you know,
Speaker 1: and they were very loving and supportive. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Terence and I you know, pushed back against them, Terence
Speaker 1: particularly on all kinds of fronts. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that we, you know, made their lives miserable in many ways,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean you described Terence at point like
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, at one point you say, you know,
Speaker 1: in some respects, he was unforgiving, you know, when it
Speaker 1: once you once he decided, you know, you know, he
Speaker 1: had ridden you off, that was it, and not only empathetic.
Speaker 1: And he also described at a very young age him
Speaker 1: cutting off your father like emotionally in a way that's
Speaker 1: never really recovered, I guess, never really recovered, never really
Speaker 1: got over that. That's right. And at the age of four,
Speaker 1: and this is not a teenage thing. This is at
Speaker 1: the age of four or five or something, right, right,
Speaker 1: right exactly, there was an incident which I'd rather not
Speaker 1: describe in graphic detail, but but you know, it led
Speaker 1: to an estrangement on some emotional level between him and
Speaker 1: my dad, and I think at at a certain point
Speaker 1: he crossed the threshold there where he came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that, you know, I've got to look out for
Speaker 1: myself or I am you know, I have to be
Speaker 1: number one. I mean kind of all I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: a Trumpian kind of thing, but preoccupation with his own
Speaker 1: self preservation and all that. You know. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: you describe also, you know, and Rand as something of
Speaker 1: you know, one of the influences on Terrence when he's
Speaker 1: growing up. Yeah, and Rand was one of the one
Speaker 1: of the books that he was reading as he was
Speaker 1: growing up. And and everybody, I mean at that age,
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen sixteen, seventeen eighteen, in that era of
Speaker 1: the late sixties, everybody was reading a Rand, you know,
Speaker 1: and and getting the you know that that download that
Speaker 1: that she that she transmitted. You know. The other popular
Speaker 1: book was Catcher in the Rye, you know, and everybody.
Speaker 1: I wasn't reading them because I was four years younger.
Speaker 1: They were not really part of my universe. But I
Speaker 1: think Anne Rand and and the or Iron Rand as
Speaker 1: they call her, and and capt Her there influential books
Speaker 1: for people of terence, this generation when they were teenagers
Speaker 1: in the you know, in the late even mid sixties,
Speaker 1: so he was about four years ahead, so all of
Speaker 1: these things were coming down. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: it influenced him. I mean, I Rand is identified with
Speaker 1: the right now and and so on. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a wider perception that her philosophy is
Speaker 1: you know, pretty distasteful in some ways, uh not not compassionate,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of very typical of some of the
Speaker 1: you know, right wing ideologies that people are. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's everyone for themselves, you know, there's a great
Speaker 1: lack of compassion and empathy. And in this perspective, well,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with that, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: we have to I mean, I think if I if
Speaker 1: psychedelics teach you anything, it is that we are all connected,
Speaker 1: we're all one, We're all in the same boat. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, they're useful for eliciting compassion and empathy.
Speaker 1: And I think we need more of that, not less
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, not only for each other, but
Speaker 1: for nature itself. But as I get older, I get
Speaker 1: more sort of maybe disillusioned, you could say a little
Speaker 1: more cynical about it. Uh. I think they have great
Speaker 1: potential for societal evolution and transformation. But the question is,
Speaker 1: isn't happening fast enough? And you know, because we are
Speaker 1: looking as as I say in the book and afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, we're looking at a closing window here where
Speaker 1: we're having we have to make decisions, and our choices
Speaker 1: are becoming more and more restricted. So can psychedelics turn
Speaker 1: this around? I think they're part of the process. I
Speaker 1: don't think psychedelics alone are are gonna do it. We'll
Speaker 1: be talking more after we hear this ad, you know, Dennis.
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that when I when
Speaker 1: I've seen you speak and really some of your writing,
Speaker 1: I sometimes you know, on the one hand, you're very
Speaker 1: much the scientist, and you very much fit within that,
Speaker 1: you know, the all the other growing the scientists in
Speaker 1: this in this world of the psychedelic renaissance. But you're
Speaker 1: also this kind of bridge to the ways of thinking
Speaker 1: that Terrence epitomized. And so in the book you talk
Speaker 1: about the influences on both of you growing up, and
Speaker 1: some of them were common influences, like you talk, for example,
Speaker 1: about your fascination with cosmology and astronomy, and then especially
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about science fiction and how that
Speaker 1: shaped um really you're thinking, and you can sort of
Speaker 1: see that manifesting not just in you know, some of
Speaker 1: the stuff, some of the terences recordings, but even in
Speaker 1: your own speaking and and and obviously Stanley Kubrick two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, you you come back to that movie frequently.
Speaker 1: There's another movie called Charlie. You come back to UM.
Speaker 1: So just talk more about, you know, the impact of
Speaker 1: of science fiction and cosmology and those movies and the
Speaker 1: in both you're thinking, and to the extent some extent
Speaker 1: your brothers as well. Well. Science fiction was a huge
Speaker 1: influence on this, you know, and I think we can
Speaker 1: attribut you that to a certain extent. In fact, to
Speaker 1: a large extent to our father who also read science fiction.
Speaker 1: And he when he was a child, he had had
Speaker 1: ramatic fever, so he'd spent quite a lot of time
Speaker 1: in bed as a child. He couldn't go to school.
Speaker 1: What did he do? He read? He read all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. He read a lot of Westerns and things
Speaker 1: like that, but he also read what science fiction there
Speaker 1: was of those days, you know, and there wasn't I mean,
Speaker 1: not like we think of it, but it was like fantasy,
Speaker 1: Tom Swift's Adventures and this kind of thing. And so
Speaker 1: when he had a family and all that, he spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time. His job required him to be
Speaker 1: on the road five days a week. He was a
Speaker 1: traveling sales representative for a company in Denver, so he
Speaker 1: would be gone from Monday through Friday. And he would
Speaker 1: need things to read on on the road. So he
Speaker 1: would buy these pulp science fiction magazines that you could
Speaker 1: buy off the shelf. He would also buy fake magazine,
Speaker 1: and he brings these things home and Fate Magazine is
Speaker 1: very interesting magazine. It's it's still published, and it was
Speaker 1: the sort of popular magazine about the esoteric and the strange,
Speaker 1: you know, so all about aliens and and paranormal phenomena
Speaker 1: and UFOs and occasionally drugs. You know, there were articles
Speaker 1: about mescaline and ayahuaska and things like them. You're talking,
Speaker 1: you know, the sixties, the fifties and sixties. But he
Speaker 1: would bring Faate magazine and these science fiction uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: pulp magazines like as Abov science fiction or fantasy and
Speaker 1: science extreudent, these different ones that you could buy, and
Speaker 1: Terence and I were all over those, you know, and
Speaker 1: particularly Fate magazine. I mean, he would bring these faith
Speaker 1: magazines home and we would be all over it. So
Speaker 1: when so, I think in Terence and me, it cultivated
Speaker 1: a fascination with the esoteric and the strange, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean for from our perspective, you know, we were
Speaker 1: weird and the weirder the better, you know. And so
Speaker 1: when psychedelics came along, I think that we viewed it
Speaker 1: not from a context of uh, spirituality or or indigenous
Speaker 1: practices or anything like that. I mean we discovered that later,
Speaker 1: but originally the idea was that, hey, we these are
Speaker 1: other dimensions. Psychedelics can take you to other dimensions, and
Speaker 1: we thought of that quite literally, you know, that these
Speaker 1: were tools for actually visiting other realms, you know, hyper
Speaker 1: spatial dimensions. That was the approach, and that perspective really
Speaker 1: colored our whole experiment at Lachrera because I just say quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, Lachrera Um is the place in the Colombian
Speaker 1: Amazon where Dennis and Terrence in around nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: go for a number of weeks and have a really
Speaker 1: formative experience. Um. They go there looking for a particular
Speaker 1: you know, psychedelic and land up finding out that maybe
Speaker 1: mushrooms is the one that they were really needing to
Speaker 1: learn to know understand better. And where Dennis describes basically
Speaker 1: having whether it was a psychotic break or a or
Speaker 1: a spiritual breakthrough or a communication with Eli ends but
Speaker 1: going what might be seen is largely crazy for a
Speaker 1: while and a bit unhinged, and and his brother worrying
Speaker 1: he might not even come back. Um. But it's then
Speaker 1: it describes almost the pinnacle of their relationship being though
Speaker 1: is a very traumatic time. Did I did I sum
Speaker 1: it up fairly? Yeah? I think so, without going into
Speaker 1: too much detail, I think that was exactly it. You know,
Speaker 1: I've done various talks of the experiment at luch Are,
Speaker 1: but at what at the Convention Breaking Convention Conference a
Speaker 1: few years ago, I did a talk called the Experiment
Speaker 1: at lucher Era colon psychotic break, shamanic initiation or alien
Speaker 1: encounter question mark, and it looked at these different modalities
Speaker 1: that might that could be applied to the experiment at
Speaker 1: luchur Era, And I was kind of arguing for the
Speaker 1: idea that yeah, there were elements of an alien encounter
Speaker 1: in this, along with the shamanic elements and the psychotic
Speaker 1: elements and so on. And uh, you know Eric Davis
Speaker 1: who writes very eloquently about this. He in his book
Speaker 1: High Weirdness. Uh, there's a whole chapter about Terrence and
Speaker 1: Dennis and our adventures and lace Erera, and he makes the,
Speaker 1: I think really insightful point in a way that we
Speaker 1: went to Lacerera thinking that we were doing that we
Speaker 1: were doing an act of science, you know, which we weren't.
Speaker 1: What we were doing is we committed an act of
Speaker 1: science fiction. And I think that's I think that's very apt.
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what we were doing because you know,
Speaker 1: given our limited grasp of science, we were not scientists.
Speaker 1: We thought we were, we fancied we were, but we weren't.
Speaker 1: Given our limited grasp of scientific understandings and so on.
Speaker 1: You know, we were trying to bring all these kind
Speaker 1: of more or less you know, unrefined, unsophisticated scientific concepts
Speaker 1: to what we were doing, to the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we could actually crack the space time continuum, you know,
Speaker 1: and step through into this new a temporal rime. So
Speaker 1: that that goes right back to the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: fascination with other dimensions and all that, and the idea
Speaker 1: that that psychedelics could could be portals to this. We're
Speaker 1: not alone now, lots of people are talking about this
Speaker 1: very same thing, you know. I recently attended a private
Speaker 1: conference in in the UK in October which the uh
Speaker 1: you know, the theme of the conference was the Sentient Other,
Speaker 1: and it was all about d MT entities and other
Speaker 1: kinds of entities that you encounter in psychedelic experiences, you know.
Speaker 1: And the problem with d MT it's too short. You know,
Speaker 1: by the time you get there to this place or
Speaker 1: this dimension or the state, it's already fading away. It's
Speaker 1: very hard to too spend enough time there to really
Speaker 1: get a handle on what's going on. So you come
Speaker 1: back with a sense of astonishment, but not much actual data.
Speaker 1: It's such a short acting uh experience when you've smoke it.
Speaker 1: Then it's just to clarify for our listeners. I mean,
Speaker 1: D and T is one of the essential ingredients in ayahuasca,
Speaker 1: but it's also something that can be smoked for a
Speaker 1: shorter experience. Right. And then you have I guess one
Speaker 1: of the early early books that kind of you go
Speaker 1: back to the early origins, early twenty one century origins,
Speaker 1: the cycle like Renaissance. Some of that goes back to
Speaker 1: Rick Straussman and his research in books and the spirit
Speaker 1: and molecule, and he were distinguishing that from five and
Speaker 1: the O D M T, which also people smoke for
Speaker 1: a short intense experience. These are the two. These are
Speaker 1: the two two tryptamans that are short acting. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: not orally active unless you potentiate them with a monoamine
Speaker 1: oxidase inhibitor, right, And that's the basis of ayahwatska. The
Speaker 1: two plants, one of them contains an M A O
Speaker 1: inhibitor which inhibits the D m T from breakdown in
Speaker 1: the gut, and then it's orally active. And instead of
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty minutes you have six to seven hours, but
Speaker 1: much less intense than the fifteen to twenty minutes. The
Speaker 1: other way people take it is so the term is
Speaker 1: parentally either injected or usually people smoke the free base
Speaker 1: and then you get this very intense uh fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty minute I sometimes refer to it as like a
Speaker 1: like a trip on a Neon roller coaster. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a very visual space, you know, and
Speaker 1: all sorts of things going on, really like being in
Speaker 1: a different place. Five athoxy is actually not like that.
Speaker 1: Fivethoxy is different in that it lacks the the visual
Speaker 1: dimension for some reason. Fivethoxy is the same as is
Speaker 1: the same thing as five m O d n T. Yes,
Speaker 1: five m e O d m T fivethoxy people call
Speaker 1: it it is you get effectively the the same feeling
Speaker 1: of dissolution being in this space, and this feeling of acceleration,
Speaker 1: but there's no visuals, you know, And the things that
Speaker 1: set d MT apart is it's all about visuals, you know,
Speaker 1: including the apparent encounter with other intelligences d m T.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have much more experience with d m
Speaker 1: T than five thoxy d MT, but my experience with
Speaker 1: five athoxy is that it is the total ego and
Speaker 1: really self dissolution drug. I mean, what it does is
Speaker 1: for me at least, it just dissolves the self. It
Speaker 1: dissolves the ego. It's like, you know, the cliche with
Speaker 1: the psychedelics is we are all one, you know, and
Speaker 1: we we merge with with everything. And five athoxy delivers
Speaker 1: that experience when you really have very little or almost
Speaker 1: no sense of the self as a discrete entity. You're
Speaker 1: just part of the continuum, you know. D m T
Speaker 1: is not that way. It's not the ego dissolving kind
Speaker 1: of approach. It. I mean, you're still you, I mean
Speaker 1: your ego. Maybe you know, the boundaries may be getting
Speaker 1: a little shaky, but you're still yourself and very often
Speaker 1: in relationship in this uh you know, relationship with these
Speaker 1: extra dimensional entities which are presenting as intelligences and you
Speaker 1: know maybe so, I mean, I'm skeptical and you know
Speaker 1: that the main question here if you have these encounters
Speaker 1: with these apparent non human but obviously intelligent entities, the
Speaker 1: first question is are they real? You know? And then
Speaker 1: but then that's a loaded question because then you have
Speaker 1: to say, well, what do you mean by real, you know,
Speaker 1: and and this is where I get you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: people look at me and say, well, you you just
Speaker 1: you just can't accept it. I'm not saying it's not
Speaker 1: that they don't accept it. I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: is this coming from some part of the self, some
Speaker 1: part of myself that is presented as something that is
Speaker 1: not me, or is it really something from elsewhere that
Speaker 1: is in communication you know, well, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: ess interestingly, because you describe in the book, you know
Speaker 1: that you and Terrence returning from La Gurea, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, fifty two years ago or so, and
Speaker 1: and you know, Terence comes back and says, basically, science
Speaker 1: can't explain any of this stuff, essentially, let's skip it.
Speaker 1: And you come back saying, well, we can't dismiss science
Speaker 1: unless we understand science better. And it seems like that's
Speaker 1: a key place where your trajectory is really golf in
Speaker 1: different directs. That's where you decide to go and get
Speaker 1: the degrees and become a scientist. And it seems I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm more sympathetic to your point viewpoint, which is if
Speaker 1: we want to try to figure out whether there is
Speaker 1: something about aliens communicating with us through mushrooms, or these
Speaker 1: things being exported to Earth from in that way, or
Speaker 1: how we think about different manifestations of reality. We better
Speaker 1: know the science a lot better, so we can critically
Speaker 1: evaluate both its you know, what it has to say,
Speaker 1: as well as its limitations. Yeah, exactly. I mean you
Speaker 1: put your figure right on it that at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, after our return from psychedelics represented a uh
Speaker 1: you know, a point where our trajectories in some ways diverged,
Speaker 1: you know, And and Terrence yes, said well, science is
Speaker 1: never going to explain this, we should just throw science out.
Speaker 1: My response is, we can't say that because we're not
Speaker 1: scientists and we don't really understand how to do science,
Speaker 1: you know, So for to reject science, let's learn how
Speaker 1: to do it first. Then we can examine these phenomena
Speaker 1: in the light of sort of the scientific perspective, scientific
Speaker 1: framework and decide or help us decide what is going on,
Speaker 1: or give it up and say yes, science can't explain this.
Speaker 1: In trying to understand nature, I think science is a
Speaker 1: good place to start, you know, because science, unlike most
Speaker 1: endeavors of human thought, Uh, it's a way to construct
Speaker 1: models about the way things are, the way you think
Speaker 1: things are, and then test the model, you know, tested
Speaker 1: against what the evidence is, and either reject the model
Speaker 1: or modify it or whatever. In this way, scientific knowledge advances.
Speaker 1: This is the scientific method, and it's not often, it's
Speaker 1: not often practice the way should be. But in its
Speaker 1: pure form, this is what science is, and it's very powerful,
Speaker 1: UH way of thinking. We describe in the book doing
Speaker 1: a very powerful having a very powerful ayahuask experience. I
Speaker 1: think in the context of the of the UDV Church
Speaker 1: in Brazil, and and and and and the single sentence
Speaker 1: that you that you most come away with is this one.
Speaker 1: You monkeys only think you're running things? Yes, how does
Speaker 1: that fit into what you were just talking about about science?
Speaker 1: I think that psychedelics are great counterbalance to science. I
Speaker 1: think one of the UH pitfalls of science and scientists
Speaker 1: particularly is a tendency to think that, you know, we
Speaker 1: have made such advances, we have such sophisticated understanding of
Speaker 1: the cosmos and the way things are, we pretty much
Speaker 1: have this thing figured out, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: psychedelics emphatically illustrate to us we only have a tiny
Speaker 1: part of reality figured out, you know. There's no excuse
Speaker 1: for arrogance here. What we should be humble because we
Speaker 1: should always bear in mind how little we really know,
Speaker 1: what a small part of the total picture. Science, science
Speaker 1: furnishes us. For us, it's science tend to be arrogant,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no room for arrogance. They should be
Speaker 1: more humble. They should recognize no matter how much we
Speaker 1: how much science advances, how much we expand our understanding,
Speaker 1: it's still only going to be a tiny slice of
Speaker 1: the total picture. And psychedelics are useful for for that
Speaker 1: making that realization. And that's that's effectively what I meant
Speaker 1: by you monkeys only think you're ready this show. We
Speaker 1: are not in control. You know, I'm not sure anyone
Speaker 1: is in control, but we're we're participating in this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this coevolutionary process with the plants, with everything
Speaker 1: on the planet. And we're not reading the reading the
Speaker 1: show at all. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad Well. You know, I said, I think
Speaker 1: in the book, I think one of the indication of
Speaker 1: the kind of not I shouldn't say two sides as
Speaker 1: if they're oppositional, but the two aspects Dennis to your
Speaker 1: way of thinking about this is you know, you talk
Speaker 1: about you know, in the fifties, um, really Gordon Wasson
Speaker 1: and his wife's writings in Life magazine and their encounter
Speaker 1: with Maria Sabina and the book about Mushrooms and Russia
Speaker 1: really kind of launches the first stage of of really
Speaker 1: popular awareness about about about psychedelics. And then in the sixties,
Speaker 1: I mean you're a bit dismissive of Timothy Leary. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you're more critical him than not, and in
Speaker 1: some respects, you know, later on you worry, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I don't want my brother, you know, Terrence, to become
Speaker 1: like the new Timothy Leary and do the kind of
Speaker 1: harms that oftentimes associated with Timothy Leary is kind of
Speaker 1: going over the top. But which you do credit are
Speaker 1: two books, which both of which come out I think
Speaker 1: in the late sixties or early seventies. One is Carlos
Speaker 1: custand is The Teachings of Don Juan, which you know,
Speaker 1: I probably sold billions of copies. I remember I had
Speaker 1: a copy when I was when I was younger as well,
Speaker 1: which is you know, probably largely fictional, but you say,
Speaker 1: nonetheless very important. And the other book, though you're surprising
Speaker 1: someone surprisingly. Quote is a volume that's published by the
Speaker 1: National in student Meental Health, you know US, you know
Speaker 1: Health Agency, the proceedings of a conference health in San
Speaker 1: Francisco seven. To explain why those two books actually play
Speaker 1: an important role in your revolution. They were very influential
Speaker 1: for me personally, those two books. The Castidated book, which
Speaker 1: Terence gave to me for my eighteenth birthday, and yes
Speaker 1: it probably is largely fictional, but I didn't know that
Speaker 1: at the time, and it doesn't really matter because what
Speaker 1: it presented was the ethnographic side, the indigenous origins of
Speaker 1: these things, the idea that there were you know, uh,
Speaker 1: indigenous world views and understandings about these substances and these
Speaker 1: plants and fungi. So that was that was like the
Speaker 1: Cosmo vision of you know, the indigenous world. And then
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the ethno pharmacologic search for psychoactive
Speaker 1: drugs the name of this conference in sixty seven, which
Speaker 1: was a private conference. The only thing that the taxpayers
Speaker 1: ever got was the publication that the book itself, which
Speaker 1: was published, and somehow or other it fell into my
Speaker 1: hands again at the age of eighteen the year after
Speaker 1: the conference, and This actually happened some years before my
Speaker 1: my understandings about science and are the whole conversation about
Speaker 1: rejecting science and so on. That book really opened up
Speaker 1: for me that that ethel pharmacology was a real discipline.
Speaker 1: There was actual science here, There were people working in this,
Speaker 1: people like you know, icons of still icons like Sualties
Speaker 1: and shul Gun and even Andy Wild wasn't that conference
Speaker 1: and and you know, so it was an eye oldener
Speaker 1: for me in the sense that there's a real discipline
Speaker 1: here and potentially a discipline that you know, I could
Speaker 1: follow as a career path. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: what led me to to that direction to start studying
Speaker 1: not only ethnography, which I was also interested in, but
Speaker 1: but botany and chemistry and pharmacology and all that. It
Speaker 1: was the inspiration. That book was the inspiration for that.
Speaker 1: You know. You know, it's another thing that pops up
Speaker 1: in your writing. You keep coming back to more than
Speaker 1: most people I know, right about psychedelics, and it's the
Speaker 1: dark side. I mean, you write about the bluejas um,
Speaker 1: the witches both in Europe and Latin America, and the
Speaker 1: uses of the toura, and you tell the story of
Speaker 1: a leading and quite powerful um Iowa Scarrow Pablo Amaringo,
Speaker 1: who basically you know, stops doing that, stops leading sessions
Speaker 1: because he's gotten involved in some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: uh conflict with what he sees a brujas which could
Speaker 1: use could potentially be a conflict to the death by
Speaker 1: where either kill or be killed. So say something about
Speaker 1: that dark side of this. Yeah, well there is a
Speaker 1: dark side. I mean, I mean, psychedelic are a tool,
Speaker 1: you know, like any other technology, They're a tool, and
Speaker 1: they can be used or misused, you know, and because
Speaker 1: they are, they can put people into very vulnerable states.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the point of these intense psychedelic therapy
Speaker 1: sessions is to provide circumstances where you can open up,
Speaker 1: you know, and but you have you can open up.
Speaker 1: You can look at your problems, whether they be addiction
Speaker 1: or depression or you know, whatever your issues are from
Speaker 1: a different perspective. I think that's really the most important
Speaker 1: therapeutic aspect of psychedelic therapy is they let you step
Speaker 1: away from your reference frame temporarily what we now call
Speaker 1: the default mode network, although there are other terms for
Speaker 1: it as well, and in traditional cultures like in South America,
Speaker 1: for example. Uh, not all the Iowa Scarrows are good people,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean there is a power dynamic there,
Speaker 1: and if you have a drug or something that will
Speaker 1: let you get power over people. There are many cure
Speaker 1: and arrows that are effectively sorcerers. They want power, they
Speaker 1: want money, sex, they want all of these things that
Speaker 1: you know, people people year to have. And if they
Speaker 1: can be used to you know, to effectively render you know,
Speaker 1: people compliant and willing to give up their their selfhood,
Speaker 1: then they will employ them that way. I think most
Speaker 1: of the people traditional practitioners using Ayahuascat really do it
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of being healers and helping people. Uh
Speaker 1: Like Pablo ever Ringo, you know, was a good examp
Speaker 1: apple of that. Like many of the Iowa Scarrols that
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to to work with, I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I mean I learned this over time that
Speaker 1: not all of these people can be trusted. And we
Speaker 1: see this now, you know, there's a great deal of
Speaker 1: maybe overstated. On the other side, there's a great deal
Speaker 1: of paranoia for people that are doing, you know, want
Speaker 1: to go to South America and do Ayahwaska retreats, and
Speaker 1: so I like, you know, people say, well, you must
Speaker 1: be very careful, you know, uh not to get in
Speaker 1: with the wrong people because you know, damnaged you in
Speaker 1: many many ways. And that's true. I think it's a
Speaker 1: matter of proceeding thoughtfully and sort of not just don't
Speaker 1: sign up for a retreat at the first website that
Speaker 1: comes up. You know, do your research, ask around, talk
Speaker 1: to people that know the ropes down there, and you know,
Speaker 1: take care to get to the right places. Well, you've
Speaker 1: talked about sometimes the ayahuasca actually being mixed with a
Speaker 1: little bit of the tour or something or yes, that
Speaker 1: that does happen when the ayahuasca is mixed with the toura. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes they put it in because they actually
Speaker 1: make bad ayahuaska and they if they add in the
Speaker 1: de toura, that ensures that something will happen, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily what you want to happen, but that pretty
Speaker 1: much will make it active. And other times they put
Speaker 1: into tour because they're you know, their motives are more sinister.
Speaker 1: I mean, detura is a Brent banzi is. It's called
Speaker 1: the Tree de tours in South America. But the de
Speaker 1: tours in European uh, you know, European witchcraft and all that.
Speaker 1: These are deliriums and these are they're not psychedelics, they're
Speaker 1: deliriums there. They're drugs that create a great deal of confusion,
Speaker 1: and they also wipe your memory out and to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, and they also make you very suggestible, you know,
Speaker 1: so classic example of like a date raped drug, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And actually in in UH Colombia it's
Speaker 1: used that way. You know, if you take ayahuasca and
Speaker 1: there is there's the tour in it, there's bergmancy have
Speaker 1: been added into it. The traditional term for it is
Speaker 1: to a they call it to a. You can tell
Speaker 1: if your ayahuasca has been dosed with the tour because
Speaker 1: you get this classical dry mouth reaction. Those trop pains
Speaker 1: make you feel very thirsty, and they of course dilate
Speaker 1: the eyes greatly and so they produce blurred vision and
Speaker 1: all that. If you're getting those symptoms, that probably means
Speaker 1: there's a good slack of towai in the brew And
Speaker 1: for me, that's a red flag, you know, to get
Speaker 1: the hell out of there, because this person does not
Speaker 1: have your best interests at heart, you know, in a way.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been identified so much with ayahuasca, but
Speaker 1: also of course mushrooms and not just the growing guide.
Speaker 1: But and it's interesting the way you talk about them.
Speaker 1: Right at one point you say, are they alien artifacts?
Speaker 1: And you've mentioned this already. Then another time you say, well,
Speaker 1: mushrooms can be tricksters, and someplace else you say bullshitters
Speaker 1: at times, and they have way of presenting delusions at
Speaker 1: self evident truths, and in someplace else you go they
Speaker 1: are mushrooms the perfect psychedelic exclamation point. Well, they are
Speaker 1: the perfect psychedelic you know, I mean in the sense
Speaker 1: that there you know, they're non toxic there generally non threatening.
Speaker 1: They're usually enjoyable, and then they do download information, you know,
Speaker 1: but like all psychedelics do. But I think it's up
Speaker 1: to the individual too, you know, not necessarily, uh, lower
Speaker 1: your your analytical antennas. You know, you get revelations, you
Speaker 1: get insights from psychedelics, and they seem maybe at the
Speaker 1: time they seem like true revelations, but you know, you
Speaker 1: need to look at it the next day in the
Speaker 1: cold hard light of reality and see if that really
Speaker 1: stands up, you know, And that's what I mean by
Speaker 1: by they can be tri trickster to them. And whilst
Speaker 1: it can be a trickster, although I think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's less common. But you you know, you have
Speaker 1: to you know, you have to keep your powder dry
Speaker 1: in a certain sense, and and not necessarily just take in,
Speaker 1: uh everything that the mushrooms tell you, or the danger
Speaker 1: is you're going to get into some delusionary state that's
Speaker 1: very hard to get out of, you know, if you
Speaker 1: just accept this. I mean I get emails kind of
Speaker 1: dismayingly frequently from people, you know, that have had these
Speaker 1: really powerful experiences and they've come away and they say, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I am the Messiah, I am the transcedentdal
Speaker 1: object at the end of time. I figured all this out.
Speaker 1: And you know, wait a minute, cowboy, calm down, think
Speaker 1: about it, think about it, and get that, you know,
Speaker 1: or hopefully don't get back to me because I don't
Speaker 1: have time for this ship anyway. Let me actually ask
Speaker 1: you this, you know. I mean, I mean, obviously some
Speaker 1: of this stuff that Terrence was coming up with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like like the world ending in twelve and
Speaker 1: a whole lot of stuff just seems off the wall
Speaker 1: in retrospect. But there's there's at least one thing that
Speaker 1: not just he but you also have talked about with
Speaker 1: frequency that's maybe looking a little better over the years,
Speaker 1: and that's the stoned ape theory. Yes, yeah, so just
Speaker 1: explained your listeners what that is and why it's looking better. Well,
Speaker 1: the stone ape theory, it's kind of a pejority of
Speaker 1: way to describe it, but the idea of basically that
Speaker 1: we co evolved with mushrooms that you know, the hominid
Speaker 1: species evolved in Africa, you know, three to two to
Speaker 1: three million years ago, and they evolved and leading eventually
Speaker 1: to you know, they're different species, starting with Homo habilists
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, Homo erectus, Homo neunderthal, eventually
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens, although it wasn't quite as linear as that implies.
Speaker 1: But what we know is now it's it's a very
Speaker 1: hard theory to prove, but what we do know is
Speaker 1: that hominid lineages were evolving in northern and actually southern
Speaker 1: africas well during this period. We know that the climate
Speaker 1: about two million years ago was much wetter, there were
Speaker 1: seasonal rainfalls, It was not a dry desert like it
Speaker 1: is now, and you know, we've got the paleoclimate theological
Speaker 1: data to support that. We know that there were cows
Speaker 1: or the precursors of modern cows boasts, uh I forget
Speaker 1: the species, but there were cow species. The fossils of
Speaker 1: these cows have been found. They evolved in the same
Speaker 1: environment that the hominids did. Undoubtedly the hominids hunted them
Speaker 1: and ate them. Well, the mushrooms grow on the dung
Speaker 1: of these cows. And if you look at any tropical ecosystem,
Speaker 1: you know, where there's rainfall pastures and grazing cattle, you're
Speaker 1: going to find these mushrooms. And you know, philosophy convinces
Speaker 1: in in most places. The thing that makes it more
Speaker 1: plausible now is so probably in that environment, obviously the
Speaker 1: primates were there and they had to be eating the
Speaker 1: mushrooms if the mushrooms were there, after all, they're hungry,
Speaker 1: you know, the mushrooms are good to eat, and they're
Speaker 1: not hard to spot. The two things that make it
Speaker 1: more plausible now is what we've learned about the effects
Speaker 1: that psilocybin have on neural connectivity and the you know,
Speaker 1: neuro genesis and basically the complexification of the brain, you know,
Speaker 1: could have been triggered by these mushrooms because this is
Speaker 1: what they this is what they do, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have the data to support that now. So potentially
Speaker 1: it could have been a cognity boost for the populations
Speaker 1: that were eating these mushrooms, leading to language formation and
Speaker 1: the formation of the brain structures that support cognition, internalization
Speaker 1: of imagery, you know, synesthesia, all of these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And then the other side of this coin is, well, okay, maybe,
Speaker 1: so what's the heritable mechanism. How is this transmitted from
Speaker 1: generation to generation? Well, now we can invoke epigenetics, which
Speaker 1: was not a concept that was talked about when Terrence
Speaker 1: published this book. In neither that nor this neural plasticity element.
Speaker 1: We now know that, you know, mushrooms foster neural plasticity,
Speaker 1: which has to do with adaptation to external stimuli as
Speaker 1: well as internal and then epigenetics provides a mechanism whereby
Speaker 1: these traits can be transmitted across generations. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't ever prove this idea, but I think these
Speaker 1: two uh notions move the needle from plausible to more
Speaker 1: than likely, if you want to put it that way.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's more than likely that
Speaker 1: mushrooms did play a role in this evolutionary period where
Speaker 1: we saw an expansion in the size and complexity of
Speaker 1: the human brain over a mirror. Two million years well too,
Speaker 1: million years sounds like a long time, but evolutionarily, it's
Speaker 1: actually the blink of an eye. So how did this
Speaker 1: exponential expansion in human neural complexity take place? I submit
Speaker 1: that mushrooms were the catalyst for this. Well, Dennis, on
Speaker 1: that fascinating note. I want to thank you for joining
Speaker 1: me and my listeners on psycho Active for discussion about
Speaker 1: your book and your brother and your work. Thank you
Speaker 1: very very much, Thanks so much, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it,
Speaker 1: or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear
Speaker 1: from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments,
Speaker 1: and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight
Speaker 1: three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three
Speaker 1: psycho zero, or you can email us at psychoactive at
Speaker 1: protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at Ethan
Speaker 1: natal Man. You can also find contact information in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's
Speaker 1: produced by no h'm osband and Josh Stain. The acutive
Speaker 1: producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren
Speaker 1: Aronofsky from Protozolla Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio and me Ethan Edelman. Our music is
Speaker 1: by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to a Bio
Speaker 1: s f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next week we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about the global history of drugs with Professor
Speaker 1: Paul Gudenberg of sunny Stony Brook, perhaps the leading expert
Speaker 1: in this area. Drugs we're actually quite important in the
Speaker 1: constitution of modernity as we think of it today. Starting
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century, all types of stimulants began to
Speaker 1: flow together and reach first Europeans and Middle Easterners and
Speaker 1: Asians and North Americans, and they began to be part
Speaker 1: of our kind of integral lifestyles, everything from coffee to
Speaker 1: tobacco and then later things like you know, Coca cola,
Speaker 1: or opiates. Subscribe to Cycoactive now see it, don't miss it.