Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, 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 I 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 as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about doing this podcast is
Speaker 1: that I really get to pick any guest I want,
Speaker 1: who I think is really smart and has interesting things
Speaker 1: to say. And you may have listened to the episode
Speaker 1: with Nora Volcale, the longtime headed National Student Drug Abuse
Speaker 1: or the ones with Dan Chieroni, the UCSF professor experient
Speaker 1: overdose Randy wild Um. And this one is somebody who
Speaker 1: ranks at the level of brilliance of any of those
Speaker 1: previous guests, but whose life has been quite a bit different.
Speaker 1: His name is Leonard Picard, and Leonard Picard is known
Speaker 1: if you'll look him up on Wikipedia or anywhere else
Speaker 1: for being allegedly I should say, perhaps the world's greatest
Speaker 1: producer of LSD in the twentieth century. And now Leonard
Speaker 1: is not just that, of course. I mean, he's a
Speaker 1: brilliant chemist helps explain why he allegedly did what he did.
Speaker 1: But he's also somebody who ended up with a master's
Speaker 1: degree in the Kennedy School did really interesting drug research.
Speaker 1: He's also somebody who was sentenced UM in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands to two life sentences in a federal prison
Speaker 1: and spend something like two decades behind bars in a
Speaker 1: maximum security prison, and then just got out at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of this year, I think in good part
Speaker 1: because of COVID and a sort of compassionate release, although
Speaker 1: I think there was also a campaign UH to try
Speaker 1: to get him released early as well, and he remains
Speaker 1: under supervised release, which also will inhibit a bit what
Speaker 1: he can say about his life and his activities. So
Speaker 1: I've asked Leonard in talking about this, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: blunt and asking him every question. He's going to do
Speaker 1: his best to um answer as frankly as he can,
Speaker 1: but where he'd feel that there might be some risks,
Speaker 1: he might answer a little more in the abstract um,
Speaker 1: and so you the audience should take his comments as
Speaker 1: maybe or maybe not reflecting his actual real life world experience. Now, Leonard, hello,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Well,
Speaker 1: hello Ethan. Lovely to see you again. A year ago
Speaker 1: we couldn't have this conversation, so it's um particularly meaningful
Speaker 1: to be able to speak with you after so many years.
Speaker 1: I know I've been wondering about my ability to try
Speaker 1: to get other people who actually are currently behind bars
Speaker 1: to be on a podcast, but I'm imagining most prison
Speaker 1: systems in America. Maybe other countries went to allow that. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I we first crossed paths very
Speaker 1: briefly in the mid nineties. I think it was it's
Speaker 1: some psychedelics conference in the Bay Area, and then had
Speaker 1: no contact thereafter for you know, really since you got out.
Speaker 1: And then one of my fellow producers said, hey, how
Speaker 1: about this fellow letter Picard, and so you and I
Speaker 1: have now had a chance to spend some time together,
Speaker 1: both in New York and in Boulder, Colorado. You've introduced
Speaker 1: me to some of your friends and contacts in the
Speaker 1: psychedelics investment space. But I wanted to start off really
Speaker 1: by um just asking this. When we talk about your
Speaker 1: reputation as being the biggest or one of the guest
Speaker 1: uh produces of LSD in global history, can you say, well, yep,
Speaker 1: that's true, or are you in a position where it's
Speaker 1: really hard to you know, own that at this point,
Speaker 1: or whether maybe it's actually it's actually not true? My goodness. Uh,
Speaker 1: First of all, I should preface this for your audience
Speaker 1: and the Ethan. I had a quite a rollicking conversation
Speaker 1: until midnight some weeks ago in Boulder, Colorado, and which
Speaker 1: we went over quite a few things that perhaps can't
Speaker 1: be talked about on this podcast. Um, but I do
Speaker 1: remain under federal supervision, and h I must maintain my
Speaker 1: position under oath at federal trial that the allegations are
Speaker 1: our millarague government conjecture. Okay, fair enough, Leonard. So let
Speaker 1: me just go back to your early days. I mean,
Speaker 1: as people who are allegedly involved in lucy drug production
Speaker 1: and distribution are at all, yours is a really kind
Speaker 1: of specialized area in that you were a chemist by
Speaker 1: many accounts of in chemist and became uh you know,
Speaker 1: involved in this. Uh you know in making LSD a drug,
Speaker 1: which is it's not cocaine, it's not heroin or meth amphetamine.
Speaker 1: I mean it sort of is in a different category
Speaker 1: in a way. And I just wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: if you go back to your early years. I mean,
Speaker 1: you grew up in a family I'm not sure which
Speaker 1: city it was, but with a father who was a
Speaker 1: lawyer and a mother working for the U S Center
Speaker 1: Disease Control. You've got a scholarship to Princeton, but at
Speaker 1: some point in your late teens early twenties, you must
Speaker 1: have got an interest both in chemistry and in psychedelic substances. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I can speak to that a little Ethan. Uh My
Speaker 1: interest goes back to perhaps nine three, when the only
Speaker 1: marijuana available was that from jazz bends in New York City.
Speaker 1: The young people didn't have access. Then things slowly changed
Speaker 1: and one began to see in cannabis more widely available.
Speaker 1: At that point, Uh, I left Princeton in order to
Speaker 1: join what then was a youth revolution spanning the globe.
Speaker 1: You recall the song if You're going to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: were flowers in your hair? And so I was part
Speaker 1: of that entire youth movement moving west, but also in
Speaker 1: New York City, London, Rome, throughout the world, youth were
Speaker 1: experiencing an unusual, very specialized, very potent neurochemical and having
Speaker 1: subjective experiences that were profound and unanticipated, often very spiritual
Speaker 1: or religious. So I was part of that early movement. Yes,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, you're eighteen. Then Timothy Leary is
Speaker 1: kind of emerging on the scene. There's already been quite
Speaker 1: substantial LSD research. And it's not just LSD, right, there's
Speaker 1: also mescal in out there in mushrooms and things like that.
Speaker 1: But does LSD play a special role when you're talking
Speaker 1: about this set of keem nicles from right to the
Speaker 1: beginning or early on, was mescaline is of great interest
Speaker 1: to you as LSD? Oh? Not not at all. Of course,
Speaker 1: Mescaline reared its head among the artists of Paris in
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties an Twinine are Toad, for example,
Speaker 1: all through Huxley's days, but I, of course had no
Speaker 1: access to a pure Mescaline is exceptionally rare, and of
Speaker 1: course the dosage is several hundred milligrams, so that the
Speaker 1: first large scale deployment of a specialized psychoactive such as
Speaker 1: LSD had to be simply that compound, which is potent
Speaker 1: at a hundred micrograms um ten million doses a kilogram.
Speaker 1: So it took this incredibly potent substance to be manufactured
Speaker 1: by small cadres of underground chemists to deploy ten million
Speaker 1: doses throughout initially northern California and across the United States,
Speaker 1: and thus began the revolution of the sixties sixty six
Speaker 1: sixties seven, and the advent of the Beatles, the shift
Speaker 1: in music. No one had ever heard songs such as
Speaker 1: I Am the Walrus was all Detroit bebop, So music changed,
Speaker 1: aren't changed. Spontaneous social gatherings occurred, thousands of people coming
Speaker 1: together peacefully with no police around, no bands, simply sharing
Speaker 1: sunlight on each other on a warm afternoon. We know LSD, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's created somewhat by accident by chemist Albert
Speaker 1: Hoffman working for a pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland in three
Speaker 1: and it's legally available until at some point in the
Speaker 1: mid sixties or so, so we're people largely obtaining it
Speaker 1: through legal or diverted legal sources. Up until that point, well,
Speaker 1: it was made of legal in sixties six, and before
Speaker 1: then one could actually buy small quantities from some of
Speaker 1: the manufacturers in Europe, most prominent among them Sandoz Laboratories
Speaker 1: and Bossel, which is where Albert Dresser Hoffmann did his inventions.
Speaker 1: So occasionally magic Grahams as they were called, would appear
Speaker 1: in the United States, and that's ten to twenty thousand
Speaker 1: doses and one gram. And these were very carefully shared
Speaker 1: among young and psychoanalysts and UH saxophone players and abstract
Speaker 1: impressionists and theologians and quite a wide spectrum of humanity. Initially, well,
Speaker 1: there was a particularly fascinating character I think back in
Speaker 1: the late fifties early sixties named al Hubbard Right, a
Speaker 1: businessman who got his hand on some thousands or tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of doses and supposedly made it his mission
Speaker 1: in life to go around dosing prominent individuals five or
Speaker 1: six thousand people, business leaders, famous actors, UH intellectuals. Did
Speaker 1: you ever cross paths with him in those days or
Speaker 1: did you have any special insights into this pioneer sort
Speaker 1: of Johnny apple Seed of LSD, I'm aware of Hubburry,
Speaker 1: but I did not cross paths with him. He uh
Speaker 1: was cauite, a remarkable character, and would often wear a
Speaker 1: boy scout suit and carry a faux handgun, sort of
Speaker 1: quasi militaristic spoof on you know, oppressive control regimes. He
Speaker 1: was a trickster, had a great deal of fun. But
Speaker 1: I did become well acquainted with a very beloved psychiatrist
Speaker 1: named John Beresford, who passed away about John is famous
Speaker 1: for bringing in the magic Graham into the United States
Speaker 1: and turning on, or rather exposing, if you will, to
Speaker 1: the subjective effects of LSD stunning array of scientists and
Speaker 1: physicians and uh seekers of every kind. Uh huh. Well,
Speaker 1: you and I also had a friend come in Alexander
Speaker 1: A ka Sasha Shulgin, who you know some would describe
Speaker 1: as one of the most brilliant chemists ever to devise
Speaker 1: psychedelic oriented substances in his backyard lab. We're both you
Speaker 1: and I were visitors in Lafayette, California, back when he
Speaker 1: was still alive. Now he's most known for discovering a
Speaker 1: rediscovering M D M A a K ecstasy and its properties,
Speaker 1: but also inventing to CB and writing some remarkable books
Speaker 1: with his wife, An children about this. When do you
Speaker 1: meet Sasha Schulgin And how does he l end up
Speaker 1: becoming I guess, something of a mentor in your life. Oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, Sasha is a truly beloved figure, and frankly
Speaker 1: I loved him. I first became of his work at
Speaker 1: twenty one. I'm standing in Malancroft, the old Malancroft Laboratories
Speaker 1: at Harvard, and looking through a bound volume of the
Speaker 1: Journal of Organic Chemistry, and looking at a set of
Speaker 1: compounds called pylamans, which were psychoactive. And there was this
Speaker 1: most unusual paper describing the production of ethyl amans, written
Speaker 1: by an author who's affiliation was not dal Chemical or
Speaker 1: this or that university, but simply three Shulgen Road, Lafayette, California.
Speaker 1: And what is this? And it described the first human effects.
Speaker 1: It was unusual that prestigious journal such as Organic Chemistry
Speaker 1: would publish human work, but Sasha did it. That was
Speaker 1: oh goodness. UM sixty six or so. And I followed
Speaker 1: every paper that Sasha wrote with his UM co worker
Speaker 1: Peyton Jacobs, the third for twenty years, but of course
Speaker 1: never met the man. I was too awed by his
Speaker 1: capability and statue, and uh at that point I was
Speaker 1: at Stanford and had a problem involving the synthesis of
Speaker 1: Mesklin that was intractable. I was looking at this particular
Speaker 1: process and it was just no way around a particular
Speaker 1: synthetic hurdle. And I thought Sasha would be the only
Speaker 1: person to whom one might dare approach and ask about this.
Speaker 1: So I braved, writing a letter to Shogun Road in Lafayette,
Speaker 1: and rather quickly came back an invitation personal invitation signed
Speaker 1: by Sasha to visit his class at that time in
Speaker 1: toxicology at San Francisco State, although we also taught at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: Thus I appeared, and there was Sasha six five of
Speaker 1: extraordinarily quite thick mane of hair, with the devoted and
Speaker 1: always in attendance, and their daughter Wendy with her mane
Speaker 1: of golden hair. And there was Sasha in front of
Speaker 1: the class, the great smiles, scribbling these exotic structures on
Speaker 1: the chalkboard of the most elegant molecules. And he had
Speaker 1: a certain lee about him, as though he was respectful
Speaker 1: of these creations that he had made, and understood how
Speaker 1: they reached rather deeply into people's hearts and minds, and
Speaker 1: somehow conveyed that to all of us. I I can
Speaker 1: you're caall going through that entire semester with a smile. M.
Speaker 1: We know. I just want to say to our listeners
Speaker 1: it's important for me when I mentioned the name of
Speaker 1: Sasha Shulgin in this conversation with Leonard, or as I
Speaker 1: have in conversations with other guests, it's because I do
Speaker 1: think it's important to appreciate who's some of the founders
Speaker 1: um in drug research and drug policy were, and Sasha
Speaker 1: Shulgin really was this sort of god father of psychedelics research,
Speaker 1: and in some respects his wife Anne was the godmother
Speaker 1: because she was his co writer on so much of
Speaker 1: what he did. I'm just trying to get a sense
Speaker 1: of your life then, right, So you're born in forty five,
Speaker 1: sixty three or eighteen, You spent a little time at Princeton,
Speaker 1: you started hanging out in Greenwich Village, the jazz scene,
Speaker 1: the marijuana scene. You head out West San Francisco and
Speaker 1: everything's up there. There's all this leaning to psycholics figures,
Speaker 1: there's ken Keisi and uh so in that period in
Speaker 1: your twenties, you know, you don't end up getting arrested
Speaker 1: for anything until you're in your thirties or forties or
Speaker 1: something like that. Are you basically just hanging out? Are
Speaker 1: you a research astician? Are you working for pharmaceutical firms?
Speaker 1: Are you, to the extent you can say, engaged in
Speaker 1: beginning to produce some of these things, either legally as
Speaker 1: part of projects or not so legally. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about your twenties in the West Coast and
Speaker 1: wherever else? Well, you're very kind to ask me, Ethan,
Speaker 1: you know, but I I can't say that I'm part
Speaker 1: of a secret society or than anyone else was. But
Speaker 1: I think if one were part of a secret society,
Speaker 1: and in those days one sort of had to be
Speaker 1: to avoid being persecuted, that it would be most honorable
Speaker 1: to maintain that secrecy even when there was no longer
Speaker 1: any need for it. Um. I lived in the mountains,
Speaker 1: the far Mountains, the Great Forest, the snow fields. I
Speaker 1: lived in the far deserts. You could hear the cavities
Speaker 1: bark and the full moon upon the desert. I lived
Speaker 1: near the oceans, the ceaseless waves, and I studied. I
Speaker 1: haunted the libraries of Berkeley and Stanford and San Francisco
Speaker 1: State San Jose State as much academy as I could
Speaker 1: gather looking at structurals of molecules, studying what today is
Speaker 1: psychedelic space, but in those years was almost a forbidden topic.
Speaker 1: One did not mentioned these drugs at the risk of
Speaker 1: one's career, as you well recall. So I became well
Speaker 1: studied and all aspects of the chemistry and pharmacology of
Speaker 1: of these compounds, and of course naturally broader aspects of pharmacology,
Speaker 1: pharmaco kinetics, toxicology. UM I gathered several hundred undergraduate credit
Speaker 1: from multiple institutions. And in between these forays into reading
Speaker 1: and thought and practice, UM I lived in most remote
Speaker 1: areas imaginable. I see. So even in talking about what
Speaker 1: you personally were doing independent of what other people in
Speaker 1: the UH what's the phrase the brotherhood of underground chemists? Um,
Speaker 1: we're engaged in UH so, and I all I can
Speaker 1: understand that and defer to your need to be cautious
Speaker 1: about that. Let me take the conversation this way. What
Speaker 1: would have been involved in setting up an LSD lab?
Speaker 1: You know, what are the risk the challenges, what's surprisingly easy,
Speaker 1: what's surprisingly difficult? Well, let's of course a very uh
Speaker 1: deep question. You're asking me about what is required to
Speaker 1: establish a clandestine laboratory, And of course I can only
Speaker 1: speak to that giving my present situation by projecting it
Speaker 1: upon third parties. People that I have interviewed underground miss
Speaker 1: that I've interviewed, and I cannot of course speak to
Speaker 1: it personally. But I can't address the topic given those
Speaker 1: caveats to establish an underground laboratory, and I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: this at home. Kids were cars First of all, the
Speaker 1: rather dedicated faith of a small group of people who
Speaker 1: have an effect given their lives over to this particular art.
Speaker 1: Because even through the present day, with bill in dollar
Speaker 1: corporations proliferating, we must recall that all these materials are
Speaker 1: still Schedule one, no known medical use for the most
Speaker 1: severe penalties for an underground laboratory, easily mandatory life without
Speaker 1: possibility of parole. So I certainly want not suggest anyone
Speaker 1: entertained the prospect of doing so. However, those that braved
Speaker 1: this assembly first collected a small handful of the fateful
Speaker 1: and experience that had spent their entire lives in the field,
Speaker 1: and then accumulating the appropriate glassware and technical instruments which
Speaker 1: could be quite extensive and would fill a room four
Speaker 1: walls of a hundred and twenty scriffoot room to the ceiling,
Speaker 1: or several rooms. Appropriate liquids, reagents, exotic specialized glassware, some
Speaker 1: of it handmade by pharmaceutical glass firms. A very elegant
Speaker 1: and sensitive process. Not difficult, more difficult than methamphetamine. But
Speaker 1: the difficulty arises not so much in the conversion of
Speaker 1: say lysergic acid to LSD, but in scaling up from
Speaker 1: a few milligrams to hundreds of grams or kims a
Speaker 1: world quantity, if you will, ten million doses, twenty million doses.
Speaker 1: That requires highly specialized equipment and practices, and some of
Speaker 1: those practices are not simply technical. One may find oneself
Speaker 1: in a moon suit with protective face shields and respirators,
Speaker 1: and glove is made of material which won't permit dissolution
Speaker 1: by any solvent. One may find oneself in this regalia
Speaker 1: hundred miles from the nearest paved road, with pump swirring,
Speaker 1: and at three in the morning, bathed in red light
Speaker 1: to prevent any breaking of the molecule by normal light.
Speaker 1: Synthes is conducted under noble gases such as argon Uh
Speaker 1: surrounded by things which remind the manufacturer of the responsibility
Speaker 1: that the manufacturer has for the effect of this substance
Speaker 1: and potentially millions of minds. And that is not something
Speaker 1: that's simply a nine to five job and one forgets
Speaker 1: about and goes home. That's the responsibility which consumes every
Speaker 1: moment of one's day, weeks, months, years, one's life. Within
Speaker 1: the setting, there may be votives, depending upon one's religious tradition,
Speaker 1: cantles and sins, fires, burning music playing ranging from Gregorian
Speaker 1: chant to Hildegard von Being into Provian music to chance
Speaker 1: by Maria Sabino, the Mazatec Curandera in Ohaka. And within
Speaker 1: this great assembly of light and sound and music. A
Speaker 1: number of the principal chemists in the past, Osley Nick
Speaker 1: sand of the Brotherhood Tim Scully who is still with us,
Speaker 1: would at the moment of conversion from lysergic acid L
Speaker 1: s D, the moment when suddenly ten million hits becomes psychoactive,
Speaker 1: that very five minutes, they inevitably, and Nick mentioned this
Speaker 1: pup likely the inevitably would pray, and their own tradition,
Speaker 1: Nick would pray standing others would Neil place their hand
Speaker 1: upon their action kettle, and asked that this substance be
Speaker 1: a true medicine, and the hearts and minds of those
Speaker 1: that used it, there would be a medicine to heal,
Speaker 1: to alleviate suffering throughout the world, to act as a
Speaker 1: kind of grace upon us. You know, later, when I
Speaker 1: hear you describe this, part of what it sounds like
Speaker 1: is almost a hybrid of On the one hand, I
Speaker 1: love the series Breaking Bad, right about the meth amphetamine
Speaker 1: manufacturer and who does the highest quality meth amphetamine, and
Speaker 1: who has this great underground lab in the end, and
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, and they have to wear suits
Speaker 1: in the way that you describe, in a high level
Speaker 1: of meticulousness and pride in their expertise. Yet another hand,
Speaker 1: there's this element in what you describe that resembles the
Speaker 1: preparation of psychodelic and psychoactive substances by shaman's in traditional society.
Speaker 1: It would it be fair is that an accurate thing
Speaker 1: to describe it? In some sense that hybrid? Well, I
Speaker 1: have to challenge the comparison with Breaking Bad. You know,
Speaker 1: methamphetamine is um a malaise upon humanity. I've lost kind
Speaker 1: of a number of individuals I've seen come into federal
Speaker 1: holding facilities emaciated and picking at their skin from weeks
Speaker 1: and months of intravenous methamphetamine. So it carries a kind
Speaker 1: of if you will evil karma. Yeah, now I understand that.
Speaker 1: I think there's also the difference between meth amphetamine is
Speaker 1: being used in a medicinal frame and these others. But
Speaker 1: I take your point about that, Leaving aside what you
Speaker 1: regard as the immorality um and that many people regards
Speaker 1: the immorality of producing methamphetamine for the illicit market, is
Speaker 1: it fair to say that there's some element of a
Speaker 1: hybrid between those two things, the modern day lab and
Speaker 1: the spiritual tradition of the you know, indigenous healers who
Speaker 1: are producing these substances. Absolutely, I you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Walter White never prayed that his product act as a
Speaker 1: grace upon the users. At the same time, there is
Speaker 1: a shamanic aspect, I suppose underground chemist of course recognize
Speaker 1: a great responsibility that the material be pure and uh
Speaker 1: used appropriately and conveyed appropriately. I think that that may
Speaker 1: be best summed up in a statement that I think
Speaker 1: Tim Scully was Nick San's partner made not long ago
Speaker 1: and is agreed upon by a number of underground manufactors,
Speaker 1: that the effective acceptance may reflect, in some small way,
Speaker 1: the intent of the chemist. What the chemist has in
Speaker 1: their heart may reflect in the heart of the user.
Speaker 1: And so it's imperative that one ascribed to a certain
Speaker 1: purity and a certain compassion. We'll be talking more after
Speaker 1: we hear this ad. The names you mentioned before, I
Speaker 1: mean Owsley, there are books now written about him, and
Speaker 1: I think people sometimes refer to a Owsley L. S
Speaker 1: DD as a found and a draw somewhere. You know,
Speaker 1: it's particular qualities. I think I remember watching a documentary
Speaker 1: about Nick Sands of late. I hadn't know about Tim
Speaker 1: Scully till I was researching for doing this episode with you. Um,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how accurate these books and documentaries are.
Speaker 1: Could you just give us a little more of a
Speaker 1: sketch about each of the three of them? Um? What
Speaker 1: was special about each one of them in that broader
Speaker 1: brotherhood of which they were a part? Yes, I can
Speaker 1: speak a little bit too each Um. I was ay
Speaker 1: fondly known as Bear and the Grateful Dead touring community,
Speaker 1: hence the Dancing Bears. Ungrateful Dead Logos was responsible for
Speaker 1: the first major distribution or drop of LSD and the sixties,
Speaker 1: perhaps one million doses distributed as double dome white lightnings
Speaker 1: or press tablets with Batman on it. The first million
Speaker 1: doses he he made about five hundred grams over his
Speaker 1: life a million doses, as he self reported. Bear was
Speaker 1: also created the wall of sound for the Grateful Dead shows,
Speaker 1: and there enormous number of subtranean tapes which have just
Speaker 1: surfaced of Bears recordings of early Dead. He died in Australia.
Speaker 1: About Nixon, quite a flamboyant and wonderful individual, was the
Speaker 1: subject of a recent film The Sunshine makers strongly recommended
Speaker 1: to get a feeling for. Nick and Tim were arrested
Speaker 1: for making about ten million doses. I attended the trial
Speaker 1: I think in seventy three and listened to Tim testify,
Speaker 1: and shortly thereafter Tim went to prison for two years
Speaker 1: and Nikki absconded to Puna, India where he continued his
Speaker 1: manufacturing and became quite a underground figure. Extraordinary individual and
Speaker 1: very much outspoken and out front and would not limit
Speaker 1: his his views on matters. Nikki truly seminal figure, and
Speaker 1: they did uh two kilograms about ten million doses. Nikki
Speaker 1: over his lifetime produced thirteen kilograms about a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million doses. Is there anyone else who left out? Well,
Speaker 1: those are the primary figures UM. There are a number
Speaker 1: of individuals who manufactured a quilo or two UM Todd,
Speaker 1: Spenson and Boston, those that I wan't name because they
Speaker 1: were never arrested. The world of Clandis and LST manufacturer
Speaker 1: is UM small, perhaps a handful of individuals, five or
Speaker 1: ten individuals worldwide. It's been that way for fifty years,
Speaker 1: generally centered in San Francisco, but labs can just as
Speaker 1: easily be in Belgium or Italy. But if the were
Speaker 1: key people in Europe, they never got arrested. There have
Speaker 1: been quite a number of people have never been arrested.
Speaker 1: One of the more interesting figures just passed away. That
Speaker 1: would be Dennis Kelly, who did two years for a
Speaker 1: very large lab production was called clear Light. This was
Speaker 1: in the mid seventies. They were producing in burnt Ridge
Speaker 1: argon form of LSD, known as a window pane because
Speaker 1: they were little squares of translucent gelatine, a very famous patch.
Speaker 1: Dennis again produced about two to three ks. But after
Speaker 1: his two years of incarceration, Dennis Um entered these Zen
Speaker 1: Soto Zen community and became a Zen priest and for
Speaker 1: the next fifty years was known as Kinpo and developed
Speaker 1: quite a following his um It has a beautiful monastery,
Speaker 1: die Bosatsu Monastery and Mount Trumper, New York is Dennis's creation.
Speaker 1: He just passed away a few months ago, and uh
Speaker 1: left an autobiography maybe of interest to your listeners. And Leonard,
Speaker 1: the Buddhist Zen traditional was something that you embraced periodically
Speaker 1: or maybe throughout your life. Huh. Well, Uh. As a
Speaker 1: young person, I looked fondly down at Tasahara and the
Speaker 1: Tasa Horror bread book, which was all the rage during
Speaker 1: the hippie years. But something sort of called to me
Speaker 1: about them. But I couldn't quite bring myself to stop
Speaker 1: what I was doing and go don robes and face
Speaker 1: the wall for weeks that seemed rather esoteric. But after
Speaker 1: my first release from five years in prison, where I
Speaker 1: was exposed to Um, a Chinese priest that came in
Speaker 1: from the Chinese monastery in l A, I went directly
Speaker 1: to Soto was in the oldest Soto was in monastery
Speaker 1: in North America, and knocked on the door and asked admission,
Speaker 1: and was taken in and remained there for two years.
Speaker 1: Very rigorous practice up at three in the morning, morning
Speaker 1: sittings at four in the morning, sweeping the sidewalks at
Speaker 1: five in the morning, robed lots of chanting and very formal,
Speaker 1: refined practices in the Japanese tradition. Very beautiful and gentle
Speaker 1: people would bow to you in the hallway, which was
Speaker 1: quite a change of pace from stabbings in prison. So
Speaker 1: I became quite fond of the monastic setting and left
Speaker 1: only when I received a letter of acceptance from Harvard,
Speaker 1: and at that point simply had to go. So letter
Speaker 1: now that one, I'll say, has a lab set up
Speaker 1: to produce it large volume? How long does it take
Speaker 1: to produce how big a match? And is this something
Speaker 1: that you would do for some weeks at a time
Speaker 1: and then just take off a long time or was
Speaker 1: this an ongoing process that could go on for months
Speaker 1: and months and months well. The government's um primary witness
Speaker 1: stated that the lab I he alleged I was responsible
Speaker 1: for produced about a kilogram a month for twenty years.
Speaker 1: That would be twitter and fifty kilograms. But of course
Speaker 1: that to me is quite fasciful. We'll let the listener
Speaker 1: decide on that. UM. In terms of the process itself,
Speaker 1: the process would depend upon it what stage in history
Speaker 1: that you're simply doing the synthesis. Nick and Tim were
Speaker 1: young men late twenties early thirties. They were using an
Speaker 1: antique cookbook method called guard brick, which is quite toxic
Speaker 1: involving sulfur oxide. Patented process UM. I am not quite
Speaker 1: sure the process howsole used, but probably something quite similar
Speaker 1: to it, or another patented public process which is relatively
Speaker 1: low yield or produces number of by products. But as
Speaker 1: the science evolved over the next thirty and forty years,
Speaker 1: but the time we get to two thousand, processes existed.
Speaker 1: If one were the devotee of the literature and really
Speaker 1: thought about these things, processes existed which would produce in
Speaker 1: a non flammable way at room temperature, large quantities of
Speaker 1: immensely pure LSD. These were never published in the sense
Speaker 1: that it might destabilize the world market or make entry
Speaker 1: into manufacture too simple. People thought it was probably best
Speaker 1: that UM there'd be some scientific hurdle that would prevent
Speaker 1: those that were less dedicated from entering the yield, so
Speaker 1: that simple of cookment methods for these very advanced high
Speaker 1: yield methods were never published. I see it was anybody
Speaker 1: you know they ever harmed, uh in the process of
Speaker 1: producing LSD. Uh, not that I know of what you're describing,
Speaker 1: you know suggests. I mean it's like when I when
Speaker 1: I was, you know, thinking about your ostensibly getting into
Speaker 1: this line of work and what would motivate you. You
Speaker 1: wonder how the combination of on the one hand, just
Speaker 1: the challenge of it all, uh, the natural aptitude and
Speaker 1: curiosity about chemistry, the appreciation for LSD and some of
Speaker 1: these other psycholic substances having special properties for humankind. Um,
Speaker 1: But there was those element that you know, all of
Speaker 1: the people or I don't know all, but most were
Speaker 1: allegedly selling these things and earning sometimes some fairly substantial
Speaker 1: amounts of money. But many of the key players were
Speaker 1: also apparently using their money and sometimes more in philanthropic
Speaker 1: ways as opposed to buying fancy houses or boats or
Speaker 1: you know, having you know, this sort of lifestyle. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious, how is it that mixture of variables in
Speaker 1: all of this? Uh? Is it one factor that stands
Speaker 1: out more than others. You know, I realized you can't
Speaker 1: fully reflect on your own perspectives on this. But speaking
Speaker 1: a little more in the abstract or among members of
Speaker 1: the Brotherhood of Underground Chemists, well, I can go back
Speaker 1: to UH. I think what Nick said before his death,
Speaker 1: that he felt there was a calling that one has
Speaker 1: called upon if you will UH in the next case,
Speaker 1: by some higher power to UH do this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Of course, one easily sacrifices one's life, at least in
Speaker 1: the past, not so much in the future. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're going to see corporations manufacturing let's see as they
Speaker 1: are now with government licensing. And that brings up an
Speaker 1: interesting point which goes back to your early question about
Speaker 1: shamanic manufactor in the future um delicit medicalization and use
Speaker 1: of psychedelics. The sources will not be by someone who
Speaker 1: searches their soul and praise over a pure compound. It
Speaker 1: will be done by a technician, perhaps in China, who
Speaker 1: simply goes home at five o'clock. And the question is UM, well,
Speaker 1: this affect the outcome in the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: the users. Well, I mean one pel engage in control
Speaker 1: double line studies on the road where people could do
Speaker 1: their own at home control applying study and you know,
Speaker 1: randomly see and see record those experiences. What do you think.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're speculating here, Ethan. You know, scientifically, the
Speaker 1: idea of individual influencing the outcome of a drug and
Speaker 1: a third party is not tenable. It's merely myth, but
Speaker 1: it's an entertaining myth, and it may keep certain manufacturers
Speaker 1: on their toes if they think they have to harbor
Speaker 1: a pure heart. You know, it relates to another issue there, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a conversation that I've had, I think
Speaker 1: in some of the other interviews, but about the difference
Speaker 1: between the synthesized chemical the mescaline, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: and the peote or san pedro from which you know
Speaker 1: it can be derived or with psilocybin and mushrooms. And
Speaker 1: there are those I think Sasha Shilka would be included,
Speaker 1: who said, you know, whether it's a synthetically produced or
Speaker 1: whether it's coming from something that's growing in nature, you know,
Speaker 1: it's still basically the same chemical. And if anything, the
Speaker 1: basic chemical may even be a little easier because it
Speaker 1: doesn't come with the things that upset your stomach and
Speaker 1: things like that that happened with the plant product, and
Speaker 1: others who believe that there's something either fundamentally different or
Speaker 1: better about having it come from the plant itself. And
Speaker 1: now you're saying that even when you produce something synthetically,
Speaker 1: that having a nick Sands or an Owsley produces is
Speaker 1: somehow going to produce a different product than would bes um.
Speaker 1: You know, employee of a pharmaceutical company a decade from now,
Speaker 1: who's just doing this stuff is part of his nine job,
Speaker 1: And so what about that first point between the natural
Speaker 1: plant based substance and is synthetic? I would tend to
Speaker 1: agree with Sasho that synthesized mescalind hemi sulfite hydrate, for example,
Speaker 1: the most beautiful long needles. These are ten centimeter needles,
Speaker 1: the most beautiful physical substance imaginable. If that mescalin is
Speaker 1: the same as the mescalin of an all night the
Speaker 1: Native American church ceremony with prayer, fans and incense around
Speaker 1: the fire and the tp and the dawn woman bringing
Speaker 1: water and all the prayers and chants for healing, all
Speaker 1: those two different, well, the mescaline isn't the circumstances in
Speaker 1: which it is offered are are quite different. So I
Speaker 1: think that myths, if you will, or positive setting setting
Speaker 1: as a strong factor with a natural sub senances. Of course,
Speaker 1: so there are many new startups. I see them in
Speaker 1: pitch decks every week of firms that are attempting to
Speaker 1: make various elixirs from psilocybin mushrooms, claiming that the other
Speaker 1: materials psychoactive and nons acktective and the mushroom itself will
Speaker 1: influence the subjective effect on the healing properties and other
Speaker 1: larger concerns. Say no, no, pure psilocybin speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: So these have yet to be resolved. I suspect the
Speaker 1: industry will will resolve these gun dundrums in the next
Speaker 1: two years and we'll all have great fun watching it happen. Well,
Speaker 1: as I want to come back to this is towards
Speaker 1: the end of the interview, because part of our connecting
Speaker 1: or reconnecting in recent months is around some of this
Speaker 1: new world of the of the investment in the psychedelics
Speaker 1: for profits. But let me just correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong on this. But so when you do the sense
Speaker 1: I have from what you're saying is of a calling
Speaker 1: of seeing that this is something called to do, and
Speaker 1: that a persistence of doing this, even the face of obstacles.
Speaker 1: And so I came across and tell me if this
Speaker 1: is factually correct or not. But when I one of
Speaker 1: the pieces I found said, well, you know, Leonard, your
Speaker 1: first arrest in this area was a petty arrest when
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventies six or possession of payot. And then
Speaker 1: there's something else about another I think, I don't know
Speaker 1: how minor, but for creating a small m d M
Speaker 1: A lab back in the mid seventies, and then some
Speaker 1: years later, in the late eighties, you get arrested amount
Speaker 1: of View, California for allegedly having an LSD lab. Spent
Speaker 1: five years in prison until two come out, and a
Speaker 1: number of years where you're engaged with academia, getting a
Speaker 1: master's degree at Kennedy School, writing in publications. But then
Speaker 1: the big bust, uh, And I think it was election
Speaker 1: day two thousand, which puts you in prison for twenty years. Now,
Speaker 1: if those details are correct, it suggests that you were
Speaker 1: How could I say incorrigible in the most upstanding sort
Speaker 1: of way, since fundamentally I do believe that the work
Speaker 1: that you were allegedally engaged in performed an enormous community
Speaker 1: service for humankind throughout this period. But I mean, it
Speaker 1: does suggest that these criminal justice penalties kept coming after you,
Speaker 1: but that you kept persisting with something that you love
Speaker 1: to do. Well. Yes, Ethan, you've kind of got me
Speaker 1: on the spot there, but yes. So there were multiple
Speaker 1: arrests involving psychedelic drugs. Perhaps every seven or eight years
Speaker 1: one would occur. And these range from minor arrest where
Speaker 1: one was taken away for a day or two in
Speaker 1: release because the substance wasn't what they claimed to be
Speaker 1: or might have been legal, to arrests which required six
Speaker 1: months in jail, and then the Mountain View seizure which
Speaker 1: resulted in five years, which is quite a significant LSD
Speaker 1: laboratory actually, from what I understand, the same size as
Speaker 1: the later Kansas arrest in two thousand, which resulted in
Speaker 1: not twenty years but two life senators mandatory life sentences
Speaker 1: without possibility of parole, other words, a death sentence. The
Speaker 1: possibility of sorting it all out by appellate filings um
Speaker 1: is something of an American dream, and indeed does occur
Speaker 1: and supports the mercy and wisdom of our judicial system.
Speaker 1: But it is so very rarely seen that men tend
Speaker 1: to lose hope. Although at this late date I harbored
Speaker 1: no ill will against the government. Mm hm, you know, Leonard,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was about to get to this point
Speaker 1: about your sentencing, and I was looking up some of
Speaker 1: the data on this and among there's something like two
Speaker 1: point two point three million people behind bars in America today,
Speaker 1: of whom about two thirds are in state prisons in
Speaker 1: federal jails. Of that one and a half million who
Speaker 1: are in state and federal prisons, roughly two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: the last that I saw a count are there serving
Speaker 1: a life sentence, either mandated one or an effectively a
Speaker 1: life sentence. Half of them are black. But interestingly, about
Speaker 1: eight percent, seventeen thousand are people who were convicted of
Speaker 1: non violent offenses. Now, one can make too much of
Speaker 1: distinction between not non violent and violent offenses. There are
Speaker 1: people who committed you know, non violent offenses. Look who
Speaker 1: made off dead and the fact that he died behind
Speaker 1: bars I have no ethical problem with. And on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are violent offenses, you know that don't
Speaker 1: seem to me to be in some separate category from
Speaker 1: some of the horrors of what people can do non
Speaker 1: violently to one another. But that said, you know, and
Speaker 1: having been involved in building an organization, a movement opposing
Speaker 1: these draconian sentences for drug offenses. I mean, the first
Speaker 1: thing I want to ask you is, when I read
Speaker 1: about the judge who sentenced to you to the two
Speaker 1: life sentences with no possibility of parole, um, you can
Speaker 1: in your heart forgive that person. And I imagine that
Speaker 1: he's no longer alive. And part of what I read
Speaker 1: was he was a highly right wing and maybe somewhat
Speaker 1: senile figure. But on you really are able to forgive
Speaker 1: him because that was a discretionary choice he made right
Speaker 1: the law did not require him to sentence you in
Speaker 1: the way he did. Um. That would be Judge of
Speaker 1: Richard Rogers Um, a very dignified for the pointee Republican,
Speaker 1: former mayor of Manhattan, Kansas, ardent softball player, well loved
Speaker 1: in the legal community and Topeka, very distinguished jurish who
Speaker 1: handed down a number of difficult but well respected decisions.
Speaker 1: Of course, I battled in the Judge Rogers court. I
Speaker 1: wrote over a thousand motions studied the law for years
Speaker 1: to write UH such briefs, which very thoughtfully refined by
Speaker 1: the law offices of Billy Rourke in the Topeka A
Speaker 1: Rugby playing wild Man, the last of the fighting Liberal
Speaker 1: attorneys and Kansas. The late Billy Rourke. Judge Rogers Uh
Speaker 1: occasionally entertained the jury during the longest trial in Kansas history.
Speaker 1: One of his great quotes, I recall this trial is
Speaker 1: like something out of the Arabian Nights. It's got a
Speaker 1: great laugh from the jury. And he once called me
Speaker 1: a young man, which I really appreciated at. But he
Speaker 1: was most courteous. I harbored. No. U nowhere a will
Speaker 1: against Judge Rogers, even though another judge might have sentenced
Speaker 1: you to a dramatically shorter amount of time. No, I
Speaker 1: think not. I think that Judge rogers hands were tied
Speaker 1: simply by the mandatory nature of sentencing. Ten grams or
Speaker 1: more of a substance containing a detectable amount of LSD,
Speaker 1: which might be one microgram, is mandatory life at the
Speaker 1: quantities that we're discussing. So Judge Rogers, as he mentioned
Speaker 1: at sentencing, his hands were tied. I see, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I stand corrected on that I thought he had there
Speaker 1: was a discretionary element of it, you know, And hearing
Speaker 1: you talk in the past a little bit about your
Speaker 1: prison experience, just by chance, I've been watching this TV
Speaker 1: series called Rectify, produced by Sundance now on a m
Speaker 1: C plus, I think, and it's about, you know, a
Speaker 1: young man white who is convicted of having killed a
Speaker 1: young woman while into the influence of mushrooms. It so happens, uh,
Speaker 1: and can't accurately recollect what happened, and then gets out
Speaker 1: twenty years later, having been traumatized by his experience and
Speaker 1: uncertain about what's going to happen in the future. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, as I was looking forward to
Speaker 1: having this interview with you, and I'm watching at night
Speaker 1: this show, I started thinking about some of these parallels
Speaker 1: and just the experience, you know, of being in this place. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's an all male environment where physical touch
Speaker 1: is either something that's either not good that just doesn't
Speaker 1: happen with a sound of chains and the solitude the
Speaker 1: act of being in a maximum security setting when that's
Speaker 1: not called for in your a case like yours or
Speaker 1: many others to protect other inmates or what have you.
Speaker 1: It seems purely punitive. Um, But I'm curious, I mean
Speaker 1: to get through that. And I imagine you know there
Speaker 1: must have been substantial periods of time where you thought
Speaker 1: that there was little to no chance of your ever
Speaker 1: becoming a freeman during the rest of your life? Were
Speaker 1: there periods of profound hopelessness and all of this? And
Speaker 1: how did you sustain yourself through all of that? Yes,
Speaker 1: that that period of hopelessness, even you're entirely correct, began
Speaker 1: on November six, two thousand and in it on July
Speaker 1: and every day in between those two dates twenty years.
Speaker 1: I thought I would most certainly die in prison, and
Speaker 1: everyone I knew thought the same, my attorneys, my friends,
Speaker 1: my family, and my children, um, those of the public
Speaker 1: that paid attention to the case. Um, there is no
Speaker 1: way out from a mandatory life sentence simply does not occur,
Speaker 1: vanishingly rare, only with the passage and a miracle in itself,
Speaker 1: the passage in the First Step Act by Congress during
Speaker 1: the last few days of session in December. The last
Speaker 1: few days it was a bipartisan passage of the First
Speaker 1: Step Act, which for the first time allowed inmates to
Speaker 1: petition the court for release based on their good works,
Speaker 1: or their redemption or other factors medical, familial that would
Speaker 1: persuade the court that they had served an adequate amount
Speaker 1: of time and were no longer a threat to the public. Naturally,
Speaker 1: I filed immediately on that very lengthy briefses, including exhibits,
Speaker 1: and that matriculated through the system for over a year.
Speaker 1: Denied at the instituo level by the warden, denied at
Speaker 1: the regional level by b OP, denied at the national
Speaker 1: level by the BP director, denied by the United States
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office. So what hope was there left? And then
Speaker 1: a great miracle happened, And there was a merciful and
Speaker 1: distinguished jurist who, with great courage and wisdom, and I
Speaker 1: suppose a small amount of faith, read our petition, and
Speaker 1: the tempo of the times was so moved as to
Speaker 1: grant release. And since then it's been like being born again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I noticed Leonard that went I read the decision,
Speaker 1: and it seems like he went out of his way
Speaker 1: to say, I'm doing this because of COVID and Leonard
Speaker 1: seventy or almost seventy five, and there is a risk here.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the other arguments. He didn't seem
Speaker 1: to be moved by the petition of people who were
Speaker 1: fighting for your release, or the good works you've done
Speaker 1: in other areas, or the insights you'd provided on the
Speaker 1: fentinel christ Is two people in law enforcement. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe he was just covering his butt, and maybe he
Speaker 1: was in fact moved by those other variables, um, and
Speaker 1: just using the COVID as the kind of clear reason.
Speaker 1: But what do you think. Well, I can't speak of
Speaker 1: what was in the mind of this particular jurist except
Speaker 1: that I honor his wisdom and decision and whatever factors
Speaker 1: influenced that decision, and they could only be multiple factors.
Speaker 1: I am deeply grateful for that moment of grace. There
Speaker 1: was somebody else in there with you, I think, UM,
Speaker 1: a young man named Ross Albert Right who became famous
Speaker 1: or infamous, as one might have it, because he was
Speaker 1: the founder of Silk Road, which was a decade or
Speaker 1: so ago that supposedly the world's biggest dark net site
Speaker 1: for illicit activities, including obtaining illicit drugs around the world,
Speaker 1: and people were horrified when he sentenced for life. Now,
Speaker 1: there were some accusations he may have put contracts out
Speaker 1: of some people, but those were never substantiated. His mother
Speaker 1: actually came to one of the Drug Policy Alliance biennial
Speaker 1: events and I met her, and she's had a campaign
Speaker 1: to try to get him out. But do you see
Speaker 1: him as somebody sort of similarly situated with yourself, a
Speaker 1: kind of younger generation version of yourself, who is unjustly
Speaker 1: incarcerated for far far more time than he ever should
Speaker 1: have been. And thank you Ethan for mentioning Ross. Of
Speaker 1: course I know his mother lend his father Kurt and
Speaker 1: call him each night during trial in Manhattan, on the
Speaker 1: very darkest days, And then as he entered the system,
Speaker 1: suggested that perhaps he should be moved to a institution
Speaker 1: that would be less gang riddled and threatening, because Ross, uh,
Speaker 1: it was of course a target people, assuming he had
Speaker 1: hidden bitcoin, and of course he's a would be a
Speaker 1: gang victim. And I recall how happy I was one
Speaker 1: day on the yard, walking in circles for twenty years
Speaker 1: on a dirt track to see a young then bearded
Speaker 1: man walk in. And there he was, and we became
Speaker 1: great friends and spoke daily and walked quite a lot
Speaker 1: in my last year incarceration. So I learned of Ross's
Speaker 1: heart and fears. Of course, the idea that he would
Speaker 1: harm anyone is this nonsense. Of the course, even homeland
Speaker 1: security I knew that was nonsense and didn't bring charges.
Speaker 1: A very fine looking young man about thirty three, gentle meditative,
Speaker 1: a deep reader in economics, um, a writer, a sensitive
Speaker 1: young man that's been in for eight years now, surely
Speaker 1: has gotten the message and would never, never re offend
Speaker 1: and would be a tremendous asset in the crypto world,
Speaker 1: in the bitcoin world, as a speaker, as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Lynn his mother told me that when Ross heard of
Speaker 1: my release, he cried not out of self pity, but
Speaker 1: out of happiness. Because we talked. We knew every every
Speaker 1: detail of each other's cases and hopes and fears, and
Speaker 1: every filing and everything about each other's families, and and
Speaker 1: so we shared the fear and the dwindling hope and
Speaker 1: the simple faith of a mustard seed, if you will,
Speaker 1: in biblical terms, that it all might change. And when
Speaker 1: it did for me, I guess the reservoirs, and and
Speaker 1: Ross broke loose. I promised him that when I spoken
Speaker 1: podcast or spoke publicly, I would always mention him and
Speaker 1: draw public attention to his plight. It's time for him
Speaker 1: to go home. The most heartbreaking thing to me with
Speaker 1: Ross on the rare occasions I had visits was that
Speaker 1: Ross always had visits every visiting period from a love
Speaker 1: a French programmer woman that fell in love with Ross
Speaker 1: while he was way. They had special permission to see
Speaker 1: each other a lot. So I'd be in the visiting
Speaker 1: room and she would come in. They would have a
Speaker 1: brief hello and goodbye, just a brief brief hog and
Speaker 1: spent hours talking. And I would sit there and think
Speaker 1: to myself, how beautiful, but also how very very sad,
Speaker 1: because these young people are still in the honeymoon phase.
Speaker 1: He had only been in eight years, and so they
Speaker 1: still had faith that something might miraculously changed by emotion,
Speaker 1: habeas motion, some elegant legal argument, and they don't know
Speaker 1: the dark, lonely years that stretched endlessly ahead. Ross could
Speaker 1: be there twenty years, he could be there thirty years.
Speaker 1: I've said goodbye to more than one inmate who has
Speaker 1: done forty years. So my my heartward break watching them.
Speaker 1: It is important that the public, the public that cares
Speaker 1: about evolution of computers, evolution psychedelics, UH evolution of simple
Speaker 1: humanity and freedom for the individual. Recognize that long term
Speaker 1: imprisonment of the nonviolent what we've seen is uncivilized in
Speaker 1: the eight or nine ten years is enough for anyone
Speaker 1: for a nonviolent crime. No letter. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, and I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's part of the dark side of America's exceptionalism that
Speaker 1: not only have we broken all records in the history
Speaker 1: of human civilization in terms of the percent of the
Speaker 1: population or incarcerating, but also the way in which we
Speaker 1: throw away so many hundreds of thousands of people's lives,
Speaker 1: you know, for life, and these incredible amounts of time.
Speaker 1: You know, I had heard you else. We're talking about
Speaker 1: how you got through, you know, these decades thinking this
Speaker 1: might be all it would ever be. And obviously you
Speaker 1: were writing your legal briefs and those were time consuming.
Speaker 1: And I read about how you talked about becoming a
Speaker 1: big fan of nineteenth century British literature and reading vastly
Speaker 1: in that way, and you had relationships with people like
Speaker 1: Ross and others. I mean, there was that, But then
Speaker 1: I think one other thing you did was you wrote
Speaker 1: a book, and in reading about the book, it made
Speaker 1: me think of the book that Sasha Shilgan and his
Speaker 1: wife and wrote. They wrote a book called pekal p
Speaker 1: I h k a l which stood for fin Athlens
Speaker 1: I have known and loved. And the second half of
Speaker 1: the book is basically the recipes for all these psychedelic substances,
Speaker 1: but the first half is a sort of thinly disguised
Speaker 1: autobiographical account of their lives. And they felt a need
Speaker 1: to frame it his fiction because of the consequences of law.
Speaker 1: And you wrote a book which I think integrated some
Speaker 1: autobiographical um with some fictional elements as well. Maybe you
Speaker 1: could just tell our listeners a bit about that. Thank you.
Speaker 1: And the book is called The Rose of Paracelsus. Paracelsus
Speaker 1: was a sixteenth century alchemists and Basel philosopher, and the
Speaker 1: title is adapted from a short story by the Argentine
Speaker 1: writer Jorge Luis Borges. I wrote this almost seven hundred
Speaker 1: page tomb and pencil since there were only ten rickety
Speaker 1: typewriters for eight hundred men, and they were only available
Speaker 1: a few hours a day. But it was also very
Speaker 1: nourishing to write by hand. I spent twenty years reading,
Speaker 1: mostly Victorian edwater in literature, I found that a great respite.
Speaker 1: When I looked up, there were bloody gang battles and
Speaker 1: stabbings and killings, and loud speakers going off in tons
Speaker 1: of razor wir and guard towers and flash band grenades
Speaker 1: and tattooed faces with spider webs, And when I looked
Speaker 1: down into the text, I might be in nineteen century England,
Speaker 1: with carriages and horses and manners and a gentler world.
Speaker 1: So it was easy to choose between the too. So
Speaker 1: The Rose of paracelsis Um is written in a very mannered,
Speaker 1: almost Victorian, almost archaic language. It will be familiar to
Speaker 1: those that are devoted readers of literature, but may be
Speaker 1: very difficult for those that expect a casual, breezy read.
Speaker 1: The word craft is dense. There are puzzles and for shadowings,
Speaker 1: and the little humor not all ponderous. But in writing it,
Speaker 1: sitting in a sixty square foot steel cell forever, I
Speaker 1: found myself trying to remember what the world looked like,
Speaker 1: because after about five years you forget images. You still
Speaker 1: see your family's face and your children's face, of course,
Speaker 1: but not haven't seen a flower or dog or cat
Speaker 1: or river, forest or tree in so many years that
Speaker 1: these are majestic recollections, but they are evaporating quickly, and
Speaker 1: so one tries to hold onto them. So and writing
Speaker 1: the Rose, I tried to describe, for example, a great
Speaker 1: forest and had some difficulty in doing that. Let's take
Speaker 1: a break here and go to an ad Leonard. You know,
Speaker 1: we really just met a few months ago, and so
Speaker 1: I really know the letterd post this experience in prison.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious when you reflect, or when people who
Speaker 1: have known you for a very long time re encounter you. Now, um,
Speaker 1: what are your your and their perceptions about how you
Speaker 1: have changed or evolved as a human being, as a personality, um,
Speaker 1: from your days before you went into that life sentence. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't see myself faithan, I don't know. I probably
Speaker 1: I would put it as the younger version was probably
Speaker 1: brash and excited and uh, perhaps overconfident. The current version,
Speaker 1: which is twenty years on, is an elderly man with
Speaker 1: quade a few wrinkles, but I still managed to twinkle,
Speaker 1: and I have some laughs and a growing wonderful circle
Speaker 1: of friends, and my family is reawakening. However, joyous the
Speaker 1: times were just before my arrest. As you can possibly
Speaker 1: imagine the complexity and ecstasies of those days, the simple
Speaker 1: joys now our transcendent. I've never had more fun in
Speaker 1: my life. And frankly the last few months, I have
Speaker 1: to say I was amazed when he met in New
Speaker 1: York a few months ago, and then when you were
Speaker 1: in Boulder. We were both in Boulder for a meeting
Speaker 1: involving also the psychedelics investment area, and then I think
Speaker 1: you were visiting your son who is in medical school there.
Speaker 1: But I was just blown away at the way here
Speaker 1: you are. When you went away twenty years ago, technology
Speaker 1: was so radically different, and here you are reconnecting, connecting
Speaker 1: with whole new worlds of people getting deeply engaged in
Speaker 1: the whole new you know, breakout research with psychedelics and
Speaker 1: the investment side of that. You're introducing me to people
Speaker 1: I didn't know in this field, which was really quite
Speaker 1: special for me. And I was just struck by you
Speaker 1: know how well. I mean, maybe it's just a kind
Speaker 1: of quasi facade and you go back at home at
Speaker 1: night and collapse in some pile because of what you've
Speaker 1: been through, but it's quite extraordinary to see you. I mean,
Speaker 1: here we are in crazy Manhattan a few months ago,
Speaker 1: and you seem perfectly fine. I wonder if if that
Speaker 1: many people could come out of your experience of twenty
Speaker 1: years of incarceration in a maximum security federal correctional institute Susan,
Speaker 1: most of which spent hopelessly thinking you will never get out,
Speaker 1: and come out with that level of vitality and youthfulness
Speaker 1: and high spirit and renewed curiosity about all around you.
Speaker 1: I mean, what you're saying here, it does seem like
Speaker 1: you're having the time of your life. That this is this,
Speaker 1: you know, monumental gift that has been presented to you
Speaker 1: to make the most of. Uh, You're You're absolutely right, Ethan.
Speaker 1: It was like, frankly, it's with a circle of friends
Speaker 1: and startups and investors and just the expanding social nature
Speaker 1: of the world, which is increasingly intensifying, especially the psychedelic
Speaker 1: revolution that's now occurring. It feels like coming home. I
Speaker 1: feel warmly received wherever I go. It's like a party
Speaker 1: where everyone knows each other and it's all okay, and
Speaker 1: one's words are received well and one's thoughts are respected,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's mutual respect, Rick Shan about it's a
Speaker 1: new world. You know, it wasn't so long ago, Eathan,
Speaker 1: that if you mentioned the words psychedelic, you risk your career,
Speaker 1: and certainly in academia. And now it's a worldwide conversation
Speaker 1: of we hope a great promise for new medicines. And
Speaker 1: now this may or might not occur, that's entirely another conversation,
Speaker 1: but things look very promising. So it's a type of
Speaker 1: reaffirmation and redemption and helps forget all the suffering. M hm. Well,
Speaker 1: so let me ask you about this, this new focus
Speaker 1: of your life, because I mean, look, quite frankly, almost
Speaker 1: entirely because of you, it's possible that I may soon
Speaker 1: become an advisor for the first time in my life
Speaker 1: to a for profit investment fund that's investing in a
Speaker 1: host of psychedelic enterprises. And so I think you and
Speaker 1: I probably share the kind of both worries and hopes
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, not just the the incredible work
Speaker 1: that's been sponsored by MAPS, you know, Rick Doblin's Multi
Speaker 1: Disparity Association of Psychelic Studies, you know all it's a
Speaker 1: wonderful work on m d m A and public education
Speaker 1: and all of that, and the Heftress Society, the group
Speaker 1: of academics who have been involved in this research for
Speaker 1: a few decades or more now, but now with the
Speaker 1: whole growth of the commercialized for profit side, which seems
Speaker 1: to hold the potential to provide the hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in funding that could not be raised philanthropically
Speaker 1: and therefore is expediting the whole evolution. And yet on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it involves commercialization and as you said,
Speaker 1: the risk that this will be taken in the wrong
Speaker 1: direction by companies that are seeking to maximize profit by
Speaker 1: you know, securing patents and excluding others, or by manufacturers
Speaker 1: who don't really care about the special properties what they're producing,
Speaker 1: but only the market potential. You know what's going on
Speaker 1: now from your perspective, I mean, is this really a
Speaker 1: bubble that's gonna burst and it'll just be a small
Speaker 1: number of players left? Is the reason why the psilocybin
Speaker 1: thing is looming so large now in M D M A.
Speaker 1: But are we going to see more stuff with mescalin
Speaker 1: and LSD down the road? Um? Do you think it
Speaker 1: really will replace you know, the SSR eyes or other
Speaker 1: you know substances. You know, pharmaceuticals that are taken daily
Speaker 1: by large numbers of people and make you know, pharmacy
Speaker 1: companies vast profits, but with you know, only modest efficacy.
Speaker 1: So I just thrown three different sorts of questions about
Speaker 1: the future. But take a swing at any one of
Speaker 1: those you care too. Oh, my goodness, that's quite a
Speaker 1: breath of questions. Let me go back to say how
Speaker 1: much you admire the work of Rick Doblin with MAPS.
Speaker 1: I was privileged to be at Rick's PhD thesis defense
Speaker 1: at the Kennedy School. Uh, I can no goodness ninety
Speaker 1: six and uh have come to admire the great work
Speaker 1: done by MAPS and by the Hefter Foundation. Dr David Nichols,
Speaker 1: the foremost medicinal chemists in the world, was an early
Speaker 1: founder tremendous early and visionary work, and both those organizations
Speaker 1: were formed in days where the specter of psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: being used for healings was marginalized, if not ridiculed. So
Speaker 1: it took quite a bit courage of Rick and Dr
Speaker 1: Nichols to act upon their vision, often at the possibility
Speaker 1: of the wrong direction of their careers. But now it's
Speaker 1: all come round And here we are, with over three
Speaker 1: corporations in counting now formed, some valued at a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Compas Pathways, a tie cybin mind med all evolving out
Speaker 1: of effectively the twenty fifteen publication The Journal of psycho
Speaker 1: Pharmacology by Roland Griffiths at Hopkins the Study of Psilocybin
Speaker 1: and Depression, and Rick's early faith that m d M
Speaker 1: A would be useful for PTSD. And here we are.
Speaker 1: Are we in a bubble? Of course, I'm a rather
Speaker 1: elderly and devoted hippie who might proselytize. Even so, I
Speaker 1: think that we're in a time of tremendous enthusiasm, perhaps
Speaker 1: a little too much in phusiasm, in the sense that, um,
Speaker 1: you have a core of true believers that hope that
Speaker 1: these drugs will be useful for various psychiatric illnesses, and
Speaker 1: indeed they're powerful, and indeed they may and the results
Speaker 1: seem very promising. But I see an enthusiasm that perhaps
Speaker 1: is too broad. These compounds are not a panacea for
Speaker 1: all known maladies, but the corportization. In the corporization field,
Speaker 1: we see, um, every known psychedelic being promoted. Salvan orn
Speaker 1: A fiber toxic d MT, mascular psilocybin slosion, every analog
Speaker 1: ketamine clinics are popping up worldwide. It's all happening, all
Speaker 1: at once, billions of dollars, hundreds, if not thousands of
Speaker 1: chemists and psychiatrists and neuroscientists all focusing in this field.
Speaker 1: A milestone was reached the other day a by Francis Collins,
Speaker 1: director of the National Institutions of Health, truly eminent and
Speaker 1: conservative leading figurehead, who said psychedelics may well be useful.
Speaker 1: So looking carefully at a number of pitch decks each
Speaker 1: week that come across my desk and seeing the range
Speaker 1: of new founders and ideas. Some are not strongly scientifically supported,
Speaker 1: others are true gems and may become major major institutions.
Speaker 1: That all said, I do feel that we're in a
Speaker 1: classic bubble stock wise, and that within the next two
Speaker 1: or three years it probably will be a shakeout. Depending
Speaker 1: upon the outcomes of the initial clinical trials. MAPS will
Speaker 1: report first on m b m A, followed by mind
Speaker 1: med Syban Paul cybin. The outcomes of these trials, which
Speaker 1: are self reported by the sponsoring corporation and must be
Speaker 1: by federal law, may define the industry. A trial that
Speaker 1: goes south will deflate valuations. Trial that is promising in
Speaker 1: phase two will enhance valuations. But keep in mind, across
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals and their entirety, even antibiotics, only fourteen percent of
Speaker 1: new drugs are approved by f d A. I suspect
Speaker 1: that psychedelics will receive no less scrutiny than any drug,
Speaker 1: and perhaps far more so. We had better be right,
Speaker 1: and I think in some cases, h we are right.
Speaker 1: But folks, hold under your head. We're in the wild
Speaker 1: West and the next few years is going to be
Speaker 1: quite a ride. Yeah. Well, Leonard, you know, back in
Speaker 1: your days of freedom in the nineties and you cut
Speaker 1: your master's degree to Kennedy School. Uh, you worked with
Speaker 1: an academic, Mark Leman, who was a devoted friend of
Speaker 1: yours and a bit of a friend of me of mine. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, you wrote a brilliant paper about fentinel
Speaker 1: at a time when few people knew it was and
Speaker 1: you correctly predicted that this could potentially become a great
Speaker 1: threat to public health. And you missed a bit by
Speaker 1: thinking that it might be Russia that would emerge as
Speaker 1: a major source rather than China. But I'm curious bringing
Speaker 1: back the psychelics area. Does China have a feature in
Speaker 1: this psychedelics area? I mean, you see them playing this
Speaker 1: role kind of illegally on the fenital thing. You see
Speaker 1: them playing a role as a pioneer on some of
Speaker 1: the e cigarette stuff for better and worse. What about psychedelics?
Speaker 1: How interesting you should ask that ethan UH. China, of course,
Speaker 1: has the world's largest pharmaceutical industry fifty thousand or so firms,
Speaker 1: and its rather loosely regulated, hence the rather grave influx
Speaker 1: of every known analog of fentanyl into Europe. Some are
Speaker 1: quite impotent, you know, four thousand times the ponency of
Speaker 1: morphine UH, and China, of course is the primary source country,
Speaker 1: although Mexico, certain Mexican labs have been devastating in terms
Speaker 1: of the ethality of their production. It's it's difficult to
Speaker 1: answer your question on that ethan. Has China wakened the psychedelics? No,
Speaker 1: it has not. UM. I keep a spreadsheet of UM
Speaker 1: every known startup I can find over three and nothing
Speaker 1: coming out of China. A few Japanese pharmacutical firms are
Speaker 1: looking somewhat at isomers of ketamine, but China remains the
Speaker 1: sleeping giant. I feel that it would be wise of
Speaker 1: activists in this field, especially the corporate figures, to reach
Speaker 1: out to Chinese venture capital firms and attempt to engage
Speaker 1: them and excite them UH into this realm. I think
Speaker 1: that additional billions will flow into research if we managed
Speaker 1: to do that. Johnah being very conservative, having no broad
Speaker 1: underground as we do in the States. In Europe, there
Speaker 1: was no Brotherhood of Eatun in Love in the sixties
Speaker 1: putting out tens of millions of doses, So they have
Speaker 1: no mature investors who had dazzling insights around campfires in
Speaker 1: their youth. There's no Chinese versions of our San Francisco
Speaker 1: young billionaires, but those of us that have Chinese connections,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the direction personally, UH might do well
Speaker 1: to try for a clinical trial and Shendong Province or
Speaker 1: or Beijing or Hong Kong and gently awakened the Chinese
Speaker 1: to this as part of the oral community. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm interesting to see. I think China. The Chinese government
Speaker 1: played a sort of leading role a few years ago
Speaker 1: in a very bad way and trying to ban the
Speaker 1: use of kenamine more broadly, uh. You know much of
Speaker 1: the world kenemine is used for pain relief where opioids
Speaker 1: are not available. But let let me finish with one
Speaker 1: last question. So as all of these news psychedelic compounds
Speaker 1: are being created by changing a molecule here and there,
Speaker 1: um and sometimes not psychedelic compounds as well, is there
Speaker 1: anything out there on the horizon that you think shows
Speaker 1: really exceptional interests that would take matters beyond where we
Speaker 1: have with m D, M A LSD the basics that
Speaker 1: are out there, are there new compounds that you're aware
Speaker 1: of that could land up being approved or show Greek
Speaker 1: potential in one way or another. Well, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that ethan with the corporatization which has stimulated enormous advances
Speaker 1: and intensity of new medicinal chemists working feverishly at their
Speaker 1: benches with novel methods of invention and manufacturer. With this
Speaker 1: huge um illicit activity going on now, we are seeing
Speaker 1: historically for the first time, the advent of tens of thousands,
Speaker 1: of hundreds of thousands of molecular variants. These generally in
Speaker 1: previous years twenty years ago would be published in the
Speaker 1: scientific journals for everyone to see. But with the corportization.
Speaker 1: Such things are proprietary, I'm told every week, even under
Speaker 1: nondisclosure E meant that, oh, I'm sorry, we can't share
Speaker 1: our patent application. So the work is becoming oddly clandestine.
Speaker 1: Yet again, uh that all said, since I can't point
Speaker 1: any specific compound, I can say with some confidence that
Speaker 1: we will see a variety of new creatures appear. Most
Speaker 1: of these new creatures will be not very interesting, a
Speaker 1: psychedelic wash show of buzz if you will, uh somewhat
Speaker 1: change of consciousness. Some will be, hopefully most precious. They
Speaker 1: will resolve post traumatic disorders. They may resolve postpartum depression,
Speaker 1: may resolve certain types of anxiety. They may replace parts
Speaker 1: of pharmacopeia, or they may replace certain types of ss rs.
Speaker 1: Although that's quite a reach to say that. But the
Speaker 1: fear I have is that within this great generation of
Speaker 1: new creatures, some may be rather difficult little beast and
Speaker 1: proved to be quite addictive or quite lethal. Um. We've
Speaker 1: already seen an example of this um coming out of
Speaker 1: the Free University of Berlin back about two thousand six,
Speaker 1: a post TALC. There was Tinkering, one of Sasa's variations
Speaker 1: on his remarkable drug to c B, which is a
Speaker 1: worldwide recreational compound now, and this fellow, a decent researcher exploring,
Speaker 1: did a series of modifications and he came up with
Speaker 1: something called, for lack of a better chemical name, in
Speaker 1: the bomb. And in bomb turned out to be a
Speaker 1: psychedelic very potent about oh eight micrograms as potent as LSD,
Speaker 1: and so this was immediately seized upon by hasty underground
Speaker 1: people and distributed as LSD. The problem was and it
Speaker 1: was quite lethal. There were a number of deaths. So
Speaker 1: my fear is that within this great search and great
Speaker 1: discovery of thousands and thousands of quite remarkable compounds, we'll
Speaker 1: see it go both ways. We may see a new
Speaker 1: drug that will sweep the world and as a positive
Speaker 1: benefit upon humanity, ranging for medical use to personal seeking,
Speaker 1: if you will, and it may replace in large part
Speaker 1: the legacy compounds LSD, D MT, mescalin, psilocybin. But I
Speaker 1: think along with that we may also see some some
Speaker 1: most unfortunate things occur. Yes, it's a responsibility in the
Speaker 1: psychedelic community to suppress one and promote the other. I mean, so, Leonard,
Speaker 1: when you were allegedly involved in production and certainly involved
Speaker 1: in this world and his brotherhood. What was your thinking
Speaker 1: about about the broader consequences. I mean, did you basically
Speaker 1: see the use of LSD by millions or tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people as a generally positive thing, notwithstanding the
Speaker 1: risks um And then when you you know, fast forward
Speaker 1: to today, we are a lot of this is moving
Speaker 1: forward in this kind of medical research environment, even as
Speaker 1: larger and larger numbers of people are doing it outside
Speaker 1: that setting. What is your thinking it hopes these will
Speaker 1: be the whole endgame of this. That's a difficult question, Nathan.
Speaker 1: I think back to our thinking as very young people
Speaker 1: in the sixties, when we were three. The young people
Speaker 1: of the era had great hope that the insights provided
Speaker 1: by these compounds would alter society and benevolent ways, to
Speaker 1: become less militaristic, less unaware of the environment, more aware
Speaker 1: of each other, to be delighted by the gifts of
Speaker 1: the mind. And then over the years I saw people
Speaker 1: being lost in different things, lost in methamphetamine and heroin
Speaker 1: addiction and cocaine addiction, all those malaises that went on forever.
Speaker 1: And I saw those horrors quite close up and deaths
Speaker 1: from them, and so I often remark when when so asked,
Speaker 1: is it best that everybody take LSD? I would say no.
Speaker 1: I think LSD or any psychedelic is only for a
Speaker 1: certain section of the population. May be a minority of
Speaker 1: the population. It's for some people, but not everyone. In
Speaker 1: terms of the many analogs proliferating and the tendency of
Speaker 1: young people to try every known drug in the book
Speaker 1: available freely online these days, I would say that we
Speaker 1: should remember that after all our explorations, we have to
Speaker 1: come home. We have to come home to the natural mind,
Speaker 1: the place where we began as young people, before we
Speaker 1: had exposure to these substances or to extreme experiences, the simple,
Speaker 1: pure place that as our ultimate gift, that which we
Speaker 1: be and from and with luck and vision will return too.
Speaker 1: So I think that after all of the expirations and
Speaker 1: all the corporatizations, on all the excitement, that we simply
Speaker 1: remember to to come home in the natural mind. Mm hmm, Well,
Speaker 1: Leonard Um, let's just hope that the spirit that animated
Speaker 1: you and others allegedly involved in the Brotherhood of Underground
Speaker 1: Chemists continues to infuse the field of research in this
Speaker 1: area into the future. I want to thank you ever
Speaker 1: so much for being my guest today. It's been a
Speaker 1: pleasure to connect with you in recent months, and I
Speaker 1: look forward to our future intersections with every greater frequency
Speaker 1: in the future. So thank you, very very very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Ethan. Wonderful to see you again.
Speaker 1: I look forward to many future conversations. Psychoactive is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted
Speaker 1: by me Ethan Needelman. It's produce used by Katcha Kumkova
Speaker 1: and Ben Cabrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alice Williams
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick for I Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Belusian and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to a Vivit Brio, Sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to share your own stories, comments or ideas,
Speaker 1: please leave us a message at eight three three seven
Speaker 1: seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three psycho zero.
Speaker 1: You can also email us as Psychoactive at Protozoa dot
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. And
Speaker 1: if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the
Speaker 1: information in the show notes. So next week we're gonna
Speaker 1: do something different. I'll have my old friend and drug
Speaker 1: expert Dr Julie Holland joined me in and towering questions
Speaker 1: from you, the audience. I don't have to pee in
Speaker 1: a cup to talk to you, do I, Ethan? Oh? Well,
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