WEBVTT - From the Vault: Timothy Leary, Part 2 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:10.840 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In It's Saturday. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.520 Time to go into the vault. Now this time we're 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.159 going to be listening to part two of the the 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:22.400 episode from last Saturday, the episode originally from September that 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.560 you and Christian did about Timothy Leary. Yeah, we figured 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.160 since we have the big psychedelic series that we've been 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:30.360 putting out, you know, the new episodes of Stuff to 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:33.200 Blow Your Mind, it made sense to revisit these older 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.280 episodes that that explored some of the similar territory, you know, 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.440 some similar history by focusing in on the life and 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:46.559 death of Timothy Leary. All right, so we hope you enjoy. 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:58.720 Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.320 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Segar, and 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.039 this is part two of our Timothy Leary l s 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.839 D series of episodes. We've already done part one where 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:11.560 we talk about the basic science behind l s D 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.080 and psilocybin and the research that's been done using these 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.160 psychedelic substances. And we talked about the first part of 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.559 Timothy Leary's life leading up to his research on this. Yes, 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.160 that's right. So if you if you missed part one, 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:27.160 go back and listen to it, because that's the one 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.520 that's going to be front loaded with all that LSD 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:33.600 science and just the initial period of Leary's life which 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.000 which ultimately kind of sets the sets the pace for 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.480 the rest of his life, like the destruct self destructive behaviors, 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:46.119 the patterns, they're all pretty much present before he even 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.440 you know, gets that finishes his education. So I've been 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.960 sitting around the house reading about Timothy Leary for the 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:54.880 last couple of days and my wife says, out of nowhere, 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.080 you know, I met him, right, And I was like, no, really, 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.080 And we both went to college at the University of 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.440 New Hampshire for undergraduate and before I got there, but 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.760 while she was there, either as a freshman or sophomore. Uh, 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:12.440 Timothy Learry came on one of his infamous campus speaking tours, 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.600 gave one of his you know, enlightenment talks, and then 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.040 afterwards my wife was outside the venue just like smoking 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.040 a cigarette, and Timothy Leary came out and sat down 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:23.880 next to her and just smoked a cigarette with her, 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.280 and they chatted for like five or ten minutes, and 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.000 then he got up and went on his way. What 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:30.200 they talked about, she didn't really say. She just said 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.920 that like he was this kind of kind cool older guy. 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:38.560 But when I read about his life and all of 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:42.840 the uh sort of women he went through, I can't 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.240 help but imagine that he's the kind of like old 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.280 He was the kind of older man who leeringly went 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.600 up to eighteen year old girls after talks and was like, 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.720 let's talk about LSD. You know. Yeah. One of the 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.520 interesting things that Robert Greenfield points out in his biography, though, 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:02.080 is that apparently, like there's the Leary that we all imagine, 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.680 which is often that that cool older guy, you know, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.600 with all this charisma and certainly seems to have had 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:11.799 a certain amount of Christmas entire life. But there's there 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.200 was this period where he was kind of like a um, 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.919 kind of just like a greasy guy with a mustache 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:21.720 in ill fitting clothing. Like that was the version of 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:26.120 him before his first wife died. Uh. And it's it 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:28.880 was after that that things begin to change and he 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:32.360 kind of morphed into this uh this more you know, 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.240 the older hip cool Leary that we instantly imagine. And 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.840 this really all began at Harvard University, the place you 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.680 would least expect it. So Leary joined Harvard University in 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.720 nineteen fifty nine. But contrary to myth, I want to 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.240 establish this because so many of the research got pieces 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.360 of research got this wrong. He taught there, but he 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.360 was not a professor there. He was not like a 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:01.160 tenured faculty. Okay, he was teaching there for sure, and 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.880 he was part of the psychology department. Now originally his 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.680 research they're focused on the interaction of dimensions of personality 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.400 and social relationships. He also did some work there as 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:17.280 a psychotherapist. Leary was really anti behaviorism, and he disagreed 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:22.760 that psychologists should only concern themselves with observable behavior. This 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.560 was the exact opposite of what was in trend at 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.320 the time. He more wanted to explore thoughts and beliefs 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:33.640 and other internal mental states. He actually later on would 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.719 compare himself in this role to William James, who is 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.599 understood as the father of American psychology, uh and who 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:46.159 was also known to use nitrous oxide to stimulate mystical consciousness. Well, 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.839 so would Lear. Yeah. Later on, uh so at Harvard 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.520 along with a guy named Richard Alpert who would later 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.279 go on to become Rom Doss. Uh This you might 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.000 know Ram Doss from the sort of infamous meditation book 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.200 I guess called be Here Now. Uh So he they 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.640 worked together there in the psychology department. Leary introduced others 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.400 on the Harvard faculty to psilocybin. And this, as we 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.320 talked about last episode, is the active ingredient in certain 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:18.320 species of mushrooms. And at the time it was legally 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.800 available for research. But what about his first experience with 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.479 this stuff? Well, he takes psilocybin while he's on vacation 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.880 in Quernavaca, Mexico. This is he and some friends were 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:33.479 on vacation in between semesters. They took some samples of mushrooms. Uh. 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.279 And their argument for the research that they were doing. 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.880 This is back at Harvard was that if psychology is 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.039 the study of the mind, then it should have a 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:46.760 legitimate interest in how cognition, perception, and emotion are affected 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:50.520 by mind altering substances. So some argued at the time 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.680 that they were also unaware of the potential dangers of 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.880 such research. Right, So, because psilocybin and LSD were so 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.360 new on the scene, especially in America, uh that this 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.640 team of psychologists, no matter how good intention they were, 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.880 they weren't aware of what the drawbacks could be, and 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.960 Larry and Albert agreed to policies to protect their subjects. 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:17.520 So this included no participation from undergraduate students. They were 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.800 not supposed to be giving any kind of psychedelics to 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.880 the undergraduate students at Harvard, but in nineteen sixty three, 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:29.560 Albert was dismissed after he administered psilocybin to an undergraduate 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.160 off campus, reportedly for sexual favors, although that is it's 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:38.240 unclear whether or not that's true. So Leary begins administering 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.640 these drugs to other researchers. He also administers it to 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.560 a group of prison inmates and a group of Divinity 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:50.080 students for his research. This was called the Harvard Psilocybin Project, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.279 and the goal basically of this project was to document 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:58.080 the effects of psychedelics on human consciousness. The notes from 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.000 these studies were very carefully doc commented in scripted, and 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.320 we know this because Timothy Leary's archives are pretty well 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:06.760 maintained in there at the new York Public Library. Yeah, 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.320 in the various product he was involved, and he was 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.360 he was apparently very big on everyone providing him with 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:15.520 lots of data, and it was kind of a meticulous 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.560 record keeper in that regard. So let's take a little 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.559 bit closer look at these these studies that he did. Okay, 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.280 let's look first at the one that he did with 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.120 a group of Divinity students. So this was called the 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:29.600 Good Friday Experiment, and it went like this. They gave 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:34.160 psilocybin to ten students and ten to a placebo group. 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.520 All of them then went to a Good Friday service. 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:40.760 They wanted to see if this would facilitate any kind 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.000 of mystical or spiritual experience, and in fact, eight of 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.240 the ten reported a mystical experience. One reported a feeling 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:52.480 of sacredness in a sense of peace. The placebo group, however, 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.680 sat quietly through the service. The others would quote laid 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.240 down or wander around the chapel muttering things like odd 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.880 is everywhere or oh the glory. What Leary failed to 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.800 report in the study was that one of the subjects 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.680 actually had a disturbing reaction and had to be given 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:14.200 a dose of thorazine to calm down. Now you look 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.320 back on this, that's a huge lapse of research ethics. 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:23.600 That's that's not good. So so that's unfortunate. Now, Rick Doblin, 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:28.280 who is the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:30.520 Psychedelic Studies, he's come up on the show before. We 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:32.800 talked especially about MAPS during our M d M A 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.000 two parter. He went back and he replicated this study, 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.680 and he interviewed seven of the ten students involved, and 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.120 they all said the experience reshaped their lives in profound ways. 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.840 The student who reacted poorly actually said that he became 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.400 convinced that he had been chosen to announce the arrival 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.360 of the Messiah and ran from the chapel. So this 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.360 is apparently what actually happened. He freaked out, he started 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.520 running away from the chapel. Responsibility like you need that 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.480 now if he's gonna announced the Messiah on Good Friday, Yeah, 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:08.280 of course, yeah, give me some advanced prep on some 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.680 more prep time. All right, let's talk about the Conquered 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.120 Prison experiment next. Okay, this is even wilder. So the 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:18.480 aim here was to use psychedelics to reduce the recidivism 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.840 rate and inmates. Now, Leary was was not interested in 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.960 working with prisoners for a few different reasons, but he 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.160 realized that he needed a way to measure that the 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.079 transformative nature of the drugs that he so believed in, 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.240 and this offered the chance. So it seems like a 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.840 decent argument, right. Could these substances open inmates up in 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.280 a way that allowed them to discuss their conditions and 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.040 their feelings, you know, someone who's just been hardened and 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:50.080 calloused by you know, by crime, by life, and by incarceration. 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.840 Could this be the substance to just loosen them up 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.600 enough to actually get some some work done with them. 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.120 So over the course of nine months, they used over 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.680 a dozen convicts there as test subjects with psychedelics. Again, 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:10.160 Rick Doblin replicated this study and re analyzed it in UH. 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:15.120 He found that Learry's conclusion wasn't warranted. Larry's conclusion was 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:20.120 the recidivism rate has been significantly reduced, but Rick actually 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:23.920 found maybe not so much. Timothy Learry, Uh, the flaw 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.040 was in the reporting results. He looked at recidivism rates 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.320 ten months after release for the psilocybin takers, but he 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:33.720 didn't look at the same amount of time. For the 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.520 control group, he only looked at them thirty months later. 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.960 And this is important because recidivism depends a lot on time, 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.760 with rates rising the more time one is out because 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.960 of the increased opportunities. You know, when are you gonna 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.240 end up getting busted and end up going to back 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:51.079 to jail? Is going to be the first day year out? Now, 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.240 it's going to be in the weeks that follow as 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.880 more and more temptations come. Yeah, We've talked about this 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.040 on the show Gee's many many times, but this goes 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.480 It speaks to something called the halo effect, right, where 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:06.120 researchers start seeing their data in a positive light as 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.679 much as possible. This becomes misleading. This actually seems to 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.079 go beyond the halo effect. Right, He's not just seeing 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.040 his data in a positive light. He's manipulating the data 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.240 so that it looks better than actually is. So already 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.040 here you see, like these are basically his two big 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:28.800 studies on using psychedelics medically in any kind of way, 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:33.160 and he's uh either falsified as research or or made 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:37.280 huge gaps in in ethical claims. Now. Albert would later 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.320 explain that the aim of the project he thought was 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:44.040 was pretty solid and with a very reasonable therapeutic model. 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.280 But he says it would have required long term application 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:52.040 and study, and Leary simply didn't have the patients for 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:56.920 long term studies. Um, which it's you can be to 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:58.640 make the argument, Well, then you're kind of in the 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.640 wrong line of business here, right. I mean, if you 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.160 if you want to conduct a scientific study, if you 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.679 want to really um do the work, then you need 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.480 to have the patients to see it through. And if 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:12.120 you if you don't have the patients, you're gonna end 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.480 up with what we have here, a a flawed study 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.400 that ends up having to be thrown out later on. Now, 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.600 remember how I was saying that the the notes that 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.199 he took during this time were meticulous. Wired magazine did 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.520 a great article and Timothy Leary and I pulled a 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.960 quote directly from it. They said later reports adhere less 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.840 strictly to reality, meaning his reports in one filled out 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:38.719 in March of nineteen sixty three, just weeks before he 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:42.160 got kicked out of Harvard Leary Prince in big block letters, 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.040 he puts down a question mark for his age, enlists 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:50.920 his occupation as angel. Okay, yeah, so you can start 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.280 to see that he's already unraveling here, right. So Larry 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.760 eventually moves on from psilocybin and he tries LSD in 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.120 nineteen sixty two and then was dismissed from Harvard in 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.839 nineteen sixty three. Various faculty and administrators were essentially worried 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:08.080 about the safety of their subjects, especially because Larry and 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.280 Albert were conducting their research while they themselves were under 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:17.199 the influence of psilocybin. Psychologist Professor Herbert C. Kellman circulated 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.560 a letter around the faculty and called for a meeting 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.200 calling for the trials to be voluntary. One of Larry's 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.679 former students remembers that they had a choice at the 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.000 end of the semester. They could either take their final 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:33.120 or they could participate in psilocybin trials. So it's interesting. 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.240 That's an interesting choice to make. Yeah, yeah, it is 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.440 an odd choice to give a college student. So okay, 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.000 after all this stuff of the faculty, Larry was officially 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:46.600 fired for failing to fulfill his teaching obligations because he 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.559 went traveling instead. This is actually what they nailed him 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.160 for was that he wasn't teaching his classes. It wasn't 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:54.439 the actual research that he was doing. He was just 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.520 kind of like, I'm just going to travel instead of 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.160 teaching my classes. And they were like, look, the job, 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.520 says teach the classes. You're not really doing the job. Sorry, 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.880 you're done. Now. This is the moment where Leary and Alpert, though, 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:08.880 are propelled into stardom because they get kicked out of 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.040 Harvard and that's a big deal, right, and they become 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:15.360 proponents for psychedelics. Peter Connors writes this book called The 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.920 White Hand Society about Leary and his relationship with Alan Ginsburg. 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.600 He says, this is really there's a certain point, and 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.560 this is it where Larry gives up on science. Instead 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:28.320 of looking for data to legitimize his psychedelic research, he 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:33.120 started talking about spiritual enlightenment instead. This wasn't entirely his fault, 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.320 because let's think about it, he had no adequate scientific 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.960 language in place to do so. Uh. Instead he fell 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.720 back on hip poetic language that he picked up from 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.880 hanging out with people like Alan Ginsberg and Charles Olsen, 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:49.720 and that really ended the field of psychology taking him 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.640 seriously and anyway. But it also makes me think like 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.080 ultimately Leary, like this is a guy who was better 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:57.880 suited to be a shaman than a scientist. This is 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:01.760 a guy who's beterfitted to be this this celebrity figure 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.080 than than than an actual researcher. Yeah, and now I 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.560 have a lovely story before we end the Harvard stuff 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.760 and jump into his time with the Millbrook group. So 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.520 William S. Burrows is one of the people who actually 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:20.479 denounced Timothy Leary for the same thing. WILLIAMS Burrows obviously 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.960 interested in psychedelics, author of Naked Lunch. Yeah, he goes 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.120 to visit Timothy Leary while he's at Harvard. And Burrows 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:30.680 gets there and he's like, where are the scientific studies? 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.440 Like I expected there to be mazes with rats running 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.560 through them and electrodes and stuff. What you aren't proving anything. 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:38.920 All you're doing is just sitting around and getting high 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:43.720 and enjoying yourself. So even william S Burrows was like, no, sorry, 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.640 Like I'm not buying this. So it makes you sympathize 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:49.160 with this Harvard faculty crew who are like kind of 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.680 painted throughout the history of psychedelics as just being these 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.640 like stodgy old men, right, But like even william S 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.000 Burrows was like, you're not really doing anything here. Yea. 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.600 Burrows is basically saying, I thought you or one of them, 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.320 but you're just one of us, you know, yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:06.160 All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.160 we come back, we're gonna move on to the next 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:12.880 chapter in the life of Timothy Leary. Alright, we're back. 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.760 So this is a great quote that comes from Louis 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.360 Mannan's New Yorker article on Timothy Leary, and I think 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:21.880 it's a good segue into his time with the Millbrook Group. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.440 He says the only things Leary was serious about were 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:30.200 pleasure and renown. He underwent no fundamental transformation when he 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.520 left the academic world for the counterculture. He liked women, 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.960 he liked being the center of attention, and he liked 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.640 to get high. And then there's this is another quote 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.720 from it. He was a counter culture salesman, and he 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.760 wore on every occasion the same blissed out smile, a 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.400 rictus somewhere between a beat a fick, what me worry 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.320 grin and a movie stars frozen stare into the flash bulbs. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.280 One of his ex wives described it as the smile 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:02.440 of the ego actually eating the per sonality that I 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:09.720 can't think of a harsher condemnation. That's brutal. Alright, So 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:12.159 these guys get kicked out of Harvard. That's where we 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:16.399 left off, basically, right, Albert and Leary they go and 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.399 they say, well, let's just establish our own privately funded 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:21.600 research group, and we're going to call it the International 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.920 Foundation for Internal Freedom, and it's going to be in Mexico. Basically, 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.080 we'll get a bunch of people around the world to 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:31.520 form groups. They'll take LSD and they'll report their results 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:36.720 to us. Will be kind of like citizen science, very scientific. Unfortunately, 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:39.360 the Mexican government wasn't having it, so they stepped in 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.160 and they demanded that Albert and uh Leary leave. So 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:45.959 they leave. They've got no place left to go. Cambridge 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.680 doesn't want them, Mexico doesn't want them. Well, where do 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.359 they go? They go to this country estate in Millbrook, 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.640 New York that was provided to them by a millionaire 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.560 who sympathized with their research in LSD. This is what 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.520 we all need, man, We just need a sympathetic millionaire. 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:06.240 This millionaire was William Melon Hitchcock, also known as Mr Billy. 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.240 Huh yeah, Mr Billy was the grandson of the founder 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.120 of Gulf Oil. This is where all his money came from. 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:17.439 And at Millbrook, Leary established what he called the Castallia Foundation, 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.840 which he said was dedicated to the scholarly study of 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:25.199 LSD and its spiritual applications. So what's one of the 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:28.359 things he does while he's there that's anywhere close to academic. 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:33.320 He helps develop a device that's called the experiential typewriter. Uh, 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.800 and this allows psychedelic subjects to record what they're experiencing 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.800 as it's happening. Otherwise they can't tell you. This is 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:45.600 essentially him saying I can't not be high while I'm 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.600 doing these studies on people, So we need something that 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.320 we can just hit buttons of to get across what's happening, 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:54.479 rather than have somebody who's in the room who can 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.320 sort of translate it. Right, It's easier to have a 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.760 special typewriter for people that that are high then to 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.359 have a single person that is not high. And seems 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:06.840 to be the case. Yeah, yeah. So this thing looked 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.840 like an old adding machine, had large buttons on it 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.679 that had labels to indicate what kind of bodily sensations 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:15.840 you're experiencing or if you were having hallucinations or you 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.199 had a sense of entering the void. I'd love to 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.000 see what the graphics. I think it would be an emoji. Right, 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.919 he's describing he was inventing an emoji's only type. Right. 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.400 You know what, Yeah, we're not giving him enough credit. Yeah, 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.440 Tnethy Leary invented emojis. We wouldn't have the Emoji movie 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.960 if we're not to Timothy Leary. Uh, you know, to 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.160 to blame him for something else. Okay, So then this 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.119 thing basically, after you know you're high, you pound on 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.320 all these buttons, it prints out a little paper script 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.600 that records what your trip was like. Uh. Some articles 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:50.320 characterized the Millbrook Group and Leary as actually not being 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:52.960 as a kind of like psychedelically crazy as you might 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.720 think they were. Uh. They were sometimes depicted as being 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:01.480 East Coast upper class elitists and very exclusive. Now Ken 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.080 Kisi and his Mary Pranksters came out there at one point, uh, 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:07.840 and they were like, oh this is great, let's go 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.640 meet these psychedelic pioneers. And they're like, oh man, these 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.080 guys are just total stiffs. They're boring. Um, So it 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.399 is interesting interaction between these two worlds. Yeah, like because 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.199 you tend to think, well, Leary would have just been 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.119 able to move throughout the counterculture and he would do 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.440 to be embraced everywhere. But but not so so. During 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.600 this time with Millbrook, Leary was convicted on several charges. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:32.520 This is when a lot of the prison stuff happens. 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.840 It's all related to drug use in possession. The Millbrook 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:40.240 house itself was raided and Leary was arrested by who 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:44.639 G Gordon Liddy. And at the time G. Gordon Liddy 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.200 was he was part of the County Sheriff's department there 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.560 in New York. Now, later on he went to be 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:54.280 part of the Watergate Burglary. Uh, and he ends up 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.720 kind of teaming up with Timothy Leary down the way. Yeah, 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:00.439 we'll get into that in a bit. So yeah, so 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.520 this is, man, this is where things just really started 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:08.600 getting bonkers, right Mill Millbrook and afterwards are just where 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:11.920 things really let loose with Leary. Yeah. Now, this is 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.000 definitely a period where on one level, uh, Leary and 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:19.399 his bunch they are being targeted, Yeah, totally. On the 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:21.159 other hand, you could also say, well, they're kind of 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:25.040 they're making themselves easy targets. But you know, you eventually 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.600 end up in kind of gray area there when when 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.240 you're saying, well, you know, did he have it coming 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:33.080 or not. But now, this is certainly a period of 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.720 time though, where you can say that that Leary and 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:38.600 people in his circle were being targeted by the authorities. 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.120 On the other hand, you might charge while they were, 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.359 they were kind of making themselves ideal targets for these uh, 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.680 for these forces as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.040 let's take this as an example. Okay, so right after 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.159 this raid happened, Leary goes down to New York and 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.679 at the Manhattan Town Hall. There he gives a talk, 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:02.040 and there he says ls it might actually be a problem, 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:05.120 And he says, quote l s D maybe creating a 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:09.119 new race of mutants. This is like the kind of 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:12.919 hyperbole that he's starting to use in his rhetoric. He 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.359 said he was going to stop using LSD and he 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.159 urged others to do so, but he also advocated that 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:22.480 LSD would cure alcoholism, accelerate learning, and maybe helpful and 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:24.720 treating all forms of mental illness. Well, as we know 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:27.040 from the last episode, some of these things seem to 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.480 be true, we just need to do more research on them. 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:33.080 But because of its harmful side effects, Leary advised using 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:37.520 other methods to produce psychedelic effects. So he says, you 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.760 can just simply do this with the right lights, sounds, 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:43.440 and a stroboscope. So he's basically like, yeah, I just 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:45.960 don't bother with the LSD anymore, just like get in 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.119 the right mood, man, and we'll like put the right 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:51.800 kind of colorful lights in the room and things like that, 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:54.000 and it's the same experience. Well, this is this is 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:55.560 a really you know, I found this to be a 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.680