WEBVTT - Timothy Leary, Part 2: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.320 Stuff to Blow Your Mind New York Comic Con Stranger Things. Yes, 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:07.800 it all comes together on October six from seven pm 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.200 to eight thirty pm at Hudson Mercantile in Manhattan. If 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.160 you're in the area, Join is for Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.880 Your Mind Live Stranger Science as we explore the exciting 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.799 science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix show 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.799 Stranger Things. Stuff you missed in history class has a 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.360 show right after us in the same venue, so you 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.440 can really double down on your stuff. And Hey, the 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:31.680 three of us would love to meet you. This is 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:34.120 the opportunity to do it. Learn more and buy your 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:38.720 tickets at New York Comic Con dot com. Slash n 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:46.000 y c C hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:54.960 Your Mind from how Stuffworks dot com. Hey he wasn't 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:56.840 the Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.920 Lamb and I'm Christian Seger, and this is part two 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:04.039 of our Timothy Leary l s D series of episodes. 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:06.880 We've already done Part one, where we talk about the 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.440 basic science behind l s D and psilocybin and the 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.840 research that's been done using these psychedelic substances. And then 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.760 we talked about the first part of Timothy Leary's life 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.240 leading up to his research on this. Yes, that's right. 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.000 So if you if you missed part one, go back 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:24.680 and listen to it, because that's the one that's going 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.440 to be front loaded with all that LSD science and 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:32.119 just the initial period of Leary's life, which which ultimately 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.680 kind of sets the sets the pace for the rest 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.400 of his life, like the destruct self destructive behaviors, the patterns, 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.720 they're all pretty much present before he even you know, 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:47.240 gets that finishes his education. So I've been sitting around 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:49.560 the house reading about Timothy Leary for the last couple 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.520 of days and my wife says, out of nowhere, you know, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.240 I met him, right, And I was like, no, really, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.240 And we both went to college at the University of 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.640 New Hampshire for undergraduate and before I got there, but 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.920 while she was there, either as a freshman or sophomore. Uh, 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.639 Timothy Learry came on one of his infamous campus speaking tours, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.799 gave one of his you know, enlightenment talks, and then 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.200 afterwards my wife was outside the venue just like smoking 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.200 a cigarette, and Timothy Leary came out and sat down 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.079 next to her and just smoked a cigarette with her 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:23.480 and they chatted for like five or ten minutes, and 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:25.400 then he got up and went on his way. They 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:27.480 talked about She didn't really say she just said that 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.079 like he was this kind of kind cool older guy. 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.760 But when I read about his life and all of 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.960 the uh sort of women he went through, I can't 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:42.400 help but imagine that he's the kind of like old 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.480 He was the kind of older man who leeringly went 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:48.760 up to eighteen year old girls after talks and was like, 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.880 let's talk about LSD. You know. Yeah. One of the 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.720 interesting things that Robert Greenfield points out in his biography though, 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:59.240 is that apparently, like there's the Leary that we all imagine, 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.840 which is off and that that cool older guy, you know, 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.400 with that with all this charisma and certainly seems to 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.160 have had a certain amount of chrismas entire life. But 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.760 there's there was this period where he was kind of 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:15.079 like a um, kind of just like a greasy guy 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.280 with a mustache in ill fitting clothing. Like that was 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.519 the version of him before his first wife died. Uh, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.480 And it's it was after that that things began to 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.320 change and he kind of morphed into this, uh this 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.160 more you know, the older, hip cool Leary that we 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.360 instantly imagine. And this really all began at Harvard University, 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.840 the place you would least expect it. So Leary joined 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:43.480 Harvard University in nineteen fifty nine. But contrary to myth, 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:46.000 I want to establish this because so many of the 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:50.200 research got pieces of research got this wrong. He taught there, 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.640 but he was not a professor there. He was not 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:58.160 like a tenured faculty. Okay, he was teaching there for sure, 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.080 and he was part of the psychology department. Originally his 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.840 research they're focused on the interaction of dimensions of personality 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.560 and social relationships. He also did some work there as 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:14.480 a psychotherapist. Leary was really anti behaviorism, and he disagreed 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:19.960 that psychologists should only concern themselves with observable behavior. This 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.720 was the exact opposite of what was in trend at 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.520 the time. He more wanted to explore thoughts and beliefs 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.839 and other internal mental states. He actually later on would 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.919 compare himself in this role to William James, who is 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.760 understood as the father of American psychology, uh and who 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:43.040 was also known to use nitrous oxide to stimulate mystical consciousness. 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.760 Well yeah, uh so at Harvard along with a guy 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.680 named Richard Alpert who would later go on to become 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:54.480 Rom Doss. Uh This you might know Ram Doss from 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.200 the sort of infamous meditation book I guess called be 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.680 Here Now. Uh. So they worked together there in the 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:07.040 psychology department. Leary introduced others on the Harvard faculty to psilocybin. 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:09.919 And this, as we talked about last episode, is the 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.520 active ingredient in certain species of mushrooms, and at the 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:17.760 time it was legally available for research. But what about 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.520 his first experience with this stuff? Well, he takes psilocybin 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.159 while he's on vacation in Quernavaca, Mexico. This is he 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.480 and some friends were on vacation in between semesters. They 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.039 took some samples of mushrooms. Uh. And their argument for 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.240 the research that they were doing. This is back at 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:38.240 Harvard was that if psychology is the study of the mind, 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:42.320 then it should have a legitimate interest in how cognition, perception, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:46.520 and emotion are affected by mind altering substances. So some 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.320 argued at the time that they were also unaware of 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:53.720 the potential dangers of such research. Right, so, because psilocybin 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.279 and LSD were so new on the scene, especially in America, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.480 uh that this team of psychologists, no matter or how 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.320 good intentioned they were, they weren't aware of what the 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:08.600 drawbacks could be, and Leary and Albert agreed to policies 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:13.200 to protect their subjects. So this included no participation from 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.960 undergraduate students. They were not supposed to be giving any 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.080 kind of psychedelics to the undergraduate students at Harvard, but 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.920 in nineteen sixty three, Albert was dismissed after he administered 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:29.400 psilocybin to an undergraduate off campus, reportedly for sexual favors, 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.000 although that is it's unclear whether or not that's true. 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.640 So Leary begins administering these drugs to other researchers. He 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.440 also administers it to a group of prison inmates and 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.440 a group of Divinity students for his research. This was 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.960 called the Harvard Psilocybin Project, and the goal basically of 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:53.080 this project was to document the effects of psychedelics on 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.920 human consciousness. The notes from these studies were very carefully 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.599 documented in scripted, and we know this because Timothy Leary's 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.640 archives are pretty well maintained and there at the New 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.240 York Public Library. Yeah, in the various products he was involved, 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.880 and he was he was apparently very big on everyone 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.960 providing him with lots of data, and it was kind 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.040 of a meticulous record keeper in that regard. So let's 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.960 take a little bit closer look at these these studies 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:19.960 that he did. Okay, let's look first at the one 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:22.400 that he did with a group of Divinity students. So 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.560 this was called the Good Friday Experiment, and it went 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.560 like this. They gave psilocybin to ten students and ten 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.400 to a placebo group. All of them then went to 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.720 a Good Friday service. They wanted to see if this 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.360 would facilitate any kind of mystical or spiritual experience, and 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.320 in fact, eight of the ten reported a mystical experience. 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:47.480 One reported a feeling of sacredness and a sense of peace. 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.840 The placebo group, however, sat quietly through the service. The 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.760 others would quote laid down or wander around the chapel 0:07:55.840 --> 0:08:00.120 muttering things like God is everywhere or oh the glory. 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:03.880 What Leary failed to report in the study was that 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.080 one of the subjects actually had a disturbing reaction and 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:10.040 had to be given a dose of thorazine to calm down. 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:14.440 Now you look back on this, that's a huge lapse 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:19.559 of research ethics. That's that's not good. So, so that's unfortunate. Now, 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.480 Rick Doblin, who is the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.560 Association for Psychedelic Studies, he's come up on the show before, 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:29.840 we talked especially about MAPS during our M d M 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.200 A two parter. He went back and he replicated this study, 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.840 and he interviewed seven of the ten students involved, and 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:40.320 they all said the experience reshaped their lives in profound ways. 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.040 The student who reacted poorly actually said that he became 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:47.560 convinced that he had been chosen to announce the arrival 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:51.559 of the Messiah and ran from the chapel. So this 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.280 is apparently what actually happened, and he freaked out, he 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:58.280 started running away from the chapel. Responsibility. Yeah, if he's 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.360 gonna announced the Messiah on good Day, Yeah, of course. Yeah, 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:06.080 give me some advanced prep on that, some more prep time. 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.520 All right, let's talk about the Conquered Prison experiment next. Okay, 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.680 this is even wilder. So the aim here was to 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:17.360 use psychedelics to reduce the recidivism rate in inmates. Now 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.000 Learry was was not interested in working with prisoners for 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.320 a few different reasons, but he realized that he needed 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.719 a way to measure the the transformative nature of the 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.680 drugs that he so believed in, and this offered the chance. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.880 So it seems like a decent argument, right. Could these 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:38.000 substances open inmates up in a way that allowed them 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.480 to discuss their conditions and their feelings, you know, someone 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.720 who's just been hardened and calloused by you know, by crime, 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.880 by life, and by incarceration. Could this be the substance 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.720 to just loosen them up enough to actually get some 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:53.960 some work done with them. So over the course of 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:58.360 nine months, they used over a dozen convicts there as 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:03.720 test subjects with psychedelics. Again, Rick Doblin replicated this study 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:09.000 and re analyzed it in UH. He found that Leary's 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:14.040 conclusion wasn't warranted. Learry's conclusion was the recidivism rate has 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:19.079 been significantly reduced, but Rick actually found maybe not so much. 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.440 Timothy Learry, UH. The flaw was in the reporting results. 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.600 He looked at recidivism rates ten months after release for 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.760 the psilocybin takers, but he didn't look at the same 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:32.120 amount of time for the control group. He only looked 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.920 at them thirty months later. And this is important because 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.800 recidivism depends a lot on time, with rates rising the 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.320 more time one is out because of the increased opportunities. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.520 You know, when are you gonna end up getting busted 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.040 and end up going to back to jail? Is going 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:48.520 to be the first day y're out, now, It's going 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:50.680 to be in the weeks that follow as more and 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.320 more temptations come. Yeah, We've talked about this on the 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:57.880 show Gee's many many times, but this goes It speaks 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:00.320 to something called the halo effect, right where reese archers 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.560 starts seeing their data in a positive light as much 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.000 as possible. This becomes misleading. This actually seems to go 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.400 beyond the halo effect. Right, He's not just seeing his 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.760 data in a positive light, He's manipulating the data so 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.680 that it looks better than actually is. So already here 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:20.840 you see, like these are basically his two big studies 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.959 on on using psychedelics medically in any kind of way, 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:30.720 and he's either falsified as research or or made huge 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:35.439 gaps in in ethical claims. Now. Albert would later explain 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:37.560 that the aim of the project he thought was was 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.880 pretty solid and with a very reasonable therapeutic model, but 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:46.120 he says it would have required long term application and study, 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:51.679 and Leary simply didn't have the patients for long term studies. Um, 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.120 which it's you can easily make the argument, well, then 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.360 you're kind of in the wrong line of business here, right. 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:00.040 I mean, if you're if you want to conduct a 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.120 scientific study, if you want to really uh do the work, 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:06.600 then you need to have the patients to see it through. 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:08.920 And if you if you don't have the patients, you're 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.440 gonna end up with what we have here, m a 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.960 a flawed study that ends up having to be thrown 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.839 out later on. Now, remember how I was saying that 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.599 the the notes that he took during this time were meticulous. 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.240 Wired magazine did a great article and Timothy Leary and 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:27.720 I pulled a quote directly from it. They said later 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:32.000 reports adhere less strictly to reality, meaning his reports. In 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.160 one filled out in March of nineteen sixty three, just 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.040 weeks before he got kicked out of Harvard Leary Prince 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:40.920 in big block letters, he puts down a question mark 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:46.880 for his age and lists his occupation as angel. Okay, yeah, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.439 so you can start to see that he's already unraveling here, right, 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.240 So Learry eventually moves on from psilocybin and he tries 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.920 LSD in nineteen sixty two and then was dismissed from 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.360 Harvard in nineteen sixty three. Various faculty and administrators were 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.800 essentially worried about the safety of their subjects, especially because 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:08.080 Larry and Albert were conducting their research while they themselves 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.520 were under the influence of psilocybin. Psychologist Professor Herbert C. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.240 Kellman circulated a letter around the faculty and called for 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.839 a meeting calling for the trials to be voluntary. One 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.720 of Larry's former students remembers that they had a choice 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:24.640 at the end of the semester. They could either take 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.920 their final or they could participate in psilocybin trials. So 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.760 it's interesting, that's an interesting choice to make. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.560 it is an odd choice to give a college student. 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.520 So okay, After all this stuff of the faculty, Larry 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.040 was officially fired for failing to fulfill his teaching obligations 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.160 because he went traveling instead. This is actually what they 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.880 nailed him for was that he wasn't teaching his classes. 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.400 It wasn't the actual research that he was doing. He 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:53.640 was just kind of like, I'm just gonna travel instead 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.960 of teaching my classes. And they were like, look, the 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.679 job says teach the classes. You're not really doing the job. Sorry, 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.040 you're on now. This is the moment where Leary and Alpert, though, 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.040 are propelled into stardom because they get kicked out of 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.200 Harvard and that's a big deal, right, and they become 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.560 proponents for psychedelics. Peter Connors writes this book called The 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.119 White Hand Society about Leary and his relationship with Alan Ginsberg. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:18.800 He says, this is really there's a certain point, and 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.720 this is it where Larry gives up on science. Instead 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:25.480 of looking for data to legitimize his psychedelic research, he 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:30.000 started talking about spiritual enlightenment instead. This wasn't entirely his 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.800 fault because let's think about it, he had no adequate 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:36.880 scientific language in place to do so. Uh. Instead he 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.680 fell back on hip poetic language that he picked up 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:43.040 from hanging out with people like Alan Ginsburg and Charles Olsen, 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:46.880 and that really ended the field of psychology taking him 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.800 seriously in anyway. But it also makes me think like 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.280 ultimately Leary, like this is a guy who was better 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.040 suited to be a shaman than a scientist. This is 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.560 a guy who's better fitted to be this this celebrity 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:02.120 figure than than the an actual researcher. Yeah, and now 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.400 I have a lovely story before we end the Harvard 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.240 stuff and jump into his time with the Millbrook group. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.200 So William S. Burrows is one of the people who 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:17.080 actually denounced Timothy Leary for the same thing. Williams Burrows 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.880 obviously interested in psychedelic author of Naked Lunch. Yeah, he 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.760 goes to visit Timothy Leary while he's at Harvard. And 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.880 Burrows gets there and he's like, where are the scientific studies? 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.600 Like I expected there to be mazes with rats running 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.760 through them and electrodes and stuff. What you aren't proving anything. 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.160 All you're doing is just sitting around and getting high 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:41.000 and enjoying yourself. So even william S Burrows was like, no, sorry, 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:43.840 Like I'm not buying this. So it makes you sympathize 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.320 with this Harvard faculty crew who are like kind of 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:48.880 painted throughout the history of psychedelics as just being these 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.800 like stodgy old men, right, But like even william S 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.240 Burrows was like, you're not really doing anything here. Yeah, 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:57.760 Burrows is basically saying, I thought you were one of them, 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:02.040 but you're just one of us, you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Alright, 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:03.960 we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.240 we're gonna move on to the next chapter in the 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.640 life of Timothy Leary. Than all right, we're back. So 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.600 this is a great quote that comes from Louis Mannan's 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.680 New Yorker article on Timothy Leary, and I think it's 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.040 a good segue into his time with the Millbrook Group. 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:22.600 He says the only things Leary was serious about were 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:27.360 pleasure and renown. He underwent no fundamental transformation when he 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.680 left the academic world for the counterculture. He liked women, 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.160 he liked being the center of attention, and he liked 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.840 to get high. And then there's this is another quote 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:38.880 from it. He was a counter culture salesman, and he 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.960 wore on every occasion the same blissed out smile, a 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:47.120 rictus somewhere between a beatifick, what me worry grin and 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.840 a movie stars frozen stare into the flash bulbs. One 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.760 of his ex wives described it as the smile of 0:16:54.800 --> 0:17:00.880 the ego actually eating the personality. That. I can't think 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:07.800 of a harsher condemnation. That's brutal. Alright, So these guys 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:10.840 get kicked out of Harvard. That's where we left off, basically, right, 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:14.440 Albert and Leary they go and they say, well, let's 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.479 just establish our own privately funded research group, and we're 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.960 gonna call it the International Foundation for Internal Freedom, and 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:23.680 it's going to be in Mexico. Basically, we'll get a 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.600 bunch of people around the world to form groups. They'll 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.200 take LSD and they'll report their results to us. Would 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:34.080 be kind of like citizen science, very scientific. Unfortunately, the 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.680 Mexican government wasn't having it, so they stepped in and 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:41.200 they demanded that Albert and uh Leary leave. So they leave. 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:43.679 They've got no place left to go. Cambridge doesn't want them, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.399 Mexico doesn't want them. Well where do they go? They 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.320 go to this country estate in Millbrook, New York that 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.840 was provided to them by a millionaire who sympathized with 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.680 their research in LSD. This is what we all need, man, 0:17:55.760 --> 0:18:00.320 We just need a sympathetic millionaire. This millionaire was will M. 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:05.440 Melon Hitchcock, also known as Mr Billy. Huh yeah. Mr 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.479 Billy was the grandson of the founder of Gulf Oil. 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.240 This is where all his money came from. And at Millbrook, 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.159 Leary established what he called the Castallia Foundation, which he 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:19.000 said was dedicated to the scholarly study of LSD and 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.720 its spiritual applications. So what's one of the things he 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.120 does while he's there that's anywhere close to academic. He 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:30.480 helps develop a device that's called the experiential typewriter. Uh, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:35.000 and this allows psychedelic subjects to record what they're experiencing 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.000 as it's happening. Otherwise they can't tell you. This is 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:42.800 essentially him saying, I can't not be high while I'm 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.800 doing these studies on people, So we need something that 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:49.520 we can just hit buttons of to get across what's happening, 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:51.679 rather than have somebody who's in the room who can 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.520 sort of translate it. Right, It's easier to have a 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.800 a special typewriter for people that that are high than 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.800 to have a single person that is not high. And 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.560 it seems to be the case. Yeah, yeah. So this 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.720 thing looked like an old adding machine, had large buttons 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:08.840 on it that had labels to indicate what kind of 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.840 bodily sensations you were experiencing or if you were having 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.760 hallucinations or you had a sense of entering the void. 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:16.879 I'd love to see what the graphics, right, I think 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.560 it would be an emoji. Right, he's describing he was 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:22.880 inventing an emoji's only type. Right, you know what. Yeah, 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.240 we're not giving him enough credit. Yeah, Tynethy Leary invented emojis. 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.320 We wouldn't have the Emoji movie if we're not for 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:33.760 Timothy Leary. Uh, yeah, to to blame him for something else. Okay, 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.680 So then this thing basically, after you you know you're high, 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:38.560 you pound on all these buttons, it prints out a 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.879 little paper script that records what your trip was like. Uh. 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.639 Some articles characterized the Millbrook Group and Leary as actually 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:49.840 not being as a kind of like psychedelically crazy as 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.480 you might think they were. Uh. They were sometimes depicted 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:58.160 as being East Coast upper class elitists and very exclusive. 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.800 Now Ken Kizi in his R Prankster's came out there 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.280 at one point, uh, and they were like, oh this 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.000 is great, let's go meet these psychedelic pioneers. And they're like, 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.800 oh man, these guys are just total stiffs. They're boring. 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:14.680 Um so it's interesting interaction between these two worlds. Yeah, 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.159 like because you tend to think, well, Leary would have 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:19.960 just been able to move throughout the counterculture and he 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.119 would do some brad be embraced everywhere, but but not 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.720 so so. During this time with Millbrook, Leary was convicted 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:28.679 on several charges. This is when a lot of the 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.280 prison stuff happens. It's all related to drug use in possession. 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:36.399 The Millbrook house itself was raided and Leary was arrested 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:41.040 by who g Gordon Liddy And at the time, ge 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.159 Gordon Lyddy was the He was part of the County 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.320 Sheriff's department there in New York. Now, later on he 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.680 went to be part of the Watergate Burglary. Uh, and 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.760 he ends up kind of teaming up with Timothy Leary 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.400 down the way. Yeah, we'll get into that in a bit. So. Yeah, 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.359 so this is, man, this is where things just really 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:05.040 started getting bonkers, right Mill Millbrook and afterwards are just 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:08.959 where things really let loose with Leary. Yeah. Now, this 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:13.119 is definitely a period where on one level, uh, Leary 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.480 and his bunch they are being targeted. Yeah, totally. On 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.280 the other hand, you could also say, well, they're kind 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.399 of they're making themselves easy targets. But you eventually end 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:25.440 up in kind of gray area there when when you're saying, well, 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.239 you know, did he have it coming or not. But 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:30.800 now this is certainly a period of time though, where 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:33.439 you can say that that Leary and people in his 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.040 circle were being targeted by the authorities. On the other hand, 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:38.919 you might charge while they were, they were kind of 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.480 making themselves ideal targets for these uh, for these forces 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.520 as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, let's take this 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:49.240 as an example. Okay, so right after this raid happened, 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:52.320 Leary goes down to New York and at the Manhattan 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:55.959 Town Hall. There he gives a talk, and there he 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:59.640 says LSD it might actually be a problem. And he says, 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.879 quote l s D maybe creating a new race of mutants. 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.399 This is like the kind of hyperbole that he's starting 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:10.960 to use in his rhetoric. He said he was going 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:13.840 to stop using LSD and he urged others to do so, 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:18.280 but he also advocated that LSD would cure alcoholism, accelerate learning, 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.520 and maybe helpful and treating all forms of mental illness. Well, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:23.480 as we know from the last episode, some of these 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:25.320 things seem to be true. We just need to do 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:28.760 more research on them. But because of its harmful side effects, 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:33.840 Leary advised using other methods to produce psychedelic effects. So 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.280 he says, you can just simply do this with the 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:40.240 right lights, sounds, and a stroboscope. So he's basically like, 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:42.760 I just don't bother with the LSD anymore, Just like 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.000 get in the right mood, man, and we'll like put 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.040 the right kind of colorful lights in the room and 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:50.720 things like that, and it's the same experience. Well, this 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:52.520 is this is a really you know, I found this 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:54.879 to be a really interesting chapter in his life based 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.480 on Greenfields telling in the biography, and I do want 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:01.480