Drinking About...

MKUltra Subject #580348 survives & thrives?!?   

Whaddaya say about the unique hominin species, James Mathers?   

He's a mystery and a history, once a painterly appendage of the Warhol scene, later volunteered in Hakim Bey's @narcho bookstore in Dublin, chef on Mediterranean cruises, naked guru of a Smurf Village in Topanga, presiding over a motley crew and wildCAT parties. Absentee Lord of the Art House experience in Venice. Poetic high point was the toilet paper scrolls with Kali-Log. They were in the last days of old Topanga Bohemia. Mathers held forth daily sermons from the trailer in which were produced the original script of Bladerunner, or so the story goes, at any rate. Don't believe everything you hear on Internet shows about conspiracies! And finally, gotta drop mention of the Mathers classic, Children's Guide to Astral Travel, now in color. You can find it somewhere, go hunting!  

Nowadays Mathers continues to produce his entheogenic cartoons from a haunted Hollywood house, and maintains parental duties.   

What is the topology of the Soul?  

In this episode, he confesses all his hyperdimensional affiliations ... blockbuster revelations, don't miss a second!   

Tags: @wisdommathers on IG. 

We sometimes repost his art @neelunet. Stay tuned for new Xzorlock gallery shows!

In this episode, we explore a shocking contrarian view of psychedelia & the 60s counter-culture.   According to our guest Robert Forte -- who personally knew many of the "Founding Figures" of psychedelia -- the hippy acid revolution may have been more shaped by the CIA than we realize. While everybody knows that "The Agency" dabbled massively with LSD and other psychoactives (Project MKUltra), the accepted story is that it turned out not to be useful as a "truth serum."  "Acid" was just too unruly for their needs, and ultimately "escaped" into the hands of professors and beatniks, who then popularized its use. Or so the story goes, ...til today.  Robert worked closely with Timothy Leary, Albert Hoffman,  R. Gordon Wasson, and studied in their archives.  So he's not just sniping from the sidelines here, he knows the historical details and personas inside out.   Forte has also: written and edited ENTHEOGENS AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGION; TIMOTHY LEARY: OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, and THE ROAD TO ELEUSIS; played a role in early therapeutic applications of MDMA; and is critical of the current wave of medical commercialization of psychedelics; has a brand new website, AlteredStatesofAmerica.net.  Check out the episode, and subscribe! More on the way...

In our third episode, we got some time with Mark Changizi, cognitive theoretician and Co-Founder of a new institute, FreeX.group, for free speech and free expression. Mark has been an outspoken critic of lockdowns and mask mandates since early 2020. He brings decades of cognitive research and theory to bear on the mass hysteria around a real underlying infectious disease. Not such a big fan of "conspiracy theorizing," Mark proposes that a lot of what is going on can be better explained by "emergent social dynamics," which he illustrates in the second half.   

Mark's books include The Brain from 25,000 Feet; The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision and Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man; and Humans 3.0. He studied at CalTech, RPI and Duke University. We highly recommend his prolific social quips and short "Science Moments" on Twitter (@markchangizi), Facebook and here on YT, ...at least for the moment :-)

For our second episode of our revived show, we connect with Derrick Broze, a grassroots activist and journalist-at-large. Derrick explores the dangers of the emerging Bio-Security State, as well as solution-oriented approaches such as crypto, "parallel structures," and the "counter-economics" ideas of Samuel Konkin. Derrick has published a few books and documentaries, including How to Opt-Out Of The Technocratic State, is a founder of The Conscious Resistance Network, and his reports appear regularly at The Last American Vagabond. You can find more from Derrick at derrickbroze.com.

Drinking About Conspiracies sat down with Mary Jane Patton, a long-time cannabis mover and shaker, activist and marketing strategist. Mary Jane shows how the criminalization of both cannabis and hemp from the 30s on was really one big "open-air conspiracy." From there, we explore how "The War on Some Drugs" seems to have spilled over into "The War on Covid."